Part 13 (1/2)
The health-magistrate arrived at an early hour, on the morning of our departure from the lazaretto of Villa Franca. He was accompanied by a physician, who was to direct the fumigation. The iron pot was placed in the centre of the chamber, our clothes were spread out upon the beds, and the windows shut. The _chlorin_ soon filled the room, and its detestable odor became so intolerable that we forced the door, and rushed past the sentinel into the open air, nearly suffocated. This farce over, we were permitted to embark, and, rounding the point, put into Nice.
The Mediterranean curves gracefully into the crescented sh.o.r.e of this lovely bay, and the high hills lean away from the skirts of the town in one unbroken slope of cultivation to the top. Large, handsome buildings face you on the long quay, as you approach; and white chimneys, and half-concealed parts of country-houses and suburban villas, appear through the olive and orange trees with which the whole amphitheatre is covered. We landed amid a crowd of half-naked idlers, and were soon at a hotel, where we ordered the best breakfast the town would afford, and sat down once more to clean cloths and unrepulsive food.
As we rose from the table, a note, edged with black, and sealed and enveloped with considerable circ.u.mstance, was put into my hand by the master of the hotel. It was an invitation from the governor to attend a funeral service, to be performed in the cathedral that day, at ten o'clock, for the ”late Queen-mother, Maria Theresa, Archd.u.c.h.ess of Austria.” Wondering not a little how I came by the honor, I joined the crowd flocking from all parts of the town to see the ceremony. The central door was guarded by a file of Sardinian soldiers; and, presenting my invitation to the officer on duty, I was handed over to the master of ceremonies, and shown to an excellent seat in the centre of the church. The windows were darkened, and the candles of the altar not yet lit; and, by the indistinct light that came in through the door, I could distinguish nothing clearly. A little silver bell tinkled presently from one of the side-chapels, and boys dressed in white appeared, with long tapers, and the house was soon splendidly illuminated. I found myself in the midst of a crowd of four or five hundred ladies, all in deep mourning. The church was hung from the floor to the roof in black cloth, ornamented gorgeously with silver; and, under the large dome, which occupied half the ceiling, was raised a pyramidal altar, with tripods supporting chalices for incense at the four corners, a walk round the lower base for the priests, and something in the centre, surrounded with a blaze of light, representing figures weeping over a tomb. The organ commenced pealing, there was a single beat on the drum, and a procession entered. It was composed of the n.o.bility of Nice, and the military and civil officers, all in uniform and court dresses. The gold and silver flas.h.i.+ng in the light, the tall plumes of the Sardinian soldiery below, the solemn music, and the moving of the censers from the four corners of the altar, produced a very impressive effect. As soon as the procession had quite entered, the fire was kindled in the four chalices; and, as the white smoke rolled up to the roof, an anthem commenced with the full power of the organ. The singing was admirable, and there was one female voice in the choir, of singular power and sweetness.
The remainder of the service was the usual ceremonies of the Catholic church, and I amused myself with observing the people about me. It was little like a scene of mourning. The officers gradually edged in between the seats, and every woman with the least pretension to prettiness was engaged in anything but her prayers for the soul of the late Archd.u.c.h.ess. Some of these, the very young girls, were pretty; and the women, of thirty-five or forty apparently, were fine-looking; but, except a decided air of style and rank, the fairly grown-up belles seemed to me of very small attraction.
I saw little else in Nice to interest me. I wandered about with my friend the surgeon, laughing at the ridiculous figures and villainous uniforms of the Sardinian infantry, and repelling the beggars, who radiated to us from every corner; and, having traversed the terrace of a mile on the tops of the houses next the sea, unravelled all the lanes of the old town, and admired all the splendor of the new, we dined and got early to bed, anxious to sleep once more between sheets, and prepare for an early start on the following morning.
We were on the road to Genoa with the first gray of the dawn: the surgeon, a French officer, and myself, three pa.s.sengers of a courier barouche. We were climbing up mountains and sliding down with locked wheels for several hours, by a road edging on precipices, and overhung by tremendous rocks, and, descending at last to the sea-level, we entered _Mentone_, a town of the little princ.i.p.ality of _Monaco_.
Having paid our twenty sous tribute to this prince of a territory not larger than a Kentucky farm, we were suffered to cross his borders once more into Sardinia, having posted through a whole State in less than half an hour.
It is impossible to conceive a route of more grandeur than the famous road along the Mediterranean from Nice to Genoa. It is near a hundred and fifty miles, over the edges of mountains bordering the sea for the whole distance. The road is cut into the sides of the precipice, often hundreds of feet perpendicular above the surf, descending sometimes into the ravines formed by the numerous rivers that cut their way to the sea, and mounting immediately again to the loftiest summits. It is a dizzy business, from beginning to end. There is no parapet, usually, and there are thousands of places where half a ”s.h.i.+e” by a timid horse, would drop you at once some hundred fathoms upon rocks wet by the spray of every sea that breaks upon the sh.o.r.e. The loveliest little nests of valleys lie between that can be conceived. You will see a green spot, miles below you in turning the face of a rock; and right in the midst, like a handful of plaster models on a carpet, a cl.u.s.ter of houses, lying quietly in the warm southern exposure, embosomed in everything refres.h.i.+ng to the eye, the mountain sides cultivated in a large circle around, and the ruins of an old castle to a certainty on the eminence above. You descend and descend, and wind into the curves of the sh.o.r.e, losing and regaining sight of it constantly, till, entering a gate on the sea-level, you find yourself in a filthy, narrow, half-whitewashed town, with a population of beggars, priests, and soldiers; not a respectable citizen to be seen from one end to the other, nor a clean woman, nor a decent house. It is so, all through Sardinia. The towns from a distance lie in the most exquisitely-chosen spots possible. A river comes down from the hills and washes the wall; the uplands above are always of the very choicest shelter and exposure. You would think man and nature had conspired to complete its convenience and beauty; yet, within, all is misery, dirt, and superst.i.tion. Every corner has a cross--every bench a priest, idling in the sun--every door a picture of the Virgin. You are delighted to emerge once more, and get up a mountain to the fresh air.
As we got farther on toward Genoa, the valleys became longer by the sea, and the road ran through gardens, down to the very beach, of great richness and beauty. It was new to me to travel for hours among groves of orange and lemon trees, laden with both fruit and flower, the ground beneath covered with the windfalls, like an American apple-orchard. I never saw such a profusion of fruit. The trees were breaking under the rich yellow cl.u.s.ters. Among other things, there were hundreds of tall palms, spreading out their broad fans in the sun, apparently perfectly strong and at home under this warm sky. They are cultivated as ornaments for the churches on sacred days.
I caught some half dozen views on the way that I shall never get out of my memory. At one place particularly, I think near Fenale, we ran round the corner of a precipice by a road cut right into the face of a rock, two hundred feet at least above the sea; and a long view burst upon us at once of a sweet green valley, stretching back into the mountains as far as the eye could go, with three or four small towns, with their white churches, just checkering the broad sweeps of verdure, a rapid river winding through its bosom, and a back ground of the Piedmontese Alps, with clouds half-way up their sides, and snow glittering in the sun on their summits. Language cannot describe these scenes. It is but a repet.i.tion of epithets to attempt it. You must come and see them to feel how much one loses to live always at home, and _read_ of such things only.
The _courier_ pointed out to us the place in which Napoleon imprisoned the Pope of Rome--a low house, surrounded with a wall close upon the sea--and the house a few miles from Genoa, believed to have been that of Columbus.
We entered Genoa an hour after sunrise, by a n.o.ble gate, placed at the western extremity of the crescented harbor. Thence to the centre of the city was one continued succession of sumptuous palaces. We drove rapidly along the smooth, beautifully paved streets, and my astonishment was unbroken till we were set down at the hotel.
Congratulating ourselves on the hindrances which had conspired to bring us here against our will, we took coffee, and went to bed for a few hours, fatigued with a journey more wearisome to the body than the mind.
I have spent two days in merely wandering about Genoa, looking at the exterior of the city. It is a group of hills, piled with princely palaces. I scarce know how to commence a description of it. If there were but one of these splendid edifices, or if I could isolate a single palace, and describe it to you minutely, it would be easy to convey an impression of the surprise and pleasure of a stranger in Genoa. The whole city, to use the expression of a French guide-book, ”_respire la magnificence_”--breathes of splendor! The grand street, in which most of the palaces stand, winds around the foot of a high hill; and the gardens and terraces are piled back, with palaces above them; and gardens, and terraces, and palaces still above these; forming, wherever you can catch a vista, the most exquisite rising perspective. On the summit of this hill stands the n.o.ble fortress of St. George; and behind it a lovely open garden, just now alive with millions of roses, a fountain playing into a deep oval basin in the centre, and a view beneath and beyond of a broad winding valley, covered with the country villas of the n.o.bility and gentry, and blooming with all the luxuriant vegetation of a southern clime.
My window looks out upon the bay, across which I see the palace of _Andria Doria_, the great winner of the best glory of the Genoese; and just under me floats an American flag, at the peak of a Baltimore schooner, that sails to-morrow morning for the United States. I must close my letter, to send by her. I shall remain in Genoa a week, and will write you of its splendor more minutely.
LETTER XXVII.
FLORENCE--THE GALLERY--THE VENUS DE MEDICIS--THE TRIBUNE--THE FORNARINA--THE CASCINE--AN ITALIAN FESTA--MADAME CATALANI.
FLORENCE.--It is among the pleasantest things in this very pleasant world, to find oneself for the first time in a famous city. We sallied from the hotel this morning an hour after our arrival, and stopped at the first corner to debate where we should go. I could not help smiling at the magnificence of the alternatives. ”To the Gallery, of course,” said I, ”to see the Venus de Medicis.” ”To Santa Croce,” said one, ”to see the tombs of Michael Angelo, and Alfieri, and Machiavelli.” ”To the Palazzo Pitti,” said another, ”the Grand Duke's palace, and the choicest collection of pictures in the world.” The embarra.s.sment alone was quite a sensation.
The Venus carried the day. We crossed the Piazza de Granduca, and inquired for the gallery. A fine court was shown us, opening out from the square, around the three sides of which stood a fine uniform structure, with a colonnade, the lower story occupied by shops and crowded with people. We mounted a broad staircase, and requested of the soldier at the door to be directed to the presence of the Venus, without delay. Pa.s.sing through one of the long wings of the gallery, without even a glance at the statues, pictures, and bronzes that lined the walls, we arrived at the door of a cabinet, and, putting aside the large crimson curtain at the entrance, stood before the enchantress. I must defer a description of her. We spent an hour there, but, except that her divine beauty filled and satisfied my eye, as nothing else ever did, and that the statue is as unlike a thing to the casts one sees of it as one thing could well be unlike another, I made no criticism. There is an atmosphere of fame and circ.u.mstantial interest about the Venus, which bewilders the fancy almost as much as her loveliness does the eye. She has been gazed upon and admired by troops of pilgrims, each of whom it were worth half a life to have met at her pedestal. The painters, the poets, the talent and beauty, that have come there from every country under the sun, and the single feeling of love and admiration that she has breathed alike into all, consecrate her mere presence as a place for revery and speculation. Childe Harold has been here, I thought, and Sh.e.l.ley and Wordsworth and Moore; and, farther removed from our sympathies, but interesting still, the poets and sculptors of another age, Michael Angelo and Alfieri, the men of genius of all nations and times; and, to stand in the same spot, and experience the same feeling with them, is an imaginative pleasure, it is true, but as truly a deep and real one. Exceeding, as the Venus does beyond all compet.i.tion, every image of loveliness painted or sculptured that one has ever before seen, the fancy leaves the eye gazing upon it, and busies itself irresistibly with its pregnant atmosphere of recollections. At least I found it so, and I must go there again and again, before I can look at the marble separately, and with a merely admiring attention.
Three or four days have stolen away, I scarce know how. I have seen but one or two things, yet have felt so unequal to the description, that but for my promise I should never write a line about them.
Really, to sit down and gaze into one of t.i.tian's faces for an hour, and then to go away and dream of putting into language its color and expression, seems to me little short of superlative madness. I only wonder at the divine faculty of sight. The draught of pleasure seems to me immortal, and the eye the only Ganymede that can carry the cup steadily to the mind. How shall I begin to give you an idea of the Fornarina? What can I tell you of the St. John in the desert, that can afford you a glimpse, even, of Raphael's inspired creations?
The _Tribune_ is the name of a small octagonal cabinet in the gallery, devoted to the masterpieces of the collection. There are five statues, of which one is the Venus de Medicis; and a dozen or twenty pictures, of which I have only seen as yet t.i.tian's two Venuses, and Raphael's St. John and Fornarina. People walk through the other parts of the gallery, and pause here and there a moment before a painting or a statue; but in the Tribune they sit down, and you may wait hours before a chair is vacated, or often before the occupant shows a sign of life. Everybody seems entranced there. They get before a picture, and bury their eyes in it, as if it had turned them to stone. After the Venus, the Fornarina strikes me most forcibly, and I have stood and gazed at it till my limbs were numb with the motionless posture.
There is no affectation in this. I saw an English girl yesterday gazing at the St. John. She was a flighty, coquettish-looking creature, and I had felt that the spirit of the place was profaned by the way she sailed into the room. She sat down, with half a glance at the Venus, and began to look at this picture. It is a glorious thing, to be sure, a youth of apparently seventeen, with a leopard-skin about his loins, in the very pride of maturing manliness and beauty. The expression of the face is all human, but wrought to the very limit of celestial enthusiasm. The wonderful richness of the coloring, the exquisite ripe fulness of the limbs, the pa.s.sionate devotion of the kindling features, combine to make it the faultless ideal of a perfect human being in youth. I had quite forgotten the intruder, for an hour.