Part 22 (1/2)
LETTER LII.
SIENNA--POGGIOBONSI--BONCONVENTO--ENCOURAGEMENT OF FRENCH ARTISTS BY THEIR GOVERNMENT--ACQUAPENDENTE--POOR BEGGAR, THE ORIGINAL OF A SKETCH BY COLE--BOLSENA--VOLSCENIUM--SCENERY-- CURIOUS STATE OF THE CHESTNUT WOODS.
SIENNA.--A day and a half on my second journey to Rome. With a party of four nations inside, and two strangers, probably Frenchmen, in the cabriolet, we have jogged on at some three miles in the hour, enjoying the lovely scenery of these lower Appenines at our leisure. We slept last night at Poggiobonsi, a little village on a hill-side, and arrived at Sienna for our mid-day rest. I pencil this note after an hour's ramble over the city, visiting once more the cathedral, with its encrusted marbles and naked graces, and the sh.e.l.l-shaped square in the centre of the city, at the rim of which the eight princ.i.p.al streets terminate. There is a fountain in the midst, surrounded with _ba.s.si relievi_ much disfigured. It was mentioned by Dante. The streets were deserted, it being Sunday, and all the people at the Corso, to see the racing of horses without riders.
BONCONVENTO.--We sit, with the remains of a traveller's supper on the table--six very social companions. Our cabriolet friends are two French artists, on their way to study at Rome. They are both pensioners of the government, each having gained the annual prize at the academy in his separate branch of art, which ent.i.tles him to five years' support in Italy. They are full of enthusiasm, and converse with all the amusing vivacity of their nation. The academy of France send out in this manner five young men annually, who have gained the prizes for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and engraving.
This is the place where Henry the Seventh of Germany was poisoned by a monk, on his way to Rome. The drug was given to him in the communion cup. The ”Ave Marie” was ringing when we drove into town, and I left the carriage and followed the crowd, in the hope of finding an old church where the crime might have been committed. But the priest was mumbling the service in a new chapel, which no romance that I could summon would picture as the scene of a tragedy.
ACQUAPENDENTE.--While the dirty customhouse officer is deciphering our pa.s.sports, in a hole a dog would live in unwillingly, I take out my pencil to mark once more the pleasure I have received from the exquisite scenery of this place. The wild rocks enclosing the little narrow valley below, the waterfalls, the town on its airy perch above, the just starting vegetation of spring, the roads lined with snowdrops, crocuses and violets, have renewed, in a tenfold degree, the delight with which I saw this romantic spot on my former journey to Rome.
We crossed the mountain of Radicofani yesterday, in so thick a mist that I could not even distinguish the ruin of the old castle, towering into the clouds above. The wild, half-naked people thronged about us as before, and I gave another paul to the old beggar with whom I became acquainted by Mr. Cole's graphic sketch. The winter had, apparently, gone hard with him. He was scarce able to come to the carriage window, and coughed so hollowly that I thought he had nearly begged his last pittance.
BOLSENA.--we walked in advance of the vetturino along the borders of this lovely and beautiful lake till we are tired. Our artists have taken off their coats with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile further on, pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views.
The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on its face, and the water-fowl in thousands are diving and floating within gunshot of us. An afternoon in June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure.
A mile behind us lies the town, the seat of ancient _Volscinium_, the capital of the Volscians. The country about is one quarry of ruins, mouldering away in the moss. n.o.body can live in health in the neighborhood, and the poor pale wretches who call it a home are in melancholy contrast to the smiling paradise about them. Before us, in the bosom of the lake, lie two green islands, those which Pliny records to have floated in his time and one of which, _Martana_, a small conical isle, was the scene of the murder of the queen of the Goths, by her cousin Theodatus. She was taken there and strangled. It is difficult to imagine, with such a sea of suns.h.i.+ne around and over it, that it was ever anything but a spot of delight.
The whole neighborhood is covered with rotten trunks of trees--a thing which at first surprised me in a country where wood is so economised.
It is accounted for in the French guide-book of one of our party by the fact, that the chestnut woods of Bolsena are considered sacred by the people, from their antiquity, and are never cut. The trees have ripened and fallen and rotted thus for centuries--one cause, perhaps, of the deadly change in the air.
The vetturino comes lumbering up, and I must pocket my pencil and remount.
LETTER LIII.
MONTEFIASCONE--ANECDOTE OF THE WINE--VITERBO--MOUNT CIMINO--TRADITION--VIEW OF ST. PETER'S--ENTRANCE INTO ROME--A STRANGER'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE CITY.
MONTEFIASCONE.--We have stopped for the night at the hotel of this place, so renowned for its wine--the remnant of a bottle of which stands, at this moment, twinkling between me and my French companions.
The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and left us in the room where sat _Jean Defoucris_, the merry German monk, who died of excess in drinking the same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered flask. The story is told more fully in the French guide-books. A prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrimage to Rome, sent forward his servant with orders to mark every tavern where the wine was good with the word _est_, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at this hotel, the monk saw the signal thrice written over the door--_Est! Est! Est!_ He put up his mule, and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His servant wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of St.
Florian:--
”Propter minium EST, EST, Dominus meus mortuus EST!”
”_Est, Est, Est!_” is the motto upon the sign of the hotel to this day.
In wandering about Viterbo in search of amus.e.m.e.nt, while the horses were baiting, I stumbled upon the shop of an antiquary. After looking over his medals, Etruscan vases, cameos, &c., a very interesting collection, I inquired into the state of trade for such things in Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy looking old man, with his pockets worn quite out with the habit of thrusting his hands into them, and about his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso expression of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He kept also a small _cafe_ adjoining his shop, into which we pa.s.sed, as he shrugged his shoulders at my question. I had wondered to find a vender of costly curiosities in a town of such poverty, and I was not surprised at the sad fortunes which had followed upon his enterprise. They were a base herd, he said, of the people, utterly ignorant of the value of the precious objects he had for sale and he had been compelled to open a _cafe_, and degrade himself by waiting on them for a contemptible _crazie_ worth of coffee, while his lovely antiquities lay unappreciated within. The old gentleman was eloquent upon his misfortunes. He had not been long in trade, and had collected his museum originally for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. He was an odd specimen, in a small way, of a man who was quite above his sphere, and suffered for his superiority. I bought a pretty _intaglio_, and bade him farewell, after an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a friend.
Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo, and we walked up most of the long and gentle ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy plants for which it is famous, and looking out sharply for the brigands with which it is always infested. English carriages are constantly robbed on this part of the route of late. The robbers are met usually in parties of ten and twelve, and, a week before we pa.s.sed, Lady Berwick (the widow of an English n.o.bleman, and a sister of the famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in broad mid-day. The excessive distress among the peasantry of these misgoverned States accounts for these things, and one only wonders why there is not even more robbing among such a starving population. This mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below it, are spoken of in the aeneid: ”_Cimini c.u.m monte loc.u.m_,” etc. There is an ancient tradition, that in the crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills, there was formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise of the water, and certain authors state that when the lake is clear, the ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.