Mrs. Hugh Fraser

“ On Joachim’s awakening and opening his eyes, Nunziante broke the news of his approaching trial as gently as possible.
“I am lost, then!” exclaimed Murat. There were tears in his eyes, and Nunziante himself was unable to speak for emotion, but he brought his prisoner pen and paper.
“My dear Caroline [wrote Murat] : My last hour has struck. Within a few moments I shall have ceased to live and you will have lost your husband. Do not forget me! My life has never been stained by an act of injustice. Adieu, my Achilles, my Letitia, my Lucian, and my Louisa. Show yourselves worthy of me. ”

“ The white town and the green hills behind it seem to thrill visibly in unison, and the sea is cobalt that would make your eyes ache but for the fringe of feathery white ripples that the breeze combs up all over its surface, and the sky is transparent turquoise, and night seems a thousand years away. Further on yet Genoa the Superb has a sea as blue, sky as stainless, but she dominates in her white and emerald loveliness so that her setting is almost effaced. One forgets to notice the steps of the throne where Sovereign Beauty queens it so royally. ”

“ The procession passes within, the shadows swallowing up the gold and crimson of the vestments that had been sparkling in the sun. A strange sight the empty Church presents now. On the pavement two broad paths of ashes traverse its entire length and breadth, in the form of a Greek Cross. The assistants stand in silent groups while the Bishop, slowly moving down from the apse to the entrance, and then across from one transept to the other, traces in the ashes the Latin and Greek alphabets, with his crozier. Why? Because the first need of the soul is instruction. ”

“ It is but a step from one to the other—from Boniface VIII and the Colonnas and the Orsinis to Benedict and Scholastica—from smitten Palestrina to cloistered Subiaco behind it in the hills.
On the way thither one stopped for a day in Olevano, to me the least Italian, the most completely “foreignised” spot in all that country. It has been for so many years the haunt of artists of every nationality that it has none left of its own. Its beauty there is no denying; it laughs in sunshine and prosperity, and for that, in these bad times, one is grateful to it. ”

“ Of her husband, who seems to have died before the story begins, we are told nothing; her whole existence was wrapped up in a quite unsanctified passion for a handsome pagan called Boniface, a man of generous heart, as the sequel shows, but a sensualist, like most of his class at that time. He adored Aglaë, and the two must have passed some enchanting hours wandering on the terraces of the Aventine villa or sitting hand in hand to watch the sun sinking red into the distant sea. No thought of the future seems to have come to them there, nor any gleam of a scruple as to their way of life. ”

“ Rialto had its Church long before Torcello; but Rialto has been the artery of Venice’s throbbing vitality too long for any associations to cling to it now, while Torcello has stood aside, a recluse that has never wavered in its loyalty to the Past, and the Past is enshrined there for all time. I was surprised to find that it and I were friends. There are only two of all the dead and gone centuries of Europe that seem really my own besides the one I was born in—and they do not belong to the chaotic times of Barbarian invasion and Byzantine supremacy. ”

“ But, instead of assuaging the rage of King Louis, these monstrous executions seem only to have filled him with a further appetite for blood. As during the usurpation of power by Charles of Durazzo after King Andrew’s murder, so now executions multiplied to such an extent that they threatened soon to become the principal medium of government; just as, four centuries and a half later, in the time of suppression of 1799, there set in an epidemic of frantic denunciation, the general terror making of society a hot-bed of the basest passions and motives—avarice, cowardice, and hate. ”

“ He felt a real remorse for the part which he had played, and the splendour of Napoleon’s lone-handed assault upon a world in arms appealed to every soldier-like instinct in him.
He did not forget his own ambition, though, and he desired to make himself so powerful that he could treat with either Austria or France upon terms of something like equality. It was Italy that he wanted. The great Powers would have their hands full now, and he hoped to be able to surprise the Germans while the armies of Europe were engaged with the Emperor. ”

“ Before it the Campagna stretches away to the sea and to the north, the horizon there brokenly outlined by the low Volscian and Ciminian Hills. Not so [139] towards the sea; in the near distance a castle or a single tower breaks the plain, midway Rome shimmers like a net of pearls thrown down across the Tiber; but the West is the empty West always, left to the sun and the wind, with the wide Heavens above and that one long sword of light laid on its further bound where the tideless Mediterranean laps against the shore. ”

“ He had come at a moment when Corsica was in the throes of a civil war of its own, between the followers of the Bourbons, the adherents of Napoleon, and a party who, sitting on the fence between, called themselves Independents. Many of Murat’s old-time companions-in-arms had been natives of Corsica, and, the Napoleonists and Independents being in the majority, they called upon Joachim to help them crush the remainder and rule over the island afterwards. This was the sort of invitation which the fiery cavalryman was always only too ready to accept, and his heart soared into the heavens! ”

“ I have travelled so far and seen such strange and endless varieties of scenery that I think I have a right to say that there are few places on earth where nature has done more to rejoice and strengthen the body and soul of man.
From Rome the Sabines are merely a noble chain of peaks, culminating in the calm Lion profile of the couchant “Lionessa,” her face to the north, waiting through the long blue days of summer for the crown of snow that the winter lays on her brow. ”

“ It is a picture that stands out vividly in the imagination: The Count studying Murat’s face as the latter reads the message, and glancing from time to time at the Queen, trying to read something of her husband’s mind in her face; Murat blinking in the half light over the words, rejoicing in the news as he thinks of the manner in which the Congress of Legitimacy has been treating him, but endeavouring to keep his features composed and his pleasure out of his voice.
“That will spoil Metternich’s sleep for a while,” one can almost hear him saying to himself. ”

“ San Marco itself, dream of beauty as it is, inspires less devotion than many a humble country Church without a single work of art to recommend it. Without the ineffable Presence in the Tabernacle I should have felt more piously disposed at the foot of the lonely shrine out in the Lagoon, where the Blessed Madonna’s picture smiles down from its tall tarred post on the flowers that one or other of her children brings there every day. The water laps gently at her feet, the sky arches blue overhead, and one can dream very good and happy dreams as one gazes up at her. ”

“ Benedict, the “beloved, called from the cleft in the rock,” praying, rejoicing, hiding from men to be alone with God. And that seems to me the most wonderful thing in the lives of the great Founders—they had not at first the smallest forethought of their mission. They only knew that they must save their souls in fear and trembling, and in blind humility they withdrew from all occasions of sin and prayed for purification. It forms a curious contrast to the life led by most of us who consider ourselves pretty decent Christians in the eyes of the world. ”

“ Peter was crucified, you will see, rounding up in the low-lying heart of the city, a dome, white, huge, uncrowned, standing out from the darker buildings round it like an enormous mother-of-pearl shell, softly iridescent, yet, when storm is in the air, taking on a grey and deathlike hue. That is the Pantheon, and thus it has stood, reflecting every mood of the Roman sky, since the days of Hadrian, who became Emperor in the year 117. Hadrian built the magic dome, but it is not his name that stands out in the gigantic lettering on the pediment over the portico. ”

“ On leaving Avignon, what was her delight on seeing the beloved Louis of Taranto come out to meet her, accompanied by all the Cardinals then in attendance upon the Pope! Joan was now, indeed, greeted as a Queen by her people, who strewed the way with flowers, the while a number of mounted pages rode beside the royal pair, holding above them a canopy of crimson velvet; and, from every church the bells pealed out a welcome to the Sovereigns. In the castle they were received with all pomp and circumstance by the Holy Father, who embraced and blessed them ”

“ But the Church had realised the truth of the saying that the darkest hour comes just before the dawn. The high courage that had come unscathed through such appalling conflicts rose gallant and audacious in its certainty of final victory, and, at the very moment when Rome seemed to be annihilated, decreed to it such a triumph as the world had never seen before.
In 568, just a year after Narses, to gratify a personal spite, had invited the hornet swarm of Lombards to cross the Alps, he died in the city he had insulted. ”

“ Ah, look well then, for later in the day the jealous treetops will take all the light to themselves, and every lovely detail, below, only visible in that first fleeting hour, will be lost in the deep forest [136] shadow that is neither light nor darkness, but all one quivering mysterious green.
We four rode through the woods silently, drinking in the crystal freshness of the air; and then, almost before we knew it, we were out in a blaze of heat, leaving the Alban Hills behind and crossing the plain that divides them from the Sabines, one of the old roads to Naples. ”

“ There were no lengths to which Duke Charles was not prepared to go in order to attain his aim and to satisfy the ambition that devoured him; no crime, however frightful, from the contemplation of which he shrank as a means to his end. Cost what it might, he would be King of Naples and of Jerusalem. The chroniclers describe him as a pale man with close-cropped hair and a thick beard; and, when agitated, he had a trick of frowning. Charles of Durazzo had felt greatly aggrieved at the bestowal of Joan’s hand in marriage upon Andrew of Hungary ”

“ And then the wild power of it all goes to your head; you are not a modern mortal with a thousand anchors fastening you to the scrap heap of the workaday world, but a new-born princess of romance, travelling through the hills of fairyland to take possession of your unknown, enormous castle; its thousand windows are glowing gold beyond that last peak, all lighted up for your reception; in its deep courts and airy bowers invisible subjects will minister to your wants. In a high tower looking south all the great books in the world are waiting to be read ”

“ There is a busy unromantic seaport called Livorno, a long way up the coast from Naples, a Tuscan town of white streets and shadeless squares, all alive with commerce, and, until I came to years of reason, represented to me by the huge flapping straw hats, fine as silk and pale gold in colour, which we children regarded as signals of summer when, on the first hot day, the ribbons that held them were tied under our chins, and we were admonished, on pain of sunstrokes and spankings, not to take them off. ”

“ Rome had seen many festivals, but none so spontaneously, madly joyful as this. From every window floated crimson and blue silk draperies rich with gold; the thousands of balconies were wreathed in flowers, and the vast procession moved along in a rain of roses and lilies and violets showered [79] from above; music was everywhere, but it was drowned in the shouts and hosannas of the multitude that had gone out to meet the traveller with palms in their hands and now thronged the way before, beside, behind him. The women were weeping for joy and audibly thanking God for this great day ”

“ We can only see it now with the eyes of the spirit, but, even while trying to do that, we must not let the magnificence of the external function make us forget that which the Church so lovingly and repeatedly impresses upon us—first, that there is but one Sanctuary worthy of the Most High, His Throne and dwelling in the inaccessible light of the Fixed Heaven, round which all universes that the human mind can grasp revolve, like starry spindrift round a living sun ”