Thomas Adolphus Trollope

“ My body, with its ducal cloak and trappings, its dignities, possessions, and hereditaments to be mine, and the same to pass to the heirs thereof lawfully begotten;—my soul, with all thereunto appertaining,—of course carrying with it sans mot dire, the souls of all my subjects,—to be yours in eternal fee simple, to fashion, manage, and dispose of as to you shall seem fit. A fair bargain surely this, proposed by Duke Hercules of Ferrara, by no means a singular or eccentric prince, if indeed souls were what Mother Church was specially eager after, as she said! ”

“ Surely here was enough to "spoil" any young lady in her teens, if homage, flattery, applause, admiration, excited and gratified vanity, had spoiling power!
And Olympia stepped upon the pedestal set for her with all the youthful audacity of conscious genius. They all told her, that she was a tenth muse, and she accepted the part with exulting confidence, that it was in truth that for which kind nature had best fitted her. ”

“ The Cardinal Ferdinand, though rarely seen in Florence, kept himself accurately and minutely informed of all that passed in his brother's court there. No nunnery wall was scaled by Don Pietro, no masked night excursion planned by Donna Isabella, no assignation made by Donna Eleonora, no secret colloquy held with some scoundrel black–art quack and poison–dealer by Donna Bianca, no fresh outrage on his murmuring subjects committed by the Duke, without speedy and detailed information thereof reaching the much provoked Cardinal in his Roman palace. ”

“ In the brilliant springtide of Olympia's career, when she stood before us in Grecian virgin guise, fooled to the top of her bent by the applause and flattery of an entire city, with syntax–laws for a rule of life, a knowledge of words in the place of all experience of things, classicality for a summum bonum, and æsthetic appreciation of the beautiful as sole means of satisfying every need and capacity for worship, the question was suggested, shaping itself into the words so familiar, and, howsoever diversely understood, most important to every man,—How is this Olympia to be saved? ”

“ But it was not the manifestation of these fine qualities which obtained for Olympia that great reputation among her contemporaries which is itself an historical phenomenon of no slight importance. It was not her patience under trial, and constancy in adversity, that caused Europe so to ring with her name that the echo of it has reached these days. Fine and noble things as these are, the world has at no time been so poor in them, as not to have possessed many noteworthy examples of them, which fame has had no time to note. ”

“ The poets, the novelists, the historians, the moralists of Italy in the sixteenth century time of its high tide, have all left their marks deeply and visibly enough stamped on the national character, while that of the dramatists of the same period is barely, if at all, perceptible.
It needs but a cursory examination of the Italian drama of the sixteenth century, to remove all wonder that its authors should have exercised no such influence. The wonder is, that when literature in its other branches was so vigorous and full of sap, drama should have been so sapless and of such little worth. ”

“ Thanks to the intervention of good George Hermann, the box of books has arrived from Italy. The dear old books from the little library at Ferrara, where Olympia had passed among them so many, many solitary hours of ambitious girlhood; where Curione had been invited to enjoy "the blessings of solitude and peaceful study;" and in whose safe shelter many a dangerous talk on grace, free–will, and absolute decrees, had been prolonged far into the night! The dear old books, each individual of them bringing with it the well–remembered physiognomy of a familiar friend! ”

“ Of the whole picture, such as we are able to realise it, of this bright and beautiful Olympia, ambitious of praise, triumphant, full of fervid poetic enthusiasm, and love of the beautiful, enchanting all eyes, and charming all ears,—approaching, one may fancy, in social position, some Siddons or Mars more nearly than any other existence known to our times; of the whole picture, these public lectures, or declamations, seem to our notions the strangest feature. ”

“ And yet this woman, whose moral nature, if judged according to our habits of thought, must be deemed to have been saturated with impurity, and hopelessly depraved and destroyed, is proposed and accepted as the wife of a prince, whose character stands higher than that of any of his contemporaries of the sovereign houses of Italy, and whose family was already remarkable among them for enlightenment and respectability!—accepted to be the mother of his children, and the means of transmitting his unsullied name and crown! ”

“ It is amusing to find, that Bianca had no sooner entered the magic circle of the sacred brotherhood of sovereigns, than she too, as though she had been "to the manner born," shaped herself to the ways and thoughts of her new peers, and must needs have her troubles and negotiations about her rank and style and dignity! If emperors could smile at the ridicule of sovereign dukes, surely the commentary thus supplied on Francesco's pathetic complaint, that even the devils in hell have their proper rank and title, must have relaxed the grim Hapsburg features a little! ”

“ Better, if fighting must needs be, to have a quarrel of your own to fight for, like the bold Magdeburgers, with Interim at their gates! But these hapless Schweinfurth citizens had their city turned to the uses of a badger–baiting tub for neither fault, quarrel, nor interest of their own. Let the upshot of the struggle be as it might, they had only ruin and destruction to fear from it. And this siege lasted for fourteen months! "For fourteen whole months did we live in the greatest possible straits, while the city was besieged;" writes Olympia to her sister. ”

“ There indeed is a city and people unmistakably marked by Holy Mother Church, as her own; silence and solitude, decay, dilapidation, neglect, and sordid squallor, characterise the impress of her paternal hand. And yet more forcibly to point the moral of the spectacle, there remains sufficient traces of what Ferrara was in the young ungodly days of her lay government, to give all the force of contrast to her present condition. There is the gaunt frame of a city calculated to house four times the amount of its present population. ”

“ Lavinia answers, that even so she cannot help admiring the constancy with which Olympia had devoted to the acquisition of learning those long hours which others employ "in adorning themselves, in arranging their hair, and in running after vain pleasures. What especially surprises me is, that you could remain faithful to those studies in the years of your youth, in spite of the raillery of the men and girls, who were always dinning into your ears that life had something else to do, and that husbands would look more after what you possessed than what you knew." ”

“ It is for you therefore, "my gentle readers, to accept my good intention, and give all the praise to God alone, from whom comes all good, and to whom alone I am thankful for the great grace which has so enlightened me while yet not over–ripe, but youthful and fresh in age,—in questa mia età non ancor soverchiamente matura, ma giovenile e fresca,—as to bring back my heart to Him, and make me wish and strive, as far as in me lies, that all others, both men and women, may have like grace." ”

“ And thus the young artist life, so rich in promise, and in dreams of beauty yet to be embodied, of long years of labour, and praise to be won, was cut short in its spring.
Elisabetta, intent only on her art, and habituated to a wholly objective frame of mind, had made so little account of the symptoms of malady that had manifested themselves during the last four or five months of her life, that her death struck her bereaved family as a wholly sudden and inexplicable calamity. Poison was the first thing that occurred to them. ”

“ Giovanna was not endowed with the qualities calculated to make her popular with the people of her adopted country. The cold Austrian nature, the absence of all personal charm, the pride of a scion of the house of Austria, so different in its kind from the lighter boastful vaingloriousness of their own princes, the haughty reserve and stiff ceremonial manners of the daughter of the line of Hapsburg, were uncongenial and disagreeable to the Florentines. A breaking heart, moreover, whose sorrows had to be hidden under a veil of courtly etiquette, was not calculated to improve these deficiencies. ”

“ But the greatest trial to her fortitude was the first step beyond the marshy plains around persecuting, ungrateful Ferrara.
Painful partings are always most painful to those who are left behind. The necessity of action, and the excitement of going forth to meet new scenes and new fortunes, brace the nerves and give diversion to the grief of those who are to depart; and Olympia was not leaving him who was of all the world dearest to her. ”

“ But the country was distracted by war or rumours of war on all sides;—war of a different kind, and productive of very different national results from the miserable mercenary contests, which ruined Italy, and only prepared the way for the slavery and degradation of the nation. For the gist of the German fighting, however confused, barbarous, and devastating, was to be found in the determination of men to resist authority and oppression, to have souls of their own, and to say they were their own. ”

“ But this is only because all Italian society is more fully and unanimously agreed on considering that seeming is more important than being. With us, respectability must have no chinks nor crannies in its surface, through which peering eyes can discover anything derogatory to its character. But the Italian world declines to peer. Let only a good will to show a fair outside be apparent, and the world will industriously avoid looking beyond that outside. ”

“ Olympia little understood yet the nature of the power against which she hoped to prevail. How grimly Caraffa would have smiled at the notion, that his prey could be thus taken from him. A Duke of Ferrara release a convicted and relapsed heretic to pleasure a silly woman, herself more than suspected of sympathy with his errors! Or that that contemptible voluptuary at Rome, simoniacal usurper of Peter's keys, dare to absolve him whom the Holy Inquisition has condemned! Not while John Peter Caraffa keeps watch, as Inquisitor, over the interests of the Church! ”

“ To rule them, or to perish in them, is the only alternative. If I cease to rule but for a day, I fall, and am crushed into the dust! That is the condition on which I hold my place in Florence! And the Saints know how many waking nights and anxious days the holding of it thus far has cost me! And the [Pg 261] task seems growing from day to day more arduous. The Duke's deepening melancholy and discontent at his childlessness is dangerous—very dangerous. May he not seek elsewhere for that which I have failed to give him! Francesco loves me;—I think he loves me;—that is, he has need of me. ”

“ Not improbably there may have been ladies too in Ferrara who commented on the young muse much to the same purpose. But Olympia trod her bright path exultingly, scattering poesies and gathering triumphs, serenely indifferent to the justification quarrels, and free–will perplexities which were distracting the world around her, serenely worshipping beauty amid her muse–haunted attic shades in undeniably heathenish and pagan fashion. ”

“ But the ridiculous side of this ignoble farce lies in too close proximity to its tragic developments, to suffer that a smile should for more than a passing moment replace the horror and reprobation which are the standing moods of mind for the study of Medicean annals. Bianca's triumph was complete for the moment. But on how many chances might the continuance of it hang? How many of the most worthless beings had it in their power to hurl her, with a word, from the height of her success! ”

“ If Francis I. showed his paternal regard for learning by limiting the printing–presses in all France to twelve licensed machines, literature, even as represented by such men as the historian Robertson, has been flunky enough to extol him as "the father of letters!" How often has the clause—"but he protected [Pg 398] literature and loved learned men"—been accepted in a historian's summing–up of the character of some royal scourge of humanity, as a set–off against a host of abominations wholly incompatible with any real appreciation of the value of human intellect! ”

“ But Olympia was very far from giving up the game as lost. She had enormous command of money; she was well acquainted with the secret motives and wishes of parties in Rome; thoroughly skilled in the subtle underhand tactics of trading on every evil passion, which is what is meant by policy in that ecclesiastical world; and imbued with that profound faith in the thorough meanness and baseness of the highest as well as the lowest of mankind, which people of her stamp consider to be knowledge of the world. ”