Borgo

“ The Borgo and the Piazza were black with people. Before the obelisk a double cordon of troops stretched across the whole Piazza—government troops, you understand; the government keeps order when the Pope goes to St. Peter’s and is responsible for his safety. The Borgo is perhaps the safest place to live in that exists; I have never heard of any other so carefully guarded. Inside the Vatican the Papal troops keep order. At a certain point behind the church two sentinels pace their beat, the spot where they meet marking the line of the exterritorial limits of the Vatican. ”

“ The Borgo merchants in returning to their country, tie the slaves they have purchased to a long iron chain, passed round the neck of every one of them, from twenty to thirty being thus tied one behind the other; nor is the chain taken off until they reach Borgo. The provinces of this kingdom are full of slaves: some are to be met with in every house; and they are said to be very industrious, which is ascribed to their change of religion, most of them being converted to Islamism soon after their arrival. They manufacture copper, and make earthern-ware and pipe-heads. ”

“ I am strongly of opinion that the Borgo picture was the original work, the Lyons one, for which he contracted to the monks of Cassino, March 6th, 1495, being either a somewhat hurried replica of it in which the master grew tired of the monotony of repetition, or else that it was a picture in which a certain amount of labour was left to assistants and pupils. There is an important study for three apostles, in the Uffizi, which was clearly prepared for the Borgo picture and not for the Lyons one, as, while closely resembling the former, it differs from the latter in one or two important details. ”

“ She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked steadily into his lovely face.
'Will you do a man's work for me, Raffaele? I have need of a man, and there is none here whom I can spare. Will you ride to-night to Cesare Borgia's camp at Castel della Pieve with this letter?'
'If that be all that is needed to prove myself a man, account it proven,' said he.
'Good lad! Dear lad! Now listen. There may be spies about the gate, and so it were best you went forth on foot from here. If you can slip out unseen it will be better still. Then go down into the borgo to the house of Villanelli. ”

“ And so does Fortune roll this world around, and change its inhabitants up and down as she turns her wheel."
Beyond the Via del Proconsolo the Borgo, now called of the Albizzi, was originally the Borgo di San Piero–a suburb of the old city, but included [209] in the second walls of the twelfth century. The present name records the brief, but not inglorious period of the rule of the oligarchy or Ottimati, before Cosimo dei Medici obtained complete possession of the State. It was formerly called the Corso di Por San Piero. ”

“ It resembled the combat of the Greeks and Trojans for the dead body of Patroclus. The people of Borgo dragged the dead ass to the chapel of Lucciana, and flung it down at the door of the church; the Luccianese carried it off to Borgo, and after storming the village, fixed it on the church-tower. At last the Podestà seized the corpus delicti, already in a state of rapid decomposition, and none the better for its frequent travels, and the dead ass found a quiet resting-place in the grave. The poet Viale has written a comic Epopee on this occurrence, in the style of the Stolen Bucket of Bologna. ”

“ The Borgo soldiers, who are pagan Negroes, are armed with the same poisoned arrows.
The pagan Negroe nations are from ten to fifteen days journey distant from Borgo: and the people of the latter country are continually making inroads upon them to carry off slaves. The most noted of these pagan countriesi [3] are Dargulla, Benda, Djenke, Yemyem, and Ola, [487] which is the farthest off. Some of the pagan nations are tributary to the King of Borgo, who keeps an officer stationed in their territory to receive the tribute; which is paid in copper and slaves. ”

“ The smaller part of Rome, on the right or west bank, comprises the Borgo, or district, containing St. Peter’s, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, and the Janiculum Hill, to the north, with the Trastevere quarter, to the south.
The entire city is surrounded by a wall fourteen miles in circuit, with thirteen gates, the wall on the left bank being substantially identical with Aurelian’s Wall, built in the third century; while the Leonine Wall round the Borgo was extended in the early sixteenth century. ”

“ The festival of Thomas keepeth fresh,
Knighthood and privilege from him received;
Though with the populace unites himself
To-day the man who binds it with a border.
Already were Gualterotti and Importuni;
And still more quiet would the Borgo be
If with new neighbours it remained unfed.
The house from which is born your lamentation,
Through just disdain that death among you brought
And put an end unto your joyous life,
Was honoured in itself and its companions.
O Buondelmonte, how in evil hour
Thou fled'st the bridal at another's promptings! ”

“ The populace is ribald: it acclaims
His Holiness the fisher of his son,
Though not, by rights, of men.
[Poto and the Cardinals laugh.
ALEXANDER.
[Slowly opening his eyes.] Francesco, are they talking of my son?
SCENE IV
A room in the Lord Cardinal Cesare Borgia’s Palace of Borgo Sant’ Angelo.
It is dead midnight: lights are burning. Lord Cardinal Cesare, in the black satin dress of a Spanish gentleman, with jewelled poignard, reclines on a couch. ”

“ Pozzo di Borgo earned a Russian coronet, and the honour of remaining the perpetual representative of all Russian states at the court of France. Living in Paris, he became a frank opponent of the reaction, and thereby endangered his relation to the courts. Notwithstanding his career, he was, and remained, a Corsican. I have been told that he never laid aside his Corsican habits of life: he loved his country. It was, one may say, another victory of his over Napoleon, that he took from him the gratitude of his countrymen. Napoleon did nothing for Corsica, Pozzo di Borgo much. ”

“ The museum contains a few pictures of various schools and some Umbrian antiquities. Bartolommeo Borghesi, the epigraphist and numismatist, resided here from 1821 until his death in 1860. The Borgo at the base of the rock is a chiefly commercial village. ”

“ POZZO DI BORGO, CARLO ANDREA, Count (1764–1842) , Russian diplomatist, was born at Alata, near Ajaccio, of a noble Corsican family, on the 8th of March 1764, some four years before the cession of the island to France. He was educated at Pisa, and in early life was closely associated with Napoleon and Joseph Bonaparte, the 'two families being at that time closely allied in politics. ”

“ Corsican women in men's clothes, and carrying musket and sword, were seen mixing in the thickest of the fight. The French at length retired upon Bastia. They had suffered heavily in killed and wounded—among the latter was Marbœuf; and seven hundred men, under Colonel Ludre, the garrison of Borgo, laid down their arms and surrendered themselves prisoners.
The battle of Borgo showed the French what kind of people they had come to enslave. They had now lost all the country except the strong seaports. Chauvelin wrote to his court, reported his losses, and demanded new troops. ”

“ Flowers came in stacks: "H'm!" said Olimpia, "there's a woman in this." A couple of asses brought skins of wine. "That will be wash for the lean hog himself," she added. From that time forth she never left her shutter. To make herself the more sure she gave orders to Donna Matura to close all the shutters alike. Captain Mosca, on one of his returns to the Borgo, looked up at the blind green eyes of his former haven and, chuckling, rubbed his hands. ”

“ A little later, Lorenzo, Villegas’ factotum,{293} arrived with a basket of lemons from the Villino garden, covered with their own glossy green leaves and intoxicating blossoms; the petals are thick, pink outside, white inside, like orange flowers, only larger, and with a less cloying perfume.
We were up on the terrace in time to see the Host carried through the street; that was not allowed when we first came to live in the Borgo Nuovo. Little by little the old picturesque ceremonies of the Church are creeping back. It is a pretty sight. ”

“ There are women who have heard hundreds of tales and remember none; and there are others who, though they remember them, have not the grace of narration. Among her companions of the Borgo, a quarter of Palermo, Messia enjoyed the reputation of a fine story-teller ”

“ There is a kind of splice called 'the long splice' which makes a cut rope seem what it was before; it is even stronger than before, and can pass through a block. There will descend upon you a blessed hour when you will be convinced as by a miracle, and you will suddenly understand the redintegratio amoris (amoris redintegratio, a Latin phrase) . But this hour you will not receive in the rain on the Emilian Way.
Here then, next day, just outside a town called Borgo, past the middle of morning, the rain ceased. ”

“ It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier—for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina—it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease. ”

“ But we had better speed, sir, for it is touching upon evening, and night will have fallen before we reach Sant' Angelo. There you will find good quarters in the Borgo for your men; and, doubtless, the noble signor in the castle will come down at the first sound of your trumpets, and ask you and your prime officers to feast with him above. He is a noble lord, and loves the powers that be. Well that the devil has not come upon earth in his day, for he would have entertained him royally, and might have injured his means in honour of his guest. ”

“ On this part of the coast stands, close to the sea, the small Greek chapel. I have not been able to discover why it bears this name—dedicated as it is to the Madonna del Carmine, and bearing a tablet with the name of the family of Pozzo di Borgo—Puteo Borgensis—inscribed upon it. It was probably ceded to the Greeks on their arrival at Ajaccio. The Genoese had settled the colony of Mainotes at Paomia, which lies a considerable distance above Ajaccio. These industrious colonists were continually threatened by the Corsicans. ”

“ Others connect it with the name of an alleged Arab tribe, Mà-âfir, once settled at Palermo. Giuseppe Pitré asserts that the word is peculiar to western Sicily and that, with its derivatives, it formerly meant, in Il Borgo, a district of Palermo, beauty or excellence. Thus, a handsome woman showily dressed was said “to have mafia,” or to be mafiusa. Often in Palermo the street merchants call arance-mafiuse (fine oranges) . Thus, Pitré argues, mafia, applied to a man to express manly carriage and bravery, would naturally become the title of a society the members of which were all “bravos.” ”

“ Look you out _'Garfagnana, district of, Valley of Serchio'_ in the index. You will be referred to p. 267. Turn to p. 267. You will find there the phrase--
'One can walk from the pretty little village of Sillano, nestling in its chestnut groves, to the flourishing town of Borgo on the new Bagni railway in a day.'
You will find a mark [1] after that phrase. It refers to a footnote. Glance (or look) at the bottom of the page and you will find:
[1] But if one does one is a fool. ”

“ The excellent edition (Paris, 1834) which we now possess we owe to the munificence of Pozzo di Borgo, and the literary ability of Gregori, who has added an Italian translation of the Latin text.
This author's estimate of the Corsicans is still more characteristic and intelligent than that of Filippini. Let us hear what he has to say, that we may see whether the present Corsicans have retained much or little of the nature of their forefathers who lived in those early times:—
"They are eager to avenge an injury, and it is reckoned disgraceful not to take vengeance. ”

“ Borghese, Prince, marries Pauline (Buonaparte) Leclerc, ii. 258;
separates from Pauline, iv. 142.
Borghese, Princess Pauline (Buonaparte) , looseness of her life, iv. 142;
acquires the duchy of Lucca, ii. 354;
dismissed from Paris, iv. 142;
accompanies N. to Elba, 139-142;
alleged scandalous relations with N., 142.
See also Buonaparte, Pauline.
Borghetto, battle of, i. 372.
Borgo, Pozzo di. See Pozzo di Borgo.
Bormida, River, road to Italy opened through the valley of, i. 257 ”

“ It is said that he there found a large treasure in silver, which he carried off upon two hundred camels; for that in Bornou and Bagerme there are many silver mines. Upon this occasion great numbers of the inhabitants of Bagerme, with their wives and children, were driven off as slaves; but on their arrival at Borgo, the learned men of that country, who form a corps as powerful, it seems, as the Ulemas at Constantinople, represented to Saboun, that as they were Mahommedans, it was unjust to reduce them to slavery. ”

“ Here was a horrible little place on a torrent bank. One bridge was reasonable for by it went the road leading south to Lucca and to Rome; it was common honour to let men escape. But as I sat on that main bridge I counted seven others; indeed there must have been a worship of a bridge-god some time or other to account for such a necklace of bridges in such a neglected borough.
You may say (I am off hard on the road to Borgo, drooping with the heat, but still going strongly) , you may say that is explicable enough. First a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become routine ”