Fiammetta

“ The preparations for the marriage were sumptuous. Every day large parties assembled at the palace of Euthanasia; and, when the day declined, song and dance passed away the hours of darkness. The day at length arrived, when Fiammetta should first be led to church, and thence to the palace where her husband resided. Early in the morning she and her noble friends of her own sex prepared for the ceremony, by attiring themselves in the most magnificent manner. ”

“ The Ameto, like the Filocolo, was written to give expression to his love for Fiammetta, the bastard daughter of King Robert of Naples. There he says that Caleone (whom we suppose to be in some sort himself) was born not far from the place whence Fiammetta's mother (whom he has told us was French) drew her origin. Again, in another part of the same book the story is related of a young Italian merchant, not distinguished by birth or gentle breeding, who went to Paris and there seduced a young French widow. ”

“ In the Fiammetta we have another great and minutely-painted picture of the human soul, full of the keenest observation, though executed with anything but uniform power, and in parts marred by the passion for high-sounding language and by an unlucky mixture of mythological allusions and learned quotations. The Fiammetta, if we are not mistaken, is a sort of feminine counterpart to the Vita Nuova of Dante, or at any rate owes its origin to it. ”

“ As she dismounted the bride’s retinue arrived from the house of the Alessandri: thirty young matrons and maidens most richly dressed, and among them was your Fiammetta, one of the two handsomest there. They were accompanied by another set of youths dressed for dancing and preceded by trumpeters. Thirty other maidens were in Lorenzo’s house to receive the bride and her retinue. After the olive tree, to the sound of much music, had been hauled up to the windows, all went to dinner. ”

“ So, not long afterwards, he went back to Naples; and there he made splendid marriages for both the girls, heaping them with honours, and having seen them in the charge of noble husbands, he went sorrowfully away into Apulia, where with great labours he overcame his passion. "Some may say," adds Fiammetta, who told the tale on the tenth day of the Decameron, "that it was a little thing for a king to give two girls in marriage; but I call it a great thing, ay, the greatest, that a king in love should give the woman whom he loves unto another." ”

“ Antonio drained his goblet at a gulp. He got out the words:
"We are provincial, we Manzecca. Like a race apart."
"All old families, jealous of their integrity, are the same," ventured Laura, who looked, nevertheless, as if she were about to faint.
"Or maybe," mused Fiammetta, "it is because I have been ill that things perplex me, and sometimes startle me by an effect of strangeness. There are moments when even the stars look odd to me, and when the countryside, viewed from the tower above us, is bewildering. In one direction I see woods where I should have expected meadows ”

“ The first work, called Ameto, describes the civilizing influence of love, which subdues the ferocious manners of the savage with its gentle power. Fiammetta, although not the heroine of the story, is amongst the nymphs who with their tales of true love soften the mind of the huntsman. Ameto is written in prose alternating with verse, specimens of which form occur in old and middle Latin writings. ”

“ It is certain that the inhabitants of all these towns held very loose ideas on the subject of brigandage: the poor fellows, they used to say, only robbed because they were hungry, and they must live somehow.
What Fiammetta thought, down in her heart, is not told: but I presume she shared the feelings of those about her concerning the brigands, and, when she heard that Giuseppe had joined them, was more anxious for the safety of his body than of his soul ”

“ MICHELE SCALZA PROVETH TO CERTAIN YOUNG MEN THAT THE CADGERS OF FLORENCE ARE THE BEST GENTLEMEN OF THE WORLD OR THE MAREMMA AND WINNETH A SUPPER
The ladies yet laughed at Giotto's prompt retort, when the queen charged Fiammetta follow on and she proceeded to speak thus: "Young ladies, the mention by Pamfilo of the cadgers of Florence, whom peradventure you know not as doth he, hath brought to my mind a story, wherein, without deviating from our appointed theme, it is demonstrated how great is their nobility ”

“ Such is the difference between men and women; yet women are infinitely the pitifuller. The elemental riddle of them, of their inconsistencies with themselves, has never seemed to me so well epitomised as in the fable of the Amazonian Queen Thalestris, man-conqueror and man-scorner, travelling alone to give herself to Alexander, that she might become by him the mother of a boy-hero.
One day Fifine, putting a hand on my arm and looking up into my face, spoke to me wistfully of a thought that had come into her mind.
“Felix, we have been very, very happy here, have we not?” ”

“ They will come to see half a ‘Figaro’ when they will not come to see a dozen ‘Heartless Fathers.’ Therefore let us cast the mantle of Figaro upon some one, and proclaim it in our title.”
“But as I am the head of the company...” began M. Binet, weakly.
“If you will be blind to your interests, you will presently be a head without a body. And what use is that? Can the shoulders of Pantaloon carry the mantle of Figaro? You laugh. Of course you laugh. The notion is absurd. The proper person for the mantle of Figaro is Scaramouche, who is naturally Figaro’s twin-brother.” ”

“ They determine that Bianca shall now wed the rich farmer Obol (M. Raphael.) Scene changes to the Pass of the Rothen-Thurm. Grand pas de Désir, Mademoiselle Boisfleury and M. Anatole. Grand Valse, La Tentation; Pas d’Amour, Mademoiselle Boisfleury and M. Anatole. Fiametta is an aërolite, her mother is the firmament, her father is the earth, on the wings of the storm she can descend from her home in the skies, and assume a mortal appearance. She may lure others to love, but she may never love herself, or she will sink deep into the earth—buried for ever. ”

“ We would make a compromise of our theories, our principles, with even perhaps a slight leaning of the balance towards the traditional; and in the result—well, those were but plans, elevations, as it were. The whole, into which the infinite parts were compacted, exists for any one to see who likes.1 It is the only work of mine in which heart and soul and brain made a common cause of it to achieve perfection. It has not achieved it, of course, for Fifine was not perfection. But what approach to it it makes was her doing and hers alone. There is sunshine in it, which they call sunshine. ”

“ She looked at me very oddly.
“You are a gentleman, Felix Dane,” she said.
“I may be the incomparable Bayard himself, Marion; but jealousy has denied me his reputation.”
“‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ Felix” (it was her only concession to the old Marion) . “For the rest, she must not be known, of course, for whom she is. Call her simply Fifine.”
“And Madame Crussol and the others?”
“What does it matter? When she leaves you, it will be to resume herself—to disappear from all imaginary associations.” ”

“ Fifine was Fifine to me, and that was all sufficient. If I thought lazily beyond that bare fact, tasting even a piquancy in speculation, it was to present myself with the portrait of a young lady of very feminine but independent views, having a knowledge, or at least a cognizance of the Bohemian side of Paris, entertaining seedy violoncellists, and capable of coming to definite conclusions with herself on a variety of subjects, from art and dress to conduct. Comely too, and yet unspoilt, be it said; and, if a worldling, one with the highest capacity for self-sacrifice to an ideal devotion. ”

“ All immense, all significant, all spectral despite its ponderous actuality; teeming with the infinite dust and debris of bygone story; ruins like rocks and rocks like ruins, one indistinguishable confusion and torrent of stone. Long ago from the floor of the little church they had unearthed the body of some beautiful unknown châtelaine. She had golden hair, like the maid of Pornic, that stretched down on either side to her feet. It was all that survived from the desecration, and it was deposited in Mistral’s museum at Arles. Fifine had seen it there; and, of course, Carabas. ”

“ But the fashionable convention, I supposed, when once acquired was ineradicable; and, no doubt, to have dined in undress would have seemed tantamount with Fifine to bathing in public.
But, to my surprise, she took my sarcasm, if sarcasm it was, in good part.
“This apparition is of your own invoking,” she said. “And I did not want to deny you that pride in yourself which you had a right to feel. The strange comrade who has come to you out of the shadows is, after all, only your own lay-figure, Cousin; and—and the dress is very pretty.” ”

“ For myself I am a little tired of the eternal cult. He is as great a nuisance in his place as the Dairyman’s daughter is in hers, or as Kingsley at Westward Ho, where the very engines carry his name about. Mistral did not create Provence, any more than Stevenson created childhood, as some of his fatuous adorers would have us believe. But, come.”
“All that is Greek to me,” said Fifine, as we sought the front of the statue. “But if it means England——”
“It does.”
“Do you ever wish for your own country again, Felix? You have been a great traveller, have you not?” ”

“ In all else but that we were wholly one and inseparable, in trust, in truth, in perfect confidence.
We had it all out, of course, on the subject of those erst-peevish perversities and misunderstandings. There is no joy like a converted jealousy; quarrels become relishes when they can be discussed impartially. I told Fifine of my savage decision, on the hill that fateful night, to achieve the world-conquering work which was to refute and overwhelm her with a sense of what she had thrown away. ”

“ In the meantime life went on as before, and I, for my part, found it agreeable. We shared our differences impartially, as we did our amenities; and the money question was shelved.
Early in our acquaintanceship Fifine had cleaned the glass of the little picture by Auguste Ronsin that she so much admired. I don’t know why, but it always piqued me to hear her extravagant eulogies of this piece, which was after all nothing so wonderful, though it was out of the common. One day, when she was in her bedroom, I took the thing off the wall and hid it. She was not long in noticing its disappearance. ”

“ I took her hand, and she came at once, and stood with me before the picture.
She did not speak for a long time; but at length she turned to me, and I was content in the guerdon of her look.
“Felix,” she said softly, “women are really of coarser fibre than men. You see us not as we are, but as your transcendent imaginations paint us. And we know that well enough; and that is why we will always submit to the judgment of men, rather than to that of our own sex, who know the truth.”
“You are pleased, Fifine?” ”

“ As she stood up, the picture she made—her face, half in glow half in shadow, the vivid life of her contrasting with the golden ruins of the walls—wrought with such ardour upon my imagination, that I felt that, if I failed in that moment to take advantage of the creative impulse its beauty awoke in me, I deserved to be writ down for ever more the emasculate cypher of her strictures. So very quietly I got out the block, pencils, and a handful of coloured crayons which I made it my constant practice to carry about with me.
“Fifine,” I said, “don’t move: stand just as you are. ”

“ It was actually so. Strewed all about the ground, with little alleys of commerce dividing the groups, was an infinite confusion of pottery—jugs, dishes, cooking utensils, and what not; and, pervading it, a number of picturesque figures, swarthy of face, hot-dyed of dress and neckerchief, the whole constituting a sort of gypsies’ fair. Fifine stood as if dumbstricken.
“Perhaps now,” I said, “the clue of memory taken up will lead you back to your birthplace?” ”

“ A poplar or two hung above the river for foreground; there was hardly a ripple there to shake the pictured rushes; it was as lovely an impression of antique peace as I have ever encountered. Fifine, after we had passed it all, made a little gesture to me, and I came and sat by her side, when she stole her hand into mine. I thought I knew what was in her heart—something emotional, a little piteous, the sense of a loveliness spent and of doubts to come. I pressed the soft palm in reassurance.
And so at last—Paris. The benediction of the season remained with us to the end. ”

“ In the train, while Fifine pretended to sleep, I sat chewing the cud of injurious reflection. “She is comparing her day,” I thought, “with what it might have been had that fulsome yarn-slinging impostor accompanied us. I think, on the whole, and under the circumstances, she might have endured me more benignly. But I suppose it is impossible to woman to yield a point graciously, and without at least some negative nagging in the shape of a self-sacrificial, smiling-martyrdom pose.” ”

“ Once in a little garden we saw a pomegranate tree in rosy fruit—a lovely touch of colour; and once a group of merry girls went by, bareheaded and unadorned, fruit almost as fair. Elsewise, it seemed, we had these deserted ramparts to ourselves, and the view therefrom.
“But grant me still a friend in my retreat,” quoth and quoted I, “whom I may whisper—Solitude is sweet.”
And at that instant, turning an angle, we saw the whole perspective of battlements ahead fringed with human forms.
Fifine laughed delightfully, hearing my gasp of dismay. ”