Lucrezia

“ But sentiment, still more than love, forbids me to deprive Lucrezia of the proof of my gratitude, and I turn to her with all the rapture of a beginner, feeling that my ardour is increased by Angelique’s ecstasy, as for the first time she witnesses the amorous contest. Lucrezia, dying of enjoyment, entreats me to stop, but, as I do not listen to her prayer, she tricks me, and the sweet Angelique makes her first sacrifice to the mother of love. ”

“ Isabella was a great, lusty creature, and Lucrezia a frail, slight woman, just arrived from an exhausting journey, after having been overtired before she started. If she could not charm, besides, in these first crucial days, her case was lost. Who cares at any time to champion an ugly woman with every fragment of evidence against her? But a fresh, smiling, childlike creature disarms antagonism through sheer contagion of joy. And Lucrezia, as one knows, could be like sunshine itself in her soft urbanity and good humour. ”

“ Alas! you will never be cured of it. Oh! why am I not entirely your own? You are also the first true love of my heart, and you will be the last. How great will be the happiness of my successor! I should not be jealous of her, but what suffering would be mine if I thought that her heart was not like mine!"
Lucrezia, seeing my eyes wet with tears, began to give way to her own, and, seating ourselves on the grass, our lips drank our tears amidst the sweetest kisses. How sweet is the nectar of the tears shed by love, when that nectar is relished amidst the raptures of mutual ardour! ”

“ More beautiful than her greatly advertised ancestor Lucrezia—that poor, simpering, colorless thing, who had achieved a place in history to which neither her talents nor her spurious iniquities entitled her. ”

“ But Lucrezia, ill herself with a fever brought on by shock, made a desperate struggle to save the life belonging to her. Here again she shows as a perfectly natural woman. Driven at last into revolt by those she dared not openly defy, and heartsick, shaken, burning with terror, impotence, and distress, she yet fought them with all the pitiful means at her disposition. ”

“ Lucrezia did not seem even to expect a man to be true and faithful. Perhaps she knew the Sicilian character too well. Hermione lifted her face up and looked towards the mountain. Her mind had gone once more to the Thames Embankment. As once she had mentally put Gaspare beside Artois, so now she mentally put Lucrezia. Lucrezia distrusted the south, and she was of it. Men must be as God had made them, she said, and evidently she thought that God had made them to run wild, careless of woman's feelings, careless of everything save their own vagrant desires. ”

“ We rearranged our position, and the marchioness sitting close to me called me her dear husband, while I called her my dear wife.
The new bond between us was confirmed by affectionate kisses. We were absorbed and silent, and Lucrezia was delighted to find us so calm when she returned.
We had no need to warn each other to observe secrecy. Donna Lucrezia was devoid of prejudice, but there was no need to give her a piece of useless information. ”

“ Lucrezia heard the tidings with more firmness, and proceeded to dress herself to go to the chapel, exhorting Beatrice to resignation; but she, raving, wrung her, hands and struck her head against the wall, shrieking, “To die! to die! Am I to die unprepared, on a scaffold! ”

“ ALBERTO. Oh, I knew you wouldn't desert me, Lucrezia. You've always been a mother to me. (He stretches out his hand and seizes hers, which has gone half-way to meet him; but the balconies are too far apart to allow him to kiss it. He makes an effort and fails. He is too short in the body,) Will you let me come onto your balcony, Lucrezia? ”

“ Lucrezia, believing that the monster whom she had espoused was possessed, in spite of his cruelty, by a criminal passion for his own daughter, attempted secretly to save her, by presenting a memorial to the pope imploring him to give her in marriage to a Signor Guerra, who had long been attached to her. But this petition was intercepted by Francesco, who then carried off Lucrezia and his two youngest children, Beatrice and Bernardo, to Petrella, a vast and desolate castle in the Apennines. ”

“ I said, "do they call this the house of Lucrezia?"
"Why are you called a foreigner? " retorted the old woman, chuckling. "Is it not because you are a foreigner?"
"Certainly. But who was this Madam Lucrezia? Was she a Roman lady?"
"What! you come to Rome without know- ing Madam Lucrezia? I will tell you her history when we are inside. But here is another devilish trick! I do not know what has come to this key — it will not turn. You try it."
Indeed, the padlock and the key had not seen each other for a long time. ”

“ The old man burst out laughing, and Lucrezia suspecting the truth bit her lips and said nothing. The fair marchioness reserved her curiosity for another reason.
The marquis had seen the whole of Europe. He had only thought of marrying on the death of his father, who had attained the age of ninety. Finding himself in the enjoyment of thirty thousand ducats a year he imagined that he might yet have children in spite of his advanced age. He saw Leonilda, and in a few days he made her his wife, giving her a dowry of a hundred thousand ducats. Donna Lucrezia went to live with her daughter. ”

“ After dinner I felt sleepy and lay down on a bed, and did not wake till eight o'clock, when to my surprise I found that my only companion was Lucrezia, who was writing. She heard me stir, and came up to me and said affectionately,—
"My dear friend, you have slept for five hours; and as I did not like to leave you alone I would not go with the duke and our daughter to the opera."
The memory of former loves awakens when one is near the once beloved object, and desires rapidly become irresistible if the beauty still remain. ”

“ Lucrezia said nothing.
"You like Sebastiano, Lucrezia?"
Lucrezia reddened under her brown skin.
"Si, signora."
"So do I. He's always been a good friend of mine."
Lucrezia shifted along the seat until she was nearly opposite to where Hermione was sitting.
"How old is he?"
"Twenty-five, signora."
"I suppose he will be marrying soon, won't he? The men all marry young round about Marechiaro."
Lucrezia began to darn.
"His father, Chinetti Urbano, wishes him to marry at once. It is better for a man."
"You understand men, Lucrezia?"
"Si, signora. They are all alike." ”

“ Do you not know that, in moments of such rapture, lovers see and feel nothing but love? Do you doubt having possessed me wholly, entirely?"
Lucrezia, in speaking thus, was not composing a poetical ode; she was not feigning fictitious sentiments; her looks, the sound of her voice, were truth itself!
"Are you certain," I enquired, "that we are not suspected?"
"My husband does not believe us to be in love with each other, or else he does not mind such trifling pleasures as youth is generally wont to indulge in. ”

“ Lucrezia answered him in passionate Italian—of which I had no knowledge—with such fire in her eyes, such haughty gesticulation, and such a torrent of words, that I really began to think, pretty soft little dear as she looked, that she must positively be a trifle out of her mind, her silence before, and her queer speech to me, seemed such odd behavior for a young lady in such high society. She was turning to me again when Little Grand came out into the veranda, looking flushed, proud, and self-complaisant, as such a winner and slayer of women would do. ”

“ Lucrezia was twenty–five at the time of this her fourth marriage. What the tenour of her life had been, and the nature of the scenes she had passed through, the English reader is probably in some small degree aware; in a very small degree, unless indeed he happens to have sought out in the folio Latin columns of the contemporary chroniclers the details of abominations wholly unreproducible in any modern page. ”

“ Lucrezia was educated according to the usual curriculum of Renaissance ladies of rank, and was taught languages, music, embroidery, painting, &c.; she was famed for her beauty and charm, but the corrupt court of Rome in which she was brought up was not conducive to a good moral education. ”

“ True, the marriage offered Lucrezia the great opportunity of her life—the opportunity to retrieve, which should follow everybody’s primary misdemeanours. She rose, moreover, magnificently to the occasion, and through that fact alone made her life of deep and touching value. For no past [Pg 180] human backsliding should be allowed to blur the smoothness of a changed and nobler future. There is no object in life if improvement is to be hindered by cast-off failings. ”

“ She writes to grandmother Lucrezia, I, my father, to you. The one who obtains what he asks for will win. Till now Lucrezia has had all she wished for. I, who have always written in Latin in order to give a more literary tone to my [Pg 218] letters, have not yet had that pony you promised me; so that I am laughed at by all. See to it therefore, Your Magnificence, that she should not always be the winner. The war as far as I understand goes in our favour this year, but we do not quite understand how the sword that wounded us is to be broken if only the sheath is hit. ”

“ That loves her mortal, and can let him die,
Her fit of doting ended.
LUCREZIA.
Will you quarrel?
[The Pope’s voice is heard calling through the halls.
{71} ALEXANDER.
Where is she?
Lucrezia, Lucrezia! My little nurse!
Lucrezia! [He enters.
LUCREZIA.
[Rising with Alfonso.] We are here, dear father.
ALEXANDER.
Ha!
Feast of S. John, is this austerity?
Skinning cool peaches in a vestibule?
You should have seen the bull-fight, my fair Spaniard.
Cesare....
But he is Hercules! There, in his doublet,
With his short sword he faced five bulls. ”

“ She worked for the unhappy people starving about her, in a flaming rush of pity. Jews and Christians were alike to Lucrezia; her protection of Jews was strenuous in a period when the mere name roused men’s ferocity. That her heart throbbed in response to the right instincts is proved by the whole compassionate fabric of her later life. Any human being, intuitively conscious that pain equalizes all things, cannot be encased in the callousness of the really bad or cold nature. During all the years Lucrezia lived in Ferrara [Pg 196] her care for charitable institutions was personal and active. ”

“ We can understand how it was that weak men had an attraction for Lucrezia. Her independent character in combination with her motherly instincts drew her to the weak. The idea of being protected was intolerable to her; and on occasions when she had felt the desire to lean upon those who were stronger than herself, she had too often been repelled by their coldness. She was therefore inclined to believe that love and energy were to be found in combination only in hearts which had suffered as much as her own. ”

“ In the rare intervals when her heart had been tranquil, her brain had been at rest; and if she could have been prevented from ever seeing the other sex, she would have made an excellent nun, calm and vigorous. This is as much as to say that nothing could be purer than her thoughts when she was alone, and that when she loved, all that was not her lover was to her, as far as the senses were concerned, solitude, emptiness, nonentity." Lucrezia says of love: "I know that it is said to be a sensual impulse; but this is not true in the case of clever women. ”

“ Before his accession to the pontificate, Lucrezia had been formally promised to a couple of Spanish grandees, Don Cherubino Juan de Centelles and Don Gasparo da Procida, who was a son of the Count of Aversa; but once in the Vatican, with the papal power in his hands, Alexander grew more ambitious, and looked for another alliance, which might give him an increased political power. Then come three marriages in which the daughter Lucrezia seems but a puppet in her father's hands. ”

“ In April 1877 her illness increased to an alarming extent, and her last stage-appearance was on May 19, as Lucrezia. 'She fainted twice during the performance, in her dressing-room; but she would appear, though she had to undergo a painful operation on the following Tuesday. 'If I am to die,' she said to a friend, 'I will play Lucrezia once more.' Those who then heard her will always recall her rendering of the despairing cry after Gennaro's death. She died Oct. ”

“ We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of gilded wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the facility with which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the corpses ready for it. ”

“ And when they had departed, Isabella, without heeding if anyone could hear her words, rose from the couch on which she was lying, and thus addressed Lady Lucrezia Frescobaldi, her lady in waiting:
"Lady Lucrezia, we are ready to take our departure, so that it would seem better for us to be prepared by taking the sacrament."
Lady Lucrezia belonged to that race of pale and delicate creatures, who are accustomed to accompany 209 the powerful: they come with fortune, and go with it ”

“ In the midst of her explosions of passion, Lucrezia, who had either not received, or misunderstood, her lady's message by Gina, entered. The maiden stood aghast, till, admonished by a haughty wave of the hand from the count, she hastened from the room. Later in the day, the Lord of Visinara quitted the castle, to pay the promised visit. His wife refused to go. "Mercy! mercy!" she exclaimed, in anguish, as she sat alone in her apartments, "to be thus requited by Giovanni—whom I so loved, my husband! my own husband! [pg 190] Is it possible that a man can be guilty of treachery so deep? ”