Parma

“ Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town; and consequently is not so characteristic as many places of less note. Always excepting the retired Piazza, where the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Campanile—ancient buildings, of a sombre brown, embellished with innumerable grotesque monsters and dreamy-looking creatures carved in marble and red stone—are clustered in a noble and magnificent repose. ”

“ But it is not in order to survey the union of well-ordered husbandry with the civilities of ancient city-life that we break the journey at Parma between Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by the fame of one great painter, whose work, though it may be studied piecemeal in many galleries of Europe, in Parma has a fulness, largeness, and mastery that can nowhere else be found. In Parma alone Correggio challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoret, with all the supreme decorative painters who have deigned to make their art the handmaid of architecture. ”

“ In the town of Parma there is one surpassingly strange relic of the past. The palace of the Farnesi, like many a haunt of upstart tyranny and beggared pride on these Italian plains, rises misshapen and disconsolate above the stream that bears the city's name. The squalor of this grey-brown edifice of formless brick, left naked like the palace of the same Farnesi at Piacenza, has something even horrid in it now that only vague memory survives of its former uses. ”

“ The road itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all things but accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near the summit of the pass, we stopped just half an hour, to lunch off a mouldly hen and six eggs; but that was all the halt we made.
As we drove out of Parma, striking across the plain to the ghiara of the Taro, the sun rose over the austere autumnal landscape, with its withered vines and crimson haws. ”

“ Parliamentarian, one who, in the English Civil War, supported the cause of the Parliament against the king.
Parma (44) , a cathedral and university town in N. Italy, on the Parma, a tributary of the Po, 70 m. NE. of Genoa; is rich in art treasures, has a school of music, picture-gallery, and museum of antiquities; it manufactures pianofortes, silks, and woollens, and has a cattle and grain market; Parma was formerly the capital of the duchy of that name; it was the residence of Correggio as well as the birthplace of Parmigiano. ”

“ We here also observed the extreme clearness and brilliancy of the southern atmosphere: the line of hills in the western horizon was distinguished from the sky by a tint so fine that it was barely perceptible.
Bologna is even superior to Parma. If its streets are less stately, its public buildings are more picturesque and varied; and its long arcades, its porticos, and silent walks are a perpetual feast to the eye and the imagination. At Parma (as well as Turin) you see a whole street at once, and have a magical and imposing effect produced once for all. ”

“ Of a much earlier style of mural painting, Parma itself contains one notable example. The ancient octagon of the Baptistery, with its encircling arcade and strange frieze of leaping, ramping and running animals, is outwardly one of the most interesting buildings in Italy; while its interior has a character of its own hardly to be matched even in that land of fiercely competing individualism. Downward from the apex of the dome the walls are frescoed in successive tiers with figures of saints in rigid staring attitudes, interspersed with awkward presentments of biblical story. ”

“ If it were not for thoughts like these, no one, I suppose, would take the trouble to drive for two hours out of Parma to the little village of Fornovo—a score of bare grey hovels on the margin of a pebbly river-bed beneath the Apennines. The fields on either side, as far as eye can see, are beautiful indeed in May sunlight, painted here with flax, like shallow sheets of water reflecting a pale sky, and there with clover red as blood. Scarce unfolded leaves sparkle like flamelets of bright green upon the knotted vines, and the young corn is bending all one way beneath a western breeze. ”

“ Ross, inhabited in the summer the delicious old villa of Castagnolo, at Lastra a Signa, six miles on the Pisan side of my beloved Florence. Of course, I give page after page in the Diary to our journey across Italy under the Alps and the Apennines. To the modern motorist it must all sound slow, though we did travel by rail! Above all the lovely things we saw on our way by the Turin-Bologna line, I think Parma, rising from the banks of a shallow river, glowing in sunshine and palpitating jewel-like shade, holds pride of place for noontide beauty. ”

“ From Milan he went to Parma, where he saw a number of choice paintings by Correggio, Lanfranc, and Mazzola, and at the cathedral the magnificent fresco of the Assumption; at the church of Saint Sepulchre, the Madonna and Child. He also visited the Farnese gallery, and the tomb of this family in the church of the Madonna Steceata. From Parma he went to Genoa, surnamed the superb. This rich city is the rival of Venice, and is proud of her antiquities, and the power she has always held on the seas. ”

“ You will see, if you are in Parma, or you will hear it said, if you are living in the woods, that the great reservoir of the palazzo Sanseverina has burst. Act at once but by poison, and above all risk your own life as little as possible. ”

“ The Signora no doubt knows better than I that when they rashly emptied the reservoir, twenty years ago, there was as much as a foot of water in many of the streets of Parma."
"And water for the people of Parma," retorted the Duchessa with a laugh. "The avenue past the citadel would have been filled with people if they had cut off Fabrizio's head. . . . They all call him the great culprit. . . . But, above all, do everything carefully, so that not a living soul knows that the flood was started by you or ordered by me. Fabrizio, the Conte himself must be left in ignorance of this mad prank. ”

“ Through miles of these delightful forms and colours, the road winds its way. The wild festoons, the elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all shapes; the fairy nets flung over great trees, and making them prisoners in sport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon the ground; how rich and beautiful they are! And every now and then, a long, long line of trees, will be all bound and garlanded together: as if they had taken hold of one another, and were coming dancing down the field!
Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town ”

“ These summits, always covered in snow, even in the month of August which it then was, give one as it were a reminder of coolness in the midst of these scorching plains; the eye can follow them in the minutest detail, and yet they are more than thirty leagues from the citadel of Parma. This expansive view from the governor's charming palazzo is broken at one corner towards the south by the Torre Farnese, in which a room was being hastily prepared for Fabrizio. ”

“ Parma is now part of the province of Æmilia, in the kingdom of Italy, to which it was annexed March 18, 1860.
Parma, Battles of. An indecisive engagement took place at Parma, June 29, 1734, between the confederated armies of England, France, and Spain and the Austrians; and on June 19, 1799, the French under Macdonald were routed by the Russians under Suwarrow, with a loss of 4 generals and 10,000 men.
Paroi (Fr.) . A stout wooden frame having long, sharp-pointed stakes driven into it horizontally; it is placed upon the parapet to oppose scaling parties. ”

“ Very often, since you have been shut up here, the whole town of Parma has believed your last hour had come.
“It is true that you are only sentenced to twelve years in the fortress, but it is an undoubted fact, unhappily, that an all-powerful hate pursues you, and twenty times I have trembled at the thought that your days might be ended by poison. You must, therefore, snatch at every possible means of escape. ”

“ I've hit it, Tom,—Parma. Parma will do admirably. It's near, and it's never visited by strangers. There 's a gallery of pictures to look at, and, at the worst, plenty of cheese to eat. Tourists may talk and grumble as they will about the dreary aspect of these small capitals, without trade and commerce, with a beggarly Court and a ruined nobility,—to me they are a boon from Heaven. You can always live in them for a fourth of the cost of elsewhere. The head inn is your own, just as the Piazza is, and the park at the back of the palace. ”

“ Fabrizio put in an appearance every day in the most respectable and least amusing drawing-rooms in Parma. Guided by the able advice of the Duchessa, he paid a sagacious court to the two Princes, father and son, to the Princess Clara-Paolina and Monsignore the Archbishop. ”

“ They tell me that you have grown a beard like the most perfect Capuchin, and nobody has seen you at Parma except with the decent countenance of a Grand Vicar.'"
"Do you follow me, Riscara?"
"Perfectly; but the journey to Genoa is an unnecessary extravagance; I know a man in Parma who, to be accurate, is not yet in the galleys, but cannot fail to get there in the end. He will counterfeit the Sanseverina's hand to perfection." ”

“ At Naples he has had mistresses, he has had the passion for archeology, he has sold his horses to make excavations, he has behaved well, he has aroused no jealousy, he may become Pope. What delights him most about his return to Parma is the thought of being delivered from the attentions of the charming Duchessa d'A——. His governor, who has made him an educated man, receives a Cross and a pension. Fabrizio's first appearance at Parma, his arrival, his various presentations at court, form the highest comedy of manners, character and intrigue that one can read anywhere. ”

“ You must dress yourself as a well-to-do peasant, you must get out of Parma as best you can; then hire a sediola, and get to Bologna as quickly as possible. You will enter Bologna, as if you were taking an ordinary walk, by the Florence gate, and you will deliver a packet, which Cecchina will give you, to Fabrizio, who is living at the Pellegrino. Fabrizio is in hiding there, and calls himself Signor Giuseppe Bossi. ”

“ At that moment she was dreaming over all the charms Parma might possess, as she might have done on her way back there, after a long absence, so sure had she been, from nine to eleven o’clock, that she was about to leave the city forever.
“That poor dear count did cut a comical figure when he heard of my departure in the prince’s presence! He really is a charming fellow, and one does not come across such a heart as his every day. ”

“ The Pope precipitated the final catastrophe by a further act of imprudence. The young Duke of Parma, a prince of the house of Bourbon, had excluded the Jesuits from his duchy, and had published certain ecclesiastical regulations detrimental to the ancient pretensions of the Roman See. Clement XIII., reviving an antiquated title in virtue of which Parma was claimed as a dependent fief of the Papacy, was rash enough to launch a bull of excommunication against the Duke, and deprived him of his dominions as a rebellious vassal. ”

“ The signorial cities, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, are far more picturesque, and Parma excels only in the number and beauty of her fountains. It is a city of gloomy aspect, says Valery, who possibly entered it in a pensive frame of mind, for its sadness did not impress us. We had just come from Modena, where the badness of our hotel enveloped the city in an atmosphere of profound melancholy. In fact, it will not do to trust to travellers in any thing. ”

“ On Thursday I shall go to Parma again to assist at the opening of their Assembly. I am now staying with some distant cousins at a villa which Ariosto, who lived here, had celebrated.
I cannot tell you how gratified I am at what I have seen ever since I came to this part of Italy, on Monday last. The order and quiet which prevail everywhere are only equalled by the unanimity with which every man, woman, and child is determined not to submit again to the fallen Government. ”

“ And my goal above the Parma (when I should have crossed it) was a place marked in the map 'Tizzano'. To climb this second spur, to reach and cross the Parma in the vale below, to find Tizzano, I left Calestano on that fragrant morning; and having passed and drawn a little hamlet called Frangi, standing on a crag, I went on up the steep vale and soon reached the top of the ridge, which here dips a little and allows a path to cross over to the southern side.
It is the custom of many, when they get over a ridge, to begin singing. ”

“ The Duchess Sanseverina was presented to the melancholy-looking Princess of Parma, Clara Paolina, who, because her husband had a mistress (the Marchesa Balbi, a rather pretty woman) , thought herself the unhappiest, and had thus become the most tiresome woman, perhaps, in the universe. ”

“ Every evening the marchesa sat in council with the best-informed of her adherents. One day, when she had received numerous letters from Parma and Bologna, she retired at a very early hour. Her favourite waiting-woman introduced to her presence first of all her acknowledged lover, Count Baldi, a young man of great beauty and utter futility, and later on Cavaliere Riscara, who had been Baldi’s predecessor. ”

“ There are lamps and oil in the cellars. Here is a line to my agent. Let the whole population of Sacca drink themselves drunk, empty all my barrels and all my bottles. By the Madonna! If I find one full bottle, one barrel with two fingers of wine left in it, you lose Ricciarda! When that is done, return to Parma and let the water out of the reservoir. Wine for my dear people at Sacca, water for the town of Parma! ”