Sirona

“ The shepherdess went into the smallest, where, on a bed of palm-sticks, lay the slave that she had wounded, and who turned over as with a hasty hand she promptly laid a fresh, but ill-folded bandage, all askew on the deep wound in his bend. As soon as this task was fulfilled she left the room again, placed herself behind the half open door which led into the court-yard, and, pressing, her brow against the stone door-post, looked first at the senator's house, and then at Sirona's window, while her breath came faster and faster. ”

“ This whole region, the desert of Accona, is wild and barren in the extreme, save where the strenuous labour of these Olivetan monks has effected some cultivation; the convent itself appears as an oasis in a wilderness of cretaceous precipices, or balze. As we mount, it gets wilder and more bare in front, while round and behind us an ever grander and more spacious outlook opens; Siena is dimly seen in the distance, Monte Amiata rising higher and higher to the south, and, more westward, that loftily placed last home and refuge of the battered Republic, heroic Montalcino with its towers. ”

“ At her feet sits Concord, a beautiful woman upon whose brow rests the pentecostal tongue of fire; she holds two cords that proceed from the scales of Justice, uniting the twenty-four citizens who pass in procession to the feet of the Commune of Siena. This is represented by a majestic old man, richly clothed in robes that show the black and white of the republican shield, royally crowned. The mystical cord of union is attached to his sceptre, and in his other hand he holds an image of the Blessed Virgin,{140} whom the Sienese had chosen for their Sovereign Lady. ”

“ What thou seest [Pg 240] is real. The Temple of thy goddess will be bereft of its riches to adorn the golden house of Nero. This now is nothing to thee. As I have said, thou shalt go to Chios—to Chios! Rest tranquilly; I will guard thee. When evening settles down, I have means of escape for thee.'
He sent for wine and fruit and raiment. Having done this, he despatched two messengers, one to Endora (for Saronia wished it so) and another to Chios. He charged the soldiers:
'Bring the old woman from the cave on the top of yonder hill! ”

“ Sirena looked at her mother.
“He wants to be funny, Sirena,” said her mother, soothingly.
“Then he isn’t funny; he’s never funny,” said Sirena, drawing herself up with dignity.
“Totty Belmont says you’re the teasenest, hatefulest boy she knows! So there,” remarked Sirena.
“Oh, ho! I don’t wonder the doll is scared. Why don’t you treat that pretty creature with some consideration? Dragging her over the carpet, and spoiling her pretty dress! Now you’ll see, just as soon as she comes to me, because I’m good-looking and nice, she’ll put her eyes down and smile at me as lovely as ever.” ”

“ Deprived of liberty and independence, without even the showy compensation of the presence of a Court, Siena became a kind of glorified provincial city. The energies of nobles and people alike manifested themselves in the numerous academies for which the Sienese were always famous, in the wild sports of the contrade, in the social and literary gatherings, veglie and trattenimenti, which became proverbial throughout Italy. ”

“ And so one after the other all the winds entered, and the last to enter was Sirocco, for you must know that Sirocco is the youngest of Borea's sons. Scarcely had they entered when they began to say: "What smell of human flesh is here? Here, Christians, Christians!" "Oh, bad luck to you! what fools you are! Where is there any smell of human flesh here? Who do you think would risk their lives by coming here?" But her sons would not be convinced, especially that obstinate Sirocco. Lionbruno commended his soul to God, for he saw death at his heels. ”

“ There is a curious tradition that certain streets of Siena were—or possibly still are—infested by were-wolves, who rush through the city at night, and throw themselves into Fontebranda to recover human form. [106] Be that as it may, Fontebranda gives its name to the whole of the picturesque district—“il Rione di Fontebranda”—below{191} the two hills upon which the Duomo and San Domenico respectively stand. The valley is still, as in St Catherine’s days, the haunt of the tanners and the dyers, and redolent of that peculiar odour of the curing of hides that ever after haunts the lover of Siena. ”

“ I do not know whether it was indeed upon the islands under the Punta di Campanella that Ulysses, lashed to the mast, heard the singing of the Sirens, but the tradition is not doubted in Sorrento; and without leaning on it as a fact, one may recognise at least that the tale suggests the vast antiquity of trade upon these waters. Else whence came the heaps of whitening bones of lost sailors, among which the Sirens sat and sang? Here year by year we learn more of the age of man, and of the countless centuries he has dwelt by the shore of the great deep. ”

“ Flew they on with awful swiftness, till the air waves left behind them wound the earth in many circles, till the silent city Sidon slept beneath their hovering pinions; glanced their message to the spirit—Spirit Prince of Ashtoreth. Gained their answer, sailed they westward to Ionia, faster than the coming day-dawn; stood before the great Saronia; hailed her priestess of Diana; whispered forth with frightful meaning:
'Thou thyself, from her begotten, standest first amongst all women. ”

“ As for Giuseppe, he went all over the world too, looking for someone else who has seen the Siren—either a man, or, better still, a woman, for then the child might still have been born. At last he came to Liverpool,—is the district probable?—and there he began to cough, and spat blood until he died.
"I do not suppose there is anyone living now who has seen her. There has seldom been more than one in a generation, and never in my life will there be both a man and a woman from whom that child can be born, who will fetch up the Siren from the sea, and destroy silence, and save the world!" ”

“ Before the ice locked the ponds Siena killed a hundred moose and reindeer. Meat and fat and oil and robes changed the world for the Crow tribe.
Fires burned brightly all the long winter; the braves awoke from their stupor and chanted no more; the women sang of the Siena who had come, and prayed for summer wind and moonlight to bring his bride.
Spring went by, summer grew into blazing autumn, and Siena’s fame and the wonder of the shooting stick spread through the length and breadth of the land. ”

“ No chain of sympathy bound me until I drew nigh unto a world as one suspended glory. Then my whole soul stretched out to reach it, and I knew I had found sanctuary. I stood before the gates of a great city whose walls shone forth like a thousand suns, and I essayed [Pg 49] to enter; but a being of transcendent loveliness stood before me, and I knew it was Saronia! She said: "Not yet, Chios. Thy humanity still lives, and the silver cord still binds thee to it. Thou must return and work out thy destiny. This city shalt thou dimly see, and then go back to earth." ”

“ Under these trees the idlers lounge, boys play at leap-frog, men at bowls. Women in San Remo work all day, but men and boys play for the most part at bowls or toss-penny or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the cathedral, stands at one end of the square. Do not go inside; it has a sickly smell of immemorial incense and garlic, undefinable and horrible. Far better looks San Siro from the parapet above the torrent. There you see its irregular half-Gothic outline across a tangle of lemon-trees and olives. ”

“ This element of beauty, which brings the city into immediate relation with the country, is indeed not peculiar to Siena. We find it in Perugia, in Assisi, in Montepulciano, in nearly all the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany. But their landscape is often tragic and austere, while this is always suave. City and country blend here in delightful amity. Neither yields that sense of aloofness which stirs melancholy. ”

“ Two of the Angels are holding a scroll with a poem, thus blending painting and poetry together in the characteristic early Sienese way: “This blessed glorious Virgin pure, Daughter of her Son and Spouse and Mother—because the Eternal Father found her more humble than any other person, He giveth her here the crown of the Universe. Virgin Mother of the Eternal God, by whose holy hands thou art crowned, to thee be recommended the devout and faithful city of Siena, as it hopeth in thee; hail, full of grace.” The San Bernardino on the right is also by Sano. ”

“ The anchorage of the Amphitrite lay in a bay not far from the entrance to the harbour, screened by the steep-climbing olive groves belonging to this Castello of Silorno which Archie's mother had taken for the months of May and June: Silorno itself, that incredibly picturesque huddle of pink and yellow walls, of campaniles, and lacemakers, who, with bright coloured kerchiefs over their comely heads, plied their wooden bobbins all day in the shade of its narrow streets, rose, roof over roof, at the head of the harbour. ”

“ At the antimony works, where the road divides, we take the way to the right, westwards. Presently we mount up again, through lanes on either side that might almost be English—only, when these break away, the silvery olives, the convents on the hills, Siena’s towers and the distant mountains remind us that we are in Tuscany. “The most charming district in the immediate neighbourhood of Siena,” to quote Symonds once more, “lies westward, near Belcaro, a villa high up on a hill. ”

“ Thou wilt not have long to wait ere the light of a torch will stream upon the dark green foliage and a woman's form will appear, and, later, as she approaches, dark tresses waving in the breeze, and, if light enough, two eyes like stars of night, o'ershadowed by eyebrows like cloudlets of gloom. Those are the eyes of Saronia, the priestess of Hecate. Darest thou to be there and speak to her? I think not. Weigh well thy intentions, Chios, before setting out on such an awful journey. Let me entreat thee, good man ”

“ A snapping of twigs alarmed Siena and he whirled upon the defensive, but too late to save himself. A band of Indians pounced upon him and bore him to the ground. One wrestling heave Siena made, then he was overpowered and bound. Looking upward, he knew his captors, though he had never seen them before; they were the lifelong foes of his people, the fighting Crees.
A sturdy chief, bronze of face and sinister of eye, looked grimly down upon his captive. “Baroma makes Siena a slave.”
Siena and his tribe were dragged far southward to the land of the Crees. ”

“ When evening came, the people rose in mass, shouting for France and Liberty; the very women hurled stones upon the heads of the Spaniards, as they sullenly retreated towards San Domenico and the Citadel, leaving the Campo in the charge of the Florentine soldiers that Duke Cosimo had sent to their aid. Such was the flaming of the torches and the glow of lights in the windows, that “through all the city one walked as though the sun had risen.” While the Sienese within threw open the Porta Tufi, the rest of the French, led by Enea Piccolomini, fired the Porta Romana ”

“ These nobles were divided against themselves; there was bitter feud between the Salimbeni and the Tolomei, between the Malavolti and the Piccolomini. And presently the people took advantage of this to rise and claim their share in the administration of the city, and in the reformation of 1147 they obtained a third part of the government.
Gradually the Republic of Siena extended its sway over the neighbouring townlets and over the castelle of the contado, whose feudal lords were forced to reside in the city for some months in the year, to fight for the Commune in war. ”

“ SYRA. Syra, like many of the Greek towns, is best seen at a distance; for it is, in reality, but an insignificant place, and there is not a respectable street in it. The houses, too, are low and dirty; and a disagreeable smell of dried fish and bad olives salutes one in every quarter. However, the inhabitants appear to be wealthy and enterprising; and at some future period it may become a large, populous, flourishing city.
Saturday, 6th.—We started at midnight, and in the morning were off St. Nicolo, in the island of Tinos. The town is very pretty ”

“ I want you, while the attention of the whole city is directed elsewhere, at the head of a company to force the doors of the nunnery of St. Clara and take from there a person whom only you, besides myself and Capitan Tiago, can recognize. You'll run no risk at all."
"Maria Clara!" exclaimed Basilio.
"Yes, Maria Clara," repeated Simoun, and for the first time his voice became human and compassionate. "I want to save her; to save her I have wished to live, I have returned. I am starting the revolution, because only a revolution can open the doors of the nunneries." ”

“ For even the sojourn of a single week will captivate and make one feel as if he belonged to Siena, and Siena to him. It may be that the wheeled traffic, which can follow but two or three distinct lines through her streets, shuts off in silence large areas of the city, and that the visitor is left more to himself and his reveries than is the case in most Italian towns. Whatever it be, it is difficult to define, but the more one knows Siena the more whole-heartedly does one give oneself up to her charm. ”

“ The war lasted till the April of the following year, both round the city and in the contado, and was most ruthless in its character. For ten miles around, the once smiling country became a desolate, fire-stained and blood-soaked wilderness—a few trees being left standing, merely that the Spaniards might hang the hapless contadini who attempted to bring supplies through their lines to the starving people in the beleaguered city. The earlier engagements mostly resulted in favour of the Sienese with their French allies and German mercenaries. ”