threaded a needle without answering. Perhaps I had longed for this visit from my cousin, and now my rosecolored hopes were turned into bitter realities. I decided not to open my mouth again, and it was he who continued, twisting a skein of blue silk round his fingers: "I found la Querciaia in indescribable disorder. Esthetically I love the old building with its fortress-like walls covered with a profusion of climbing roses; and besides I am full of sentiment. I hear mysterious voices in the corners of the old house where my ancestors were born and died. Still, frankly speaking, there are too many spiders' webs, too many rats, and too many doors that won't shut. I spent six days, as long as it took to make the world, in putting the books in order on their shelves. The pictures in the garret will give me no end of trouble. I did not know I had so many ancestors in such poor lodgings. I am especially filled with remorse on account of a charming with wonderful white arms and handshands like yours. A rat has carried off the handkerchief that she held between two fingers. O how willingly I would put my heart in its place, great-grandmother And send up a prayer to God. My heart does not bleed in the least; it is young, strong and gay. After the necessary repairs, I shall hang my great-grandmother in the drawingroom, and I think that is all she could expect from a great-grandson." "A grandson who is a poet," I said, having had time while he followed out his fancy, to recover myself a little. "Even the acacia grove at the end of the garden proclaims that you are a poet." "And you, how do you know that?" "Have you forgotten that trees can speak?" "Ah, so they can! The oak one day said to the reed, 'Why do you bend so humbly before the blast?'" The reed bent his head in shame, but when the storm came, the reed bowed beneath it, but the oak was broken by the thunderbolt and overthrown." "Because he was too proud," cried Alexis triumphantly. un "I see that my fable is not new." "I often tell fables to Alexis." "That is a good plan; great lessons in an humble form, if the ground be even tolerably favorable, bring forth hoped-for results. When I have children, my system of education shall be very simple and patriarchal, but penetrated with the free modern spirit. Many people complicate education witn a great number of useless and sometimes injurious practices; it would be so easy to bring up children in the knowledge of the true and the beautiful.” "I am going to look for a good tutor for Alexis soon." "Where will you find him? A good mother is rare, a good father rarer still, a good tutor, almost unheard of. I advise you to choose the lesser evil." "Which in this case is myself?" "Exactly. But such a slight one!" He said this with a gentleness that touched me. "It is true, I am too ignorant." "It is not necessary to have a great deal of erudition in order to bring up a child and make a man of him. When one has a heart like yours, one can succeed in anything by the strength of love alone." He said, "When one has a heart like yours." Did he know my heart? This troubled me, but only for a moment. My confidence returned at the sound of his loyal voice, at the touch of his ideas, which were always noble though they were not always kind. "You ought to read a little." "I should be very glad," I said with enthusiasm. He was silent, thinking, and twisting his moustache between his finger and thumb. He seemed to have forgotten where he was, and I took care not to recall him to himself, for I knew that his company was valuable, even when he did not speak. At last he said, "I will send you some books." Then he rose to take his leave. "Please do not be so long again before you come back." "That must depend upon the chaos in which I am plunged. Do you fancy I can leave a thing half-done? La Querciaia needs repairing, and must be repaired. In this country the work men only come when they choose, and often one has to set one's own wits to work. By the way do you know of a good carpenter?" As we talked I had gone with him to the threshold; the sun shone through the open door, and Alexis began to clap his hands. "The spring has come," said he, “are there any flowers in your garden yet?" "Only a few hyacinths; come and look." We all three went down the steps together, and on the path my cousin stopped to look at the garden, still naked and empty, but where the beds were already spaded and prepared for the new seeds. any harm, or are you not subject to the idea which women have instinctively, that they must be constantly doing something with their children? They have not enough strength of character to find out what is really good for them, so they seize upon the first lesson that is convenient and near at hand." "Oh, near at hand, or far away, is not everything that concerns our children, our duty?" "My sweet Mentor, I bow before your wisdom, but do not be afraid to let your little boy run as much as he wants to; it is a preparation for life." "Do you know that you have a splen- longed it, giving him too, perhaps, a did exposure here?" vague feeling of pleasure, that 1 "Yes, it is very good; we even have thought I saw reflected in his eyes. too much sun." "Before two weeks are over, all these buds will be open; at la Querciaia it is very backward. Ah, here are these chattering trees which tell people's secrets." We were near the acacias, and we began to laugh a little with a feeling of intimacy which had a great charm. "When the trees are green again, you must come back and seek inspiration here." "I have no time now to write verses." "But you can be a poet! I always thought one could be a poet without writing verses." He fixed on me an intense, scrutinizing glance, pleased and perhaps surprised at what I had just said, as if I had realized in that moment a secret hope of his. The air around us was enchanting; light waves of fragrance from the beds of hyacinths floated through it. Alexis ran up and down the paths. "Alexis, don't run so; you will do yourself harm." And again, as at the first time, his visit left a reflexion of joy behind it, a plenitude of ideas, and new horizons. I had once before experienced something like it in my girlhood, when I recovered from a serious illness. That in the same way was an awakening of all my sensibilities, an affluence of strength and desire for a new life or rather a life that was just beginning anew. It was in vain I searched among my earliest recollections. I had never known any one who reminded me of my cousin, nobody had ever made me talk as he did. And in fact, whom had I ever known except my poor father, almost an invalid, our peasants, some friends whom I rarely saw, the doctor, the curé, and my husband? Far back on my childish mind was imprinted the remembrance of an old gentleman, who sometimes came to see us, and whom my father called a superior man. These words were im "Do you really think that will do him pressed upon me because I once heard my father say to mama in the course of a domestic discussion, "Let us ask X. He is a superior man." From that time I began to observe him very attentively every time he came, and his expression, more than his features, stamped itself on my memory. It had certain shades of disdain, others of tenderness, and above all a kind of elevation and disengagement from the earth. I could not say that my cousin looked like X. for my cousin was young and handsome, and X. had white hair and hollow cheeks, but if I wished to compare him with any one I should have to go back to that old man, and recall the depth of his glance and the light of his smile. In fact, what was meant by a superior man? In my lessons I had heard of the Greek and Roman heroes, and at church they spoke of our holy martyrs; I had also read in a classic anthology some extracts from our best poets, but all these people seemed so far away from me, that I could never think of them as flesh and blood, nor ever realize that they were fellow creatures. When the man I was to marry was first presented to me, thanks to my narrow range of comparison, he seemed to me almost perfect. The easy carriage of an elegant young man made a great impression on me, poor ignorant young girl! Then as he paid his addresses to me regularly, I thought he loved me. Perhaps, who knows! he did love me then, though now I know that it could not have been true love. He did not stay with me a year; he wearied in my society and in the solitude of the country, and as soon as he knew that I was to become a mother, he went back to the habits his city life and his travels. He promised me to take an apartment in town where we could pass the winter together, but he always put it off under one pretext or another, and without any real reason; our marriage was almost a form. be fossilized without regret and without ambition. My son and my two servants were my whole family. How many winter evenings I have passed with Alexis asleep on my knees and Ursula telling me for the hundredth time the story of my father's and mother's wedding. Pietro, also, would relate anecdotes of the past. One of his favorite stories was of his persuading me when I was five years old that the way to catch swallows was to put a grain of salt on their tails and of my running out into the garden with my pockets full of salt; and at this he laughed again and again, the good old fellow. I had no neighbors for three leagues, except the daughters of the doctor, two old maiden ladies, who came sometimes to see me. And this is the reason I waited with such impatience for my cousin's third visit. From The Edinburgh Review. NOVELS OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. Men search for the pictures of bygone times after many and divers fashions, but time has only three storehousesthe past, the present, and the future. From one of these every artist of the imagination must draw his material, be he painter or poet, realist or idealist. Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, is a formula epitomizing every possibility contained by the temporal divisions of eternity in which humanity abides. Law is implacable; the eyes of men can only look before or behind; there are no sideway vistas. What is the living sentiment now-must always be of bounded by the two abysses of the dead and the unborn. My delicate health, one of his pretexts for not taking me to town, caused me to feel a sort of joy in my state of abandonment, and I allowed myself to And it is to the past, by instinct, taste, or necessity, that novelist, poet, play 1 1. The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. Translated by John Payne. London: 1892. 2. The Nights of Straparola. Now first translated into English by W. G. Waters. London: 1894. 3. Il Novellino of Masuccio Salernitano. Translated by W. G. Waters. London: :896. 4. Matteo Bandello. Twelve stories selected and done into English by Percy Pinkerton. Lon. don: 1895. wright, and painter continually turn. They vie with one another in a common effort to re-create the days which are dust and ashes; they strive to disinter the Lazaruses of mortality and to call them forth from their sepulchres, clothed in garb moths have consumed and worms devoured. They set in dead hands weapons the rust has eaten, and endeavor to re-tenant those houses whose bars the Great Thief has broken through. They would have these revivified puppets speak forgotten tongues, hate, love, jest, weep, and sin before our eyes with hates, loves, laughter, tears, and crimes which are extinct as blown-out flames. They bring the pertinacious enthusiasm of the fanatic to the task; their zeal has even a tincture of personal anxiety, suggesting the inference that we, whose practical conception of immortality is perpetuation, would fain give continuance to the past, lest, surveying its valley of dry bones, we forecast the cemetery of our own final entombment. Yet who is not conscious of the futility of such efforts? The glazed relics of museums, the painted chronicles of the canvas, are in vain called to our aid. Time is the frame in which things live and move and have their being, and Time no man can reconstruct. True, we can re-conjure the likeness and image of things past; touch, handle, and see the treasure-troves of lost ages. But there remains something no skill can resuscitate, some tint of mistlight or sunlight, some sound, or it may be some silence, which gave that indefinite characteristic we name atmosphere. Moreover, were it not so, were it possible to conjure back this evasive essence, we ourselves-the children of to-day-should still stand between ourselves and the past. Who can for a moment dream that the serene Virgin, beset by roses and angels, who looks down from the walls of a London gallery, bears for him the semblance she bore for the generations who held her image in their heart? Who can imagine that the black-letter romance tells the same story to him that it told to our forbears when the world was four hun dred years younger? True and true and three times true is that Sadducean proverb, "There is no bird in any last year's nest." Nevertheless, how many an old page owes its charm to the fact that in perusing it we seem through the rifts of literary convention to detect the actualities of life and nature, and for a brief space we who elect to call ourselves the living feel some heartbeat of fellowship with those whom we call the dead! It is, or may be, an illusion. But such illusions have their value. If we have not thereby attained our goal, we have at least widened our horizon. Illusions are extensions of reality; by their aid we sail unknown seas, albeit we never cast anchor upon the Island of Golden Broom. Let us say grace! Perhaps few phases of literature produce this illusion more completely than the works of the Italian novellieri of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Their stories belong to a sharply defined school. To-day prose fiction divides itself, broadly, into the Realist and the Idealist sections; it adopts, that is, a psychological distinction; the division represents not so much the subject-matter of the themes, as the mental attitude of the writer. Hence ensue some curiosities of classification, for it has become the tour de force of the realist to apply methods used for depicting the coarse actualities of material life in his delineation of an evanescent dream, while conversely the spiritual idealist reproduces the crudest facts of nature invested with the etherealism of pure romance. The simpler mind of elder ages created a simpler literary record. The idealist nourished his imagination upon the supernatural, chivalrous, and heroic legends of the "Morte d'Arthur" cycle and the "Amadis." Later he found full scope for his fancy in pastoral narratives as infinitely delightful and infinitely tedious as the "Arcadias" of Sir Philip Sidney and Sannazaro, or the "Diana" of George of Montemayor. On the other hand, the realist of the day found a field for the development of his tendency in the French conte and the Italian novella, stories which, if they were not true stories, were at least stories which might be true. Realism in romance or romance in realism was a somewhat rare admixture when Boccaccio composed his "Decameron;" and the narratives of the novellieri may on the whole be taken to represent the world as the world appeared to them. 2 4 Thus the interest they possess is threefold-historical, social, and literary. For the critic they are the source, direct or indirect, of innumerable subsequent works. It is a truism to say that there are few schools of English poetry that have not borrowed from this storehouse of invention. Chaucer; the Elizabethan dramatists; Dryden, in his "Cimon," 1 "Sigismonda," and "Theodore;" & Keats, in his "Isabella;" Tennyson, in his "Falcon" and "Golden Supper." And although the elder prose literature of England, singularly enough, produced no great original example belonging to this school of fiction, its influence was evinced by the number of translations or imitations of "the mery books of Italy," circulated when, according to Ascham, "a tale of Bocace was made more account of than a story of the bible." " 5 6 Moreover the novellieri themselves borrowed, collected, compiled and adapted. The roots of their novels lie far and wide, to be sought for by those who will. There is nothing new under the sun, says the preacher. Confronted by the investigations of the antiquarian, we feel that in some sense it would be as true to say that neither is there anything old. For the new is the old and the old is identical with the new. Certainly the vista opened by Dunlop in his exhaustive analysis of the origins 1 Vide Decameron, 5th Day, 1st Novel. 2 Ibid. 4th Day, 1st Novel. 3 Ibid. 5th Day, 8th Novel. This last. derived by Boccaccio from a chronicle of the thirteenth century, is the origin of "retributive spectre " stories. 4 Decameron, 4th Day, 5th Novel. 5 Ibid. 5th Day, 9th Novel. Ibid. 10th Day, 4th Novel. 7 See Jusserand's "English Novel in the Time of Elizabeth." Hist of Fiction. ... of the "Decameron" stories (the "livre simplement plaisan . . . digne qu'on s'y amuse," of old Montaigne) is of a fantastically variegated mosaic. These origins, drawn from all lands, often bare skeleton plots, are, by Boccaccio, enriched and developed, riveted together in a subtle Italian mould, retouched, refashioned and recolored, until the print of the master's hand has almost effaced the trace of any other nationality than his own. He has stamped them with the individuality of his genius, he has set the types of his race; the keen-witted Florentine, the indolent luxury-loving Venetian, the Neapolitan, with what a recent critic has described as his "gaieté un peu maladive," to play in the parts framed by Eastern sage or French Trouvère. And as it was with Boccaccio so was it with his fellows in the craft. The contes and fabliaux of northern France supplied models for the tales of criminal intrigue which occupy one-third of the "Decameron," and take scarcely less space in most of the other similar collectionsthe "Sei Giornate" of Sebastiano Erizzo excepted.10 The influence of the Indian fables ascribed to Bidpai (Pilpay) is decipherable in another section. The rudiments of those tales of barbarous cruelty and savage revenge, carried to extravagance by Giraldi Cinthio (to whose "Hecatommiti" critics trace many a scene of outrage found in the old English dramatists), they sought in the "Gesta Romanorum." The parables of the Book of the Seven Counsellors, popularized in the French "Dolopathos," the Italian "Erastus," the English "Seven Wise Masters," share rights of ancestry with the Arabian tales translated by the converted Jew, Petrus Alphonsus. From all these, and many another fountain-head, the novellieri drew their themes. As in a masked ball, incongruous figures meet upon their pages. In the "Cento 9 M. Emile Gebhart in the Rerue des Deux Mondes. 10 These stories (for the most part extremely dull) are of a strictly moral tendercy. In only ten out of the thirty-six avvenimenti do women play any prominent part. |