Italian Journeys | Page 2

man in Italy.
Of course this honest man had been a great sufferer from his own
countrymen, and I wish that all English and American tourists, who
think themselves the sole victims of publican rapacity and deceit in
Italy, could have heard our honest man's talk. The truth is, these
ingenious people prey upon their own kind with an avidity quite as
keen as that with which they devour strangers; and I am half-persuaded
that a ready-witted foreigner fares better among them than a traveller of
their own nation. Italians will always pretend, on any occasion, that you
have been plundered much worse than they but the reverse often
happens. They give little in fees; but their landlord, their porter, their
driver, and their boatman pillage them with the same impunity that they
rob an Inglese. As for this honest man in the diligence, he had suffered
such enormities at the hands of the Paduans, from which we had just
escaped, and at the hands of the Ferrarese, into which we were rushing
(at the rate of five miles scant an hour), that I was almost minded to
stop between the nests of those brigands and pass the rest of my days at
Rovigo, where the honest man lived. His talk was amusingly instructive,
and went to illustrate the strong municipal spirit which still dominates
all Italy, and which is more inimical to an effectual unity among
Italians than Pope or Kaiser has ever been. Our honest man of Rovigo

was a foreigner at Padua, twenty-five miles north, and a foreigner at
Ferrara, twenty-five miles south; and throughout Italy the native of one
city is an alien in another, and is as lawful prey as a Russian or an
American with people who consider every stranger as sent them by the
bounty of Providence to be eaten alive. Heaven knows what our honest
man had paid at his hotel in Padua, but in Ferrara the other week he had
been made to give five francs apiece for two small roast chickens,
besides a fee to the waiter; and he pathetically warned us to beware
how we dealt with Italians. Indeed, I never met a man so thoroughly
persuaded of the rascality of his nation and of his own exceptional
virtue. He took snuff with his whole person; and he volunteered, at
sight of a flock of geese, a recipe which I give the reader: Stuff a goose
with sausage; let it hang in the weather during the winter; and in the
spring cut it up and stew it, and you have an excellent and delicate
soup.
But after all our friend's talk, though constant, became dispiriting, and
we were willing when he left us. His integrity had, indeed, been so
oppressive that I was glad to be swindled in the charge for our dinner at
the Iron Crown, in Rovigo, and rode more cheerfully on to Ferrara.

III.
THE PICTURESQUE, THE IMPROBABLE, AND THE PATHETIC
IN FERRARA.
I.
It was one of the fatalities of travel, rather than any real interest in the
poet, which led me to visit the prison of Tasso on the night of our
arrival, which was mild and moonlit. The portier at the Stella d'Oro
suggested the sentimental homage to sorrows which it is sometimes
difficult to respect, and I went and paid this homage in the coal-cellar
in which was never imprisoned the poet whose works I had not read.
The famous hospital of St. Anna, where Tasso was confined for seven

years, is still an asylum for the infirm and sick, but it is no longer used
as a mad-house. It stands on one of the lone, silent Ferrarese streets, not
far from the Ducal Castle, and it is said that from the window of his cell
the unhappy poet could behold Leonora in her tower. It may be so;
certainly those who can believe in the genuineness of the cell will have
no trouble in believing that the vision of Tasso could pierce through
several brick walls and a Doric portico, and at last comprehend the lady
at her casement in the castle. We entered a modern gateway, and passed
into a hall of the elder edifice, where a slim young soldier sat reading a
romance of Dumas. This was the keeper of Tasso's prison; and knowing
me, by the instinct which teaches an Italian custodian to distinguish his
prey, for a seeker after the True and Beautiful, he relinquished his
romance, lighted a waxen taper, unbolted a heavy door with a dramatic
clang, and preceded me to the cell of Tasso. We descended a little
stairway, and found ourselves in a sufficiently spacious court, which
was still ampler in the poet's time, and was then a garden planted with
trees and flowers.