Italian Journeys | Page 4

this chilly
warning, leaves his reader to his emotions.
I am afraid that if as frank caution were uttered in regard to other
memorable places, the objects of interest in Italy would dwindle sadly
in number, and the valets de place, whether they know how to read and
write or not, would be starved to death. Even the learning of Italy is
poetic; and an Italian would rather enjoy a fiction than know a fact--in
which preference I am not ready to pronounce him unwise. But this
characteristic of his embroiders the stranger's progress throughout the
whole land with fanciful improbabilities; so that if one use his eyes half
as much as his wonder, he must see how much better it would have
been to visit, in fancy, scenes that have an interest so largely imaginary.
The utmost he can make out of the most famous place is, that it is
possibly what it is said to be, and is more probably as near that as any
thing local enterprise could furnish. He visits the very cell in which
Tasso was confined, and has the satisfaction of knowing that it was the
charcoal-cellar of the hospital in which the poet dwelt. And the genius
loci--where is that? Away in the American woods, very likely,
whispering some dreamy, credulous youth,--telling him charming
fables of its locus, and proposing to itself to abandon him as soon as he
sets foot upon its native ground. You see, though I cared little about
Tasso, and nothing about his prison, I was heavily disappointed in not
being able to believe in it, and felt somehow that I had been awakened
from a cherished dream.
II.

But I have no right to cast the unbroken shadow of my skepticism upon
the reader, and so I tell him a story about Ferrara which I actually
believe. He must know that in Ferrara the streets are marvelous long
and straight. On the corners formed by the crossing of two of the
longest and straightest of these streets stand four palaces, in only one of
which we have a present interest. This palace my guide took me to see,
after our visit to Tasso's prison, and, standing in its shadow, he related
to me the occurrence which has given it a sad celebrity. It was, in the
time of the gifted toxicologist, the residence of Lucrezia Borgia, who
used to make poisonous little suppers there, and ask the best families of
Italy to partake of them. It happened on one occasion that Lucrezia
Borgia was thrust out of a ball-room at Venice as a disreputable
character, and treated with peculiar indignity. She determined to make
the Venetians repent their unwonted accession of virtue, and she
therefore allowed the occurrence to be forgotten till the proper moment
of her revenge arrived, when she gave a supper, and invited to her
board eighteen young and handsome Venetian nobles. Upon the
preparation of this repast she bestowed all the resources of her skillful
and exquisite knowledge; and the result was, the Venetians were so
felicitously poisoned that they had just time to listen to a speech from
the charming and ingenious lady of the house before expiring. In this
address she reminded her guests of the occurrence in the Venetian
ball-room, and perhaps exulted a little tediously in her present
vengeance. She was surprised and pained when one of the guests
interrupted her, and, justifying the treatment she had received at Venice,
declared himself her natural son. The lady instantly recognized him,
and in the sudden revulsion of maternal feeling, begged him to take an
antidote. This he not only refused to do, but continued his dying
reproaches, till his mother, losing her self-command, drew her poniard
and plunged it into his heart.
The blood of her son fell upon the table-cloth, and this being hung out
of the window to dry, the wall received a stain, which neither the sun
nor rain of centuries sufficed to efface, and which was only removed
with the masonry, when it became necessary to restore the wall under
that window, a few months before the time of my visit to Ferrara.
Accordingly, the blood-stain has now disappeared; but the

conscientious artist who painted the new wall has faithfully restored the
tragic spot, by bestowing upon the stucco a bloody dash of Venetian
red.
III.
It would be pleasant and merciful, I think, if old towns, after having
served a certain number of centuries for the use and pride of men, could
be released to a gentle, unmolested decay. I, for my part, would like to
have the ducal cities of North Italy, such as Mantua, Modena, Parma,
and Ferrara, locked up quietly within their walls, and left to crumble
and totter and fall, without any harder presence