_ I
The school of Romantic poets and novelists was practically dispersed by the Austrian police after the Carbonari disturbances in 1821-22, and the literary spirit of the nation took refuge under the mild and careless despotism of the grand dukes at Florence.
In 1821 Austria was mistress of pretty near all Italy. She held in her own grasp the vast provinces of Lombardy and Venetia; she had garrisons in Naples, Piedmont, and the Romagna; and Rome was ruled according to her will. But there is always something fatally defective in the vigilance of a policeman; and in the very place which perhaps Austria thought it quite needless to guard, the restless and indomitable spirit of free thought entered. It was in Tuscany, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, reigned over by a family set on the grand-ducal throne by Austria herself, and united to her Hapsburgs by many ties of blood and affection--in Tuscany, right under both noses of the double-headed eagle, as it were, that a new literary and political life began for Italy. The Leopoldine code was famously mild toward criminals, and the Lorrainese princes did not show themselves crueler than they could help toward poets, essayists, historians, philologists, and that class of malefactors. Indeed it was the philosophy of their family to let matters alone; and the grand duke restored after the fall of Napoleon was, as has been said, an absolute monarch, but he was also an honest man. This _galantuomo_ had even a minister who successfully combated the Austrian influences, and so, though there were, of course, spies and a censorship in Florence, there was also indulgence; and if it was not altogether a pleasant place for literary men to live, it was at least tolerable, and there they gathered from their exile and their silence throughout Italy. Their point of union, and their means of affecting the popular mind, was for twelve years the critical journal entitled the _Antologia_, founded by that Vieusseux who also opened those delightful and beneficent reading-rooms whither we all rush, as soon as we reach Florence, to look at the newspapers and magazines of our native land. The Antologia had at last the misfortune to offend the Emperor of Russia, and to do that prince a pleasure the Tuscan government suppressed it: such being the international amenities when sovereigns really reigned in Europe. After the Antologia there came another review, published at Leghorn, but it was not so successful, and in fact the conditions of literature gradually grew more irksome in Tuscany, until the violent liberation came in '48, and a little later the violent reenslavement.
Giambattista Niccolini, like nearly all the poets of his time and country, was of noble birth, his father being a _cavaliere_, and holding a small government office at San Giuliano, near Pistoja. Here, in 1782, Niccolini was born to very decided penury. His father had only that little office, and his income died with him; the mother had nothing--possibly because she was descended from a poet, the famous Filicaja. From his mother, doubtless, Niccolini inherited his power, and perhaps his patriotism. But little or nothing is known of his early life. It is certain, merely, that after leaving school, he continued his studies in the University of Pisa, and that he very soon showed himself a poet. His first published effort was a sort of lamentation over an epidemic that desolated Tuscany in 1804, and this was followed by five or six pretty thoroughly forgotten tragedies in the classic or Alfierian manner. Of these, only the _Medea_ is still played, but they all made a stir in their time; and for another he was crowned by the Accademia della Crusca, which I suppose does not mean a great deal. The fact that Niccolini early caught the attention and won the praises of Ugo Foscolo is more important. There grew up, indeed, between the two poets such esteem that the elder at this time dedicated one of his books to the younger, and their friendship continued through life.
When Elisa Bonaparte was made queen of Etruria by Napoleon, Niccolini became secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts, and professor of history and mythology. It is said that in the latter capacity he instilled into his hearers his own notions of liberty and civic virtue. He was, in truth, a democrat, and he suffered with the other Jacobins, as they were called in Italy, when the Napoleonic governments were overthrown. The benefits which the French Revolution conferred upon the people of their conquered provinces when not very doubtful were still such as they were not prepared to receive; and after the withdrawal of the French support, all the Italians through whom they had ruled fell a prey to the popular hate and contumely. In those days when dynasties, restored to their thrones after the lapse of a score of years, ignored the intervening period and treated all its events as if they had no bearing upon the future, it was thought the part of the true friends of order to resume the old fashions which went out with the old _regime_. The queue, or pigtail, had always been worn, when it was safe to wear it, by the supporters of religion and good government (from this fashion came the famous political nickname _codino_, pigtail-wearer, or conservative, which used to occur so often in Italian talk and literature), and now whoever appeared on the street without this emblem of loyalty and piety was in danger of public outrage. A great many Jacobins bowed their heads to the popular will, and had pigtails sewed on them--a device which the idle boys and other unemployed friends of legitimacy busied themselves in detecting. They laid rude hands on this ornament singing,
If the queue remains in your hand,
A true republican is he;
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!
Give him a kick for liberty.
It is related that the superficial and occasional character of Niccolini's conversion was discovered by this test, and that he underwent the apposite penalty. He rebelled against the treatment he received, and was arrested and imprisoned for his contumacy. When Ferdinando III had returned and established his government on the let-alone principle to which I have alluded, the dramatist was made librarian of the Palatine Library at the Pitti Palace, but he could not endure the necessary attendance at court, where his politics were remembered against him by the courtiers, and he gave up the place. The grand duke was sorry, and said so, adding that he was perfectly contented. "Your Highness," answered the poet, "in this case it takes two to be contented."
II
The first political tragedy of Niccolini was the _Nebuchadnezzar_, which was printed in London in 1819, and figured, under that Scriptural disguise, the career of Napoleon. After that came his _Antonio Foscarini_, in which the poet, who had heretofore been a classicist, tried to reconcile that school with the romantic by violating the sacred unities in a moderate manner. In his subsequent tragedies he seems not to have regarded them at all, and to have been romantic as the most romantic Lombard of them all could have asked. Of course, his defection gave exquisite pain to the lovers of Italian good taste, as the classicists called themselves, but these were finally silenced by the success of his tragedy. The reader of it nowadays, we suspect, will think its success not very expensively achieved, and it certainly has a main fault that makes it strangely disagreeable. When the past was chiefly the affair of fable, the storehouse of tradition, it was well enough for the poet to take historical events and figures, and fashion them in any way that served his purpose; but this will not do in our modern daylight, where a freedom with the truth is an offense against common knowledge, and does not charm the fancy, but painfully bewilders it at the best, and at the second best is impudent and ludicrous. In his tragedy, Niccolini takes two very familiar incidents of Venetian history: that of the Foscari, which Byron has used; and that of Antonio Foscarini, who was unjustly hanged more than a hundred years later for privity to a conspiracy against the state, whereas the attributive crime of Jacopo Foscari was the assassination of a fellow-patrician. The poet is then forced to make the Doge Foscari do duty throughout as the father of Foscarini, the only doge of whose name served out his term very peaceably, and died the author of an extremely dull official history of Venetian literature. Foscarini, who, up to the time of his hanging, was an honored servant of the state, and had been ambassador to France, is obliged, on his part, to undergo all of Jacopo Foscari's troubles; and I have not been able to see why the poet should have vexed himself to make all this confusion, and why the story of the Foscari was not sufficient for his purpose. In the tragedy there is much denunciation of the oligarchic oppression of the Ten in Venice, and it may be regarded as the first of Niccolini's dramatic appeals to the love of freedom and the manhood of the Italians.
It is much easier to understand the success of Niccolini's subsequent drama, _Lodovico il Moro_, which is in many respects a touching and effective tragedy, and the historical truth is better observed in it; though, as none of our race can ever love his country with that passionate and personal devotion which the Italians feel, we shall never relish the high patriotic flavor of the piece. The story is simply that of Giovan-Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, whose uncle, Lodovico, on pretense of relieving him of the cares of government, has usurped the sovereignty, and keeps Galeazzo and his wife in virtual imprisonment, the young duke wasting away with a slow but fatal malady. To further his ambitious schemes in Lombardy, Lodovico has called in Charles VIII. of France, who claims the crown of Naples against the Aragonese family, and pauses, on his way to Naples, at Milan. Isabella, wife of Galeazzo, appeals to Charles to liberate them, but reaches his presence in such an irregular way that she is suspected of treason both to her husband and to Charles. Yet the king is convinced of her innocence, and he places the sick duke under the protection of a French garrison, and continues his march on Naples. Lodovico has appeared to consent, but by seeming to favor the popular leaders has procured the citizens to insist upon his remaining in power; he has also secretly received the investiture from the Emperor of Germany, to be published upon the death of Galeazzo. He now, therefore, defies the French; Galeazzo, tormented by alternate hope and despair, dies suddenly; and Lodovico, throwing off the mask of a popular ruler, puts the republican leaders to death, and reigns the feudatory of the Emperor. The interest of the play is almost entirely political, and patriotism is the chief passion involved. The main personal attraction of the tragedy is in the love of Galeazzo and his wife, and in the character of the latter the dreamy languor of a hopeless invalid is delicately painted.
The _Giovanni da Procida_ was a further advance in political literature. In this tragedy, abandoning the indirectly liberal teachings of the Foscarini, Niccolini set himself to the purpose of awakening a Tuscan hatred of foreign rule. The subject is the expulsion of the French from Sicily; and when the French ambassador complained to the Austrian that such a play should be tolerated by the Tuscan government, the Austrian answered, "The address is to the French, but the letter is for the Germans." The Giovanni da Procida was a further development of Niccolini's political purposes in literature, and at the time of its first representation it raised the Florentines to a frenzy of theater-going patriotism. The tragedy ends with the terrible Sicilian Vespers, but its main affair is with preceding events, largely imagined by the poet, and the persons are in great part fictitious; yet they all bear a certain relation to fact, and the historical persons are more or less historically painted. Giovanni da Procida, a great Sicilian nobleman, believed dead by the French, comes home to Palermo, after long exile, to stir up the Sicilians to rebellion, and finds that his daughter is married to the son of one of the French rulers, though neither this daughter Imelda nor her husband Tancredi knew the origin of the latter at the time of their marriage. Precida, in his all-absorbing hate of the oppressors, cannot forgive them; yet he seizes Tancredi, and imprisons him in his castle, in order to save his life from the impending massacre of the French; and in a scene with Imelda, he tells her that, while she was a babe, the father of Tancredi had abducted her mother and carried her to France. Years after, she returned heart-broken to die in her husband's arms, a secret which she tries to reveal perishing with her. While Imelda remains horror-struck by this history, Procida receives an intercepted letter from Eriberto, Tancredi's father, in which he tells the young man that he and Imelda are children of the same mother. Procida in pity of his daughter, the victim of this awful fatality, prepares to send her away to a convent in Pisa; but a French law forbids any ship to sail at that time, and Imelda is brought back and confronted in a public place with Tancredi, who has been rescued by the French.
He claims her as his wife, but she, filled with the horror of what she knows, declares that he is not her husband. It is the moment of the Vespers, and Tancredi falls among the first slain by the Sicilians. He implores Imelda for a last kiss, but wildly answering that they are brother and sister, she swoons away, while Tancredi dies in this climax of self-loathing and despair. The management of a plot so terrible is very simple. The feelings of the characters in the hideous maze which involves them are given only such expression as should come from those utterly broken by their calamity. Imelda swoons when she hears the letter of Eriberto declaring the fatal tie of blood that binds her to her husband, and forever separates her from him. When she is restored, she finds her father weeping over her, and says:
Ah, thou dost look on me
And weep! At least this comfort I can feel
In the horror of my state: thou canst not hate
A woman so unhappy....
... Oh, from all
Be hid the atrocity! to some holy shelter
Let me be taken far from hence. I feel
Naught can be more than my calamity,
Saving God's pity. I have no father now,
Nor child, nor husband (heavens, what do I say?
He is my brother now! and well I know
I must not ask to see him more). I, living, lose
Everything death robs other women of.
By far the greater feeling and passion are shown in the passages describing the wrongs which the Sicilians have suffered from the French, and expressing the aspiration and hate of Procida and his fellow-patriots. Niccolini does not often use pathos, and he is on that account perhaps the more effective in the use of it. However this may be, I find it very touching when, after coming back from his long exile, Procida says to Imelda, who is trembling for the secret of her marriage amidst her joy in his return:
Daughter, art thou still
So sad? I have not heard yet from thy lips
A word of the old love....
... Ah, thou knowest not
What sweetness hath the natal spot, how many
The longings exile hath; how heavy't is
To arrive at doors of homes where no one waits thee!
Imelda, thou may'st abandon thine own land,
But not forget her; I, a pilgrim, saw
Many a city; but none among them had
A memory that spoke unto my heart;
And fairer still than any other seemed
The country whither still my spirit turned.
In a vein as fierce and passionate as this is tender, Procida relates how, returning to Sicily when he was believed dead by the French, he passed in secret over the island and inflamed Italian hatred of the foreigners:
I sought the pathless woods,
And drew the cowards thence and made them blush,
And then made fury follow on their shame.
I hailed the peasant in his fertile fields,
Where, 'neath the burden of the cruel tribute,
He dropped from famine 'midst the harvest sheaves,
With his starved brood: "Open thou with thy scythe
The breasts of Frenchmen; let the earth no more
Be fertile to our tyrants." I found my way
In palaces, in hovels; tranquil, I
Both great and lowly did make drunk with rage.
I knew the art to call forth cruel tears
In every eye, to wake in every heart
A love of slaughter, a ferocious need
Of blood. And in a thousand strong right hands
Glitter the arms I gave.
In the last act occurs one of those lyrical passages in which Niccolini excels, and two lines from this chorus are among the most famous in modern Italian poetry:
Perche tanto sorriso del cielo
Sulla terra del vile dolor?
The scene is in a public place in Palermo, and the time is the moment before the massacre of the French begins. A chorus of Sicilian poets remind the people of their sorrows and degradation, and sing:
The wind vexes the forest no longer,
In the sunshine the leaflets expand:
With barrenness cursed be the land
That is bathed with the sweat of the slave!
On the fields now the harvests are waving,
On the fields that our blood has made red;
Harvests grown for our enemy's bread
From the bones of our children they wave!
With a veil of black clouds would the tempest
Might the face of this Italy cover;
Why should Heaven smile so glorious over
The land of our infamous woe?
All nature is suddenly wakened,
Here in slumbers unending man sleeps;
Dust trod evermore by the steps
Of ever-strange lords he lies low!
[Illustration: Giambattista Niccolini.]
"With this tragedy," says an Italian biographer of Niccolini, "the poet potently touched all chords of the human heart, from the most impassioned love to the most implacable hate.... The enthusiasm rose to the greatest height, and for as many nights of the severe winter of 1830 as the tragedy was given, the theater was always thronged by the overflowing audience; the doors of the Cocomero were opened to the impatient people many hours before the spectacle began. Spectators thought themselves fortunate to secure a seat next the roof of the theater; even in the prompter's hole [Note: On the Italian stage the prompter rises from a hole in the floor behind the foot-lights, and is hidden from the audience merely by a canvas shade.] places were sought to witness the admired work.... And whilst they wept over the ill-starred love of Imelda, and all hearts palpitated in the touching situation of the drama,--where the public and the personal interests so wonderfully blended, and the vengeance of a people mingled with that of a man outraged in the most sacred affections of the heart,--Procida rose terrible as the billows of his sea, imprecating before all the wrongs of their oppressed country, in whatever servitude inflicted, by whatever aliens, among all those that had trampled, derided, and martyred her, and raising the cry of resistance which stirred the heart of all Italy. At the picture of the abject sufferings of their common country, the whole audience rose and repeated with tears of rage:
"Why should heaven smile so glorious over
The land of our infamous woe?"
By the year 1837 had begun the singular illusion of the Italians, that their freedom and unity were to be accomplished through a liberal and patriotic Pope. Niccolini, however, never was cheated by it, though he was very much disgusted, and he retired, not only from the political agitation, but almost from the world. He was seldom seen upon the street, but to those who had access to him he did not fail to express all the contempt and distrust he felt. "A liberal Pope! a liberal Pope!" he said, with a scornful enjoyment of that contradiction in terms. He was thoroughly Florentine and Tuscan in his anti-papal spirit, and he was faithful in it to the tradition of Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Alfieri, who all doubted and combated the papal influence as necessarily fatal to Italian hopes. In 1843 he published his great and principal tragedy, _Arnaldo da Brescia_, which was a response to the ideas of the papal school of patriots. In due time Pius IX. justified Niccolini, and all others that distrusted him, by turning his back upon the revolution, which belief in him, more than anything else, had excited.
The tragedies which succeeded the Arnaldo were the _Filippo Strozzi_, published in 1847; the _Beatrice_ _Cenci_, a version from the English of Shelley, and the _Mario e i Cimbri_.
A part of the Arnaldo da Brescia was performed in Florence in 1858, not long before the war which has finally established Italian freedom. The name of the Cocomero theater had been changed to the Teatro Niccolini, and, in spite of the governmental anxiety and opposition, the occasion was made a popular demonstration in favor of Niccolini's ideas as well as himself. His biographer says: "The audience now maintained a religious silence; now, moved by irresistible force, broke out into uproarious applause as the eloquent protests of the friar and the insolent responses of the Pope awakened their interest; for Italy then, like the unhappy martyr, had risen to proclaim the decline of that monstrous power which, in the name of a religion profaned by it, sanctifies its own illegitimate and feudal origin, its abuses, its pride, its vices, its crimes. It was a beautiful and affecting spectacle to see the illustrious poet receiving the warm congratulations of his fellow-citizens, who enthusiastically recognized in him the utterer of so many lofty truths and the prophet of Italy. That night Niccolini was accompanied to his house by the applauding multitude." And if all this was a good deal like the honors the Florentines were accustomed to pay to a very pretty _ballerina_ or a successful _prima donna_, there is no doubt that a poet is much worthier the popular frenzy; and it is a pity that the forms of popular frenzy have to be so cheapened by frequent use. The two remaining years of Niccolini's life were spent in great retirement, and in a satisfaction with the fortunes of Italy which was only marred by the fact that the French still remained in Rome, and that the temporal power yet stood. He died in 1861.
III
The work of Niccolini in which he has poured out all the lifelong hatred and distrust he had felt for the temporal power of the popes is the Arnaldo da Brescia. This we shall best understand through a sketch of the life of Arnaldo, who is really one of the most heroic figures of the past, deserving to rank far above Savonarola, and with the leaders of the Reformation, though he preceded these nearly four hundred years. He was born in Brescia of Lombardy, about the year 1105, and was partly educated in France, in the school of the famous Abelard. He early embraced the ecclesiastical life, and, when he returned to his own country, entered a convent, but not to waste his time in idleness and the corruptions of his order. In fact, he began at once to preach against these, and against the usurpation of temporal power by all the great and little dignitaries of the Church. He thus identified himself with the democratic side in politics, which was then locally arrayed against the bishop aspiring to rule Brescia. Arnaldo denounced the political power of the Pope, as well as that of the prelates; and the bishop, making this known to the pontiff at Rome, had sufficient influence to procure a sentence against Arnaldo as a schismatic, and an order enjoining silence upon him. He was also banished from Italy; whereupon, retiring to France, he got himself into further trouble by aiding Abelard in the defense of his teachings, which had been attainted of heresy. Both Abelard and Arnaldo were at this time bitterly persecuted by St. Bernard, and Arnaldo took refuge in Switzerland, whence, after several years, he passed to Rome, and there began to assume an active part in the popular movements against the papal rule. He was an ardent republican, and was a useful and efficient partisan, teaching openly that, whilst the Pope was to be respected in all spiritual things, he was not to be recognized at all as a temporal prince. When the English monk, Nicholas Breakspear, became Pope Adrian IV., he excommunicated and banished Arnaldo; but Arnaldo, protected by the senate and certain powerful nobles, remained at Rome in spite of the Pope's decree, and disputed the lawfulness of the excommunication. Finally, the whole city was laid under interdict until Arnaldo should be driven out. Holy Week was drawing near; the people were eager to have their churches thrown open and to witness the usual shows and splendors, and they consented to the exile of their leader. The followers of a cardinal arrested him, but he was rescued by his friends, certain counts of the Campagna, who held him for a saint, and who now lodged him safely in one of their castles. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, coming to Rome to assume the imperial crown, was met by embassies from both parties in the city. He warmly favored that of the Pope, and not only received that of the people very coldly, but arrested one of the counts who had rescued Arnaldo, and forced him to name the castle in which the monk lay concealed. Arnaldo was then given into the hands of the cardinals, and these delivered him to the prefect of Rome, who caused him to be hanged, his body to be burned upon a spit, and his ashes to be scattered in the Tiber, that the people might not venerate his relics as those of a saint. "This happened," says the priest Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, of Brescia, whose Life, published in 1790, I have made use of--"this happened in the year 1155 before the 18th of June, previous to the coronation of Frederick, Arnaldo being, according to my thinking, fifty years of age. His eloquence," continues Guadagnini, "was celebrated by his enemies themselves; the exemplarity of his life was superior to their malignity, constraining them all to silence, although they were in such great number, and it received a splendid eulogy from St. Bernard, the luminary of that century, who, being strongly impressed against him, condemned him first as a schismatic, and then for the affair of the Council of Sens (the defense of Abelard), persecuted him as a heretic, and then had finally nothing to say against him. His courage and his zeal for the discipline of the Church have been sufficiently attested by the toils, the persecutions, and the death which he underwent for that cause."
IV
The scene of the first act of Niccolini's tragedy is near the Capitoline Hill, in Rome, where two rival leaders, Frangipani and Giordano Pierleone, are disputing in the midst of their adherents. The former is a supporter of the papal usurpations; the latter is a republican chief, who has been excommunicated for his politics, and is also under sentence of banishment; but who, like Arnaldo, remains in Rome in spite of Church and State. Giordano withdraws to the Campidoglio with his adherents, and there Arnaldo suddenly appears among them. When the people ask what cure there is for their troubles, Arnaldo answers, in denunciation of the papacy:
Liberty and God.
A voice from the orient,
A voice from the Occident,
A voice from thy deserts,
A voice of echoes from the open graves,
Accuses thee, thou shameless harlot! Drunk
Art thou with blood of saints, and thou hast lain
With all the kings of earth. Ah, you behold her!
She is clothed on with purple; gold and pearls
And gems are heaped upon her; and her vestments
Once white, the pleasure of her former spouse,
That now's in heaven, she has dragged in dust.
Lo, is she full of names and blasphemies,
And on her brow is written _Mystery!_
Ah, nevermore you hear her voice console
The afflicted; all she threatens, and creates
With her perennial curse in trembling souls
Ineffable pangs; the unhappy--as we here
Are all of us--fly in their common sorrows
To embrace each other; she, the cruel one,
Sunders them in the name of Jesus; fathers
She kindles against sons, and wives she parts
From husbands, and she makes a war between
Harmonious brothers; of the Evangel she
Is cruel interpreter, and teaches hate
Out of the book of love. The years are come
Whereof the rapt Evangelist of Patmos
Did prophesy; and, to deceive the people,
Satan has broken the chains he bore of old;
And she, the cruel, on the infinite waters
Of tears that are poured out for her, sits throned.
The enemy of man two goblets places
Unto her shameless lips; and one is blood,
And gold is in the other; greedy and fierce
She drinks so from them both, the world knows not
If she of blood or gold have greater thirst....
Lord, those that fled before thy scourge of old
No longer stand to barter offerings
About thy temple's borders, but within
Man's self is sold, and thine own blood is trafficked,
Thou son of God!
The people ask Arnaldo what he counsels them to do, and he advises them to restore the senate and the tribunes, appealing to the glorious memories of the place where they stand, the Capitoline Hill:
Where the earth calls at every step, "Oh, pause,
Thou treadest on a hero!"
They desire to make him a tribune, but he refuses, promising, however, that he will not withhold his counsel. Whilst he speaks, some cardinals, with nobles of the papal party, appear, and announce the election of the new Pope, Adrian. "What is his name?" the people demand; and a cardinal answers, "Breakspear, a Briton." Giordano exclaims:
Impious race! you've chosen Rome for shepherd
A cruel barbarian, and even his name
Tortures our ears.
_Arnaldo._ I never care to ask
Where popes are born; and from long suffering,
You, Romans, before heaven, should have learnt
That priests can have no country....
I know this man; his father was a thrall,
And he is fit to be a slave. He made
Friends with the Norman that enslaves his country;
A wandering beggar to Avignon's cloisters
He came in boyhood and was known to do
All abject services; there those false monks
He with astute humility cajoled;
He learned their arts, and 'mid intrigues and hates
He rose at last out of his native filth
A tyrant of the vile.
The cardinals, confounded by Arnaldo's presence and invectives, withdraw, but leave one of their party to work on the fears of the Romans, and make them return to their allegiance by pictures of the desolating war which Barbarossa, now approaching Rome to support Adrian, has waged upon the rebellious Lombards at Rosate and elsewhere. Arnaldo replies:--
Romans,
I will tell all the things that he has hid;
I know not how to cheat you. Yes, Rosate
A ruin is, from which the smoke ascends.
The bishop, lord of Monferrato, guided
The German arms against Chieri and Asti,
Now turned to dust; that shepherd pitiless
Did thus avenge his own offenses on
His flying flocks; himself with torches armed
The German hand; houses and churches saw
Destroyed, and gave his blessing on the flames.
This is the pardon that you may expect
From mitered tyrants. A heap of ashes now
Crowneth the hill where once Tortona stood;
And drunken with her wine and with her blood,
Fallen there amidst their spoil upon the dead,
Slept the wild beasts of Germany: like ghosts
Dim wandering through the darkness of the night,
Those that were left by famine and the sword,
Hidden within the heart of thy dim caverns,
Desolate city! rose and turned their steps
Noiselessly toward compassionate Milan.
There they have borne their swords and hopes: I see
A thousand heroes born from the example
Tortona gave. O city, if I could,
O sacred city! upon the ruins fall
Reverently, and take them in my loving arms,
The relics of thy brave I'd gather up
In precious urns, and from the altars here
In days of battle offer to be kissed!
Oh, praise be to the Lord! Men die no more
For chains and errors; martyrs now at last
Hast thou, O holy Freedom; and fain were I
Ashes for thee!--But I see you grow pale,
Ye Romans! Down, go down; this holy height
Is not for cowards. In the valley there
Your tyrant waits you; go and fall before him
And cover his haughty foot with tears and kisses.
He'll tread you in the dust, and then absolve you.
_The People._ The arms we have are strange and few,
Our walls Are fallen and ruinous.
_Arnaldo._ Their hearts are walls
Unto the brave....
And they shall rise again,
The walls that blood of freemen has baptized,
But among slaves their ruins are eternal.
_People._ You outrage us, sir!
_Arnaldo._ Wherefore do ye tremble
Before the trumpet sounds? O thou that wast
Once the world's lord and first in Italy,
Wilt thou be now the last?
_People._ No more! Cease, or thou diest!
Arnaldo, having roused the pride of the Romans, now tells them that two thousand Swiss have followed him from his exile; and the act closes with some lyrical passages leading to the fraternization of the people with these.
The second act of this curious tragedy, where there may be said to be scarcely any personal interest, but where we are aware of such an impassioned treatment of public interests as perhaps never was before, opens with a scene between the Pope Adrian and the Cardinal Guido. The character of both is finely studied by the poet; and Guido, the type of ecclesiastical submission, has not more faith in the sacredness and righteousness of Adrian, than Adrian, the type of ecclesiastical ambition, has in himself. The Pope tells Guido that he stands doubting between the cities of Lombardy leagued against Frederick, and Frederick, who is coming to Rome, not so much to befriend the papacy as to place himself in a better attitude to crush the Lombards. The German dreams of the restoration of Charlemagne's empire; he believes the Church corrupt; and he and Arnaldo would be friends, if it were not for Arnaldo's vain hope of reestablishing the republican liberties of Rome. The Pope utters his ardent desire to bring Arnaldo back to his allegiance; and when Guido reminds him that Arnaldo has been condemned by a council of the Church, and that it is scarcely in his power to restore him, Adrian turns upon him:
What sayest thou?
I can do all. Dare the audacious members
Rebel against the head? Within these hands
Lie not the keys that once were given to Peter?
The heavens repeat as 't were the word of God,
My word that here has power to loose and bind.
Arnaldo did not dare so much. The kingdom
Of earth alone he did deny me. Thou
Art more outside the Church than he.
_Guido_ (_kneeling at Adrian's feet_). O God,
I erred; forgive! I rise not from thy feet
Till thou absolve me. My zeal blinded me.
I'm clay before thee; shape me as thou wilt,
A vessel apt to glory or to shame.
Guido then withdraws at the Pope's bidding, in order to send a messenger to Arnaldo, and Adrian utters this fine soliloquy:
At every step by which I've hither climbed
I've found a sorrow; but upon the summit
All sorrows are; and thorns more thickly spring
Around my chair than ever round a throne.
What weary toil to keep up from the dust
This mantle that's weighed down the strongest limbs!
These splendid gems that blaze in my tiara,
They are a fire that burns the aching brow,
I lift with many tears, O Lord, to thee!
Yet I must fear not; He that did know how
To bear the cross, so heavy with the sins
Of all the world, will succor the weak servant
That represents his power here on earth.
Of mine own isle that make the light o' the sun
Obscure as one day was my lot, amidst
The furious tumults of this guilty Rome,
Here, under the superb effulgency
Of burning skies, I think of you and weep!
The Pope's messenger finds Arnaldo in the castle of Giordano, where these two are talking of the present fortunes and future chances of Rome. The patrician forebodes evil from the approach of the emperor, but Arnaldo encourages him, and, when the Pope's messenger appears, he is eager to go to Adrian, believing that good to their cause will come of it. Giordano in vain warns him against treachery, bidding him remember that Adrian will hold any falsehood sacred that is used with a heretic. It is observable throughout that Niccolini is always careful to make his rebellious priest a good Catholic; and now Arnaldo rebukes Giordano for some doubts of the spiritual authority of the Pope. When Giordano says:
These modern pharisees, upon the cross,
Where Christ hung dying once, have nailed mankind,
Arnaldo answers:
He will know how to save that rose and conquered;
And Giordano replies:
Yes, Christ arose; but Freedom cannot break
The stone that shuts her ancient sepulcher,
For on it stands the altar.
Adrian, when Arnaldo appears before him, bids him fall down and kiss his feet, and speak to him as to God; he will hear Arnaldo only as a penitent. Arnaldo answers:
The feet
Of his disciples did that meek One kiss
Whom here thou representest. But I hear
Now from thy lips the voice of fiercest pride.
Repent, O Peter, that deniest him,
And near the temple art, but far from God!
* * * * *
The name of the king
Is never heard in Rome. And if thou are
The vicar of Christ on earth, well should'st thou know
That of thorns only was the crown he wore.
_Adrian._ He gave to me the empire of the earth
When this great mantly I put on, and took
The Church's high seat I was chosen to;
The word of God did erst create the world,
And now mine guides it. Would'st thou that the soul
Should serve the body? Thou dost dream of freedom,
And makest war on him who sole on earth
Can shield man from his tyrants. O Arnaldo,
Be Wise; believe me, all thy words are vain,
Vain sound that perish or disperse themselves
Amidst the wilderness of Rome. I only
Can speak the words that the whole world repeats.
_Arnaldo_. Thy words were never Freedom's; placed between
The people and their tyrants, still the Church
With the weak cruel, with the mighty vile,
Has been, and crushed in pitiless embraces
That emperors and pontiffs have exchanged.
Man has been ever.
* * * * *
Why seek'st thou empire here, and great on earth
Art mean in heaven? Ah! vainly in thy prayer
Thou criest, "Let the heart be lifted up!"
'T is ever bowed to earth.
* * * * *
Now, then, if thou wilt,
Put forth the power that thou dost vaunt; repress
The crimes of bishops, make the Church ashamed
To be a step-mother to the poor and lowly.
In all the Lombard cities every priest
Has grown a despot, in shrewd perfidy
Now siding with the Church, now with the Empire.
They have dainty food, magnificent apparel,
Lascivious joys, and on their altars cold
Gathers the dust, where lies the miter dropt,
Forgotten, from the haughty brow that wears
The helmet, and no longer bows itself
Before God's face in th' empty sanctuaries;
But upon the fields of slaughter, smoking still,
Bends o'er the fallen foe, and aims the blows
O' th' sacrilegious sword, with cruel triumph
Insulting o'er the prayers of dying men.
There the priest rides o'er breasts of fallen foes,
And stains with blood his courser's iron heel.
When comes a brief, false peace, and wearily
Amidst the havoc doth the priest sit down,
His pleasures are a crime, and after rapine
Luxury follows. Like a thief he climbs
Into the fold, and that desired by day
He dares amid the dark, and violence
Is the priest's marriage. Vainly did Rome hope
That they had thrown aside the burden vile
Of the desires that weigh down other men.
Theirs is the ungrateful lust of the wild beast,
That doth forget the mother nor knows the child.
... On the altar of Christ,
Who is the prince of pardon and of peace,
Vows of revenge are registered, and torches
That are thrown into hearts of leaguered cities
Are lit from tapers burning before God.
Become thou king of sacrifice; ascend
The holy hill of God; on these perverse
Launch thou thy thunderbolts; and feared again
And great thou wilt be. Tell me, Adrian,
Must thou not bear a burden that were heavy
Even for angels? Wherefore wilt thou join
Death unto life, and make the word of God,
That says, "My kingdom is not of this world,"
A lie? Oh, follow Christ's example here
In Rome; it pleased both God and her
To abase the proud and to uplift the weak.
I'll kiss the foot that treads on kings!
_Adrian._ Arnaldo,
I parley not, I rule; and I, become
On earth as God in heaven, am judge of all,
And none of me; I watch, and I dispense
Terrors and hopes, rewards and punishments,
To peoples and to kings; fountain and source
Of life am I, who make the Church of God
One and all-powerful. Many thrones and peoples
She has seen tost upon the madding waves
Of time, and broken on the immovable rock
Whereon she sits; and since one errless spirit
Rules in her evermore, she doth not rave
For changeful doctrine, but she keeps eternal
The grandeur of her will and purposes.
... Arnaldo,
Thou movest me to pity. In vain thou seek'st
To warm thy heart over these ruins, groping
Among the sepulchers of Rome. Thou'lt find
No bones to which thou canst say, "Rise!" Ah, here
Remaineth not one hero's dust. Thou thinkest
That with old names old virtues shall return?
And thou desirest tribunes, senators,
Equestrian orders, Rome! A greater glory
Thy sovereign pontiff is who doth not guard
The rights uncertain of a crazy rabble;
But tribune of the world he sits in Rome,
And "I forbid," to kings and peoples cries.
I tell thee a greater than the impious power
That thou in vain endeavorest to renew
Here built the dying fisherman of Judea.
Out of his blood he made a fatherland
For all the nations, and this place, that once
A city was, became a world; the borders
That did divide the nations, by Christ's law
Are ta'en away, and this the kingdom is
For which he asked his Father in his prayer.
The Church has sons in every race; I rule,
An unseen king, and Rome is everywhere!
_Arnaldo_. Thou errest, Adrian. Rome's thunderbolts
Wake little terror now, and reason shakes
The bonds that thou fain would'st were everlasting.
... Christ calls to her
As of old to the sick man, "Rise and walk."
She 'll tread on you if you go not before.
The world has other truth besides the altar's.
It will not have a temple that hides heaven.
Thou wast a shepherd: be a father. The race
Of man is weary of being called a flock.
Adrian's final reply is, that if Arnaldo will renounce his false doctrine and leave Rome, the Pope will, through him, give the Lombard cities a liberty that shall not offend the Church. Arnaldo refuses, and quits Adrian's presence. It is quite needless to note the bold character of the thought here, or the nobility of the poetry, which Niccolini puts as well into the mouth of the Pope whom he hates as the monk whom he loves.
Following this scene is one of greater dramatic force, in which the Cardinal Guido, sent to the Campidoglio by the Pope to disperse the popular assembly, is stoned by the people and killed. He dies full of faith in the Church and the righteousness of his cause, and his body, taken up by the priests, is carried into the square before St. Peter's. A throng, including many women, has followed; and now Niccolini introduces a phase of the great Italian struggle which was perhaps the most perplexing of all. The subjection of the women to the priests is what has always greatly contributed to defeat Italian efforts for reform; it now helps to unnerve the Roman multitude; and the poet finally makes it the weakness through which Arnaldo is dealt his death. With a few strokes in the scene that follows the death of Guido, he indicates the remorse and dismay of the people when the Pope repels them from the church door and proclaims the interdict; and then follow some splendid lyrical passages, in which the Pope commands the pictures and images to be veiled and the relics to be concealed, and curses the enemies of the Church. I shall but poorly render this curse by a rhymeless translation, and yet I am tempted to give it:
_The Pope._ To-day let the perfidious
Learn at thy name to tremble,
Nor triumph o'er the ruinous
Place of thy vanished altars.
Oh, brief be their days and uncertain;
In the desert their wandering footsteps,
Every tremulous leaflet affright them!
_The Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!
_Pope._ May their widows sit down 'mid the ashes
On the hearths of their desolate houses,
With their little ones wailing around them.
_Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!
_Pope._ May he who was born to the fury
Of heaven, afar from his country
Be lost in his ultimate anguish.
_Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!
_Pope._ May he fly to the house of the alien oppressor
That is filled with the spoil of his brothers, with women
Destroyed by the pitiless hands that defiled them;
There in accents unknown and derided, abase him
At portals ne'er opened in mercy, imploring
A morsel of bread.
_Cardinals._ Be that morsel denied him!
_Pope._ I hear the wicked cry: I from the Lord
Will fly away with swift and tireless feet;
His anger follows me upon the sea;
I'll seek the desert; who will give me wings?
In cloudy horror, who shall lead my steps?
The eye of God maketh the night as day.
O brothers, fulfill then
The terrible duty;
Throw down from the altars
The dim-burning tapers;
And be all joy, and be the love of God
In thankless hearts that know not Peter, quenched,
As is the little flame that falls and dies,
Here in these tapers trampled under foot.
In the first scene of the third act, which is a desolate place in the Campagna, near the sea, Arnaldo appears. He has been expelled from Rome by the people, eager for the opening of their churches, and he soliloquizes upon his fate in language that subtly hints all his passing moods, and paints the struggle of his soul. It appears to me that it is a wise thing to make him almost regret the cloister in the midst of his hatred of it, and then shrink from that regret with horror; and there is also a fine sense of night and loneliness in the scene:
Like this sand
Is life itself, and evermore each path
Is traced in suffering, and one footprint still
Obliterates another; and we are all
Vain shadows here that seem a little while,
And suffer, and pass. Let me not fight in vain,
O Son of God, with thine immortal word,
Yon tyrant of eternity and time,
Who doth usurp thy place on earth, whose feet
Are in the depths, whose head is in the clouds,
Who thunders all abroad, _The world is mine!_
Laws, virtues, liberty I have attempted
To give thee, Rome. Ah! only where death is
Abides thy glory. Here the laurel only
Flourishes on the ruins and the tombs.
I will repose upon this fallen column
My weary limbs. Ah, lower than this ye lie,
You Latin souls, and to your ancient height
Who shall uplift you? I am all weighed down
By the great trouble of the lofty hopes
Of Italy still deluded, and I find
Within my soul a drearer desert far
Than this, where the air already darkens round,
And the soft notes of distant convent bells
Announce the coming night.... I cannot hear them
Without a trembling wish that in my heart
Wakens a memory that becomes remorse....
Ah, Reason, soon thou languishest in us,
Accustomed to such outrage all our lives.
Thou know'st the cloister; thou a youth didst enter
That sepulcher of the living where is war,--
Remember it and shudder! The damp wind
Stirs this gray hair. I'm near the sea.
Thy silence is no more; sweet on the ear
Cometh the far-off murmur of the floods
In the vast desert; now no more the darkness
Imprisons wholly; now less gloomily
Lowers the sky that lately threatened storm.
Less thick the air is, and the trembling light
O' the stars among the breaking clouds appears.
Praise to the Lord! The eternal harmony
Of all his work I feel. Though these vague beams
Reveal to me here only fens and tombs,
My soul is not so heavily weighed down
By burdens that oppressed it....
I rise to grander purposes: man's tents
Are here below, his city is in heaven.
I doubt no more; the terror of the cloister
No longer assails me.
Presently Giordano comes to join Arnaldo in this desolate place, and, in the sad colloquy which follows, tells him of the events of Rome, and the hopelessness of their cause, unless they have the aid and countenance of the Emperor. He implores Arnaldo to accompany the embassy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist, who has hitherto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been converted.
As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them. Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it, drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there. "What have you known here!" he asks, and his soldiers reply in chorus:
The pride of old names, the caprices of fate,
In vast desert spaces the silence of death,
Or in mist-hidden lowlands, his wandering fires;
No sweet song of birds, no heart-cheering sound,
But eternal memorials of ancient despair,
And ruins and tombs that waken dismay
At the moan of the pines that are stirred by the wind.
Full of dark and mysterious peril the woods;
No life-giving fountains, but only bare sands,
Or some deep-bedded river that silently moves,
With a wave that is livid and stagnant, between
Its margins ungladdened by grass or by flowers,
And in sterile sands vanishes wholly away.
Out of huts that by turns have been shambles and tombs,
All pallid and naked, and burned by their fevers,
The peasant folk suddenly stare as you pass,
With visages ghastly, and eyes full of hate,
Aroused by the accent that's strange to their ears.
Oh, heavily hang the clouds here on the head!
Wan and sick is the earth, and the sun is a tyrant.
Then one of the Swiss soldiers speaks alone:
The unconquerable love of our own land
Draws us away till we behold again
The eternal walls the Almighty builded there.
Upon the arid ways of faithless lands
I am tormented by a tender dream
Of that sweet rill which runs before my cot.
Oh, let me rest beside the smiling lake,
And hear the music of familiar words,
And on its lonely margin, wild and fair,
Lie down and think of my beloved ones.
There is no page of this tragedy which does not present some terrible or touching picture, which is not full of brave and robust thought, which has not also great dramatic power. But I am obliged to curtail the proof of this, and I feel that, after all, I shall not give a complete idea of the tragedy's grandeur, its subtlety, its vast scope and meaning.
There is a striking dialogue between a Roman partisan of Arnaldo, who, with his fancy oppressed by the heresy of his cause, is wavering in his allegiance, and a Brescian, whom the outrages of the priests have forever emancipated from faith in their power to bless or ban in the world to come. Then ensues a vivid scene, in which a fanatical and insolent monk of Arnaldo's order, leading a number of soldiers, arrests him by command of Adrian. Ostasio's soldiers approaching to rescue him, the monk orders him to be slain, but he is saved, and the act closes with the triumphal chorus of his friends. Here is fine occasion for the play of different passions, and the occasion is not lost.
With the fourth act is introduced the new interest of the German oppression; and as we have had hitherto almost wholly a study of the effect of the papal tyranny upon Italy, we are now confronted with the shame and woe which the empire has wrought her. Exiles from the different Lombard cities destroyed by Barbarossa meet on their way to seek redress from the Pope, and they pour out their sorrows in pathetic and passionate lyrics. To read these passages gives one a favorable notion of the liberality or the stupidity of the government which permitted the publication of the tragedy. The events alluded to were many centuries past, the empire had long ceased to be; but the Italian hatred of the Germans was one and indivisible for every moment of all times, and we may be sure that to each of Niccolini's readers these mediaeval horrors were but masks for cruelties exercised by the Austrians in his own day, and that in those lyrical bursts of rage and grief there was full utterance for his smothered sense of present wrong. There is a great charm in these strophes; they add unspeakable pathos to a drama which is so largely concerned with political interests; and they make us feel that it is a beautiful and noble work of art, as well as grand appeal to the patriotism of the Italians and the justice of mankind.
When we are brought into the presence of Barbarossa, we find him awaiting the arrival of Adrian, who is to accompany him to Rome and crown him emperor, in return for the aid that Barbarossa shall give in reducing the rebellious citizens and delivering Arnaldo into the power of the papacy. Heralds come to announce Adrian's approach, and riding forth a little way, Frederick dismounts in order to go forward on foot and meet the Pope, who advances, preceded by his clergy, and attended by a multitude of his partisans. As Frederick perceives the Pope and quits his horse, he muses:
I leave thee,
O faithful comrade mine in many perils,
Thou generous steed! and now, upon the ground
That should have thundered under thine advance,
With humble foot I silent steps must trace.
But what do I behold? Toward us comes,
With tranquil pride, the servant of the lowly,
Upon a white horse docile to the rein
As he would kings were; all about the path
That Adrian moves on, warriors and people
Of either sex, all ages, in blind homage,
Mingle, press near and fall upon the ground,
Or one upon another; and man, whom God
Made to look up to heaven, becomes as dust
Under the feet of pride; and they believe
The gates of Paradise would be set wide
To any one whom his steed crushed to death.
With me thou never hast thine empire shared;
Thou alone hold'st the world! He will not turn
On me in sign of greeting that proud head,
Encircled by the tiara; and he sees,
Like God, all under him in murmured prayer
Or silence, blesses them, and passes on.
What wonder if he will not deign to touch
The earth I tread on with his haughty foot!
He gives it to be kissed of kings; I too
Must stoop to the vile act.
Since the time of Henry II. it had been the custom of the emperors to lead the Pope's horse by the bridle, and to hold his stirrup while he descended. Adrian waits in vain for this homage from Frederick, and then alights with the help of his ministers, and seats himself in his episcopal chair, while Frederick draws near, saying aside:
I read there in his face his insolent pride
Veiled by humility.
He bows before Adrian and kisses his foot, and then offers him the kiss of peace, which Adrian refuses, and haughtily reminds him of the fate of Henry. Frederick answers furiously that the thought of this fate has always filled him with hatred of the papacy; and Adrian, perceiving that he has pressed too far in this direction, turns and soothes the Emperor:
I am truth,
And thou art force, and if thou part'st from me,
Blind thou becomest, helpless I remain.
We are but one at last....
Caesar and Peter,
They are the heights of God; man from the earth
Contemplates them with awe, and never questions
Which thrusts its peak the higher into heaven.
Therefore be wise, and learn from the example
Of impious Arnaldo. He's the foe
Of thrones who wars upon the altar.
But he strives in vain to persuade Frederick to the despised act of homage, and it is only at the intercession of the Emperor's kinsmen and the German princes that he consents to it. When it is done in the presence of all the army and the clerical retinue, Adrian mounts, and says to Frederick, with scarcely hidden irony:
In truth thou art
An apt and ready squire, and thou hast held
My stirrup firmly. Take, then, O my son,
The kiss of peace, for thou hast well fulfilled
All of thy duties.
But Frederick, crying aloud, and fixing the sense of the multitude upon him, answers:
Nay, not all, O Father!--
Princes and soldiers, hear! I have done homage
To Peter, not to him.
The Church and the Empire being now reconciled, Frederick receives the ambassadors of the Roman republic with scorn; he outrages all their pretensions to restore Rome to her old freedom and renown; insults their prayer that he will make her his capital, and heaps contempt upon the weakness and vileness of the people they represent. Giordano replies for them:
When will you dream,
You Germans, in your thousand stolid dreams,--
The fume of drunkenness,--a future greater
Than our Rome's memories? Never be her banner
Usurped by you! In prison and in darkness
Was born your eagle, that did but descend
Upon the helpless prey of Roman dead,
But never dared to try the ways of heaven,
With its weak vision wounded by the sun.
Ye prate of Germany. The whole world conspired,
And even more in vain, to work us harm,
Before that day when, the world being conquered,
Rome slew herself.
... Of man's great brotherhood
Unworthy still, ye change not with the skies.
In Italy the German's fate was ever
To grow luxurious and continue cruel.
The soldiers of Barbarossa press upon Giordano to kill him, and Frederick saves the ambassadors with difficulty, and hurries them away.
In the first part of the fifth act, Niccolini deals again with the _role_ which woman has played in the tragedy of Italian history, the hopes she has defeated, and the plans she has marred through those religious instincts which should have blest her country, but which through their perversion by priestcraft have been one of its greatest curses. Adrian is in the Vatican, after his triumphant return to Rome, when Adelasia, the wife of that Ostasio, Count of the Campagna, in whose castle Arnaldo is concealed, and who shares his excommunication, is ushered into the Pope's presence. She is half mad with terror at the penalties under which her husband has fallen, in days when the excommunicated were shunned like lepers, and to shelter them, or to eat and drink with them, even to salute them, was to incur privation of the sacraments; when a bier was placed at their door, and their houses were stoned; when King Robert of France, who fell under the anathema, was abandoned by all his courtiers and servants, and the beggars refused the meat that was left from his table--and she comes into Adrian's presence accusing herself as the greatest of sinners. The Pope asks:
Hast thou betrayed
Thy husband, or from some yet greater crime
Cometh the terror that oppresses thee?
Hast slain him?
_Adelasia._ Haply I ought to slay him.
_Adrian._ What?
_Adelasia._ I fain would hate him and I cannot.
_Adrian._ What
Hath his fault been?
_Ad._ Oh, the most horrible
Of all.
_Adr._ And yet is he dear unto thee?
_Ad._ I love him, yes, I love him, though he's changed
From that he was. Some gloomy cloud involves
That face one day so fair, and 'neath the feet,
Now grown deformed, the flowers wither away.
I know not if I sleep or if I wake,
If what I see be a vision or a dream.
But all is dreadful, and I cannot tell
The falsehood from the truth; for if I reason,
I fear to sin. I fly the happy bed
Where I became a mother, but return
In midnight's horror, where my husband lies
Wrapt in a sleep so deep it frightens me,
And question with my trembling hand his heart,
The fountain of his life, if it still beat.
Then a cold kiss I give him, then embrace him
With shuddering joy, and then I fly again,--
For I do fear his love,--and to the place
Where sleep my little ones I hurl myself,
And wake them with my moans, and drag them forth
Before an old miraculous shrine of her,
The Queen of Heaven, to whom I've consecrated,
With never-ceasing vigils, burning lamps.
There naked, stretched upon the hard earth, weep
My pretty babes, and each of them repeats
The name of Mary whom I call upon;
And I would swear that she looks down and weeps.
Then I cry out, "Have pity on my children!
Thou wast a mother, and the good obtain
Forgiveness for the guilty."
Adrian has little trouble to draw from the distracted woman the fact that her husband is a heretic--that heretic, indeed, in whose castle Arnaldo is concealed. On his promise that he will save her husband, she tells him the name of the castle. He summons Frederick, who claims Ostasio as his vassal, and declares that he shall die, and his children shall be carried to Germany. Adrian, after coldly asking the Emperor to spare him, feigns himself helpless, and Adelasia too late awakens to a knowledge of his perfidy. She falls at his feet:
I clasp thy knees once more, and I do hope
Thou hast not cheated me!... Ah, now I see
Thy wicked arts! Because thou knewest well
My husband was a vassal of the empire,
That pardon which it was not thine to give
Thou didst pretend to promise me. O priest,
Is this thy pity? Sorrow gives me back
My wandering reason, and I waken on
The brink of an abyss; and from this wretch
The mask that did so hide his face drops down
And shows it in its naked hideousness
Unto the light of truth.
Frederick sends his soldiers to secure Arnaldo, but as to Ostasio and his children he relents somewhat, being touched by the anguish of Adelasia. Adrian rebukes his weakness, saying that he learned in the cloister to subdue these compassionate impulses. In the next scene, which is on the Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate resolves to defend the city against the Germans to the last, and then we have Arnaldo a prisoner in a cell of the Castle of St. Angelo. The Prefect of Rome vainly entreats him to recant his heresy, and then leaves him with the announcement that he is to die before the following day. As to the soliloquy which follows, Niccolini says: "I have feigned in Arnaldo in the solemn hour of death these doubts, and I believe them exceedingly probable in a disciple of Abelard. This struggle between reason and faith is found more or less in the intellect of every one, and constitutes a sublime torment in the life of those who, like the Brescian monk, have devoted themselves from an early age to the study of philosophy and religion. None of the ideas which I attribute to Arnaldo were unknown to him, and, according to Mueller, he believed that God was all, and that the whole creation was but one of his thoughts. His other conceptions in regard to divinity are found in one of his contemporaries." The soliloquy is as follows:
Aforetime thou hast said, O King of heaven,
That in the world thou wilt not power or riches.
And can he be divided from the Church
Who keeps his faith in thine immortal word,
The light of souls? To remain in the truth
It only needs that I confess to thee
All sins of mine. O thou eternal priest,
Thou read'st my heart, and that which I can scarce
Express thou seest. A great mystery
Is man unto himself, conscience a deep
Which only thou canst sound. What storm is there
Of guilty thoughts! Oh, pardon my rebellion!
Evil springs up within the mind of man,
As in its native soil, since that day Adam
Abused thy great gift, and created guilt.
And if each thought of ours became a deed,
Who would be innocent? I did once defend
The cause of Abelard, and at the decree
Imposing silence on him I, too, ceased.
What fault in me? Bernard in vain inspired
The potentates of Europe to defend
The sepulcher of God. Mankind, his temple,
I sought to liberate, and upon the earth
Desired the triumph of the love divine,
And life, and liberty, and progress. This,
This was my doctrine, and God only knows
How reason struggles with the faith in me
For the supremacy of my spirit. Oh,
Forgive me, Lord. These in their war are like
The rivers twain of heaven, till they return
To their eternal origin, and the truth
Is seen in thee, and God denies not God.
I ought to pray. Thinking on thee, I pray.
Yet how thy substance by three persons shared,
Each equal with the other, one remains,
I cannot comprehend, nor give in thee
Bounds to the infinite and human names.
Father of the world, that which thou here revealest
Perchance is but a thought of thine; or this
Movable veil that covers here below
All thy creation is eternal illusion
That hides God from us. Where to rest itself
The mind hath not. It palpitates uncertain
In infinite darkness, and denies more wisely
Than it affirms. O God omnipotent!
I know not what thou art, or, if I know,
How can I utter thee? The tongue has not
Words for thee, and it falters with my thought
That wrongs thee by its effort. Soon I go
Out of the last doubt unto the first truth.
What did I say? The intellect is soothed
To faith in Christ, and therein it reposes
As in the bosom of a tender mother
Her son. Arnaldo, that which thou art seeking
With sterile torment, thy great teacher sought
Long time in vain, and at the cross's foot
His weary reason cast itself at last.
Follow his great example, and with tears
Wash out thy sins.
We leave Arnaldo in his prison, and it is supposed that he is put to death during the combat that follows between the Germans and Romans immediately after the coronation of Frederick. As the forces stand opposed to each other, two beautiful choruses are introduced--one of Romans and one of Germans. And, just before the onset, Adelasia appears and confesses that she has betrayed Arnaldo, and that he is now in the power of the papacy. At the same time the clergy are heard chanting Frederick's coronation hymn, and then the battle begins. The Romans are beaten by the number and discipline of their enemies, and their leaders are driven out. The Germans appear before Frederic and Adrian with two hundred prisoners, and ask mercy for them. Adrian delivers them to his prefect, and it is implied that they are put to death. Then turning to Frederick, Adrian says:
Art thou content? for I have given to thee
More than the crown. My words have consecrated
Thy power. So let the Church and Empire be
Now at last reconciled. The mystery
That holds three persons in one substance, nor
Confounds them, may it make us here on earth
To reign forever, image of itself,
In unity which is like to that of God.
V
So ends the tragedy, and so was accomplished the union which rested so heavily ever after upon the hearts and hopes, not only of Italians, but of all Christian men. So was confirmed that temporal power of the popes, whose destruction will be known in history as infinitely the greatest event of our greatly eventful time, and will free from the doubt and dread of many one of the most powerful agencies for good in the world; namely, the Catholic Church.
I have tried to give an idea of the magnificence and scope of this mighty tragedy of Niccolini's, and I do not know that I can now add anything which will make this clearer. If we think of the grandeur of its plan, and how it employs for its effect the evil and the perverted good of the time in which the scene was laid, how it accords perfect sincerity to all the great actors,--to the Pope as well as to Arnaldo, to the Emperor as well as to the leaders of the people,--we must perceive that its conception is that of a very great artist. It seems to me that the execution is no less admirable. We cannot judge it by the narrow rule which the tragedies of the stage must obey; we must look at it with the generosity and the liberal imagination with which we can alone enjoy a great fiction. Then the patience, the subtlety, the strength, with which each character, individual and typical, is evolved; the picturesqueness with which every event is presented; the lyrical sweetness and beauty with which so many passages are enriched, will all be apparent to us, and we shall feel the esthetic sublimity of the work as well as its moral force and its political significance. _