Little Novels of Italy/Ippolita in the Hills/Chapter 2

 

II

MESSER ALESSANDRO THINKS TO CUT HIS NAILS

Not to weary you, it is clear that Ippolita was the fashion. The poets, the courtiers, the painters, of whom in that age of peace Padua was full, were wild about this glowing girl, this sumptuous nymph of the Via Agnus Dei; they were melodiously, caperingly, symphonically wild, according to their bents. She saw herself on plates of faience, where the involutions of a ribbon revealed "Ippolita Bella" to the patient eye; she found herself (or they found her) an inordinate tri-syllable for a canzone, saw her colours of necessity reproduced on her lover's legs and shoulders as colours of election. One by one she could appraise her own possessions, and those they fabled of her. Her hair was Demeter's crown of ripe corn—she knew nothing of the lady, but hoped for the best. Her eyes were dark blue lakes in a field of snow—this she thought very fine. Her lips were the amorous petals of a rose that needs must kiss each other; kissing, they made a folded flower—ah!

 

"La virtù della bocca,
Che sana ciò che tocca,"

 

sighed the poets. But, bless her good innocence! that sweet mouth had touched nothing more mannish than her father's forehead or the feet of the Crucified. Her cheeks, said they, were apple-blossoms budded, her neck the stem of a chalice, her breast—but I spare your blushes, though they never spared hers. There is a book, "Gli Ornamenti delle Donne," which will tell you what that bastion of a fair girl should be; and what it should be those Paduan lyrists will more than assure you Ippolita's was. Thus passionately they fingered every part, dwelling here, touching there, with no word that was not a caress. What she had not, too, they gave her—the attributes she sowed in them. She was "vagha," since they longed; "lontana," since she kept them at a distance; "nascosa," since they drove her to it; cold, since she dared not be warm.

The painters, not to be behind, expressed what the others hinted. She saw herself, first, as Daphne behind a laurel-bush—the artist, kneeling in the open, offered his heart smoking upon a dish; second, as Luna, standing in shrouded white on a crescent moon—the artist, as Endymion, asleep in a rocky landscape, waiting to be kissed; third, as Leda, naked in reeds beside her pair of eggs—the plumed artist near by, ruffling and flapping his wings. Luckily, their allusiveness escaped her; she knew nothing of the diversions of the ancient gods.

But of all the vantage she gave them, none equalled that for which her gossips should have answered, her most commendable name of Ippolita. The verses she received on that theme would have made a Theseid, those she had to hear would have kept the rhapsodists for a twelve-month, those she saw the very Sala del Consiglio could not have contained. Ippolita at war with the Athenian, or leading her Amazons afield; Ippolita turning her unmaimed side to an adoring warrior (the painter) and you, or suckling Ippolita (with the artist's strongly marked features) in an ivied ruin with peacocks about it; Ippolita in a colonnade at Athens on the right hand of the king—thus she saw herself daily; thus the old palace walls of Padua, if they could yield up their tinged secrets through the coats of lime, would show her rosy limbs and crowned head. Mantegna has her armoured, with greaves to the knee and spiked cups on her breastplate. Gian Bellini carried her to Venice, to lead Scythians in trousers against Theseus in plate-armour and a blazoned shield. Giorgione set her burning in the shade, trying to cool her golden flank in deep mosses by a well.

All this, and much more, Ippolita endured because she was a good as well as a beautiful girl. Sometimes she wept in a friend's arms, sometimes (really frightened) she sought her parish priest; mostly it was the wonder-working Virgin in Sant' Antonio or, at the greatest stress, the Saint's own black sarcophagus in the lighted chapel, to lay upon it a feverish palm or hot, indignant cheek. By some such aids as these she preserved entire her head, her heart, all her precious store, so that no flattery ever tarnished the clear glass of her mind, no assaults, however fierce, could bruise the root of modesty within her.

Her father, vexed man, at first felt the glory of his daughter, shone by her reflected light, guessed (and had reasonable grounds for guessing) the profit it might be; but lastly, seeing the suitors sought not to marry her, and she would do no less, he grew disgusted with so windy a business, beat her for what was no fault of hers, and bade her be sold or begone. Ippolita, who began her day's processioning with music and flowers, ended it mostly in tears and stripes. There seemed no escape. If she went to draw water at the well the courtiers jostled for her first salutation; if she went to mass in the grey of the morning, so, blinking, did they. The priest who confessed her paid her compliments, the blind beggar at the church door looked at her out of one eye. She was incredibly the fashion; and the women, far from being jealous, were as wild about her as the men. She could have had a Court of Virgins, or gone like Artemis, buskined through the thickets, with a hundred high-girdled nymphs behind her, all for her sake locked in chastity. They also made her presents, which her father sold, until (learning to fear the Greeks, their brothers), she gently forbore them. Whereupon, the honest stone-mason had fresh cause for chastisement of so incalculably calculating a child.

The hunted fair at last came to a point where she must stand or deliver. From three desperate lovers there seemed no sure road. All that was possible she did. She consulted her priest; he patted her cheek. A very old woman of her intimacy advised her to look in the glass; she did, and blushed at her own distressful face. A friar of the order of Saint Francis plumply told her to choose the most solid of her pursuers and make the most of him. "Such roses as yours, my daughter," said he, "should be early to market. You are sixteen now; but remember that by the mercy of Heaven you may live to be six and sixty. That's the time when the pot wants lining. If you have not the experience, pray how are you to direct the young in the way they should go? Yet that is the trade for an old lady whose life has been an easy one. For my part, I regret that the rules of our convent do not allow me to open the gate."

She pouted, and went out into the sun again, to find her way to the Santo barred. The three poets, with three lutes, were singing a madrigal in her honour. They were understood to say that her going was over the tired bodies of lovers, that she went girdled with red hearts, that her breast was cold ivory, and her own heart carved in ice. Nymph rhymed with lymph and Ippolita with insolita; the whole, ingenious as it was, was not ad rem; and as for the poor subject of it all, her heart (far from being ice) was hot with mutiny. She knew herself for a simpleton—just a poor girl; she knew herself made ridiculous by this parade; could see herself as she was. Her crisping hair was over her ears and knotted behind her neck, without garland or fillet or so much as a brass pin; her green dress, though it was low in the neck, was tightly drawn over her bust; for what were glorious to be shown in a great lady, in her had been an immodesty. When she lifted her skirt out of the gutter you could see some inches of bare leg. Her hands were brown with work, though her neck was like warm marble in the sun. Eh, she knew herself through and through just a low-born wench; and "O Gesù Rè!" her heart cried within her, "why can they not leave me alone!"

The three poets—Stazio Orsini in white and yellow, Alessandro del Dardo in white and green, and Meleagro de' Martiri in a plum-coloured cloak—accompanied her down the Via Pozzo Depinto to her poor house in the quarter of Santa Caterina; she lived in the Vicolo Agnus Dei. To their florid exercises in the language of courts she replied in monosyllables—"Sissignore," "Grazie, Signore," or "Servo suo"; the humble words were as much her daily use as Padre nostro or Ave Maria. At the door she must have her hand kissed three times in face of the nudging neighbours; and to each salute her honesty prompted a fresh "Grazie, Signore," a curtsy, and a profound blush. Meleagro beat his forehead to see her so lovely and so unapproachable; Orsini bit his lip; but Alessandro, mindful of his nails, and not to be Sub-Prefect for nothing, went away to find the girl's father.

This worthy bowed to the earth before his visitor. In what way could His Excellency be served? By the acceptance, on Matteo's part, of twenty ducats? Benissimo, e tante grazie!

"Matteo," said the Sub-Prefect when this little transfer was accomplished, "your daughter is the most beautiful lady in all this city of Padua."

"She is a choice thing, I own it," said the good Matteo; "and how dear to her old father your honour hath no notion."

"I can very well imagine it," returned Messer Alessandro; "and, indeed, I remember that you are twenty ducats in hand."

"Oh, va bene, va bene!" cried Matteo. "I am your Excellency's humble servant. You shall take her when you like and as you like."

"All will be done scrupulously," Alessandro said with fervour. "We shall crown her Queen of our College of the Muses; she shall be priestess, sacred image, and oracle; and most honourably served."

"Honour of course," said Matteo, "comes into the game. I have played it myself, and know what I am talking about. There was Beppina, that fat Venetian hussy—to see her eat! But she always had her whack. Eh, I have been a blade in my day!"

To this testimony the Sub-Prefect had no comments ready. He returned to the object of his thought.

"We shall in turn contemplate her excellence," he explained, "and derive inspirations in turn. A fine body of devotional rhyme should be the result of this."

"The result," Matteo broke in, "will be a fine one, I warrant your Excellency, if such things as that are in your mind—and call it what you will, she's as healthy as ever her mother was. And she had seventeen of 'em, one way with another, before I buried her."

"She shall be crowned with stars, rest upon beds of roses, walk in flowery meadows, hide from the the heat in thickets where water is—" Alessandro went lilting on. "We will sing to her all day, and of her all night. The saloon of the Villa Venusta shall depict the story of her glorious arising."

"Pretty, pretty!" cried Matteo, "I see that your honour knows the rules of play. Now when shall the game begin?"

"My honest friend, the litter will be at your door come daybreak," said Alessandro. "Three noble ladies will attend Madonna to bathe and dress her. After that, you shall leave her safely in our keeping."

Matteo bowed. "Excellency, I am your servant. Everything shall be as you wish."

He did not add, though he might well have added, that it was more than himself had dared to hope for.

At time of sunset home he came, but not to beat his beautiful daughter. On the contrary, he made much of her. Fuddled he was, but not drunk. He took her incontinent upon his knee and began to deal in rather liberal innuendo. Divining him darkly, she went to work with such arts as she had to wheedle the worst out of him.

"Carissimo padre,"—so she coaxed him, with hands interwoven about his scrubby face,—"tell me more of this gallantry of young blades."

"Chuck, chuck, chuck," he babbled, oozing wine, "come and feed out of my hand. Bill me, sweeting, and I bill thee. Ho, ho! Two doves on a branch! What, turtle? Wilt thou mope for ever?"

She trembled. "Nay, nay, I'll mope no more, father," says she. "But do thou tell me who my mate is to be."

Slyly he looked at her burning face and slyly kissed it. Then he began to sing—

 

"Quell' drudo, Messer Amore,
Ha scelto un Dardo per cuore!
Dardo acerbo, ardente,
Che fa gridare le genti—
Ohimè! Dolce dolore!"

 

She had been a fool indeed to miss such a rebus. So the peril was worse than her dread! The lees of twenty ducats shabby in his fist told her how near the peril was.

Going to bed, he folded her in his arms, making her prop while he mumbled comfort.

"It is all for the best, my beauty-bright," he hiccoughed, "all clearly for the best. Messer Alessandro is a lover in ten thousand. I shall be as good as a father-in-law any day of the week. Why, it's 'My honest friend' that he hails me already! That is what a man may call climbing up, I hope, when a poetical roaring blade cuts out your 'servo suo' in that fashion. And he's Sotto-Prefetto, remember. That means all Padua yours for the asking. Sleep sound, my pretty bird, Ippolita bella! After this night you shall sleep by day." So he found, by good luck, his bed, and she a time for tears.