XIX.
“Gentil oiseau! gentil oiseau!
Ayez de moy mercye,
Que si est mort mon Chevalier,
Ne tiens point à la vye.
XX.
“Alme loyal! vaillante espèe,
Sir Tristan de Bretagne—
Adieu! ‘Qui me gagne me perd,
Et qui me perd me gagne!’”
XXI.
She died,—well for her in that hour,—
From north, south, east, and west
Much interceding prayer went forth
For her soul’s lasting rest.
XXII.
“Ci gist la très hault puissante
Yseult, belle des belles!”
Is on her tomb; on his alone—
“Passants! Priez pour Elle!”
A FELLOW-TRAVELLER’S STORY.
CHAPTER I.
Wishing to trace the valley which runs from the mouth of the Magra to Parma, I arrived at Sarzana, where I was told that a vetturino could easily be procured to make the journey in two easy days. I discovered, however, that the information—like a good deal of that one picks up from chance sources in Italy—was at fault. Sarzana has few vetturini, and none of them at all disposed to travel out of the beaten tracks on one side to Pietra-Santa and Pisa, and on the other to Sestri; or, perhaps, to Chiavari.
To induce an Italian to do anything out of his ordinary routine, can only be done at a considerable sacrifice of money. All the difficulties, obstacles, even dangers of the newly suggested plan, will be set forth by him with an eloquence positively astounding.
Though he should never have travelled the intended road in his life, he will assume to be familiar with all its obstacles and perils. The torrents, the mountains, the bad roads, the wretched villages, the lawless people who live in them, the vile accommodation to be paid for prezzo d’oro, and the atrocious forage, only procurable by bribery, are all themes for description, not the less ample and gloomy because untrammeled by truth.
I was not entirely unacquainted with this feature of Italian travel, and bore up tolerably patiently for two days under the usual torrent of such eloquence, always ending with the same peroration. “But if his Excellency”, meaning myself, “insists and must actually go that road, he will surely not grudge to recompense handsomely a poor fellow, who may never bring his horses back to his village, if happily he should return there himself with life again.” All this, be it remarked, for a journey of about seventy odd miles on a splendid macadam road, with every possible accommodation for halting by the way.
I say that I endured two days of this sort of pleading; and, on the third, I was so utterly disgusted with the exaggerated demands of these roguish dealers, that I resolved to give up my intended excursion, and pursue my way along the “riviera” to Genoa. A severe storm of wind and rain, one of those really awful storms which counterfeit tropical hurricanes, detained me the whole of the day; which I passed in all the unabated misery of a bad inn, without books, papers, or companionship.
After reading a little dirty newspaper, called the “Pungolo,” till I had it by heart, from the distinguished catalogue of certain chevaliers, decorated with the older of “St. Maurice and St. Lazare,” down to an illustrated advertisement of somebody’s “Cod Liver Oil,” I sat moodily at the window watching a man polishing a slab in a small archway opposite, a labour so curious and interesting, as to have attracted six spectators, who with loose coats hanging sleeveless on their backs, watched him also, the live-long day, never moving from the spot till the night closed in and ended his work. Wearisome as such superinspection had often seemed to me, I felt at last that there was a state of mind in which it might be pleasurable; and I own, I sympathised with the patient onlookers, seeing that, had I been a gentleman of Sarzana, I should have come to the like fate.
As night closed in, and the polisher moved away, I sallied forth to see what life might be had in the cafés. Blank disappointment again: of all the dreary abodes of stale tobacco-smoke, flat anise-seed, and dirty guests, there is nothing to compare with a low Italian café. The squalid tables, the unswept floor, and the unwashed company, are about the nastiest things I know of.
I recognised several of my vetturino acquaintances at table, some supping, some domino playing; while a select circle near the stove, of which the judge and the chief revenue officer formed a part, were exchanging their experiences on the subject of knives, assisted by specimens in all gradations, from the pen-maker, to what one enthusiast proclaimed un vero scucitore, “a regular ripper.”
Rather overcome by the fumes of the place and a cup of chocolate, I had been rash enough to invest in, I was making my way to the door, when a deep voice from a corner called out:
“Ha! Inglese, Signorino!”
I turned, and saw a fellow I had been bargaining with in the morning, playing cards with a very poorly clad and sickly-looking priest.
“Ecco!” cried the fellow aloud. “Ecco,” pointing to the priest; “Lo affare suo.”
I own I did not see how my interest could possibly attach me to the poor ecclessiastic; but it was soon explained. The priest lived at a village near Parma, and was about to return thither the next day, in a little calessina, or poney-carriage of his own; of which, for a consideration, he was disposed to let a place.
The contract was soon made, though greatly to the vetturino’s disgust, not paid for in anticipation, for he was intently bent on despoiling the priest of every “soldo” of it ere they parted; a scheme which I read and thwarted with some pleasure; and it was settled that the Father, whose name