Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847

Such was the serious, brave, and resolute spirit of Giacomo. But he had other qualities than those which made him the most popular student bf the university; and as a proof of this, we need only mention that he was the intimate friend of Petrarch, at this time also a student at Bologna. Though despatched to this university by his father for the express purpose of prosecuting the study of the law, Petrarch was wrapt up in his Latin classics and his poetry; and it was precisely in our brave and handsome cavalier that he found the companion who most completely sympathised with him in his pursuits, and most correctly appreciated his nascent genius.

These two friends had been walking together in silence for some time under the long colonnades which then, as now, lined the streets of Bologna. A more noble pair have rarely traversed those colonnades. The poet, remarkable for his beauty, was in his youth very studious of elegance in his dress; and the short velvet cloak, with its border of gold or silver lace, was always thrown over his slight, but finely moulded figure, with a grace which would have satisfied the eye of a painter. From time to time he might be seen to brush away, or to shake off, the specks of dust which had settled on it, or to re-adjust, by a movement intended to appear unconscious, the folds of its drapery. His companion, taller, and of a somewhat larger build, and far more costly in his attire, though utterly unoccupied with it, walked "like one of the lions" by his side.

"My dear Giacomo," said Petrarch, breaking the long silence, "what has befallen you? Not a word – certainly not two in any coherent succession, have you uttered for the last hour."

"Neither to-day, nor yesterday!" muttered Giacomo to himself, certainly not in answer to his friend, – "Neither to-day, nor yesterday – perhaps, she means never to go to mass again."

"What are you talking, or rather, thinking of?"

"What I am always thinking of, my dear Petrarch, – what I shall never cease thinking of till it prove my destruction – which some spirit of divination tells me that it will."

"Really, really, Giacomo," said his friend, "you show in this a most insane pertinacity. Here are you, week after week, month after month – "

"I know it – know all you would say. – Good God! how beautiful she is!"

"Here are you – for I will speak." – continued his youthful but grave associate, "who are simply the most perfect cavalier in all Bologna – (one would not flatter, but this physic is, in some cases, absolutely necessary) – at once the boast and envy of the whole university – wasting, consuming yourself away, in a perpetual fever after the only woman, I take it upon me to declare – "

"Psha! psha! Tell me, if you would have me listen, what further can I do? I have wooed her in sonnets, which ought to have affected her, for Petrarch polished the verse. Nothing touches her. She is as obdurate as steel. Not a smile – not, at least, for me – and for all others she smiles how sweetly, how intelligently, how divinely! But by the Holy Cross! she shall love me! Petrarch, she shall! – she shall!"

"My dear Giacomo, you rave. Be a little reasonable. Lover as you are, stay on this side of madness. Love on – if it must be so – love her for ever; but do not for ever be striving for a return of your passion. Take home your unrequited love into your bosom – nourish it there – but do not exasperate it by a bootless and incessant struggle against fate. For my part, I can conceive there may be a strange sweet luxury in this solitary love that lives in one breast alone. It is all your own. It is fed, kindled, diversified, sustained by your own imagination. It is passion without the gross thraldom of circumstance. It is the pure relation of soul to soul, without the vast, intricate, unmanageable relationship of life to life."

"To you, a poet," replied Giacomo with a slight tone of sarcasm, "such a passion may be possible. Perhaps you care not for more heat than serves to animate and make fluent the verse. Pleased with the glow of fancy and of feeling, you can stop short of possession. I cannot! Oh, you poets! you fuse your passion with your genius: you describe, you do not feel."

"Not feel!" exclaimed Petrarch "we cannot then describe."

"Oh, yes! you can describe. You fling the golden light of imagination, like a light from heaven, round the object of your adoration; but, in return, the real woman is translated herself to the skyey region of imagination. She becomes the creature of your thoughts. You are conscious that the glory you have flung around her, you can re-assume. Petrarch, Petrarch! if you ever love, if you are constant to any woman from Springtime to the last leaf of Autumn, it will be to some fair creature who dwells for ever, and only, in your imagination, whom you will never press to your bosom. You poets love beauty, you love passion, you love all things fair and great, and you make a vision of them all. You sing them, and there's an end."

"Well, well," said the poet, warding off the attack with a smile, "I have brought down, it seems, a severe castigation on myself."

"Dear, dear Petrarch! let it teach you never again to give advice to a lover, unless it be to show him how, or where, he is to meet his mistress. Fool that I am! she is, perhaps, all this time in the Church of St Giovanni." And without another word he darted up a street that led to that same church, leaving his friend to follow or not, as he pleased.

CHAPTER II

There was, indeed, something like perversity, it must be allowed, in this firm refusal of Constantia to reward so devoted an attachment. Even her stern, grave uncle, whose judicial functions were not likely to give him much leisure or disposition to interfere with the love affairs of his niece, had dropt a hint that the suit of Giacomo da Valencia would not be displeasing to himself. Bologna could not have supplied a more fitting match; our lover, therefore, was not guilty of presumption, though of much obstinacy. It was his right, this blessed hand of Constantia – he felt it was his right, and he would win it.

Some one, some day, she must surely love, he argued to himself, and why not me? and why not now? Oh, could I but plead my passion, he would say, alone, – pour it out unrestrained at her feet, she would surely see how reasonable it was that she should love, that she ought, that she must! To his excited and impetuous mood of mind, it appeared that nothing but the artificial barrier which the customs of society interposed in their intercourse, prevented his success. He could never see her alone, never speak unreservedly and passionately. The presence of others imposed restraints on both; and if an opportunity occurred to speak without being overheard, the few moments were filled with embarrassment by reason of their brief and precarious tenure. Nay, what were a few moments to him who had so full a heart to utter? "Oh, could I place her there!" he would exclaim, pointing to the upper end of the spacious room he occupied, "and there kneel down, and pray before her, as men do to their saints! Oh Nature! Oh Heaven! you would not so desert me, that my prayer should be fruitless."

Yes! if she were there alone, no other mortal near! This thought so wrought within him, took so strong possession of his mind, that it led him to a thousand projects for its realisation. What if he carried her off by force from her uncle's residence, and brought her there? Surely the humility, the passionate devotion with which he would entreat her, would atone for the rash and violent means he had used to bring her within the scope of his supplications; and the utter submission, and profound respect of his manner, would immediately convince her that he had no design upon her freedom of will, and that she might confide with entire safety to his honour. And as to the feasibility of the project, popular and beloved as he was in the university, there were numbers of students quite ready to engage in any scheme he should propose, however hazardous it might be. It would be very easy for him to organise a little band of the most faithful and the boldest of his adherents, who, with a due mixture of stratagem and force, would accomplish this new and harmless species of abduction.

The uncle of Constantia held, as we have intimated, a high judicial post, and was sometimes absent from Bologna, administering justice amongst the several dependencies of the republic. On one of these occasions Constantia was sitting with a female friend, who had been invited to stay with her during his absence from home. The room they sat in was one of those fine old Gothic chambers, which the pencil of Haghe delights to reproduce and restore for us; and to his pencil we willingly leave the description of it. Constantia was seated on one of those tall arm-chairs, with straight high back, which beauty then made graceful to the eye, and leaned her little chin upon her doubled hand, as she listened to her friend, Leonora, who was reading her a lecture upon the very theme which makes the burden of our story, her coldness to Giacomo.

"What would you have? what do you expect?" was the triumphant close of her harangue.

"What would I have?" replied Constantia. "Myself! I would possess myself in peace and stillness – What do I expect? I do not live on expectation. I love my present life – its calm, its contentment, its freedom. Why would you help to rob me of these?"

"Freedom! So, then, you fear the tyrant in the husband. But, my dear Constantia, where there are only two in the society, there is an even chance for the tyranny."

"A pleasant prospect! But you mistake me, Leonora. It is not the husband in his tyranny I fear, – I have not come to think of that; it is the lover and his love! I would not be infected by the turmoil of his passion. I dread it. Friends let me have and cherish. Leonora, be you always one of them; but for this turbulent Love, may the lightest down upon his pinion never touch me! How soft it seems, how light, as light and soft as the down we rob the swan's neck of; but touch it, and it burns, and fans a fever into the veins. I do love my own calm life, and I will keep it."

As she spoke thus, she rose from her seat and advanced towards the window. The two friends stood looking together down the street, which, as the sun descended, began to be deserted of its usual crowd. Their attention was arrested by a numerous body of footmen, and other attendants, who were escorting apparently some lady in a sedan chair. They were rather surprised to observe that the sedan chair directed its course towards their own house. A knocking at the door was heard; and soon after their servant brought them word, that a certain Signora – desired urgently to speak with Constantia, but that she could not quit her chair. The person whose name was announced, was an old lady, one of Constantia's most intimate friends; she descended immediately into the hall to meet her. She precipitated herself towards the sedan chair, the door of which stood open; a slight impulse from some bystander, from a hand which trembled as it touched her, carried her forward, and she found herself seated in what indeed was an empty chair. Before she had time to raise an alarm, she found herself borne swiftly and softly along the street. Leonora, who had followed her friend down the stairs, and was a witness to her singular disappearance, called up all the servants of the establishment, and despatched them after their mistress. They followed, but to no purpose. The running footmen, on either side of the sedan, drew their swords. They were students in disguise. Giacomo had succeeded in his daring enterprise.

Constantia had hardly collected her thoughts, when she perceived that her chair was carried through a lofty archway up a broad flight of stairs, and deposited in a spacious apartment, once the proud saloon of a palatial residence, though the whole building, of which it formed a part, had since been constituted a portion of the university. All her attendants except one left the room. We need not say that it was Giacomo who handed her from her temporary imprisonment.

To judge from their bearing and attitude, you would have said that it was Giacomo who was the captive, bending before the mercy of Constantia. She stood there, upright, calm, inflexible. He was, indeed, at her mercy. He felt that his life depended on this present moment, and on the few words that should fall from her lips. He led her to the upper end of the room where his imagination had so often placed her. He knelt – he sued.

Beginning with abrupt protests and exclamations, his impassioned pleading gradually grew more continuous, but not less vehement, till it flowed in the full torrent of a lover's eloquence. On all this turbulent pathos Constantia looked calmly down, more in sorrow than in anger. From the moment she understood in whose power she was, she had ceased (so much justice she had at least done to the character of her lover) to have any alarm whatever on her own account; but she was filled with regret, disquietude, and concern for the fatal consequences which might ensue to himself from the unwarrantable step he had taken. "Restore me to my uncle's before he shall hear of this," were the only words she vouchsafed in return to all his passionate appeal.

But the pleading of the desperate lover was not, as may well be supposed, allowed to proceed without interruption. Leonora, a young girl of spirit and animation, immediately sent forth the servants of the household to rouse up the friends of the family, and to spread every where the report of the strange outrage which had been committed upon one of the most respected families of Bologna. A fleet messenger was especially despatched to the uncle of Constantia, distant only a few miles from the town, to recall him to a scene where his presence was so much required. There was a perpetual standing feud between the citizens of Bologna and the students of the university, which had often disturbed the tranquillity of the city; it was therefore with extreme alacrity and zeal that the townsmen rushed in crowds into the streets, armed with the best weapons they could procure, to rescue the niece of their venerable judge, and to punish the gross outrage which they conceived had been perpetrated.

When, however, the multitude came in front of the large mansion or palace in which Giacomo resided, and which was tenanted entirely by students, the great majority of whom were his zealous partisans, and all of whom were prepared, in any quarrel whatever, to take part against the townsmen, they found the enterprise they had undertaken to be one of no little difficulty. The huge gates were closed and barred, while the windows above were occupied by a spirited garrison who had already supplied themselves with missiles of every description to annoy their assailants. These latter began, with true Italian energy, to pull up the posts out of the street, to form battering-rams with which to force the gates. They thundered at them with dreadful din, shaking the whole edifice; and in spite of the missiles despatched in quick succession from above, seemed to be on the point of effecting an entrance.

When Constantia heard this horrible din she turned pale with affright – Giacomo pale with rage. He could make no impression on the cold beauty before him – his suppressed passion was suffocating him. Against these assailants all his impetuosity could burst forth —them he knew at least how to defy; – here was an enemy he could vanquish, or, at worst, a defeat he knew how to sustain. When, therefore, several of his friends rushed breathless into the room to tell him that the great gates began to creak upon their hinges, and were likely to be beaten in, he almost welcomed this new species of contest. Conducting Constantia into a side-room, where she would be out of reach of the ensuing tumult and disorder, and where an aged matron waited to attend upon her, he went with his friends to meet the rest of his companions in arms, who were anxious to consult him on the next measures which in their present emergency should be taken.

The house, or palazzo, was built on a plan very customary in such structures. In the centre were the tall gates, now undergoing the battery of the citizens, which opened upon a square, lofty, paved court or hall, supported by columns, and forming a carriage-way up to the foot of the staircase. Originally you passed through the hall into a garden beyond, but when the building had been converted into a residence for students, and made a part, in fact, of the university, a wall had been erected, separating the garden from the house. This wall, though lofty, did not, however, rise to the level of the roof of the hall; both light and air were admitted from above it, and you still saw the topmost branches of the orange-trees and the summits of the fountains that were playing in the garden beyond. From either side of this hall rose the broad and marble staircase which led into the interior of the house.

Upon both branches of this noble staircase, whose steps faced the entrance, Giacomo stationed his gallant band, armed each of them at least with his rapier. He then commissioned one of his companions to proclaim to the besiegers from a window above, that if they would cease their battering, and retreat a few paces from the gates, they should be opened to them.

To this the crowd assented, presuming that it could imply nothing else than a surrender. The great doors were opened. They rushed forward; but the staircase they thought to ascend so readily was occupied every inch of it by a brave phalanx, which awaited them with glittering swords, held forward in spear fashion, tier above tier. The first rank of this disordered multitude had no desire whatever to be thrust forward by those in the rear on the points held forth by this determined phalanx. A great number of them passed harmless between the two staircases, but the wall we have described prevented any egress in that direction; and when the lower part of the hall was quite full, the struggle commenced in earnest between those of the crowd who desired to retreat, and those who, knowing nothing of the peril of their companions, were still urging forward. The struggle rose to a combat. The students, who, at the express desire of Giacomo, stood steadily at their post, and preserved a dead silence, were undisturbed spectators of the tumult, and saw their adversaries in desperate strife, the one against the other.

They seemed to be on the point of obtaining, in this singular manner, a bloodless victory, when Andrea, the uncle of Constantia, together with the Podestà, made their appearance, with such military force as could be assembled at the moment. This had immediately one good effect; the crowd without, by making way for the Podestà, released their companions within, still struggling for escape. The military force of the Podestà soon stood confronted with the little band of students. Yet these were so well placed, had so decidedly the advantage of position, and their leader was so well known for his prowess and indomitable courage, that there was a great unwillingness to commence the attack, and very loud calls were made upon them to surrender to the majesty of the law.

For Giacomo, the combat was what his blood boiled for. Would that he could have fought single-handed – he alone – and perilled, and have lost his life! But when he saw the respected form of the uncle of Constantia – when he reflected that the experiment he had so long desired, had been made and failed– that the cold virgin whom he had left up stairs was still invincible, whoever else he might conquer or resist, and that he should be exposing the lives of his companions in a combat where to him there was now no victory – he lowered his sword, and made treaty of peace with the Podestà. On consideration that none other but himself should suffer any species of penalty for that day's transaction, he offered to resign Constantia to her uncle, and himself to the pleasure of the Podestà. These terms were very readily accepted; his companions alone seemed reluctant to acquiesce in them.

CHAPTER III

While all this tumult was raging round the house, and within the heart of Giacomo, the student's lamp was burning, how calm, how still, in the remote and secluded chamber of his friend Petrarch! To him, out of a kind and considerate regard, and from no distrust in his zeal or attachment, the ardent lover had concealed his perilous enterprise. Remote from the whole scene, and remote from all the passions of it, sat the youthful sage; not remote, however, from deep excitements of his own. Far from it. Reflection has her emotions thrilling as those of passion. He who has not closed his door upon the world, and sat down with books and his own thoughts in a solitude like this – may have lived, we care not in how gay a world, or how passionate an existence, – he has yet an excitement to experience, which, if not so violent, is far more prolonged, deeper, and more sustained than any he has known, – than any which the most brilliant scenes, or the most clamorous triumphs of life, can furnish. What is all the sparkling exhilaration of society, the wittiest and the fairest, – what all the throbbings and perturbations of love itself, compared with the intense feeling of the youthful thinker, who has man, and God, and eternity for his fresh contemplations, – who, for the first time, perceives in his solitude all the grand enigmas of human existence lying unsolved about him? His brow is not corrugated, his eye is not inflamed: he sits calm and serene – a child would look into his face and be drawn near to him – but it seems to him that on his beating heart the very hand of God is lying.

The poet had closed his door, and unrolled before his solitary lamp his favourite manuscript, "The Tusculan Disputations of Cicero." How well that solitary lamp burning on so vivid and so noiseless – the only thing there in motion, but whose very motion makes the stillness more evident, the calm more felt; how well that lamp – the very soul, as it seems, of the little chamber it illumines – harmonises with the student's mood! How it makes bright the solitude around him! How it brings sense of companionship and of life where nothing but it – and thought – are stirring!

But though the young student had seated himself to his intellectual feast, it was evident that he was not quite at his ease; there was something which occasioned him a slight disquietude. In truth he was destined, by his father, to be "learned in the law;" was enjoying a stolen fruit; and whatever the well-known proverb may say, we have never found, ourselves, that any enjoyment is heightened by a sense of insecurity in its possession, or a thought of the possible penalty which may be the consequence of its indulgence. Petrarch might have been observed to listen attentively to every footstep on the great staircase that served the whole wing of the building to which his little turret belonged; and till the step was lost, or he was sure that it had stopped at some lower stage in the house, he suspended the perusal of his manuscript, and sat prepared to drop the precious treasure into a chest that stood open at his feet, and to replace it by an enormous volume of jurisprudence which lay ready at hand for this piece of hypocritical service. This peculiarly nervous condition was the result of a paternal visit which had been paid him, most unexpectedly, a few evenings before. His father, suspecting that he was more devoted to the classics than to the study of the law, started suddenly from Avignon, stole upon his son unforewarned, ruthlessly snatched from him the prized manuscripts in which he found him absorbed, and committed them to the flames. Petrarch, of gentle temper, and full of filial respect, ventured upon no resistance; but when he saw his Virgil and his Cicero put upon his funeral pyre, he burst into a flood of uncontrollable tears. His father, who was not himself without a love of classic literature, but who was anxious for his son's advancement in the world, and his study of a profession on which that advancement appeared entirely to depend, was smit with compassion and some remorse. These last two manuscripts he rescued himself from the flames, and restored to his disconsolate son, with the repeated admonition, however, to indulge less in their perusal, nor to allow them to take the place due to the science of jurisprudence.