He went to France, I think. My poor Nanina! She was decidedly ‘tisica.’ It would not have cured her to go to Florence.”
I thought I could trace some other malady than consumption in her case: the slow heartbreak which follows a delusive dream. Life itself given by her in exchange for his summer holiday.
“My second son died two years ago. He was a priest and a clever lad, but the flower of my family was Carlo. He was a genius. I was told that he would have been one of the most famous men in Tuscany. He gained every prize at school, and I was advised to send him to study medicine. I could afford it,” said he, with modest dignity, “and I sent him. The testimonials he received I will show you.” He went away and returned in an incredibly short space of time, from a journey to the very top of the house. “Here they are,” and he slipped into my hands a quantity of written and printed testimonials, two diplomas, and last of all a portrait! A hideous daub of his beloved Carlo. It was out of all drawing, coloured like a caricature, the nose at variance with the eyes and the eyes with each other. “You see,” he said, “he looks like a perfect gentleman; he went into the best society. They say he would have been the best physician in Florence, and in Florence are the greatest physicians of the world. He had studied too much, and was sent home for change of air and repose; it was just after his sister began to be ill; they were inseparable, but he died two months after he returned. His funeral was the handsomest that has been seen for years in San Gimignano, and we are famous here for our splendid funerals. He was so impatient to get well and continue his studies that he was imprudent, and got worse every day. Poor Carlo!” There was something touching yet ludicrous in the mingled regrets and vanity of the old man. His voice quite changed as he pointed to his only living child, a man dressed like an ostler, whom we saw in the piazza below, smoking and talking with our coachman. “That is Michael; he is strong and well, but has no brains. He is not like the others, but he is his mother’s favourite. He works for me in the stables,” and the old man nodded his head significantly, “he is good for that; but his mother loves him better than all the others put together. She says he is satisfied with San Gimignano, and with his poor old mother; the others she could not understand,—they were like Signori. ’Cosa vuole;’ she thinks there is no place like this, for she has seen no other; I know better, for I have seen Siena, Livorno, and Firenze, but I must remain here, for I have property here. After all I have seen, I can tell you I prefer this house to Ricasoli’s. It is a corner house, and from it you can see both the piazze. There is no house better situated anywhere.”
“Content is richer than a king,” says the old song, and it was well for the old man he was so satisfied; but when he had taken me all over, up and down, his large, many-storied, dirty, cold, ugly house, I could not be surprised at the anxiety of his poor son to leave it. Widely severed from all his native associations by the force of education and habits, he must have found himself as out of place here as would the graceful marble Campanile of Florence, if it were to be suddenly transported by the side of the brick Torre de Ardinghelli. The carriage was now announced, and we took a friendly farewell of our communicative host and drove out to meet our friends.
While we waited for them on the road we were surrounded by beggars, who were of course delighted to levy contributions on chance “forestieri.” One of these beggars was a young woman with an infant asleep in her arms. I asked its name.
“It is a girl,” she said, “and we could not, therefore, call it Victor Emanuel, or Cavour, or Garibaldi, so we have called it ‘Italia.’”
The word sounded like music, and I stooped down to kiss the little sleeping babe, and blessed the name-bearer and the name.
It was now about half-past four, and we chose the Poggibuosi road for our return. On referring to our guide-books we found that in the old chronicles it was thus affectionately described. “Once one of the fairest and strongest forts in Italy, with fine walls and towers, beautiful churches, rich abbeys and glebes, and lovely marble fountains; populous and full of pleasant dwellings, like a good city (una buona città), now deserted and ruined.” The last phrase is no longer true. The railroad to Siena from Florence has a station here, and in the progressive march which all Italy is now making, I doubt not that in a few more years this rapidly rising and improving town will merit its ancient name of “una buona città.”
We were all a little tired, and content to lean back in silence and try to individualise the impressions we had received, and so stereotype them on our memory. On comparing notes, we found we were all agreed on one point. In all we had seen and in all we had read (we had taken with us the elaborate and minutely-descriptive work of Canone Pecori), through the details of wars and divisions, and heresies and revolts, the only two names which lived, life-like in our recollections, were those of Sta. Fina, the poor little crippled girl, and of Onofrio, the “operaio,” to whose judicious guardianship the embellishment of his native town was entrusted. Foster says that the names of Sesostris, Semiramis, &c., are distinguished through the dying glimmer of ancient history from the ocean of blood which surrounds them; here, on the contrary, Guelphs and Ghibelines, abbots and abbesses, warlike achievements and change of dynasties, have been confused together by time, but the halo of the saint and the work of the craftsman remain. And it is possible that as no legend invests it with miraculous properties Onofrio’s, is the dearest to us.
The road where it turned off from the one we had travelled in the morning was far flatter and less varied. There were long stretches of green fields with lines of tremulous poplars, and cattle lazily pasturing among them. We passed through Poggibuosi, and left Gertaldo behind us, with its castellated monastery just visible. The quiet was unbroken; a few labourers were in the fields stripping the last grapes from the vines; but in the road we met no one. The shades of evening had now drawn in, and at ten o’clock at night I was driving alone, along the lovely circuitous lane which led to my own villa.
