قراءة كتاب Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20, September, 1877.
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Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20, September, 1877.
under the crimson glow of the silver lamps.
We wandered on, past the carved chapel-gates, the wrought bronze lamps, the incense-clouds and the silver-white lilies, out into the tomb-filled cloisters. There they lie, cheek by jowl—old professors from the university in cap and gown, high up under the arches; old warriors in armor, with their griffins and lions at their feet, and slaves bearing scrolls with their names and exploits registered thereon. Old councillors and syndics in robe and ruff, noble women in veil and coif, lie side by side with some brave young heart that shed its life's blood for united Italy.
Old dragons and monsters and wide-mouthed cherubim leer down from the gray sepulchres. From under the pointed arches, blossoming with palm-leaves and sweet stone child-faces, young painted angels, soft-eyed, long-haired, in pink and blue robes, smile down from the gold background, with emblems of resurrection in their hands, like flowers springing from the dust beneath. Here and there, high up under the cornice of some old Gothic tomb, is a round-eyed frescoed Madonna watching the slumbers of an old knight whose bed-curtain is upheld by long-armed saints. Pompous and grim and fantastic and sullen by turns, these tombs would make the heart of the stranger ache with their mockery, but that the living sunlight streams athwart the hard stone faces and the monster heads, and in the quadrangle of the cloister the lilies are standing like white-robed heavenly hosts, and a well upheld by angels rises up from the rank meadow-space. The purple clover runs riot among the grass. There is humming of bees about the golden lily-hearts, and a red butterfly loses its way now and then among the graves.
There is the rustle of ghostly garments in the silent air—the fall of shadowy feet upon the grave-lined pavements. A white-robed, shining multitude of philosophers and sages is for ever pacing up and down the sunny gallery discoursing of great and high things, like the blessed in the Paradise of Dante. A goodly company were they who walked there of old. Here came Giotto, pale-browed and thoughtful, discoursing with his friend, old Pietro di Abano, wizard, astrologer and learned physician, of the designs he was to give him for the frescoing of the new Palace of Reason that the city was erecting. With them, perchance, walked the great Tuscan, for he knew and loved them both, and all three, the seer, the poet and the painter, brooded over the inner forces of Nature and bared their souls to revelation. Hither came Petrarch, worn with the pomp of courts, yet flushed with modest pride at the new clerical dignity conferred upon him by his friend the Carrara, looking back upon his past life with philosophic calm, bidding no man judge the day till the evening be past, yet now and again feeling the old waves of passion surge through his heart, breathing a prayer for the repose of his dead love and a sigh for those sweet, far-off days of his youth. Here Tasso, the beautiful young dreamer, escaping from the dull round of the university, threw himself down in the clover beside the angels of the well, and saw fair white women with golden hair wreathing their arms about him, while the bees and the butterflies laughed aloud and cried, "Poor fool! he does not know they are only lilies." And Galileo, teaching the while the dull youth of the school, came to gather strength in the thought of the great finality that was to lay him low beyond the reach of the Inquisition, and yet lift him far above all human grandeur to mate with the stars that had been his comfort through long years of pain. Great Paolo Sarpi, when he came down from Venice in his monk's dress to discourse with the learned men of Padua, wandered here with his mind intent on the mighty problems of the universe, all unthinking of the assassin's knife that was to ease the jealousy of the Roman cardinals. Here wandered the apprentice-boy Mantegna, poor and humble, stealing timidly in behind the furred gowns and the gilded chains to feast his poor little artist-soul upon the frightened young Madonnas and wide-eyed angels that look out timidly from the arches of the sepulchres. What grand old phantoms glide on by the side of the laughing student-lads, and the old market-women in red kerchiefs who tell their beads in corners, and the young girls who gather the long stalks of seed-grass from the quadrangle and whisper to them timid questions concerning their absent lovers!
On the great square in front of the church were booths filled with bright flowers and early fruit and cheap sweetmeats, at which the peasants were haggling and chaffering and filling their blue handkerchiefs. The saints and prophets raised their hands in blessing from the blossoming spires. Over the way, in the inn of the "Two White Crosses," the farmers were dining. The laughter floated out through the open windows, and a man appeared at the door and scattered cherries to the crowd. By the side of the church was a great sepulchre, horrible with demon-heads and pictures of the sinners in Purgatory. Above the heads of the crowd, high on a pedestal, sat a bronze warrior on a fiery charger. It is old Gattamelata, the condottiere of the Venetian forces in the long wars with Padua. His body lies within the church, and his effigy is the work of one Donatello, famous in Tuscan art.
We followed the crowd along the white-walled street to the great market-square the people call the Prato della Valle. In the middle was a circular space of meadow, with trees above it, surrounded by a moat, above which stand life-size statues of warriors and poets and nobles and philosophers, blackened with the damp and mould of centuries, the folds of their gowns battered and grass-grown, their noses missing, their eyes put out by stones in the well-nerved hands of riotous youth, their swords and sceptres broken short, their pointed beards snapped off into bluntness. All around the great piazza are arches with caffès and shops under them. Off at one end rises the massive front of Santa Giustina.
The broad paved space between the arcades and the moat of the statues was the scene of a horse-fair. The most miserable animals that the imagination can conjure up, all the gaunt, ghostly steeds that graze in the pastures of legend and fable, were gathered there, neighing and pawing as impatiently as their half-starved spirits would allow. Be sure Petruchio bought his famous steed at the horse-fair of Padua, and that he tried the beast's speed, as these peasants do, by driving him round and round the statues, raising a cloud of white dust and scattering crowds of girls and children, who screamed with terror and prayed that the curse of Sant' Antonio might ever follow him.
Suddenly, a sound as of kettledrums and cymbals and squeaking violins rose above the neighing and braying of the fair. In front of Santa Giustina were a circus and a wild-beast show and a crowd of lesser jugglers and charlatans. Outside the circus-booth, high up on a platform, stood the clowns in their dingy fleshings and faded scarlet trunks. They blew furiously on great brass trumpets until their cheeks were purple and nigh to bursting under all the ghastly chalk. There were ballerine in draggled pink tarletan petticoats and low white bodices that made their bony necks and brawny arms still browner by contrast. They had honest, unpainted faces, and wore their hair screwed up tightly on the tops of their heads. They bore traces of exposure to wind and rain. Their eyes had a kind of wistful look, as though they were tired of all this noise and foolery, and wished themselves back again on the old olive-farms with