THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

common ground of civility, conversed with them as equals, and was not only respected by them for what I was, but came
myself to respect them in spite of what they were. Virginia taught me much here. With her it never was, "Such-and-such is a
woman of infamous life," but rather, "Such-and-such has a fine ear for music, or can make a complicated risotto." I learned,
with astonishment, that with the most deplorable degradation of life there could consist an ability to share the interests of the
most refined persons. These associates of ours made no secret of their avocations (except to the police), nor were they
abashed or confounded if I happened to meet them in the exercise of them; but, business done, they were to be treated like Mr.
Councillor or My Lady. Nor was this an arbitrary exaction or a curious foppery on their part; not at all, but as they expected to
be taken, so they behaved themselves. There was not, I am bound to say, one of those women who did not hear Mass three
times a week, recite the daily rosary, confess herself, take the sacrament. Nor do I remember a single man of those whom I met
in various houses of call or thieves-kitchens in the town who was without his mental activity of some honest kind, who had not a
shrewd interest in politics, a passion for this or that science— as botany, mineralogy, or optics, or an appreciation keenly critical
of the fine arts. Philosophers, too, some of them were, acute reasoners, sophists, casuists. We had no doubts, fears or
suspicions of them, and they thought no evil of us. Some of them we invited to a reading in our tower; and once we enacted the
"Aminta" with great applause: Beltramo, a very engaging boy (afterwards hanged for highway robbery and prison- breaking),
Violante, an unfrocked priest called Il Corvo, Virginia and I took parts. Beltramo I never saw again but once, and that against
my will. I saw him hanged at Genoa in 1742. A curious life indeed, which, to one so addicted to research into the ways of men
as I always was, would have needed violence for its termination. Violence, indeed, did end it, and with humiliating detail.
One day I sold my cloak to buy a book. That was a vellum-bound copy of the Sonnets of Cino of Pistoja, which, with my
autograph, "Fr. Strelleius—Pistoriae—IV Kal. Aug. MDCCXXII," I still possess in my present retreat at Lucca. Cino had been
a famous poet in his day, the lover of the beautifully named Selvaggia Vergiolesi, who had, in fact, lived in our romantic tower. I
thought that the opportunity of becoming acquainted, on the very spot, with the mind of a man who must so often have sighed
and sung upon it was well worth an unnecessary garment. The volume mine, and a few pence besides, I purchased bread, wine
and sausage, and made Virginia a feast. We banqueted first on sausage, next on poetry, and revelled so late in the latter that we
exhausted our stock of candle, and had none left for the exigencies or possibilities of the night. Tired out and in the dark we
sought our proper ends of the long room. I, who lay below the window, immediately fell into a deep sleep.
I was awakened by a dream of suffocation, imprisonment and loss, to find that of such pains I was literally a sufferer. A thick
woollen was over my mouth and nose, the knees of some monstrous heavy man were on my chest, cords were being circled
and knotted about my hands and arms. My feet were already bound so fast that the slightest movement of them was an agony.
Dumb, blind, bound, what could I do but lie where I was? The work was done swiftly, in the pitchy dark, and in silence so
profound that I could hear Virginia's even breathing, separated as she was from me by the length of a long floor. There was but
one effort I could make with my tied ankles, and that was to raise both legs together and bring the heels down with a thud upon
the boards. The cords cut me to the bone—the effect upon Virginia was precisely nothing.
When I was reduced to a mere chrysalis, having cords wound all over my body which glued my arms to my flanks, I was lifted
like a bundle and lowered by a rope through the window to the ground. The descent—for I spun round and round with horrible
velocity—made me extremely giddy; probably I lost my senses for a time. My next discovery was of being carried swiftly over
the ground by one who ran rather than walked; of my captor mounting what I supposed to be the city wall, with me on his
back, dropping lightly on the other side and running again, on and on. The river was crossed, for I heard the pounding and
splashing, the bank was mounted; I was now crossing furrowed ground, Heaven knew whither! I was a long time; the thief
climbed a hill; I heard him labouring his breath, and felt the heat come up from his body like the sun in the dog- days from a
paved courtyard. I was too uncomfortable, too perturbed, too much enraged over the fact to spend much thought on what the
fact might mean. Was I taken for a soldier? Then why such a mystery about it? I had seen men crimped in the open piazza, out
of wine-shops, from the steps of churches. What then was my fate? I was soon to learn.
After what I think to have been an hour and a half's journey, my captor, puffing for breath, stopped and put me down on grass.
"Porca Madonna!" cried a strident voice, "I'm not so young as I was, or you have grown fat in Pistoja. The fatter the better for
me."
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