So Well Preserved, And Carefully Maintained,
That Every Row Of Seats Is There, Unbroken.
Over certain of the
arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are
corridors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts,
and winding ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce
thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody shows of the
arena.
Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of the
walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers
of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and
grass, upon the parapet. But little else is greatly changed.
When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had
gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely
panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the
building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a
prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and
a shallow crown; the plaits being represented by the four-and-forty
rows of seats. The comparison is a homely and fantastic one, in
sober remembrance and on paper, but it was irresistibly suggested
at the moment, nevertheless.
An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before--the same
troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the church at
Modena--and had scooped out a little ring at one end of the area;
where their performances had taken place, and where the marks of
their horses' feet were still fresh. I could not but picture to
myself, a handful of spectators gathered together on one or two of
the old stone seats, and a spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a
Policinello funny, with the grim walls looking on. Above all, I
thought how strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the
favourite comic scene of the travelling English, where a British
nobleman (Lord John), with a very loose stomach: dressed in a
blue-tailed coat down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a
white hat: comes abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an
English lady (Lady Betsy) in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a
red spencer; and who always carries a gigantic reticule, and a put-
up parasol.
I walked through and through the town all the rest of the day, and
could have walked there until now, I think. In one place, there
was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had just performed the
opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet. In another
there was a collection, under a colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and
Etruscan remains, presided over by an ancient man who might have
been an Etruscan relic himself; for he was not strong enough to
open the iron gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice
enough to be audible when he described the curiosities, nor sight
enough to see them: he was so very old. In another place, there
was a gallery of pictures: so abominably bad, that it was quite
delightful to see them mouldering away. But anywhere: in the
churches, among the palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down
beside the river: it was always pleasant Verona, and in my
remembrance always will be.
I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that night--of
course, no Englishman had ever read it there, before--and set out
for Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to myself (in the coupe
of an omnibus, and next to the conductor, who was reading the
Mysteries of Paris),
There is no world without Verona's walls
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence-banished is banished from the world,
And world's exile is death -
which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and-twenty
miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his energy
and boldness.
Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I wonder! Did it
wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing
streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees! Those
purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain; and the
dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, knobbed, silver
pin like an English 'life-preserver' through their hair behind, can
hardly be much changed. The hopeful feeling of so bright a
morning, and so exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger,
even to an exiled lover's breast; and Mantua itself must have
broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and
water, pretty much as on a commonplace and matrimonial omnibus. He
made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling
drawbridges; passed through the like long, covered, wooden bridge;
and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of
stagnant Mantua.
If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his place
of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came together
in a perfect fitness of things. It may have been more stirring
then, perhaps. If so, the Apothecary was a man in advance of his
time, and knew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and forty-
four. He fasted much, and that assisted him in his foreknowledge.
I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own room
arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest
little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery
surrounding a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man looked
in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the
town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened
doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit
and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with
which he held it--not expressed the less, because these were
evidently his genteel clothes, hastily slipped on--that I would as
soon have trodden on him as dismissed him.
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