There Were Two Other Travellers In The Vettura, Both
Frenchmen; The One About Forty Years Of Age Was A Captain
Of cavalry en
retraite, married to a Hungarian lady and settled at Florence, to which
place he was returning; the
Other, a young man of very agreeable manners,
settled likewise at Florence, as chief of a manufactory there, returning
from Lyons, his native city, whither he had been to see his relations. I
never in my life met with two characters so diametrically opposite. The
Captain was quite a bourru in his manners, yet he had a sort of dry,
sarcastic, satirical humour that was very diverting to those who escaped
his lash. Whether he really felt the sentiments he professed, or whether he
assumed them for the purpose of chiming in with the times, I cannot say,
but he said he rejoiced at the fall of Napoleon. My other companion,
however, expressed great regret as his downfall, not so much from a regard
for the person of Napoleon, as for the concomitant degradation and conquest
of his country, and he spoke of the affairs of France with a great deal of
feeling and patriotism.
The Captain seemed to have little or no feeling for anybody but himself;
indeed, he laughed at all sentiment and said he did not believe in virtue
or disinterestedness. When, among other topics of conversation, the loss
the French Army sustained at Waterloo was brought on the tapis, he said,
"Eh bien! qu 'importe? dans une seule nuit a Paris on en fabriquera assez
pour les remplacer!" A similar sentiment has been attributed to the great
Conde.[78] We had a variety of amusing arguments and disputes on the road;
the Captain railed at merchants, and said that he did not believe that
honor or virtue existed among mercantile people (no compliment, by the bye,
to the young fabricant, who bore it, however, with great good humour,
contenting himself with now and then giving a few slaps at the military for
their rapacity, which mercantile people on the Continent have now and then
felt, before the French Revolution, as well as after). The whole road from
Turin to Alexandria della Paglia is a fine broad chausee. The first day's
journey brought us to Asti. A rich plain on each side of the road, the
horizon on our right bounded by the Appennines, on our left by the Alps,
both diverging, formed the landscape. Asti is an ancient, well and solidly
built city, but rather gloomy in its appearance. It is remarkable for being
the birthplace of Vittorio Alfieri, the celebrated tragic poet, who has
excelled all other dramatic poets in the general denouement of his
pieces, except, perhaps, Voltaire alone. I do not speak of Alfleri so much
as a poet as a dramaturgus. I may be mistaken, and it is, perhaps,
presumptuous in me to attempt to judge, but it has always appeared to me
that Voltaire and Alfieri have managed dramatic effect and the intrigue and
catastrophe of their tragedies better than any other authors. Shakespeare,
God as he is in genius, is in this particular very deficient. Schiller,
too, the greatest modern poetic genius perhaps and the Shakespeare of
Germany, has here failed also, and nothing can be more correct than the
estimate of Alfieri made by Forsyth[79] when, after speaking of his
defects, he says: "Yet where lives the tragic poet equal to Alfieri?
Schiller (then living also) may perhaps excel him in those peals of terror
which flash thro' his gloomy and tempestuous scene, but he is far inferior
in the mechanism of his drama."
To return to my first day's journey from Turin. It was a very long day's
work, and we did not arrive at Asti till very late, after having performed
the last hour, half in the dark, on a road which is by no means in good
repute. The character of the lower class of Piedmontese is not good. They
are ferocious, vindictive and great marauders. They make excellent soldiers
during war and they not unfrequently, on being disbanded after peace, by
way of keeping their hand in practise and of having the image of war before
their eyes, ease the traveller of his coin and sometimes of his life. Our
conversation partook of these reminiscences, and during the latter part of
our journey turned entirely on bandits "force and guile," so that we were
quite rejoiced at seeing the smoke and light of the town of Asti and
hearing the dogs bark, which reminded me of Ariosto's lines:
Non molto va che dalle vie supreme
De' tetti uscir vede il vapor del fuoco
Sente cani abbajar, muggire armento,
Viene alla villa, e piglia alloggiamenti.[80]
Nor far the warrior had pursued his best,
Ere, eddying from a roof, he saw the smoke,
Heard noise of dog and kine, a farm espied,
And thitherward in quest of lodging hied.
- Trans. W.S. ROSE.
We met on alighting at the door of a large spacious inn, two ladies who had
very much the appearance of the two damsels at the inn where Don Quixote
alighted and received his order of knighthood; but, in spite of their
amorous glances and a decided leer of invitation, I had like Sacripante's
steed more need of "riposo e d'esca che di nuova giostra." The usual
Italian supper was put before us, and very good it was, viz., Imprimis: A
minestra (soup), generally made of beef or veal with vermicelli or
macaroni in it and its never failing accompaniment in Italy, grated
Parmesan cheese. Then a lesso (bouilli) of beef, veal or mutton, or all
three; next an umido (fricassee) of cocks' combs and livers, a favourite
Italian dish; then a frittura of chickens' livers, fish or vegetables
fried. Then an umido or ragout of veal, fish with sauce; and lastly, an
arrosto (roast) of fowls, veal, game, or all three. The arrosto is
generally very dry and done to cinders almost.
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