Chapter VII: An Unexpected Proposal (3)

“I say, woman, go to bed and leave me alone,” thundered Roony, bringing down his huge fist on the table with a thump which made everything in the shanty rattle.

Poor, poor Helen! With a heart torn by anguish, she obeyed. But not a wink of sleep came to her――no, not a wink, and never night seemed longer than this one. But her husband slept like a top, nor opened his eyes until ten the next morning; then, as soon as he was dressed, and without waiting for breakfast, out he went to take a drink.

“Oh! what is coming? What is going to happen now?” thought Helen, as she watched him enter the bar-room. Then kneeling down, she said a prayer.

The clock had just struck noon when Mike returned, accompanied part of the way by another man, who helped him mount the difficult path which wound up the rock; and Roony needed assistance, for even when he gained the summit he could not walk straight, and fell within a yard of his door. Quick Helen ran to him; for, although his condition filled her with disgust, yet she could not abide the thought of other eyes than hers discovering him thus. “Come in, husband, come in the house,” she said, taking his arm. Scarcely, however, had she got him on his feet again when he caught her by the throat and exclaimed, in the voice of a wild beast, “Ah, ha! now I’m going to beat you.” But in an instant Helen broke loose from him; then rushing back into the shanty, she called her children and bade them hurry out on the rock. The little things obeyed, too innocent to know what the trouble was. Then facing her husband, who was scowling at her from the threshold, “Now enter,” she said, “and beat me if you will. Here, at least, nobody will witness the deed.” Roony staggered in and Helen closed the door.

That evening, after pressing her children many times to her poor bruised heart, Helen went away. She quitted the home where she had once been so happy, and, as she went, she said to herself: “If on my wedding day an angel from heaven had told me this, I should not have believed him.”

But the step she was now taking was all for the best. In his madness Roony had threatened to kill her. “And he might do it,” she sighed, “for when he is intoxicated he doesn’t know what he is doing. And then all his life afterward he would be haunted by remorse. Poor Michael! I believe he still loves me. For his own sake I am going away.”

It was Helen’s intention to seek refuge with a family who dwelt not far off, and for whom she had once done some work. They received her very kindly, and wondered ever so much at the ugly cut under one of her eyes, from which the red drops were still oozing; and her upper lip, too, was cut. But Helen refused to tell who had ill-used her. “Pray, ask no questions,” she said. “Only furnish me with employment; I’ll drudge; I’ll do anything to earn a little money.” Accordingly, they gave her a number of shirts to make; and being a deft hand at needle-work, she was able to gain quite a good livelihood. But it was not for herself that Helen labored, ’twas for those whom she loved better than herself. And every evening, when the stars began to twinkle, she visited her old home, and there, peeping through the window, would watch little Mike and Nell with yearning eyes. And once she saw her husband seated by the stove, eating a piece of the bread and meat which she had left at the door the previous evening.

“Oh! thank God!” she said, “that I am able to support him and the children. Perhaps ere long my prayers will be heard, and I shall be happy again.”

But Roony was still drinking steadily; even now, as he ate the cold victuals, he was barely able to sit on the chair, and so the poor woman did not venture to show herself. Next day, however, the fifth since she left home, the longed-for opportunity presented itself; Mike was sober, and with bounding heart Helen went into the shanty.

“O wife!” he exclaimed, rising to meet her, “’tis an age since I laid eyes on you. Where have you been?” Then his countenance suddenly growing dark as a thundercloud, “but, by heaven! what’s happened? How came those bruises on your face? Somebody has ill-treated you! Tell me the villain’s name, that I may take his heart’s blood.”

“I’ll never tell his name,” answered Helen, in a low but firm voice. “Never!”

For about a minute Roony gazed on her in silence; the mournful, the shocking truth seemed to be gradually dawning upon him. “Oh! is it possible? Could I have done it――done such a wicked, brutal thing?” he asked himself. Then, falling on his knees, he bathed her feet with bitter tears. Helen wept also, while the children ceased their gambols and wondered what was the matter. But presently the wife bade him rise, then, twining her arms round his neck, gave him a tender embrace, by which he knew that he was forgiven. And now for a brief half-hour, oh! how happy he was, and how happy she was! During the dark days which followed Helen often looked back to those fleeting moments; ’twas like a gleam of sunshine flung across a scathed and desolate landscape.

“Now, husband dear,” she said after he had fondled her a little while, “let me put things to rights.” Whereupon she took her broom, swept the floor, and sprinkled it with clean sand; the pictures were dusted; the clock set agoing; the rosebush watered; nor was the poor goat forgotten. And delighted, indeed, was the half-starved creature to see her again.

“Helen!” exclaimed Mike, while she was thus employed, “a wife like you is a priceless treasure. Would to Heaven I had listened to you Christmas morning! What a different man I’d be now!”

“Well, love, all is bright once more,” answered Helen, cheerily. He made no response save a deep sigh.

“Why, husband dear, what troubles you?” she asked, her look of joy vanishing in a moment.

“No slave was ever bound by such chains as bind me,” he groaned, dropping his forehead in his hands. “And it all comes from that one fatal drink.”

“Well, pray, dear, pray to God, and I will pray with you.”

“Too late! The craving for liquor which seizes me at times is irresistible; ’tis seizing me now――the demon!”

“O my Saviour!” cried Helen, trembling and turning pale. The words had hardly left her lips when the door opened and a strange face――at least it was new to her――peeped in.

“Time!” spoke the chief of the Black-eye Club in a voice which caused Roony to start to his feet.

“Begone!” cried Helen, advancing boldly toward the intruder.

“Time!” he repeated, now holding up a pistol. But, nothing daunted, she was about to try and close the door on him, when her husband slipped past, and ere she could recover from her amazement they were both beyond the rock and half way to the grog-shop.

That night the poor woman remained in the shanty, watching, and weeping, and praying. But her husband did not come back till sunrise; and then he was so crazy with drink that she deemed it best to quit her home once more. Accordingly, she returned to the kind people who had given her shelter and employment. But it was not easy to settle down anew to her sewing; the needle would drop from her fingers and a cold fear thrill through her veins as she thought of the repulsive, sin-stamped face which had peeped into the shanty and enticed her dear Michael away. We may imagine, also, her agony of mind when it was reported that a burglary, accompanied by murder, had been committed during the night, and that suspicion pointed to certain members of the Black-eye Club. But, to her unspeakable relief, Mike was not among those who were arrested. The chief of the gang, however, was; and condemned, too, to be hanged; which sentence would doubtless have been carried out had he not managed to escape from prison. This incident, far from ruining the Black-eyes, only afforded them a pleasing excitement; like rats when the cat comes, they dived into their holes for a space; then out they came as flourishing as ever, and Roony was one of their most popular members.

But let us be brief with our story. Why linger over poor Helen’s misery? Why tell of all the brutal treatment she suffered?

Month after month rolled by. Spring came; summer followed spring. Yet there was no change for the better in Mike. His shanty, once the prettiest and cleanest of all the shanties on Manhattan Island, grew to be the dirtiest and most forlorn-looking. The door was kicked off its hinges, ugly rags and papers fluttered in the broken windows, and occasionally the Black-eye Club assembled on the rock, making it the scene of a drunken revel. But brave, faithful Helen continued to visit her children every evening after dark, carrying them food and clothing. She would not remove them from the spot which she still called home, for she hoped that the sight of the little innocents would sooner or later call her husband back to his old self again. And every day Helen went to St. Paul’s church and made the Stations of the Cross; this was her favorite devotion. “And if my Saviour suffered so much,” she would say, “oh! surely, I can bear my load.” Yet there were moments when she seemed well-nigh ready to sink under it. Ay, more than once Hope wrestled with Despair; but Hope always came off victorious.

If the wife’s faith was still glowing, if her trust in God continued strong as ever, nevertheless in one respect a woful change appeared in her. Oh! sad was the havoc which this year of grief, of cruel ill-treatment wrought on her once bright and lovely face! ’Twas as if a coarse hand had rubbed off the delicate tints of that sweet picture, and left behind, not the ruins of her beauty, but the ruins of those ruins.

And now in time’s monotonous circle winter is come round again; another Christmas is at hand. Evergreens and toys, laughing children and good-humored parents, with well-filled purses, all tell it to you. And papa and mamma, as they dash hither and thither in their jingling sleighs, doubt not but everybody else is happy too: Santa Claus will visit every home; Santa Claus will fill every stocking. Why, who could help feeling merry at this holy season?――unless, perhaps, the turkeys. Yes, it is Christmas Eve.

“How well I remember last Christmas!” sighed poor Helen as she leaned back in her chair and gazed with tearful eyes at the shirt which, alas! she was unable to finish. How could she finish it? She was barely able to see. Yet those livid, tell-tale marks on her visage, painful as they are, are easier to bear than the curses and unfeeling words which have broken her heart at last. As night approached, snow began to fall and the wind to blow――a keen, angry wind from the north-east; one of those winds we love so to hear howling round the house while we sit toasting our slippers by the fire. But, bitter cold as it was, Helen did not shrink from going to church; although half-blind, she could still find the way there.

She went; she made anew the stations of the Cross, and said, as she had so often said before, “If my Saviour suffered so much, oh! surely I can bear my load.” As she breathed these words to herself the ugly black-and-blue marks which disfigured her seemed to fade away, a glow of heaven shone in her face, and for a moment, one brief moment, she became once more the beautiful Helen――Helen, “the Belle of the Shanties,” as Mrs. McGowan used to call her――then suddenly she gave a start and the mien of rapture changed to a look of wonder and alarm. Who had spoken her name? There was nobody near; who could it be? While Helen was gazing about her, she heard the voice again. “Who is calling me?” she asked, her heart now throbbing violently. The words were scarcely uttered when for the third time, and more distinctly, “_Helen!_” sounded in her ear. “It is Michael!” she exclaimed, hastening to the door. “Yes, it is he calling me.” But ere she passed out of the church she broke off a sprig of evergreen and dipped it into the holy-water font. Then hiding it in her bosom, so that the angry wind might not snatch it away, she sped homeward on winged feet.

But ’twas no easy matter to get to the rock at this hour with her poor bruised eyes and in such a driving storm. Yet she did find the way. And up the rude path she climbed with marvellous agility; ’twas as though an invisible hand were leading her on.

The sight which Helen beheld on entering the shanty might have appalled any heart but hers. Her husband, his face streaming with blood, was engaged in a deadly struggle with a horrible-looking being much larger than himself, who seemed striving to make him drink from a cup which he pressed to his lips. “O Ellen!” cried Michael in a tone of despair, “save me! save me!” Quick she flew towards him, stretching forth at the same time the branch of evergreen. In another instant ’twas in his hand; then, just as he grasped it, his strange adversary uttered a demoniac cry and the cup fell to the floor, shattered in many pieces.

“Oh! I am saved,” exclaimed Roony――“saved! saved! Thank God!” But while his joyful words were ringing through the house, the fiend turned upon his deliverer and out into the black night Helen was driven. Vainly she struggled; a powerful hand, which seemed mailed in iron, thrust her out, and presently, when released from its ruthless grip, she found herself blindly groping here and there in the darkness. Round and round the house she wandered――near it always, yet never finding it.

And during these sad moments, the last moments of her life, her husband was anxiously seeking her. But it was easy to miss each other in such a snow-storm, and when he shouted her name the wild wind carried away her response, until at length, numbed by the cold, she answered him no more. And so, within a few feet of home, the brave Helen, the faithful Helen, was wrapt in a winding-sheet of snow.

* * * * *

Next morning――sweet Christmas morning――the sun rose in a cloudless sky; and as its bright beams flashed from window to window, from spire to spire, every object, the humblest, the least beautiful, became suddenly transformed into a thing of beauty. Ay, even those two icy hands peeping above the snow hard by Mike Roony’s shanty door sparkle as if they were covered with gems and have a golden halo round them. They were clasped as if in prayer, and when poor Mike discovered them he cried aloud: “Oh! she prayed for me to the last; she prayed for me to the last!”

His wail was heard at the next rock, and far beyond it. Then a crowd began to collect, a very large crowd; for Helen was known to many, and her husband was not the only one who shed tears over her remains this bright Christmas morning.

“I had a feeling that something was going wrong,” spoke Mrs. McGowan. Then, when Roony told of the infernal being who had attacked him, and how he had been rescued by the blessed evergreen which Helen had brought, the good woman solemnly shook her head, and whispered: “This house ought to be exorcised――indeed it ought.”

“Well, one thing I vow by all that’s holy,” ejaculated Mike, crossing himself and lifting his voice so that the crowd might hear him――“I vow never again to touch liquor――never, never, never!”

“I join you!” exclaimed a bystander.

“So do I!”

“And I too!”

“And I!” shouted a number of voices. And those who spoke were members of the notorious Black-eye Club. Then they all knelt around the body and swore, hand-in-hand together, never to drink another drop of intoxicating spirits.

And thus by Helen’s death many sinners were converted, many a drunkard’s home made happy again; for the ways of the Lord are mysterious. Good is not seldom wrought out only through tears and suffering. Oh! who will say it was not well for Helen to die?

But poor Mike was inconsolable. He who had once been so blithe and frolicsome now spoke scarcely a word. Days and weeks rolled by, yet he did not change. We may pity him indeed! There was no light in the window now to welcome him from afar as he trudged back from his work in the dusk. And when he sat down to warm himself by the stove, instead of lighting his pipe as of yore and falling into a pleasant doze, he became strangely wakeful.

Then the spectre remorse would glide out of some shadowy corner and whisper bitter words in his ear. If at times he succeeded in silencing its voice, and would give himself up to a reverie of other days, when this miserable shanty was more gorgeous to him than a palace, oh! the pleasure which the sweet vision brought was like music heard from withinside a prison wall, like sunshine seen through the bars; for those golden days would come never more. Eternity stood between him and them.

Then back remorse would creep and whisper: “You beat her――you broke her heart――you killed her――you did――you did!”

And one evening, while these torturing words were wringing his soul, he threw up his right hand――the hand which had struck her so often――and groaned aloud: “Oh! this is hell. Where’s the axe?”

Forlorn wretch! well it was that as he bared his arm and clutched the axe――ay, well it was that at that very moment the minister of God appeared to check the rash deed he contemplated, to speak soothing words, to save him, perhaps, from madness.

And as from this hour forth a new life began for Michael Roony, we end our tale with the closing advice which the priest addressed him. “My dear friend,” he said, “do not weep any more, for tears will not bring back your wife. There is nothing in this world so vain as regret. Therefore cease to mourn; strive your best to be cheerful.” Then pointing to little Mike and Nell, who were playing at his feet, “work hard, too, for these children whom she bore you. For their sake, as well as your own, keep true to the pledge of temperance, and so live here on earth that one day you may meet again your dear Helen in heaven.”

SIENA.

_Cor magis Sena pandit._

The railway from Empoli to the south passes through a rough, hilly country, following its sinuosities, spanning the valleys on gigantic arches, or plunging through the tunnelled mountains. One tunnel is a mile long――through the hill of San Dalmazzo; and when you issue from it, you see before you another hill, on which rises, stage after stage, the strange, mediæval city of Siena, to the height of nearly a thousand feet above the level of the sea. It was rather a disappointment not to enter it, as carriages from Florence do, by the celebrated Porta Camollia, where the traveller is greeted by the cordial inscription, _Cor magis Sena pandit_――Siena opens her gates even more willingly than her heart――testifying to the hospitable character of the inhabitants. The city is built on three hills, with deep ravines between them. These hills are crossed by three main streets, meeting at the Piazza del Campo, around which the city radiates like a star. There is scarcely a level spot in the whole place. Even the central square descends like the hollow of a cone. Nothing could be more favorable to the picturesque. The old brick walls of the thirteenth century, with their fortifications and thirty-eight gate-ways, go straggling up the heights. Narrow, lane-like streets, inaccessible to carriages, rush headlong down into deep ravines, sometimes through gloomy arches, the very houses clinging to the steep sides with a giddy, top-heavy air. On one of these three hills stands the cathedral, with its lofty arches and magnificent dome, a marvel of art, full of statues and bronzes, carvings and mosaics. On another is the enormous brick church of San Domenico, for ever associated with the divine raptures of St. Catharine of Siena. Palaces, as well as churches, adorn all the heights――palaces grim and time-worn, that bear old, historic names, famed in the great contests between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, in which live, secluded in their own dim halls, the aristocratic owners, keeping up their ancient customs, proud as the imperial Ghibellines or lordly Guelphs from whom they sprang. Amid all the towers, and domes, and palaces, rises, from the central square, light and slender, the tall, arrow-like Torre del Mangia, which shoots up to a prodigious height into the sapphire sky, crowned with battlements, as if to defend the city against the spirits of the air.

Yes, Siena is singularly picturesque and striking as no other city in Italy is, but sad and melancholy with its recollections of past grandeur. It cannot forget the time when it sent forth its legions to triumph over the Florentines, and had two hundred thousand inhabitants. Now it has only about a tenth of that number. Once it was great in war. It was a leader in art. Eight popes sprang from its territory, among whom were Pius II., the poet, diplomatist, and lover of art, from the Piccolomini family; the great Hildebrand, so prominent in the history of the church; and Alexander III., who deposed Frederick Barbarossa, and gave his name to a city――styled by Voltaire himself the benefactor of the human race. And like so many stars that blaze in the heaven of the Italian Church――nay, the church universal――are the Sienese saints, wondrous in life and glorified by art.

The first place into which the traveller inevitably drifts, if he attempts to explore the city alone, is the Piazza del Campo, now called, of course, Vittorio Emmanuele, in spite of Dante. This piazza is singularly imposing from its unchanged, mediæval aspect. It slopes away like an amphitheatre, being intended for public games and spectacles; Murray says, like a shell. Yes, a shell that whispers of past storms――of the tempestuous waves that have swept over the city; for it has witnessed many a popular insurrection, many a struggle between the nobles and people. Among the interesting associations we recall the haughty Ghibelline leader, Provenzano Salvani, whose name, as Dante says:

“Far and wide
Through Tuscany resounded once; and now
Is in Siena scarce with whispers named.”

It was here, when a friend of his, taken prisoner by Charles of Anjou, lay under penalty of death, unless his ransom of a thousand florins in gold should be paid within a certain time, that Provenzano, the first citizen of the republic, the conqueror of Monte Aperti, unable to pay so large a sum, humbled himself so far as to spread a carpet on this piazza, on which he sat down to solicit contributions from the public.

“When at his glory’s topmost height,
Respect of dignity all cast aside,
Freely he fixed him on Siena’s plain,
A suitor to redeem his suffering friend,
Who languished in the prison-house of Charles;
Nor, for his sake, refused through every vein to tremble.”

Dante, who meets him in Purgatory, alludes to the grandeur of this act as atoning for his ambition, which

“Reached with grasp presumptuous at the sway
Of all Siena.”

So stanch a friend would seem to have deserved a less terrible fate. On the disastrous day of Colle he was taken by the Florentines, who cut off his head, and carried it around the battle-field, fastened on a lance.

On one side of the piazza is the massive Palazzo Pubblico, bristling with battlements. On its front blazes the holy name of Jesus, held up by St. Bernardin of Siena for the reverence of the whole world. The busy throng beneath looks up in its toilsome round, and goes on, the better for a fleeting thought. Below is a pillar with the wolf of pagan Rome that bore Siena. From this palace rises the beautiful tower _del Mangia_, seen far and wide over the whole country, so called from the automaton which used to come forth at mid-day, like the Moor at Venice, to strike the hours. This figure was to the Sienese what Pasquino was to Rome. To it were confided all the epigrams of the city wits; but, alas for them! one day, when it came forth to do its duty, a spring gave way, and it fell to the ground and was dashed in pieces. This tower commands an admirable view. North, the country looks barren, but the slopes of Chianti are celebrated for their wines, and Monte Maggio is covered with forests. South and west, it is fresher and more smiling, but leads to the fatal marshes of Maremma. Santa Fiora, the most productive mountain, annually yields vast quantities of umber. The happy valleys are full of olives and wheat-fields. Farther off, to the south, the volcanic summits of Radicofani, associated with Boccaccio’s tales, blacken the horizon. To the east everything is bleak and dreary, the whole landscape of a pale, sickly green.

At the foot of the tower is a beautiful votive chapel of the Virgin, built in the fourteenth century after a pestilence which carried off eighty thousand people from Siena and its environs. It is like an open porch resting on sculptured pillars. Over the altar within are statues and a fresco of the Madonna, before which are flowers and lamps burning in the bright sunlight――all open to the air, as if to catch a passing invocation from the lips of those who might otherwise spare no thought, amid their toils, for heaven.

Siena is peculiarly the city of Mary. Before the great battle with the Florentines,

“That colored Arbia’s flood with crimson stain,”

the Sienese solemnly placed their city under the protection of the Virgin, and vowed, if victorious, to regard her as the Sovereign Lady of the land, from whom they would henceforth hold it as her vassals. After their triumph they came to lay their spoils at her feet, and had her painted as Our Lady of Victory, throned like a queen, with the Infant standing on her knee. When Duccio, some years later, finished his Madonna, he wrote beneath it: _Mater sancta Dei, sis causa Senis requiei!_――Give peace to Siena!――and the painting was transported, amid public rejoicings, to the cathedral. Business was entirely suspended. All the shops were closed. The archbishop, at the head of the clergy and magistrates, accompanied it with a vast procession of people, with lighted tapers in their hands, as if around a shrine. The trumpets sounded; the bells rang; nothing could equal the enthusiasm. The picture was placed over the high altar of the church.

This was during the height of Siena’s grandeur, when the wisdom of its laws corresponded to the depth of its religious sentiments, so that, while most of the Italian republics were ruined by intestine commotions between the nobles and people, Siena had the wisdom to modify its constitution in such a way as to admit the representatives of both parties to the government, and so preserve the vigor of the nation. It was thus she was enabled to extend her dominion and win the great victory of Monte Aperti, in which ten thousand Florentines were left dead on the field.

On one side of the piazza is the palace of the Sansedoni, one of the great Ghibelline families belonging to the feudal aristocracy of Siena――a frowning, battlemented palace, with a mutilated tower built by a special privilege in 1215. In it is a chapel in honor of the Beato Ambrogio Sansedoni, a Dominican friar who belonged to this illustrious family. It was he whom Pope Clement IV., after a vain effort to save the unfortunate Conradin of Souabia from death, sent to administer the sacraments and console the young prince in his last moments. Ambrogio distinguished himself as a professor of theology at Paris, Cologne, and Rome.

Close beside the Palazzo Buonsignori, one of the finest in the city, is the house said by tradition to have been inhabited by the unhappy Pia de Tolomei, indebted for her celebrity to Dante, rather than to her misfortunes. He meets her in the milder shades of Purgatory, among those who had by violence died, but who, repenting and forgiving,

“Did issue out of life at peace with God.”

Her death was caused by the deadly miasmas of “Maremma’s pestilential fen,” to which her cruel husband had banished her.

It was a member of the Tolomei family――the Beato Bernardino――who, in the fourteenth century, founded the Olivetan Order. He was previously a professor at the university of Siena, but, being struck blind while discussing some philosophical subject in his lecture-room, he resolved, though he soon recovered his sight, to embrace the religious life; and when he next appeared in his chair, instead of resuming his philosophical discussions, he astonished his audience by insisting on the vanity of all earthly acquirements, and the importance of the only knowledge that can save the soul. Several of his pupils were so impressed by his words that they followed him when he retired to one of the family estates not far from Siena, which he called Monte Oliveto, whence the name of the order. Bernardino fell a victim to his zeal in attending to the sick in the time of a great plague. The convent he founded became a magnificent establishment, with grounds luxuriantly cultivated, a church adorned by the arts, and apartments so numerous that the Emperor Charles V., and his train of five thousand, all lodged there at once.

The Palazzo Bandanelli, where Pope Alexander III. was born, is gloomy and massive as a prison, with iron gratings at the arched windows, brick walls black with age, from which project great iron rings, and on the doors immense knockers of wrought iron, made when blacksmiths were genuine artists. But, however dismal his birthplace, Alexander III. was enlightened in his views. It was in 1167 he declared, in the name of a council, that all Christians ought to be exempted from servitude.

To go back to the Piazza del Campo. Before the Sansedoni palace is the Fonte Gaja――so called from the joyful acclamations of the people, when water was brought into the square in 1343. It is surrounded by an oblong basin of white marble, elegantly sculptured by Giacomo della Quercia, to whom was henceforth given the name of Del Fonte.

Siena, being on a height, was, from the first, obliged to provide water for its inhabitants at great expense. Aqueducts were constructed in the time of the Romans. But a still grander work was achieved in the middle ages, when water was brought from the neighboring mountains by an aqueduct about twenty miles long, that passed beneath the city, giving rise, perhaps, to the derisive report in Dante’s time that the hill was tunnelled in search of the river Diana:

“The fancied stream
They sought, of Dian called.”

These vast subterranean works so excited the admiration of Charles V. that he said Siena was more wonderful below ground than above. Now there are three hundred and fifty-five wells in the city, and eighteen fountains. The deep well in the cloister of the Carmine is called the Pozzo di Diana.

The most noted of the fountains is Fonte Branda, whose waters were so famous in Dante’s time for their sweetness and purity that he makes Adamo of Brescia, the coiner of counterfeit money, exclaim, amid the flames of the Inferno, that to behold the instigators of his crime undergoing a like torture would be sweeter to him than the cool waters of Fonte Branda:

“For Branda’s limpid font I would not change
The welcome sight.”

This fountain has also been celebrated by Alfieri, who often came to Siena to visit his friend, Francesco Gori, with whom he remained months at a time. He liked the character of the people, and said, when he went away, that he left a part of his heart behind. And yet Dante, perhaps because a Florentine, accused the Sienese of being light and vain:

“Was ever race
Light as Siena’s? Sure, not France herself
Can show a tribe so frivolous and vain.”

Formerly, if not still, giddy people in Tuscany were often asked if they had been drinking water from the Fonte Branda, as if that would account for any excess.

The Sienese are proud of the fame and antiquity of this fount, which is known to have existed in 1081. It flows at the very bottom of one of the deep ravines which makes Siena so peculiar, between two precipitous hills, one crowned by the Duomo, and the other by the church of St. Dominic, and you look from one to the other in silent wonder. The whole quarter is densely populated. The people are called Fontebrandini――mostly, as five centuries ago, tanners, dyers, and fullers, who are reputed to be proud, and are to Siena what the Trasteverini are to Rome. The streets around diverge from a market-place, on one side of which is the fount under a long, open arcade of stone, of immense thickness, built against the hillside. You go down to a paved court, as to something sacred, by a flight of steps as wide as the arcade is long. Here are stone seats around, as if to accommodate the gossips of the neighborhood. Three pointed archways, between which lions look out with prey between their outstretched paws, open into the arcade, where flow the waters, gathered from the surrounding hills, by three apertures, into an enormous stone reservoir. The surplus waters pass off into other tanks beyond the arcade, for the use of the workmen of the quarter. Lemon-trees hang over the fount, and grape-vines trail from tree to tree. The steep hillside is covered with bushes and verdure up to the church of San Domenico, which stands stern and majestic, with its crenelated tower amid the olive-trees.

An old Sienese romance is connected with the Fonte Branda. Cino da Pistoja, a poet and celebrated professor of jurisprudence at Siena in the fourteenth century, whose death Petrarch laments in a sonnet, promised his daughter, a young lady of uncommon beauty, to any one of his pupils who should best solve a knotty law-question. It was a young man, misshapen in form, to whom the prize was adjudged, and the poor girl, in her horror, threw herself into the Fonte Branda. Her suitor, sensible of the value of the prize, plunged in after her, and not only saved her life, but fortunately succeeded in winning her affections.

Turning to the right, and ascending the Costa dei Tintori, you come in a few moments to the house of St. Catharine of Siena, once the shop of her father, a dyer, but now a series of oratories and chapels, sanctified by holy memories and adorned by art. It is built of brick, with two arched galleries, one above the other, of a later period. _Sposæ XPI. Katharinæ Domvs_ is on the front, with a small head of the saint graven in marble, and another tablet styling her the Seraphic Catharine. Below hang tanned skins, probably for sale. The memories of the place are truly seraphic, but the odors would by no means be considered so by those who do not believe in the dignity and sacredness of labor; for the whole quarter――at least, when we were there――was redolent of tan. Skins hung on all the houses. Tan-cakes for fuel were displayed on shelves for sale at every door. Everybody seemed industrious. There was none of the _far niente_ we like to associate with Italy. It was a positive grievance to find great heaps of tan around the Fonte Branda, so poetical to us, because associated with the Divine Poet. But it was still harder to have the same odors follow us to the very house of the seraphic St. Catharine, the mystic Bride of Christ. Very little change can have taken place during the last five centuries in the neighborhood where bloomed this fair lily of the church, and, in one sense, this is a satisfaction. The house itself is of the most touching interest. There are the stairs Catharine, when a child, used to ascend, with an _Ave_ at every step, and over which the legend says she was so often borne by the angels. Everywhere through the passages are the emblematic lily and heart. An oratory has been made of the kitchen which became to Catharine a very sanctuary, instead of a place of low cares, where she served Christ under the form of her father, the Blessed Virgin under that of her mother, and the disciples in the persons of her brothers and sisters. Her father’s _Bottega_ has also been converted into an oratory. In the garden where she loved to cultivate the symbolic rose and lily and violet for the altar, is a chapel in which hangs the miraculous crucifix painted by Giunta of Pisa, framed in pillars of black marble, over the altar. Before this crucifix she received the stigmata in the church of St. Christina at Pisa. In these various oratories are a profusion of paintings by Sodoma, Vanni, and other eminent artists. Del Pacchia has attained the very perfection of feminine beauty in his painting of St. Catharine’s visit to the shrine of St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano――a genuine production of Christian inspiration. Salimbeni represents her calm amid the infuriated, ungrateful Florentines after her return from Avignon; and Sebastian Folli, her appearance before Gregory XI.

But the most sacred part of the house is her chamber, a little, dark cell about fifteen feet long and eight or nine wide. A bronze door now opens into this sanctuary. Here you are shown the board on which she slept, and other relics of the saint. Here she passed nights in prayer and converse with the angels. Here she scourged her frail body, unconscious that her mother was weeping at the door. Here she wrote the admirable letters so remarkable for their purity and elegance of style. Here took place the divine _Sposalizio_ which, immortalized by art, we see all over Italy. Here, when calumniated by the repulsive object of her heroic charity, she came to pour out her pure soul, that shrank from the foul accusations, before the heavenly Bridegroom; but when he appeared with two crowns, one of gold set with jewels, and the other of thorns, she unhesitatingly chose the latter, pressing it deep into her head, thus becoming for all time, in the world of art, the thorn-crowned Catharine. Pius IX., when he visited the house in 1857, prayed long in this cell, where lived five centuries ago the obscure maiden who, for a time, almost guided St. Peter’s bark.

On St. Catharine’s day the house is richly adorned and resplendent with light. The walls are covered with emblems and verses commemorating her life. The altars have on their finest ornaments. The neighboring streets are strewn with flowers and hung with flags. Hangings are at all the windows. A silver statue of the saint is borne into the street by a long procession of clergy and people. The magistrates join the _cortège_, and they all go winding up to San Domenico with chants, perfumes, and flowers, where a student from the college Tolomei pronounces a eulogy on their illustrious townswoman. When night comes on, the whole hill around Fonte Branda is illuminated, the rosary is said at the foot of the Madonnas, and hymns are sung in honor of the saint.

St. Catharine’s life, in which everything transcends the usual laws of nature, has been written by her confessor, the Blessed Raymond of Capua――the life of one saint by another. He was not a credulous man easily led away by fantasies of the imagination, but one of incontestable ability and knowledge, who relates what he witnessed in the soul of whose secrets he was the depositary, who scrutinized every prodigy, but only to give additional splendor to the truth.

Raymond was a descendant of Piero della Vigna (the celebrated chancellor of Frederick II.), whose spirit Dante finds imprisoned in “the drear, mystic wood” of the Inferno, and, plucking a limb unwittingly from

“The wild thorn of his wretched shade,”

to his horror brings forth at once cries and blood. For nineteen years Raymond was general of the Dominican Order. Pope Urban VI. confided the most delicate and difficult missions to him; called him his eyes, his tongue, his feet, and his hands; held him up to the veneration of princes and people; and would have raised him to the highest dignities but for the opposition of the saint. No one, therefore, could have greater claims to our confidence.

Catharine Benincasa was born in 1347. From her earliest years she was a being apart, and favored with divine communications. Uncomprehended at first by those around her, her home became to her a place of trials. Her parents tried to draw her into the world, and she cut off her long, golden hair. They wished her to marry, and she consecrated herself to a higher love. They then subjected her to household labor, but she found peace in its vulgar details. She worked by day. At night she prayed till lost in ecstasy, insensible to everything earthly. She wished to enter the Third Order of St. Dominic, but was refused admission because she was too young and beautiful. It was only after an illness that made her unrecognizable that she was received; but she continued, like all the members, an inmate of her father’s house. Her soul was peculiarly alive to the sweet harmonies of nature. She liked to go into the woods, at springtime, to listen to the warbling of the birds and watch the mysterious movements of awakening vegetation. She loved the mountain heights, with their wild melodies of winds and torrents, as well as the gentle rustling of the air among the leaves, which seemed to her like nature’s whispered prayer. She said, as she looked at the ant, a thought of God had created it. She loved flowers. She had a taste for music, and liked to sing hymns as she sewed. The name of Mary from her lips was said to leave a singular harmony in the ears of her listeners. She sympathized in every kind of misery to aid it; lent a helping hand to every infirmity, and often served in the hospital, choosing those who were abandoned by the rest of the world as the objects of her care. She rose above the wants of the body. From her childhood she never ate meat, the very odor of which became repugnant to her. For years she subsisted from Ash Wednesday till Whitsuntide solely on the Holy Eucharist, which she received every morning. She entered into all the troubles of the times, diffusing everywhere the pure light of divine charity. Though without human instruction, she astonished the doctors of the church by her profound knowledge of theology. “The purest Italian welled from her untutored lips.” She wrote to popes, cardinals, princes, and republics. Some of her letters are to Sir John Hawkwood, or, as the Italians call him, Giovanni Aguto, the ferocious English _condottiere_, who stained the flag of the church, and then entered the service of her enemies. She takes a foremost rank among the writers of the age――that of Boccaccio, who lacks her touching grace and simplicity.

Siena, at the time of St. Catharine, was no longer the powerful, united city it had been a century before, but in its turn had become the prey of anarchy and division. The different classes of people were at war with each other. They proscribed each other; and private hatred took advantage of the disorder to indulge in every kind of revenge. The Macconi were at variance with the Rinaldini; the Salimbeni with the Tolomei; the Malvotti with the Piccolomini.

War reigned all over Italy. Milan and all Lombardy were ravaged by the Visconti. Naples was a prey to the excesses caused by Queen Joanna. Florence, that had been devoted to the church, was now governed by the Ghibellines, who went to every extreme against the Guelphs, whose cause, says Dean Milman, “was more (!) than that of the church: it was that of freedom and humanity.” The States of the church were ravaged. Rome itself, widowed and abandoned, “with as many wounds as she had palaces and churches,” as Petrarch says, was in a complete state of anarchy.

Amid all these horrors St. Catharine moved, an angel of peace. God gave her a wonderful power of appeasing private resentments and calming popular tumults. Inveterate enemies clasped hands under her influence. Veteran warriors, and republics themselves, listened respectfully to her voice. She wrote to Pope Gregory XI. at Avignon, pleading the cause of all Italy, and urging him to return to Rome, where he could overrule the passions that agitated the country, and restore dignity to the Apostolic See. Her heart bled at the sight of so much misery and crime. “Peace! peace!” she wrote to the pope――“peace for the love of a crucified God! Do not regard the ignorance and blindness and pride of your children. You will perhaps say you are bound by conscience to recover what belongs to holy church. Alas! I acknowledge it; but when a choice is to be made, it should be of that which is most valuable. The treasure of the church is the Blood of Christ shed for the redemption of souls. This treasure of blood has not been given for temporal dominion, but for the salvation of the human race. If you are obliged to recover the cities and treasures the church has lost, still more are you bound to win back the souls that are the true riches of the church, which is impoverished by losing them. It is better to let go the gold of temporal than the gold of spiritual wealth. You must choose between two evils――that of losing grandeur, power, and temporal prosperity, and the loss of grace in the souls that owe obedience to your Holiness. You will not restore beauty to the church by the sword, by severity and war, but by peaceful measures. You will combat more successfully with the rod of mercy and kindness than of chastisement. By these means you will recover what belongs to you both spiritually and temporally.”

Noble liberty on the part of the dyer’s daughter! And it is to the honor of Pope Gregory that he listened to her with respect. It was time to pour oil on the troubled waters. The proud republic of Florence, after revolting against all spiritual authority, torturing the priests, declaring liberty preferable to salvation, and exciting the papal cities to rebellion, had been laid under an interdict. The people began to feel the disastrous effects on their commerce, and came to solicit Catharine’s intervention with the pope. She went to Avignon, where she made known her mission in a public consistory. “She passed from her father’s shop to the court of princes, from the calmness of solitude to the troubles of factions; and everywhere she was in her place, because she had found in solitude a peace above all the agitations of the world, and a profound charity.”

Pope Gregory left her to dictate the terms of peace with the Florentines, though he foresaw their ingratitude. Nay, more: after some hesitation he decided to return to Rome. Nor was St. Catharine the only woman that urged him to do so. St. Bridget of Sweden added the influence of her prophetic voice. Ortensia di Gulielmo, one of the best poets of the day, thus begins a sonnet:

“Ecco, Signor, la greggia tua d’intorno
Cinta da lupi a divorla intenti.
Ecco tutti gli onor d’Italia spenti,
Poiché fa altrove il gran Pastore soggiorno.”[108]

Catharine’s return to Siena was celebrated by festive songs:

“Thou didst go up to the great temple,
Thou didst enter the mighty consistory;
The words of thy mouth were full of power;
Pope and cardinals were persuaded to depart.
Thou didst direct the course of their wings towards the See of
Peter. O virgin of Siena! how great is thy praise――soul prompt
in movement, energetic in action.”

On the tomb of Gregory XI., in the church of St. Francesca at Rome, St. Catharine is represented walking before the pope’s mule as he makes his triumphal entrance into the city――a symbol of her guiding influence. From this time she took a prominent part in all the affairs of Italy. But the re-establishment of the papal throne at Rome was her last joy on earth. At the death of Pope Gregory fresh disorders broke out. Catharine’s life slowly wasted away, inwardly consumed, as she declared, for the church. She died in Rome at the age of thirty-three, and lies buried under the high altar of the Minerva, surrounded by lamps and flowers. Her countryman, Pius II., canonized her, not only at the request of the magistrates of Siena, but of several of the sovereigns of Europe.

Siena boasts of other saints: St. Ansano, the first apostle of the country, beheaded on the banks of the Arbia in the time of Diocletian; Galgano di Lolo, who led an angelic life in the mountains; the founder of Monte Oliveto, whose order sheltered Tasso; Ambrogio Sansedoni, the confessor of Conradin, noted for his eloquence and sanctity; St. Bernardin, on whose breast glows the potent Name; Beata Nera Tolomei, noted for her ascetic charity; the poor Pietro Pettinajo, who devoted himself to the plague-stricken in the hospital della Scala; Aldobrandescha Ponzi, who wished to be crowned with thorns like Christ; the Blessed John Colombini, whose only passion was to be like Jesus; and many more besides. But St. Catharine――the heroine of divine love――is the most sublime expression of Sienese piety, and of her is the city especially proud. Her statue was placed by the republic on the front of its glorious cathedral, and she is represented in the gorgeous picture of Pinturicchio in the library, where, as Mrs. Stowe says, “borne in celestial repose and purity amid all the powers and dignitaries of the church, she is canonized as one of those that shall reign and intercede with Christ in heaven.”

From St. Catharine’s house you go winding up under the mulberry-trees to San Domenico, soon leaving the tops of the houses below you. On the way is the place where Catharine, when a child, coming down the hill one evening with Stefano, her favorite brother, turned to look back, and saw the heavens opened above the campanile of the church, and the Great High-Priest seated on a radiant throne, around which stood SS. Peter, Paul, and John, who seemed with uplifted hands to bless her. Keeping on to the top of the hill, you come to a large green, silent and deserted, before the church. The street that properly leads to it is well named the _Via del Paradiso_. The church of St. Dominic is vast and imposing, though of severe simplicity of style, offering a marked contrast to the richness of the Duomo. It is shaped like the letter T, without aisles or apsis. Rafters support the vault, but at the entrance to the transepts is an enormous arch of singular boldness. There is something broad and expansive about the atmosphere of the church, as often found in the churches of the Dominican Order. Even with a considerable number of worshippers it would seem solitary. In one of its chapels is a Madonna, celebrated in the history of art, long attributed to Guido of Siena, but now proved to be by Guido di Graziano, a contemporary of Cimabue, whose Madonnas it resembles, with its oblique eyes, large head, and a certain angular stiffness. Among other noted paintings is one of Santa Barbara by Matteo da Siena, very beautiful in expression. She sits, crowned by two angels, with a palm in one hand and a tower-like tabernacle in the other, in which the Host is exposed above a chalice. SS. Magdalen and Catharine are at her side.