The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

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"Let us drink great draughts, brothers," he cried, leaving off his
strange anointment for a while, to lift a great glass, filled with
sparkling liquor, to his lips. "Let us drink to our approaching triumph.
Let us drink to the great poison, Macousha. Subtle seed of Death,--swift
hurricane that sweeps away Life,--vast hammer that crushes brain and
heart and artery with its resistless weight,--I drink to it."

"It is a noble decoction, Duke Balthazar," said the old fortune-teller
and midwife, Madame Filomel, nodding in her chair as she swallowed her
wine in great gulps. "Where did you obtain it?"

"It is made," said the Wondersmith, swallowing another great goblet-full
of wine ere he replied, "in the wild woods of Guiana, in silence and
in mystery. But one tribe of Indians, the Macoushi Indians, know the
secret. It is simmered over fires built of strange woods, and the maker
of it dies in the making. The place, for a mile around the spot where
it is fabricated, is shunned as accursed. Devils hover over the pot in
which it stews; and the birds of the air, scenting the smallest breath
of its vapor from far away, drop to earth with paralyzed wings, cold and
dead."

"It kills, then, fast?" asked Kerplonne, the artificial eyemaker,--his
own eyes gleaming, under the influence of the wine, with a sinister
lustre, as if they had been fresh from the factory, and were yet
untarnished by use.

"Kills?" echoed the Wondersmith, derisively; "it is swifter than
thunderbolts, stronger than lightning. But you shall see it proved
before we let forth our army on the city accursed. You shall see a
wretch die, as if smitten by a falling fragment of the sun."

"What? Do you mean Solon?" asked Oaksmith and the fortune-teller
together.

"Ah! you mean the young man who makes the commerce with books?" echoed
Kerplonne. "It is well. His agonies will instruct us."

"Yes! Solon," answered Hippe, with a savage accent. "I hate him, and he
shall die this horrid death. Ah! how the little fellows will leap upon
him, when I bring him in, bound and helpless, and give their beautiful
wicked souls to them! How they will pierce him in ten thousand spots
with their poisoned weapons, until his skin turns blue and violet and
crimson, and his form swells with the venom,--until his hump is lost in
shapeless flesh! He hears what I say, every word of it. He is in the
closet next door, and is listening. How comfortable he feels! How
the sweat of terror rolls on his brow! How he tries to loosen his bonds,
and curses all earth and heaven when he finds that he cannot! Ho! ho!
Handsome lover of Zonela, will she kiss you when you are livid and
swollen? Brothers, let us drink again,--drink always. Here, Oaksmith,
take these brushes,--and you, Filomel,--and finish the anointing of
these swords. This wine is grand. This poison is grand. It is fine to
have good wine to drink, and good poison to kill with; is it not?" and,
with flushed face and rolling eyes, the Wondersmith continued to drink
and use his brush alternately.

The others hastened to follow his example. It was a horrible scene:
those four wicked faces; those myriads of tiny faces, just as wicked;
the certain unearthly air that pervaded the apartment; the red,
unwholesome glare cast by the fire; the wild and reckless way in which
the weird company drank the red-illumined wine.

The anointing of the swords went on rapidly, and the wine went as
rapidly down the throats of the four poisoners. Their faces grew more
and more inflamed each instant; their eyes shone like rolling fireballs;
their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to
and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon
convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences,
and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of the
swords went on.

"I see the faces of millions of young corpses," babbled Herr Hippe,
gazing, with swimming eyes, into the silver bowl that contained the
Macousha poison,--"all young, all Christians,--and the little fellows
dancing, dancing, and stabbing, stabbing. Filomel, Filomel, I say!"

"Well, Grand Duke," snored the old woman, giving a violent lurch.

"Where's the bottle of souls?"

"In my right-hand pocket, Herr Hippe"; and she felt, so as to assure
herself that it was there. She half drew out the black bottle,
before described in this narrative, and let it slide again into her
pocket,--let it slide again, but it did not completely regain its former
place. Caught by some accident, it hung half out, swaying over the edge
of the pocket, as the fat midwife rolled backwards and forwards in her
drunken efforts at equilibrium.

"All right," said Herr Hippe, "perfectly right! Let's drink."

He reached out his hand for his glass, and, with a dull sigh, dropped on
the table, in the instantaneous slumber of intoxication. Oaksmith soon
fell back in his chair, breathing heavily. Kerplonne followed. And the
heavy, stertorous breathing of Filomel told that she slumbered also; but
still her chair retained its rocking motion, and still the bottle of
souls balanced itself on the edge of her pocket.

VII.

LET LOOSE.

Sure enough, Solon heard every word of the fiendish talk of the
Wondersmith. For how many days he had been shut up, bound in the
terrible net, in that dark closet, he did not know; but now he felt that
his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in
efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe
placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this
meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it
was better than the horrible death that menaced him. His brain reeled
with terror at the prospect of it. Then, where was Zonela? Why did she
not come to his rescue? But she was, perhaps, dead. The darkness, too,
appalled him. A faint light, when the moon was bright, came at night
through a chink far up in the wall; and the only other hole in the
chamber was an aperture through which, at some former time, a stove-pipe
had been passed. Even if he were free, there would have been small hope
of escape; but, laced as it were in a network of steel, what was to be
done? He groaned and writhed upon the floor, and tore at the boards with
his hands, which were free from the wrists down. All else was as solidly
laced up as an Indian papoose. Nothing but pride kept him from shrieking
aloud, when, on the night of New Year's Eve, be heard the fiendish Hippe
recite the programme of his murder.

While he was thus wailing and gnashing his teeth in darkness and
torture, he heard a faint noise above his head. Then something seemed to
leap from the ceiling and alight softly on the floor. He shuddered with
terror. Was it some new torture of the Wondersmith's invention? The next
moment, he felt some small animal crawling over his body, and a soft,
silky paw was pushed timidly across his face. His heart leaped with joy.

"It is Furbelow!" he cried. "Zonela has sent him. He came through the
stove-pipe hole."

It was Furbelow, indeed, restored to life by Zonela's care, and who had
come down a narrow tube, that no human being could have threaded,
to console the poor captive. The monkey nestled closely into the
hunchback's bosom, and as he did so, Solon felt something cold and hard
hanging from his neck. He touched it. It was sharp. By the dim light
that struggled through the aperture high up in the wall, he discovered
a knife, suspended by a bit of cord. Ah! how the blood came rushing
through the veins that crossed over and through his heart, when life and
liberty came to him in this bit of rusty steel! With his manacled hands
he loosened the heaven-sent weapon; a few cuts were rapidly made in the
cunning network of cord that enveloped his limbs, and in a few seconds
he was free!--cramped and faint with hunger, but free!--free to move,
to use the limbs that God had given him for his preservation,--free to
fight,--to die fighting, perhaps,--but still to die free. He ran to the
door. The bolt was a weak one, for the Wondersmith had calculated more
surely on his prison of cords than on any jail of stone,--and more; and
with a few efforts the door opened. He went cautiously out into the
darkness, with Furbelow perched on his shoulder, pressing his cold
muzzle against his cheek. He had made but a few steps when a trembling
hand was put into his, and in another moment Zonela's palpitating heart
was pressed against his own. One long kiss, an embrace, a few whispered
words, and the hunchback and the girl stole softly towards the door of
the chamber in which the four gypsies slept. All seemed still; nothing
but the hard breathing of the sleepers, and the monotonous rocking of
Madame Filomel's chair broke the silence. Solon stooped down and put his
eye to the keyhole, through which a red bar of light streamed into the
entry. As he did so, his foot crushed some brittle substance that lay
just outside the door; at the same moment a howl of agony was heard to
issue from the room within. Solon started; nor did he know that at that
instant he had crushed into dust Monsieur Kerplonne's supernumerary eye,
and the owner, though wrapt in a drunken sleep, felt the pang quiver
through his brain.

While Solon peeped through the keyhole, all in the room was motionless.
He had not gazed, however, for many seconds, when the chair of the
fortune-teller gave a sudden lurch, and the black bottle, already
hanging half out of her wide pocket, slipped entirely from its
resting-place, and, falling heavily to the ground, shivered into
fragments.

Then took place an astonishing spectacle. The myriads of armed dolls,
that lay in piles about the room, became suddenly imbued with motion.
They stood up straight, their tiny limbs moved, their black eyes flashed
with wicked purposes, their thread-like swords gleamed as they waved
them to and fro. The villanous souls imprisoned in the bottle began
to work within them. Like the Liliputians, when they found the giant
Gulliver asleep, they scaled in swarms the burly sides of the four
sleeping gypsies. At every step they took, they drove their thin swords
and quivering daggers into the flesh of the drunken authors of their
being. To stab and kill was their mission, and they stabbed and killed
with incredible fury. They clustered on the Wondersmith's sallow cheeks
and sinewy throat, piercing every portion with their diminutive poisoned
blades. Filomel's fat carcass was alive with them. They blackened the
spare body of Monsieur Kerplonne. They covered Oaksmith's huge form like
a cluster of insects.

Overcome completely with the fumes of wine, these tiny wounds did not
for a few moments awaken the sleeping victims. But the swift and deadly
poison Macousha, with which the weapons had been so fiendishly anointed,
began to work. Herr Hippe, stung into sudden life, leaped to his feet,
with a dwarf army clinging to his clothes and his hands,--always
stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. For an instant, a look of stupid
bewilderment clouded his face; then the horrible truth burst upon him.
He gave a shriek like that which a horse utters when he finds himself
fettered and surrounded by fire,--a shriek that curdled the air for
miles and miles.

"Oaksmith! Kerplonne! Filomel! Awake! awake! We are lost! The souls have
got loose! We are dead! poisoned! Oh, accursed ones! Oh, demons, ye are
slaying me! Ah! fiends of Hell!"

Aroused by these frightful howls, the three gypsies sprang also to their
feet, to find themselves stung to death by the manikins. They raved,
they shrieked, they swore. They staggered round the chamber. Blinded in
the eyes by the ever-stabbing weapons,--with the poison already burning
in their veins like red-hot lead,--their forms swelling and discoloring
visibly every moment,--their howls and attitudes and furious gestures
made the scene look like a chamber in Hell.

Maddened beyond endurance, the Wondersmith, half-blind and choking with
the venom that had congested all the blood-vessels of his body, seized
dozens of the manikins and dashed them into the fire, trampling them
down with his feet.

"Ye shall die too, if I die," he cried, with a roar like that of a
tiger. "Ye shall burn, if I burn. I gave ye life,--I give ye death.
Down!--down!--burn!--flame! Fiends that ye are, to slay us! Help me,
brothers! Before we die, let us have our revenge!"

On this, the other gypsies, themselves maddened by approaching death,
began hurling manikins, by handfuls, into the fire. The little
creatures, being wooden of body, quickly caught the flames, and an awful
struggle for life took place in miniature in the grate. Some of them
escaped from between the bars and ran about the room, blazing, writhing
in agony, and igniting the curtains and other draperies that hung
around. Others fought and stabbed one another in the very core of the
fire, like combating salamanders. Meantime, the motions of the gypsies
grew more languid and slow, and their curses were uttered in choked
guttural tones. The faces of all four were spotted with red and green
and violet, like so many egg-plants. Their bodies were swollen to a
frightful size, and at last they dropped on the floor, like overripe
fruit shaken from the boughs by the winds of autumn.

The chamber was now a sheet of fire. The flames roared round and round,
as if seeking for escape, licking every projecting cornice and sill with
greedy tongues, as the serpent licks his prey before he swallows it. A
hot, putrid breath came through the keyhole and smote Solon and Zonela
like a wind of death. They clasped each other's hands with a moan of
terror, and fled from the house.

The next morning, when the young Year was just unclosing its eyes, and
the happy children all over the great city were peeping from their beds
into the myriads of stockings hanging near by, the blue skies of heaven
shone through a black network of stone and charred rafters. These were
all that remained of the habitation of Herr Hippe, the Wondersmith.

ROBA DI ROMA

[Continued.]

CHAPTER IV.

Lent.

The gay confusion of Carnival is over, with its mad tossing of flowers
and _bonbons_, its showering of _confetti_, its brilliantly draped
balconies running over with happy faces, its barbaric races, its rows of
joyous _contadine_, its quaint masquerading, and all the glad folly of
its Saturnalia. For Saturnalia it is, in most respects just like the
_festa_ of the Ancient Romans, with its _Saturni septem dies_, its
uproar of "_Io Saturnalia!_" in the streets, and all its mad frolic. In
one point it materially differs, however; for on the ancient _festa_ no
criminal could be punished; but in modern times it is this gay occasion
that the government selects to execute (_giustiziare_) any poor wretch
who may have been condemned to death, so as to strike a wholesome terror
into the crowd. Truly, the ways of the Church are as wonderful as
they are infallible! But all is over now. The last _moccoletti_ are
extinguished, that flashed and danced like myriad fire-flies from window
and balcony and over the heads of the roaring tide of people that ebbed
and flowed in stormy streams of wild laughter through the streets. The
Corso has become sober and staid, and taken in its draperies. The fun is
finished. The masked balls, with their _belle maschere_, are over. The
theatres are all closed. Lent has come, bringing its season of sadness;
and the gay world of strangers is flocking down to Naples.

_Eh, Signore! Finito il nostro carnovale. Adesso e il carnovale dei
preti:_--"Our carnival is over, and that of the priests has come." All
the _frati_ are going round to every Roman family, high and low, from
the prince in his palace to the boy in the _caffe_, demanding "_una
santa elemosina,--un abbondante santa elemosina,--ma abbondante_,"--and
willingly pocketing any sum, from a half-_baiocco_ upwards. The parish
priest is now making his visits in every ward of the city, to register
the names of the Catholics in all the houses, so as to insure a
confession from each during this season of penance. And woe to any wight
who fails to do his duty!--he will soon be brought to his marrow-bones.
His name will be placarded in the church, and he will be punished
according to circumstances,--perhaps by a mortification to the pocket,
perhaps by the penance of the convent; and perhaps his fate will be
worse, if he be obstinate. So nobody is obstinate, and all go to
confession like good Christians, and confess what they please, for the
sake of peace, if not of absolution. The Francescani march more solemnly
up and down the alleys of their cabbage-garden, studiously with books in
their hands, which they pretend to read; now and then taking out their
snuff-stained bandanna and measuring it from corner to corner, in search
of a feasible spot for its appropriate function, and then rolling it
carefully into a little round ball and returning it to the place whence
it came. Whatever penance they do is not to Father Tiber or Santo
Acquedotto, excepting by internal ablutions,--the exterior things of
this world being ignored. There is no meat-eating now, save on certain
festivals, when a supply is laid in for the week. But opposites cure
opposites, (contrary to the homoeopathic rule,) and their _magro_ makes
them _grasso_. Two days of festival, however, there are in the little
church of San Patrizio and Isidoro, when the streets are covered with
sand, and sprigs of box and red and yellow hangings flaunt before the
portico, and scores of young boy-priests invade their garden, and,
tucking up their long skirts, run and scream among the cabbages;
for boydom is an irrepressible thing, even under the extinguisher of a
priest's black dress.

Daily you will hear the tinkle of a bell and the chant of alto
child-voices in the street, and, looking out, you will see two little
boys clad in some refuse of the Church's wardrobe, one of whom carries a
crucifix or a big black cross, while the other rings a bell and chants
as he loiters along; now stopping to chaff with other boys of a similar
age, nay, even at times laying down his cross to dispute or struggle
with them, and now renewing the appeal of the bell. This is to call
together the children of the parish to learn their Dottrina or
Catechism,--from which the Second Commandment is, however, carefully
expurgated, lest to their feeble minds the difference between bowing
down to graven images, or likenesses of things in the earth, and what
they do daily before the images and pictures of the Virgin and Saints
may not clearly appear. Indeed, let us cheerfully confess, in passing,
that, by a strange forgetfulness, this same Commandment is not
reestablished in its place even in the catechism for older persons,--of
course through inadvertence. However, it is of no consequence, as the
real number of Ten Commandments is made up by the division of the last
into two; so that there really are ten. And in a country where so many
pictures are painted and statues made, perhaps this Second Commandment
might be open to misconstruction, if not prohibited by the wise and holy
men of the Church. [A]

[Footnote A: This is a fact,--denied, of course, by some of the Roman
Catholics, in argument; for what will they not deny? But it is,
nevertheless, a fact. I have now before me a little Catechism, from
which the Second Commandment is omitted, and the Tenth divided into two;
and I have examined others in which the same omission is made. I cannot
say that all are in the same category; for the Catholic Church is
everything to everybody; but I can assert it of all I have seen,
and especially of _La Dottrina Xtiana, compilata per Ordine dell
Eminentissinto Cardinale_ GONZAGA MEMBRINI, _Vescovo di Ancona, per
l'Uso delict Citta e Diocesi_, published in 1830, which I mention
because it is a compilation of authority, made under the superintendence
of the Cardinal Bishop of Ancona,--and of the _Catechismo per i
Fanciulll, ad Uso delle Citta e Diocesi di Cortona, Chiuso, Pienza,
Pistoia, Prato e Colle_, published in 1786, under the auspices and with
the approval of the bishops of all these cities and dioceses.]

Meantime the snow is gradually disappearing from Monte Gennaro and the
Sabine Mountains. Picnic parties are spreading their tables under the
Pamfili Doria pines, and drawing St. Peter's from the old wall near
by the ilex avenue,--or making excursions to Frascati, Tusculum, and
Albano,--or spending a day in wandering among the ruins of the Etruscan
city of Veii, lost to the world so long ago that even the site of it was
unknown to the Caesars,--or strolling by the shore at Ostia, or under
the magnificent _pineta_ at Castel Fusano, whose lofty trees repeat, as
in a dream, the sound of the blue Mediterranean that washes the coast at
half a mile distant. There is no lack of places that Time has shattered
and strewn with relics, leaving Nature to festoon her ruins and heal her
wounds with tenderest vines and flowers, where one may spend a charming
day and dream of the old times.

Spring--_prima vera_, the first true thing, as the Italians call it--has
come. The nightingales already begin to bubble into song under the
Ludovisi ilexes and in the Barberini Gardens. Daisies have snowed all
over the Campagna,--periwinkles star the grass,--crocuses and anemones
impurple the spaces between the rows of springing grain along the still
brown slopes. At every turn in the streets baskets-full of _mammole_,
the sweet-scented Parma violet, are offered you by little girls and
boys; and at the corner of the Condotti and Corso is a splendid show of
camelias, set into beds of double violets, and sold for a song. Now and
then one meets huge baskets filled with these delicious violets, on their
way to the confectioners and caffes, where they will be made into syrup;
for the Italians are very fond of this _bibite_, and prize it not only for
its flavor, but for its medicinal qualities. Violets seem to rain over the
villas in the spring,--acres are purple with them, and the air all around
is sweet with their fragrance. Every day, scores of carriages are driving
about the Borghese grounds, which are open to the public, and hundreds of
children are running about, plucking flowers and playing on the lovely
slopes and in the shadows of the noble trees, while their parents stroll
at a distance and wait for them in the shady avenues. At the Pamfili Doria
villa the English play their national game of cricket, on the flower-
enamelled green, which is covered with the most wondrous anemones; and
there is a _matinee_ of friends who come to chat and look on. This game is
rather "slow" at Rome, however, and does not rhyme with the Campagna. The
Italians lift their hands and wonder what there is in it to fascinate the
English; and the English in turn call them a lazy, stupid set, because
they do not admire it. But those who have seen _pallone_ will not,
perhaps, so much wonder at the Italians, nor condemn them for not playing
their own game, when they remember that the French have turned them out of
their only amphitheatre adapted for it, and left them only _pazienza_.

If one drives out at any of the gates, he will see that spring is come.
The hedges are putting forth their leaves, the almond-trees are in full
blossom, and in the vineyards the _contadini_ are setting cane-poles and
trimming the vines to run upon them. Here and there, along the slopes,
the rude old plough of the Georgics, dragged by great gray oxen, turns
up the rich loam, that "needs only to be tickled to laugh out in flowers
and grain." In the olive-orchards, the farmers are carefully pruning
away the decayed branches and loosening the soil about their old roots.
Here and there, the smoke of distant bonfires, burning heaps of useless
stubble, shows against the dreamy purple hills like the pillar of cloud
that led the Israelites. One smells the sharp odor of these fires
everywhere, and hears them crackle in the fields.

"Atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis."

On _festa_-days the way-side _osterias (con cucina)_ are crowded by
parties who come out to sit under the _frascati_ of vines and drink the
wine grown on the very spot, and regale themselves with a _frittata_
of eggs and chopped sausages, or a slice of _agnello_, and enjoy the
delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals
descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their
household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin
liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad
red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in
their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of
scholars from the Propaganda stream along, now and then, two by two,
their leading-strings swinging behind them, and in their ranks all
shades of physiognomy, from African and Egyptian to Irish and American.
Scholars, too, from the English College, and Germans, in red, go by in
companies. All the schools, too, will be out,--little boys, in black
hats, following the lead of their priest-master, (for all masters are
priests,) and orphan girls in white, convoyed by Sisters of Charity, and
the deaf and dumb with their masters. Scores of _ciocciari_, also, may
be seen in faded scarlets, with their wardrobes of wretched clothes, and
sometimes a basket with a baby in it, on their heads. The _contadini_,
who have been to Rome to be hired for the week to labor on the Campagna,
come tramping along too, one of them often mounted on a donkey, and
followed by a group carrying their tools with them; while hundreds of
the middle classes, husbands and wives with their children, and _paini_
and _paine_, with all their jewelry on, are out to take their _festa_
stroll, and to see and be seen.

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