Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860




Near the upper end of the Toledo the Cathedral is situated, not very
favorably for effect, as only the eastern side is sufficiently free from
buildings. It is a noble pile: Northern power and piety expressed by
the agency of Southern and Arabic workmen, and somewhat affected by the
nationality of the artificer.

The stones are fretted and carved more elaborately than those of any
French or English cathedral, but entirely in arabesques and diapering of
low relief, so that the spectator misses with regret the solemn rows of
saints and patriarchs that enrich the portals of our Gothic minsters.
These, however, are reflections of a subsequent date, and did not
interfere to mar the pleasure with which we sat in front of the southern
door, beneath the two lofty arches, which, springing from the entrance
tower, span the street high above our heads. For some time we sat,
unwilling to change and it might be impair our sensations by passing
inwards. Our reluctance was but too well founded: the whole interior has
been modernized in detestable Renaissance style, and in place of highest
honor, above the central doorway, sits in tight-buttoned uniform a
fitting idol for so ugly a shrine, the double-chinned effigy of the
reigning monarch. We turned for comfort to a chapel on the right, where
in four sarcophagi of porphyry are deposited the remains of the Northern
sovereigns. The bones of Roger repose in a plain oblong chest with a
steep ridged roof, and the other three coffins, though somewhat more
elaborate, are yet simple and massive, as befits their destined use. The
inscription, on that of Constantia is touching, as it tells that she
was "the last of the great race of Northmen,"--the good old bad Latin
"Northmannorum" giving the proper title, which we have injudiciously
softened into Norman.

In a small _piazza_ near the intersection of the main streets is a
Dominican church, whose black and white inlaid marbles are amazing in
their elaborateness, astounding in their preposterously bad taste. They
transcend description, and can be faintly imagined only by such as
know a huge marble nightmare of waves and clouds in the south aisle
of Westminster Abbey. This church contains one good painting of a
triumphant experiment conducted by some Dominican friars in the presence
of sundry Ulemas and Muftis: a Koran and Bible have been thrown into a
blazing fire, and the result is as satisfactory as that of Hercules's
death-grapple with the Nemean lion. To be sure, lions and Turks are
not painters. The Martorana church is rich in gold-grounded mosaics,
resembling Saint Mark's at Venice. One represents the coronation of
Roger Guiscard by the Saviour: very curious, as showing at how early a
date the invaders laid claim to the Right Divine. The inscription is
also noteworthy: _Rogerius Rex_, in the Latin tongue, but the Greek
characters, thus: [Greek: ROGERIOS RAEX].[a] The Renaissance has invaded
this church too, and flowery inlaid marbles with gilded scroll balconies
(it is a nuns' church) mingle with the bold discs and oblong panels of
porphyry and green serpentine. In the nave of the small church sat in
comfortable arm-chairs two monks, one black, one white, leaning their
ears to gilded grates and receiving the confessions of the sisterhood.
The paschal candlestick stood in front of the high altar,--Ascension-Day
not being past; but here, as in other Sicilian churches, it assumes the
form of a seven-branched tree, generally of bronze bedecked with gold.
These same nuns' balconies are not confined to the interior of churches,
but form a distinct and picturesque feature in the long line of the
Toledo. Projecting in a bold curve whose undersurface is gaily painted
in arabesque, their thick bars and narrow openings nevertheless leave a
gloomy impression on the mind, while they add to the Oriental character
of the city. A somewhat unsuccessful effort to identify the church whose
bell gave signal for the Sicilian Vespers closed our day's labor. The
spot is clearly defined and easily recognizable, and a small church, now
shut up, occupies the site. So far, so good; but the cloister which is
distinctly mentioned cannot now be found, nor is it easy to perceive
where it could have stood. Perhaps some change in the neighboring harbor
may have swept it away.

[Footnote a: The _e_ in _Rex_ is here rendered by the Greek eta,--a
proof that the pronunciation of that letter was similar to that of our
long _a_, and not like our double _ee_; although the modern Greeks
support the latter pronunciation.]

_23d April_. To those who take interest in the efforts of that age when
Christianity, devoid at once of artistic knowledge and of mechanical,
strove from among the material and moral wreck of Paganism to create for
herself a school of Art which should, despite of all short-comings, be
the exponent of those high feelings which inspired her mind, the Royal
Chapel of Palermo offers a delightful object of study. Less massive than
the gloomily grand basilicas of Rome and Ravenna, surpassed in single
features by other churches, as, for instance, the Cathedral of Salerno,
it contains, nevertheless, such perfect specimens of Christian Art in
its various phases, that this one small building seems a hand-book in
itself. The floor and walls are covered with excellently preserved and
highly polished Alexandrine mosaic, flowing in varied convolutions of
green and gold and red round the broad crimson and gray shields, whose
circular forms recall the mighty monolith columns of porphyry and
granite which yielded such noble spoils. The honey-combed pendentines of
the ceiling must be due to Arab workmen; their like may yet be found in
Cairo or the Alhambra; while below the narrow windows, and extending
downwards to the marble panelling, runs a grand series of gold-grounded
mosaics, their subjects taken from the Old and New Testaments. But
far older than even these are the colossal grim circles of saints and
apostles who cling to the roof of the choir, and yield in size only to
the awful figures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and Saint Paul, enthroned
in the _apsides_ of the nave and aisles. The _ambones_, though not
so large as those of Salerno, are very gorgeous; and the paschal
candlestick, here at all events in its usual shape, is of deeply-carved
marble, and displays an incongruous assemblage of youths, maidens,
beasts, birds, and bishops, hanging each from other like a curtain of
swarming bees.

Service, which had been going on in the choir when we arrived, had now
ceased; but from the crypt below arose a chant so harsh, vibratory,
and void of solemnity, that we were irresistibly reminded of the
subterranean chorus of demons in "Robert le Diable." Two of us ventured
below and discovered the chapter, all robed in purple, sitting round a
pall with a presumable coffin underneath. Little of reverence did they
show,--it is true, the death was not recent, the service being merely
commemorative, as we afterwards learned,--and as the procession shortly
afterwards emerged and proceeded down the chapel, the unwashed,
unshaven, and sensual countenances of some of highest rank among them
gave small reason to believe that they could feel much reverence on any
subject whatever.

The Palace itself is as tedious as any other palace: the Pompeian room
follows the Louis Quinze, and is in turn followed by the Chinese, till,
for our comfort, we emerged into one large square hall, whose stiff
mosaics of archers killing stags, peacocks feeding at the foot of
willow-pattern trees, date from the time of Roger. Another wearisome
series of rooms succeeded, which we were bound to traverse in search of
a bronze ram of old Greek workmanship, brought from Syracuse. The work
is very good and well-preserved; in fact, no part is injured, save the
tail and a hind leg, whose loss the _custode_ ascribed to the villains
of the late revolution. He even charged them with the destruction of
another similar statue melted into bullets, if we may believe his
incredible tale. A pavilion over the Monreale gate commands a view right
down the Toledo to the sea.

The drive to Monreale is a continued ascent along the skirts of a
limestone rock, whose precipices are thickly planted at every foothold
with olive, Indian fig, and aloe. The valley, as it spread below our
gaze, appeared one huge carpet of heavy-fruited orange-trees, save where
at times a rent in the web left visible the bluish blades of wheat, or
the intense green of a flax-plantation.

Monreale is a mere country-town, containing no object of interest, save
the Cathedral. This is a noble basilica, grandly proportioned, the nave
and aisles of which are separated by monolith pillars, mostly of gray
granite, and some few of cipollino and other marbles, the spoils, no
doubt, of the ancient Panormus. Above the cornice the walls are entirely
sheeted with golden mosaics, representing, as usual, Scripture history.
The series which begins, like the speech of the Intendant in "Les
Plaideurs," "_Avant la creation du monde_" complies with the wish of
(the judge?) by going on to the Deluge, in a train of singularly meagre
figures, most haggard of whom is Cain, here represented (as in the Campo
Santo of Pisa) receiving his death accidentally from the hand of Lamech.
In the passage of the beasts to the Ark, Noah coaxes the lion on board,
and in the next compartment the patriarch shoves the king of beasts down
the plank in a most ludicrous fashion. The mosaics of the New Testament
are less archaic, though still very old, too old to be infected by the
tricks of later Romanism,--such, for instance, as introducing the Virgin
among the receivers of the mysterious gift of tongues. Saint Paul, both
here and at the Royal Chapel, appears under the earlier type adopted
whether by fancy or tradition to represent that saint,--that is, a
short, strong figure, with the head large, and almost devoid of hair,
except at the sides, and one dark lock in the centre of the massive
forehead. Over the western door-way is a mosaic of the Virgin with the
following leonine and loyal distich beneath it:--

"Sponsa suae prolis, O Stella puerpera Solis,
Pro cunctis ora, sed plus pro rege labora!"

There is an ample square cloister, with twenty-seven pairs of columns on
each side, once richly decorated in mosaics like those of San Giovanni
Laterano and San Paolo at Rome, but even more dilapidated than either
of these latter. Indeed, so entirely non-existent is the mosaic, the
twisted and channelled columns showing nothing but places "where the
pasty is not," that the more probable solution may be that want of funds
or of devotion has left the work unfinished. On the capital of one
column may be seen the figure of William the Good, who founded the
Cathedral in 1170. He bears in his arms a model of the building, which
here appears with circular-headed windows instead of the lanceolated
Gothic now existing.

In, perhaps, the very loveliest of the many lovely sites around Palermo
stands the small Moorish building of La Ziza. Moorish it may be called;
for the main feature of the edifice, a hall with a fountain trickling
along a channel in the pavements, is clearly due to the Saracens. These,
however, had availed themselves of Roman columns to support their
fretted ceilings, once gorgeous in color, but now desecrated with
whitewash. The Norman invaders have added their never-failing gold
mosaic,--while the Spaniard, after painting sundry scenes from Ovid's
"Metamorphoses" in a dreadfully barocco style, calls upon the world,
in those magniloquent phrases which somehow belong as of right to your
mighty Don, to admire the exquisite commingling of modern art with
antique beauty, to which his _fiat_ has given birth.

Somewhat of Spain, perhaps, might also be traced in an incident,
promisingly romantic, but coming to a most lame and impotent conclusion,
which occurred this afternoon to one of our party. While busily
sketching, in the Martorana church, the previously mentioned mosaic of
Roger's coronation, a hand protruded from the gilded lattice above,
and a small scroll was dropped, not precisely at the feet, but in the
neighborhood of the amazed artist. Sharp eyes, however, must be at work;
for, ere he could appropriate this mysterious waif on Love's manor, a
side-door opened, and an attendant in the very unpoetical garb of a
carpenter bore off the prize. It maybe presumed that the next confessor
who occupied an arm-chair in the church would have somewhat of novelty
to enliven what some priests have stated to be the most wearisome of the
work, namely, the hearing of confessions in a nunnery.

This evening was passed in the house of the British Consul, who, in
amusing recognition of our nationalities, comprising, as they did,
both branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, treated us to Lemann's
captain's-biscuit and Boston crackers. Notwithstanding the interesting
conversation of our host, who had not allowed a residence of many years
in a mind-rusting city to impair his love of literature, a love dating
from the time when Praed edited the "Etonian," and Metius Tarpa
contributed to the "College Magazine," we were obliged to leave early.
Our arrangements for a very early start next morning were completed, and
a thirty miles' ride lay before us.

To save further allusion to them, it may be as well to describe these
arrangements, which were made for us by Signor Ragusa, landlord of the
Trinacria hotel. A guide, Giuseppe Agnello by name, took upon himself
the whole responsibility of our board, lodging, and travelling, at a
fixed rate of forty-two (?) _carlini_ a head,--which sum, including his
_buonamano_ and return voyage from Syracuse or Messina, amounted to
about twenty francs each _per diem_. For this sum he furnished us with
good mules, a hearty breakfast at daybreak, cold meat and hard eggs at
noon, and a plentiful dinner or supper, call it which you choose, on
arriving at our night's quarters. Agnello himself was cook, and proved
a very tolerable one. This is essential; for Spanish custom prevails
in the inns, whose host considers his duty accomplished when he has
provided ample stabling for the mules and dubious bedding for his biped
guests.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *


THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.


CHAPTER XV.

PHYSIOLOGICAL.


If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young pupil for saving
him from an imminent peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity
to know why he should have needed such aid. He, an active, muscular,
courageous, adventurous young fellow, with a stick in his hand, ready to
hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his way, to stand
still, staring into those two eyes, until they came up close to him,
and the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him stiff where he
stood,--what was the meaning of it? Again, what was the influence this
girl had exerted, under which the venomous creature had collapsed in
such a sudden way? Whether he had been awake or dreaming he did not feel
quite sure. He knew he had gone up The Mountain, at any rate; he knew he
had come down The Mountain with the girl walking just before him;--there
was no forgetting her figure, as she walked on in silence, her braided
locks falling a little, for want of the lost hair-pin, perhaps, and
looking like a wreathing coil of--Shame on such fancies!--to wrong that
supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush of shining black hair,
that, shaken loose, would cloud her all round, like Godiva, from brow to
instep! He was sure he had sat down before the fissure or cave. He was
sure that he was led softly away from the place, and that it was Elsie
who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show that so far it was not a
dream. But between these recollections came a strange confusion; and the
more the master thought, the more he was perplexed to know whether she
had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on the stone, from some frightful
dream, such as may come in a very brief slumber, or whether she had
bewitched him into a trance with those strange eyes of hers, or whether
it was all true, and he must solve its problem as he best might.

There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.
As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr.
Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had
heard of as a cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the
person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of
Mr. Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so
profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he
had an enemy in this handsome youth,--an enemy, too, who was like to be
subtle and dangerous.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no
enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner
or later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a
scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole
armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him.
Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm
in feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his
investigations. Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed
suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of
fellow, and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added
a curious, romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and
psychological inquiries he was about instituting.

The afternoon on The Mountain was still uppermost in his mind. Of course
he knew the common stories about fascination. He had once been himself
an eyewitness of the charming of a small bird by one of our common
harmless serpents. Whether a human being could be reached by this
subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the mysterious
relation generally felt to exist between man and this creature, "cursed
above all cattle and above every beast of the field,"--a relation which
some interpret as the fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so
instinctive that this animal has been for that reason adopted as the
natural symbol of evil. There was another solution, however, supplied
him by his professional reading. The curious work of Mr. Braid of
Manchester had made him familiar with the phenomena of a state allied to
that produced by animal magnetism, and called by that writer by the name
of _hypnotism_. He found, by referring to his note-book, the statement
was, that, by fixing the eyes on a _bright object_ so placed as _to
produce a strain_ upon the eyes and eyelids, and to maintain _a steady
fixed stare_, there comes on in a few seconds a very singular condition,
characterized by _muscular rigidity_ and _inability to move_, with a
strange _exaltation of most of the senses_, and _generally_ a closure of
the eyelids,--this condition being followed by _torpor_.

Now this statement of Mr. Braid's, well known to the scientific world,
and the truth of which had been confirmed by Mr. Bernard in certain
experiments he had instituted, as it has been by many other
experimenters, went far to explain the strange impressions, of which,
waking or dreaming, he had certainly been the subject. His nervous
system had been in a high state of exaltation at the time. He remembered
how the little noises that made rings of sound in the silence of the
woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters, had reached his inner
consciousness. He remembered that singular sensation in the roots of the
hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him
of a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and
peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted
sensibility and irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of
the internal ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little
snap in the middle of the head, that proved to him he was getting very
nervous.

The next thing was to find out whether it were possible that the
venomous creature's eyes should have served the purpose of Mr. Braid's
"bright object" held very close to the person experimented on, or
whether they had any special power which could be made the subject of
exact observation.

For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it necessary to get a live
_crotalus_ or two into his possession, if this were possible. On
inquiry, he found that there was a certain family living far up the
mountain-side, not a mile from the ledge, the members of which were said
to have taken these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any danger,
or at least in any fear, of being injured by them. He applied to these
people, and offered a reward sufficient to set them at work to capture
some of these animals, if such a thing were possible.

A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking woman presented herself at
his door. She held up her apron as if it contained something precious in
the bag she made with it.

"Y'wanted some rattlers," said the woman. "Here they be."

She opened her apron and showed a coil of rattlesnakes lying very
peaceably in its fold. They lifted their heads up, as if they wanted to
see what was going on, but showed no sign of anger.

"Are you crazy?" said Mr. Bernard. "You're dead in an hour, if one of
those creatures strikes you!"

He drew back a little, as he spoke; it might be simple disgust; it might
be fear; it might be what we call antipathy, which is different from
either, and which will sometimes show itself in paleness, and even
faintness, produced by objects perfectly harmless and not in themselves
offensive to any sense.

"Lord bless you," said the woman, "rattlers never touches our folks. I'd
jest 'z lieves handle them creaturs as so many striped snakes."

So saying, she put their heads down with her hand, and packed them
together in her apron as if they had been bits of cart-rope.

Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or, at least, the belief in
the possession of a power by certain persons, which enables them to
handle these frightful reptiles with perfect impunity. The fact,
however, is well known to others, and more especially to a very
distinguished Professor in one of the leading institutions of the great
city of the land, whose experiences in the neighborhood of Graylock, as
he will doubtless inform the curious, were very much like those of the
young master.

Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his formidable captives, and
studied their habits and expression with a strange sort of interest.
What did the Creator mean to signify, when he made such shapes of
horror, and, as if he had doubly cursed this envenomed wretch, had set
a mark upon him and sent him forth, the Cain of the brotherhood of
serpents? It was a very curious fact that the first train of thoughts
Mr. Bernard's small menagerie suggested to him was the grave, though
somewhat worn, subject of the origin of evil. There is now to be seen in
a tall glass jar, in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Cantabridge
in the territory of the Massachusetts, a huge _crotalus_, of a species
which grows to more frightful dimensions than our own, under the hotter
skies of South America. Look at it, ye who would know what is the
tolerance, the freedom from prejudice, which can suffer such an
incarnation of all that is devilish to lie unharmed in the cradle of
Nature! Learn, too, that there are many things in this world which we
are warned to shun, and are even suffered to slay, if need be, but which
we must not hate, unless we would hate what God loves and cares for.

Whatever fascination the creature might exercise in his native haunts,
Mr. Bernard found himself not in the least nervous or affected in any
way while looking at his caged reptiles. When their cage was shaken,
they would lift their heads and spring their rattles; but the sound was
by no means so formidable to listen to as when it reverberated among
the chasms of the echoing rocks. The expression of the creatures was
watchful, still, grave, passionless, fate-like, suggesting a cold
malignity that seemed to be waiting for its opportunity. Their awful,
deep-cut mouths were sternly closed over the long hollow fangs that
rested their roots against the swollen poison-bag, where the venom had
been boarding up ever since the last stroke had emptied it. They never
winked, for ophidians have no movable eyelids, but kept up that awful
fixed stare which made the two _unwinking_ gladiators the survivors of
twenty pairs matched by one of the Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in
his "Natural History." But their eyes did not flash, as he had expected
to see them. They were of a pale-golden or straw color, horrible to look
into, with their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, hardly
enlivened by the almost imperceptible vertical slit of the pupil,
through which Death seemed to be looking out like the archer behind the
long narrow loop-hole in a blank turret-wall. Possibly their pupils
might open wide enough in the dark hole of the rock to let the glare
of the back part of the eye show, as we often see it in cats and other
animals. On the whole, the caged reptiles, horrid as they were, were yet
very different from his recollections of what he had seen or dreamed
he saw at the cavern. These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet. A
treacherous stillness, however,--as the unfortunate New York physician
found, when he put his foot out to wake up the torpid creature, and
instantly the fang flashed through his boot, carrying the poison into
his blood, and death with it.

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