“And they had fixed the wedding day,
The morning that must wed them both,
For Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And with this other maid to church
Unthinking Stephen went—
Poor Martha, on that woeful day,
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent.”

Wordsworth: Poems of the Imagination: The Thorn.

There was once in Florence a wealthy widow lady of noble family, who had a son who was all that a parent could have wished, had he not been somewhat reckless and dissipated, and selfish withal, which he showed by winning the love of girls and then leaving them; which thing became such a scandal that it caused great grief to the mother, who was a truly good woman. And so the youth, who was really a devoted son, seeing this, reformed his ways for a long time.

But as the proverb says, he who has once drunk at this fountain will ever remember the taste, and probably drink again. So it came to pass that in time the young gentleman fell again into temptation, and then began to tempt, albeit with greater care and caution—’tis so that all timid sinners go, resolving the next step shall be the last—till finally, under solemn promise of marriage, he led astray into the very forest of despair a very poor and friendless maid, who was, however, of exquisite beauty, and known as “the girl of golden locks,” from her hair. It might be that the young man might have kept his word, but at an evil time he was tempted by the charms of a young lady of great wealth and greater family, who met him more than half-way, giving him to understand that her hand was to be had for asking; whereupon he, who never lost a chance or left a fruit unplucked, asked at once and was accepted, the wedding-day being at once determined on.

Then the girl with the golden hair, finding herself abandoned, became well-nigh desperate. Ere long, too, she gave birth to a child, which was a boy. And it was some months after this, indeed, ere the wedding of the youth to the heiress was to take place, when one day, as the young unmarried mother was passing along the Arno, she met the great poet and sorcerer Virgil, who saw in her face the signs of such deep suffering, and of such a refined and noble nature, that he paused and asked her if she had any cause of affliction. So with little trouble he induced her to confide in him, saying that she had no hope, because her betrayer would soon be wedded to another.

“Perhaps not,” replied Virgil. “Many a tree destined to be felled has escaped the axe and lived till God blew it down. On the day appointed we three will all go to the wedding.”

And truly when the time came all Florence was much amazed to see the great Virgil going into the Church of Santa Maria with the beautiful girl with the golden hair and bearing her babe in his arms. So the building was speedily filled with people waiting eagerly to witness some strange sight.

And they were not disappointed. For when the bride in all her beauty and the bridegroom in all his glory came to the altar and paused, ere the priest spoke Virgil stepped forward, and presenting the girl with golden locks, said:

“This is she whom thou art to wed, having sworn to make her thy wife, and this is thy child.”

Then the infant, who had never before in his life uttered a word, exclaimed, in loud, sweet tones:

“Thou’rt my father, I’m thy son;
Other father I have none.”

Then there was a great scene, the bride being as one mad, and all the people crying, “Evviva, Virgilio! If the Signore Cosino [114] does not wed the girl with golden hair, he shall not escape us!” Which he did indeed, and that not so unwillingly, for the sight of the girl and the authority of Virgil, the cries of the people, his own conscience, and the marvellous occurrence of the babe’s speaking, all reconciled him to it.

So the wedding was carried out forthwith, and every soul in Florence who could make music went with his instrument that night and serenaded the newly-married pair.

And the mother was not a little astonished when she saw her son, who had gone forth with one bride, return with another. However, she was soon persuaded by Virgil that it was all for the best, and found in time that she had a perfect daughter-in-law.

I had rejected this story as not worth translating, since it presents so few traditional features, when it occurred to me that it indeed very clearly and rather curiously sets forth Virgil as a benevolent man and a sympathizer with suffering without regard to rank or class. This Christian kindness was associated with his name all through the Middle Ages in literature, and it is wonderful how the form of it has been preserved unto these our times among the people.

There is a tale told by one Surius, “In Vita S. Anselmi,” cited by Kornmann in his work “De Miraculis Vivorum” in 1614, which bears on this which I have told. A certain dame in Rome not only had a child, ex incestu, but magnified her sin by swearing the child on the Pope, Sergius. The question being referred to Saint Anselm, he asked the babe, which had never spoken, whether his papa was the Pope. To which the infant answered, “Certainly not,” adding that Sergius “nihil cum Venere commercium habere”—Anselmus, as is evident, being resolved to make a clean sweep of the whole affair and whitewash the Holy Father to the utmost while he was about it. SalvertÉ would, like a sinner, have said that Anselm was perhaps a ventriloquist—es kann sein!But let us not discuss it, and pass on, just mentioning that since I wrote the above I found another legend of an Abbot Daniel, of whom Gregory of Tours and Sophronius relate that he, having prayed that a certain lady might become a mother, and the request being complied with, some of Daniel’s enemies suggested that other means as well as prayer, and much more efficacious, had been resorted to by the saint to obtain the desired result. But Daniel, inquiring of the babe when it was twenty-five days of age, was, coram omnibus, fully acquitted, the bambino pointing to his true father, and saying, with a nod, “Verbis et mitibus”—That’s the man! And the same happened to a Bishop Britius. But Saint Augustine beats the record by declaring that, “It hath sometimes happened that infants as yet unborn have cried out ex utero matris—which is indeed a marvellous thing!” (“De Civitate Dei,” III., c. 31).

And yet it seems to me that Justinus, Procopius, and several others, have done as well, if not better; for it is related by them that a number of orthodox believers who had their tongues cut out by Socinians, or Unitarians (whom the zealous Dean Hole declares are all so many little ungodly antichrists, or words to that effect), went on praying and preaching more volubly than ever. The same is told by Evagrius of some pious women, but I do not offer this as a miracle, there being in it nothing improbable or remarkable.

That the Arians, or Unitarians, or Socinians have set tongues to wagging—especially the tongues of flame which play round the pyres of martyrdom—is matter of history—and breviary. But that they have been the cause of making dead and tongueless Trinitarians talk, seems doubtful. However, as the Canadian said of the ox: “There is no knowing what the subtlest form of Antichrist may do.” Passons!