"The whirligig of time brings in his revenges."—Still Undine.—The "salvation" question stands over.

In the winter of 1542–3 Charles V. was in Italy, returning from his unsuccessful expedition against Algiers. As usual, the sovereigns of Italy were all on the alert to do homage to their great "barbarian" master; buzzing about him, to beg "investitures,"—to plead for pardon in respect of deeds done in contempt of their allegiance as soon as his back was turned,—to complain one against the other, and in general to kotoo the great man, and express by all means their own flunkyhood.

Even octogenarian Paul III. thought it necessary to travel in mid–winter to meet the Emperor in the neighbourhood of Bologna. Paul was anxious about the great council now at last in earnest on the point of being summoned; was very desirous of sounding the Emperor's mind, and getting, if possible, at his real views upon the subject; and thought, perhaps, that some good might be done by having an opportunity of ear–wigging him respecting sundry matters connected with it.

Charles had promised to meet him at Busseto; and the old Pope had travelled as far as Parma towards the place of meeting. But the Emperor kept him waiting there in vain, remaining himself the while in Genoa.

Very near the spot, where the octogenarian Pope was, in the depth of winter, awaiting the pleasure of the Emperor, there had taken place, some five hundred years before, another meeting between an Emperor and a Pope, of which the circumstances had been somewhat different. And it may be supposed that the vicinity of that world–famous Canossa castle can hardly have failed to suggest some very disagreeable comparisons to the mind of the pontiff. Then it had been the Emperor, who had waited the good pleasure of the priest, standing there for three days' space bareheaded among the snow. Those were the good old days, eh, your Holiness! But then, that grand old Hildebrand, you see, really did think and believe, without any manner of doubt, that he absolutely was God's vicar on earth;—in some sense, indeed, truly was so. And that makes all the difference in the matter. Whereas your Holiness, in this sixteenth century, you know, between ourselves ... must put the best face you can upon the matter, swallow your indignation as best you may, and turn your face homewards.

Pope Paul did so; and determined on returning to Bologna by way of Ferrara, very much to the annoyance of Duke Hercules.[64] It was not that there was not plenty of business to be transacted between the Pope and the Duke. But the successor of St. Peter travelled in a manner that made the honour of being his host a very serious consideration. Duke Hercules was much given to splendid hospitality, was fond, generally, of magnificence, and of occasions for display. But he had already borne the entire expense of the Pope's passage through Modena on his way northwards, and was not anxious to do the honours of his capital to such a visitor on such a scale as he felt he must do them, if they were to be done at all.

In the first place "Servus servorum" travelled with a suite of three thousand persons, among whom were eighteen cardinals, forty bishops, and a whole posse of ambassadors and princes. He brought with him fourteen hundred horses, which seem few enough to drag and carry all these ecclesiastical dignitaries and their followers over the roads of Italy as they then were. Then festivals, gala doings temporal and spiritual, spectacles and celebrations of all sorts must be provided, and cash disbursed on all sides. A magnificent state barge,—a bucentaur, as the chroniclers call it, such as that in which the Venetian doge went out to wed the Adriatic—was sent up the Po to the nearest point to Parma, together with a whole fleet of other boats to bring the Pope and his enormous following down the river.

The famous villa of Belvidere was to be the Pope's resting place the first night after entering the Duke's territories. This was a pleasure–palace of the Dukes of Ferrara, built on an island in the Po, which was entirely occupied by it and the superb gardens attached to it. The recorders of the Ferrarese magnificences are never tired of describing the splendours of Belvidere, its marble quays and stairs from the water's edge, its courts, its fountains (which necessarily, as Frizzi remarks, must have been worked by machinery), its walls, glowing with the frescoes of the best masters of the Ferrara school, and, above all, its enchanting—if not, as Tasso describes them, enchanted—gardens. For these ducal pleasure–grounds furnished, it is said, the model whence the poet drew his well–known description of the gardens of Armida.

The next day there is the usual ceremony of the state entry into the city. The cannon fire, and the bells ring; the crown prince Alphonso, with an hundred youths, chiefly of the students of the University, bring the keys of the city in a golden basin to the feet of his Holiness, who kisses the prince on the forehead. Then he has to hear an oration, then to be carried in a chair on men's shoulders all round the city, blessing all the way, till his arm is ready to drop off, then to "attend service" at the Cathedral—(adorned for the occasion by four pieces of arras belonging to the Duke, valued at sixty thousand crowns, some three hundred thousand pounds sterling, at least, of our present money!)—then to hear more orations; and then, it is to be hoped, to be put to bed. For in truth, for an octogenarian Servus servorum, such a day's work must have been harder than that of most of his masters.

The next day the Duchess has to do her share of the hard work, and with seventy–two ladies all on horseback, and all dressed in black and gold, and twenty–two cars full of other ladies following them, "made several circuits of the city."

But the grand day was the third, which happened to be the festival of St. George, the patron saint of Ferrara. The Pope had to do pontifical mass in the cathedral to begin with. After dinner, he was present at a tournament held in his honour. And after supper the "Adelphi" of Terence was performed before him and all the great folks assembled, by the sons and daughters of the Duke, and doubtless also by our Olympia.

Muratori, in his "Antiquities of the House of Este," rehearses the different parts sustained by the three princesses and their two brothers, but says nothing of the share Olympia had in the fÊte. But this, of course, is quite in accordance with the natural instincts of a court historian. It is likely enough, however, that the poor schoolmaster's daughter, who would most assuredly have eclipsed her fellow comedians, was not permitted to have the opportunity of committing such a solecism. But it is impossible that such a business could have been afoot in the court of Ferrara, and that Olympia should not have had a leading share in the guidance of it, behind if not before the curtain.

As a detached bit of sixteenth century life, brought up out of the dark past, and made to flit for a moment before our vision by history's magic lanthorn, it is a pretty and striking scene enough, and interestingly characteristic of tastes and manners,—this venerable (looking) octogenarian pontiff, with his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, &c., sitting there to hear a group of royal children, of whom the youngest was only five years old, declaim the rough comedy of ancient Rome! Little Luigi, sustained the part of a slave, Muratori tells us; and had not, we must suppose, much to say.

Amid all these festivities and amusements the Pope and the Duke had to find time for long colloquies, the subjects of which, we are told, were kept secret, but which may be easily divined.

The old investiture difficulty was not settled yet; and the new inquisition had to be established in Ferrara. Here, then, the proposed body and soul arrangement, might, one would think, have been brought to a settlement. But, as usual, the Duke assented to the proposed new and more complete abandonment of his own and his subjects' right to their own souls, but by no means obtained the temporal advantages he was so desirous of in return.

There were other matters, too, of very really important, but altogether material interest, to be debated between the Duke and the father of the faithful. All the rich cities, with their fertile territories, which are situated in the lower part of the great valley of the Po, have suffered from the earliest historic times, and to the present day still suffer from very great difficulty in getting rid of the waters brought down to them from the higher country by the Po itself, and sundry other rivers. As usual in the compensatory processes of nature, the same causes have produced their prosperity, and the circumstances which tend to diminish it. The whole of the wonderfully fertile region in question is alluvial soil of extremely recent formation. Very numerous and exceedingly curious discoveries, made at different times within the last two centuries at various points, extending over the whole district from Modena to the Adriatic, prove that the country has been at former times inhabited, when the surface of the soil was from four to ten or more feet lower than it is at the present day. On the left bank of the Brenta, near Fusina, a mosaic pavement, and other Roman remains, were found in situ at a level now two feet and a half below that of the mean height of the Adriatic. And a great variety of similar facts have been placed on record,[65] which satisfactorily prove that the level of the sea has been raised, pari passu, with that of the adjoining low lands.

The result of the process thus always going on is, that an exceedingly small margin of difference between the level of the land and that of the sea remains to render possible the discharge of the waters from the mouths of the different rivers. The fertilising materials, which are brought down from the Apennines in vast quantities, not only tend to raise the general level of the district, but also, and with much greater rapidity, to raise the beds of the rivers, and obstruct their course. From a very early period, this evil has been met by the inhabitants by constructing lofty banks along the courses of their rivers. The more the bed of the stream became raised in the process of time, the higher these moles had to be built to follow it, till some of the rivers now traverse large districts of country in a perfectly artificial canal, constructed upon, instead of in, the face of the soil. Near Ferrara itself, the surface of the Po is now higher, it is said, than the highest building in the city.

In such a state of things, it may easily be imagined how important a public concern was, and still is, the maintenance and regulation of these vast artificial banks, and how vital a question the management of the waters of those secondary streams, which contribute their volume to the mass that threatens the lower country.

Then, again, the disputes inevitably arising from the conflicting interests of adjacent districts, in this respect, were further complicated by differences of an exactly opposite kind. For the waters, which, under certain conditions, were agents of destruction, which all were eager to escape at the expense of their neighbours, were, under other circumstances, creators of fertility and wealth, which all sought to appropriate to their own advantage.

Thus the Reno, which comes from the Apennines above Bologna, and is one of the most important of the tributaries of the Lower Po, had been modified in its course by embankments, which tended to divert its waters from the extensive rice grounds of Bologna and Imola, and bring them into the Ferrarese branch of the Po, which the people of that city at that time feared would, from the encumberment of its bed, soon become unnavigable.[66]

Here then was matter for interminable dispute and negotiation between the two governments,—disputes, too, which, in the hands of their more immediately interested subjects, gave rise to perpetual acts of lawless violence, to quarrels, and, on more than one occasion, even to pitched battles between commune and commune. For in the season of the floods, when the ruin of a whole district from anticipated inundation might be prevented by the cutting of an embankment, and thus averting the devastation from one's own to one's neighbour's fields; or when, in the summer, the fertilising stream, precious as a Pactolus, was insufficient for all the demands upon it, it could hardly be expected that such acts should not be resorted to, especially when, from the undecided condition of all the questions concerning the law of the case, either party honestly believed themselves to be in the right.

Thus, thrice in the course of the year 1542, the embankments of the Reno had been cut through in the night–time,[67] and it was whispered that the Duke himself was the instigator of the deed,—an opinion, which was strengthened by the evident unwillingness of the authorities to discover and punish the offenders.

But in this matter of the waters, as in the other affair, the Duke had to concede all and obtain nothing. The Pope deferred his decision till his return to Rome, and then gave sentence in his own favour, by awarding to the Bolognese all the advantages in dispute.

Olympia continued to be an inmate of the palace for about five years after the memorable visit of Pope Paul to Ferrara: five more happy sunshine years of Undine–Muse existence. The public declamations, the triumphs, the homage of the learned,[68] the interchange of complimentary poetry, the heathen philosophisings on Scipio's dream, and such like matters, went on as before. A more brilliant creature than this beautiful young priestess in the Temple of Minerva, or a sunnier existence, it is impossible to conceive. But had her life reached its term before the end of this summer–tide period, she would not have left behind her the fair claim to be remembered as one of the noblest types on record of true womanly excellence, which she afterwards made good. The depths of her moral nature slept like an unstirred lake, while the intellectual portion of her being was in full and energetic activity. And the subsequent completion of a noble character by the awakening of her soul at that fire–touch, which is woman's true Prometheus spark, shows us a psychological study of great beauty and interest.

But a very noteworthy indication of the genuineness of her nature, of the sincere simplicity of her enthusiasm and Muse–ship, and the sympathetic loveableness of her character, is to be found in the fact, that in the midst of her triumphant career, while she was the cynosure of all male eyes, and the object of so much male admiration, she formed the most durable and loving friendships with all that was best and noblest in the female world around her.

The attachment which existed between her and the companion of her studies, Anne d'Este, has been mentioned. It must have been at an early period of her residence at the court, that she and one of the ladies of the Duchess, Francesca Bucyronia, were drawn together rather by a similarity of qualities of heart than of intellectual pursuits. The learned German, John Sinapi, Olympia's Greek master, and second father, as she considered him, had also discovered the good qualities of Francesca, and induced her to leave the sunny skies of her own Italy and accompany him to Germany as his wife. The friendship which had been formed between the two young women in the bright springtide of their existence was life–long, and became strengthened in their after life under less brilliant skies, and in less brilliant fortunes.

Another friendship, of perhaps a yet closer and more intimate kind, was that which sprung up between Olympia and the Princess Lavinia della Rovere. This daughter of the Ducal family of Urbino had recently married Paolo Orsini, when, at the court of Ferrara, she became acquainted with Olympia. Lavinia, says the historian of her husband's family,[69] "was a lady of most excellent and cultivated mind, inasmuch as, besides her other rare and excellent qualities, she was devoted to philosophy and the other branches of profane literature;" "alla filosofia, e all'altre belle lettere humane." This, too, was a friendship for life; and, despite the wide difference in the social standing and circumstances of the two friends, was one, in which the most perfect equality of affection placed these two natures—highly gifted both—in the relative position to each other, which their respective calibre of intellect made the fitting and natural one, of guide and guided, as is seen from the letters of Olympia in after life.

The remarkable limitation in Sansovino's above quoted eulogy to excellence in philosophy and profane literature, would seem to imply that Lavinia, at the time of which the writer is speaking, had paid no attention to the theological questions which were agitating the world. It may be, that the orthodox historian of the house of Orsini merely intended to indicate in a manner reflecting as little scandal as might be on the family of his patron, that in the province of religion there was little good to be said of the lady Lavinia. Either meaning on the part of a good Catholic would have done her little wrong at the time of her companionship with Olympia at the court of Ferrara.

The general movement of mind, and the ventilation of theological questions which was stirring society from the monk's cell to the lady's bower, had produced on both the friends a destructive, but as yet no constructive result. They had ceased to believe the incredibilities taught by the Church; and their emancipation had brought them to a state,—if not of entirely comfortable and contented indifferentism, yet to one of unanxious infidelity, in which their meditations were rather curious speculations, than struggles for vital truth.

This state of mind is clearly indicated by passages of Olympia's letters of an after period, joined to the traces yet left of her pre–occupations and studies at that time. Writing after her own mind had attained firm convictions, she exhorts her friend to "lay aside that old error, which formerly induced us to think that, before calling on God, it was necessary to know whether we had been from eternity elected by him. Rather let us, as he commands us, first implore his mercy, and then, when we have done so, we shall know of a certainty, that we are of the number of elect."

It is needless now–a–days to stop to point out how this method of defending the tenets of Calvinism consists in simply abandoning them. The use of the passage quoted is only to show, that when the two friends had talked of these things together at Ferrara, they had been prevented from adopting the reformer's faith by these perplexities.

And this difficulty of finding the way to any firm standing ground of conviction was not a cause of unhappiness or struggle to these pure young hearts. Witness Olympia's subsequent opinion of her then state of mind.

"Had I remained longer at court," she writes[70] to her earliest friend Celia Curione, "it would have been all over with me and my salvation. For never while I remained there, could I attain the knowledge of aught lofty or divine, or read the books of either Testament."

The two young women talked of these subjects, soon discovered that they sympathised in utter alienation from the faith of the Church, compared their difficulties as to the new doctrines in vogue, and turned to the more congenial subjects of pagan philosophy and Augustan literature;—Olympia, for example, to the amusement of translating into the language of Cicero a couple of the fables of Boccaccio.

They are the first and second of the entire Decameron; a circumstance which looks as if it had been the translator's intention to proceed with the work. But they are such as to make the selection of them, if they were selected, sufficiently indicative of the tone of thinking and speaking of Church matters in those secret inner women's chambers of the Ferrara palace, which the Duke found it so impossible to purify from the heretical smell.

In the first place it may be observed, that the two "Novelle" in question are free from the indecency which marks so many of the collection. But they are among those which hit hardest the ecclesiastical shortcomings and absurdities of the age. In the first Ser Ciappelletto, who is described as one of the most worthless scoundrels who ever lived, sends for a friar when on his death–bed, and makes such a confession of all sorts of virtues, under the guise of remorseful dissatisfaction at the imperfection of them, that the confessor has him buried in a costly tomb at the expense of his convent, where his body forthwith begins to work miracles in the most satisfactory manner. The author, as if afraid of the telling force of his own satire, and the conclusions to which it naturally points, finishes by remarking, that after all it is impossible to deny that Ser Ciappelletto may have become San Ciappelletto in the other world by force of a sincere, even though momentary repentance in the last instants of his life!

The second story tells how a rich Jew was induced by a Christian friend to go to Rome for the purpose of examining Christianity at its fountain head, with a view to conversion in case conviction of the truth should reach his mind. The Jew notes well all that he can see and hear in the capital of Christianity, returns, and is baptised at once, alleging that nothing but divine miraculous interposition could possibly enable a religion preached and maintained by such men and such means to subsist and find credence among mankind.

We can easily imagine, that such fun as this would be well relished with all the zest of forbidden fruit in the young Muse's classical version by the initiated set of erudite freethinkers, male and female, that made the circle of the Duchess of RenÉe. But Boccaccio is not the author, to whom Calvin, or even Celio Curione would have recommended one struggling with religious doubts and difficulties to resort. Nor can we doubt that Olympia, while thus occupying herself, was in that state of religious indifferentism, which she subsequently as we have seen, regarded as one of perdition.

Another extant fragment of her composition, which is marked by its subject as belonging to the last year of her court life, places her before us, still as the heathen Muse, drawing all her inspiration and her imagery from pagan sources, even on an occasion which might seem by its nature to require, if merely as a matter of art, a Christian treatment.

Cardinal Bembo died on the 18th of February 1547; and his loss, keenly felt by the literary world in all parts of Italy, was especially lamented in Ferrara, where he had been so well known and highly valued by all the learned society gathered there. Bembo was, it is true, a Churchman of the old school of Leo X.'s easy going days, who found more pleasure in reading Plato than St. Paul, and liked Cicero infinitely better than the vulgate. Though inclined in all ways to liberal opinions, he probably would have had as little disposition to meddle in the controversy between the old and new theology, as many a greek–play–learned Bishop of George III's time, would have felt to be made moderator between the "high" and "low" schools of our own day. Cardinal as he was, he might no doubt have been permitted to be present at any of those little gatherings of the unorthodox, under the rose, in the apartments of the Duchess, without danger to any of the set; and if he had there heard Olympia's Boccaccio translations, he would have laughed at the fun, and been delighted with the classical latinity as much as any there. And this aspect of very mildly ecclesiastical literary MÆcenas–ship was doubtless that under which the amiable and generally beloved Cardinal had appeared to Olympia.

Yet, had her mind not been still in 1547 wholly uninfluenced by any deep religious impressions, she would not have written on the death of a prince of the Church in so thoroughly a heathen spirit as that of the following lines:[71]

"Bembo, the great light of the sea–girt queen,
The Muse's glory, Bembo hath gone hence;

Nor left his equal 'mong the sons of men
In noble deeds, or witching eloquence.

For Tully's self, with Hermes by his side,

Recross'd the Stygian flood, when Bembo died."

Such as may be gathered from these productions and occupations, and from her own subsequent reminiscences, were Olympia's thoughts and views of life and death up to this her twenty–first year. To her, indeed, whose being had as yet been stirred by no deeper feeling than gratified love of approbation, congenial friendship, and enthusiasm for her favourite studies, the age in which she was living might have appeared one of "renaissance," as it has since been discovered to have been. Not because she was able to look out far, but because her view was as yet so circumscribed. The social earthquake which was heaving the world around her, had not yet awakened her from her dream–life among "the haunts of the Muses."

Her talk with Lavinia della Rovere on the great topics which were agitating the world, election, grace, free will, and justification, was only such as may serve curiously to indicate how thoroughly the general mind must have been saturated with speculations on such subjects, when two girls, neither of them feeling strongly on the matter, could not meet and make friends without diversifying their Boccaccio readings and Ciceronian studies with chat on the difficulties of predestination. The outside air must have been very highly charged with an electricity of thought that boded stormful changes. For the meeting and shock of large masses of human thought always is a portent indicating that much change is at hand. Absence of much thought is an indispensable condition of stability.

But the time was now come when Olympia was to be waked from her Helicon dreams, and to be summoned very suddenly to descend from her calm Parnassus heights, step out into this storm–atmosphere, and find herself under circumstances wholly unknown to "Apollo and the Æonian maids."