Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 -- Friends and associates; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
It often happens with miracles that they occur in doubles or trebles, in
order, I suppose, to suggest to us that they may be simply instances
of an undiscovered law. Gaetano was a miracle, and he was followed by
Constantino, who, though of an altogether different human type, was
of no less sweet and shining a nature than the other. He was a grand,
noble, gentle creature, and my mother soon dubbed him "The Emperor,"
though it may be doubted whether the original emperor of that name was
as good a man as ours; he was certainly not nearly so good-looking. He
was only the driver of our _vettura_ from Siena to Rome, but there was
a princely munificence in his treatment of us that made us feel his
debtors in an indefinitely greater sum than that which technically
discharged our obligations. He was massive, quiescent, oxlike, with
great, slow-moving, black eyes. He had the air of extending to us the
hospitalities of Italy, and our journey assumed the character of a royal
progress. He was especially devoted to my small sister Rose, and often,
going up the hills, he would have her beside him on foot, one of his
great hands clasping hers, while with the other he wielded the long whip
that encouraged the horses. His garments were of the humblest fashion,
but he so wore them as to make them seem imperial robes. My mother
caught an excellent likeness of him as he sat before her on the driver's
seat. The second trip was as enjoyable as the first, though it was two
or three days shorter. The route was west of our former one, passing
through Radicofani, incrusted round its hill-top; and Bolsena, climbing
backward from the poisonous shore of its beautiful lake; and Viterbo,
ugly and beggar-ridden, though famous forever on account of the war for
Galiana waged between Viterbo and Rome. In the front of an old church in
the town I saw the carved side of her sarcophagus, incorporate with the
wall. She was the most beautiful woman in the world in her day, and in
the fight for the possession of her her townsmen overcame the Romans,
but the latter were permitted, as a salve for their defeat, to have one
final glimpse of Galiana as they marched homeward without her. From
a window in a tower of one of the gates of the city, therefore, her
heavenly face looked forth and shed a farewell gleam over the dusty,
defeated ranks of Rome as they filed past, up-looking. The tale is as
old as the incident itself, but I always love to recall it; there is in
it something that touches the soul more inwardly than even the legend of
Grecian Helen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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