University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA.

Perugia, on its lofty hill-top, was reached by the two
travellers before the sun had quite kissed away the early
freshness of the morning. Since midnight, there had
been a heavy rain, bringing infinite refreshment to the
scene of verdure and fertility amid which this ancient
civilization stands; insomuch that Kenyon loitered, when
they came to the gray city-wall, and was loth to give up
the prospect of the sunny wilderness that lay below. It
was as green as England, and bright as Italy alone.
There was the wide valley, sweeping down and spreading
away on all sides from the weed-grown ramparts,
and bounded afar by mountains, which lay asleep in the
sun, with thin mists and silvery clouds floating about
their heads by way of morning dreams.

“It lacks still two hours of noon,” said the sculptor to
his friend, as they stood under the arch of the gateway,
waiting for their passports to be examined; “will you
come with me to see some admirable frescoes by Perugino?
There is a hall in the Exchange, of no great
magnitude, but covered with what must have been — at

the time it was painted — such magnificence and beauty
as the world had not elsewhere to show.”

“It depresses me to look at old frescoes,” responded
the Count; “it is a pain, yet not enough of a pain to
answer as a penance.”

“Will you look at some pictures by Fra Angelico in
the Church of San Domenico?” asked Kenyon; “they
are full of religious sincerity. When one studies them
faithfully, it is like holding a conversation about heavenly
things with a tender and devout-minded man.”

“You have shown me some of Fra Angelico's pictures,
I remember,” answered Donatello; “his angels look as if
they had never taken a flight out of heaven; and his
saints seem to have been born saints, and always to have
lived so. Young maidens, and all innocent persons, I
doubt not, may find great delight and profit in looking at
such holy pictures. But they are not for me.”

“Your criticism, I fancy, has great moral depth,” replied
Kenyon; “and I see in it the reason why Hilda so
highly appreciates Fra Angelico's pictures. Well; we
will let all such matters pass for to-day, and stroll about
this fine old city till noon.”

They wandered to and fro, accordingly, and lost themselves
among the strange, precipitate passages, which, in
Perugia, are called streets. Some of them are like caverns,
being arched all over, and plunging down abruptly
towards an unknown darkness; which, when you have
fathomed its depths, admits you to a daylight that you
scarcely hoped to behold again. Here they met shabby
men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people,

some of whom guided children in leading-strings through
those dim and antique thoroughfares, where a hundred
generations had passed before the little feet of to-day
began to tread them. Thence they climbed upward
again, and came to the level plateau, on the summit of
the hill, where are situated the grand piazza and the principal
public edifices.

It happened to be market-day in Perugia. The great
square, therefore, presented a far more vivacious spectacle
than would have been witnessed in it at any other
time of the week, though not so lively as to overcome the
gray solemnity of the architectural portion of the scene.
In the shadow of the cathedral and other old Gothic
structures — seeking shelter from the sunshine that fell
across the rest of the piazza — was a crowd of people,
engaged as buyers or sellers in the petty traffic of a
country-fair. Dealers had erected booths and stalls on
the pavement, and overspread them with scanty awnings,
beneath which they stood, vociferously crying their merchandise;
such as shoes, hats and caps, yarn stockings,
cheap jewelry and cutlery, books, chiefly little volumes
of a religious character, and a few French novels; toys,
tin-ware, old iron, cloth, rosaries of beads, crucifixes, cakes,
biscuits, sugar-plums, and innumerable little odds and
ends, which we see no object in advertising. Baskets of
grapes, figs, and pears, stood on the ground. Donkeys,
bearing panniers stuffed out with kitchen vegetables, and
requiring an ample road-way, roughly shouldered aside
the throng.

Crowded as the square was, a juggler found room to

spread out a white cloth upon the pavement, and cover it
with cups, plates, balls, cards, — the whole material of his
magic, in short, — wherewith he proceeded to work miracles
under the noonday sun. An organ-grinder at one
point, and a clarion and a flute at another, accomplished
what they could towards filling the wide space with tuneful
noise. Their small uproar, however, was nearly
drowned by the multitudinous voices of the people, bargaining,
quarrelling, laughing, and babbling copiously at
random; for the briskness of the mountain atmosphere, or
some other cause, made everybody so loquacious that more
words were wasted in Perugia on this one market-day,
than the noisiest piazza of Rome would utter in a month.

Through all this petty tumult, which kept beguiling
one's eyes and upper strata of thought, it was delightful
to catch glimpses of the grand old architecture that stood
around the square. The life of the flitting moment, existing
in the antique shell of an age gone by, has a fascination
which we do not find in either the past or present,
taken by themselves. It might seem irreverent to make
the gray cathedral and the tall, time-worn palaces echo
back the exuberant vociferation of the market; but they
did so, and caused the sound to assume a kind of poetic
rhythm, and themselves looked only the more majestic
for their condescension.

On one side, there was an immense edifice devoted
to public purposes, with an antique gallery, and a range
of arched and stone-mullioned windows, running along its
front; and by way of entrance it had a central Gothic
arch, elaborately wreathed around with sculptured semicircles,

within which the spectator was aware of a stately
and impressive gloom. Though merely the municipal
council house and exchange of a decayed country town,
this structure was worthy to have held in one portion
of it the parliament-hall of a nation, and in the other,
the state apartments of its ruler. On another side of the
square rose the mediæval front of the cathedral, where
the imagination of a Gothic architect had long ago flowered
out indestructibly, achieving, in the first place, a
grand design, and then covering it with such abundant
detail of ornament, that the magnitude of the work
seemed less a miracle than its minuteness. You would
suppose that he must have softened the stone into wax,
until his most delicate fancies were modelled in the pliant
material, and then had hardened it into stone again.
The whole was a vast, black-letter page of the richest and
quaintest poetry. In fit keeping with all this old magnificence,
was a great marble fountain, where again the
Gothic imagination showed its overflow and gratuity of
device in the manifold sculptures which it lavished as
freely as the water did its shifting shapes.

Besides the two venerable structures which we have
described there were lofty palaces, perhaps of as old a
date, rising story above story, and adorned with balconies,
whence, hundreds of years ago, the princely occupants
had been accustomed to gaze down at the sports, business,
and popular assemblages of the piazza. And, beyond all
question, they thus witnessed the erection of a bronze
statue, which, three centuries since, was placed on the
pedestal that it still occupies.

“I never come to Perugia,” said Kenyon, “without
spending as much time as I can spare in studying yonder
statue of Pope Julius the Third. Those sculptors of the
middle age have fitter lessons for the professors of my
art than we can find in the Grecian masterpieces. They
belong to our Christian civilization; and, being earnest
works, they always express something which we do not
get from the antique. Will you look at it?

“Willingly,” replied the Count, “for I see, even so far
off, that the statue is bestowing a benediction, and there is
a feeling in my heart that I may be permitted to share
it.”

Remembering the similar idea which Miriam a short
time before had expressed, the sculptor smiled hopefully
at the coincidence. They made their way through the
throng of the market-place, and approached close to the
iron railing that protected the pedestal of the statue.

It was the figure of a pope, arrayed in his pontifical
robes, and crowned with the tiara. He sat in a bronze
chair, elevated high above the pavement, and seemed to
take kindly yet authoritative cognizance of the busy scene
which was at that moment passing before his eyes. His
right hand was raised and spread abroad, as if in the act
of shedding forth a benediction, which every man — so
broad, so wise, and so serenely affectionate was the bronze
pope's regard — might hope to feel quietly descending
upon the need, or the distress, that he had closest at his
heart. The statue had life and observation in it, as well
as patriarchal majesty. An imaginative spectator could
not but be impressed with the idea that this benignly

awful representative of divine and human authority might
rise from his brazen chair, should any great public exigency
demand his interposition, and encourage or restrain
the people by his gesture, or even by prophetic utterances
worthy of so grand a presence.

And, in the long, calm intervals, amid the quiet lapse
of ages, the pontiff watched the daily turmoil around his
seat, listening with majestic patience to the market cries,
and all the petty uproar that awoke the echoes of the
stately old piazza. He was the enduring friend of these
men, and of their forefathers and children, — the familiar
face of generations.

“The pope's blessing, methinks, has fallen upon you,”
observed the sculptor, looking at his friend.

In truth, Donatello's countenance indicated a healthier
spirit than while he was brooding in his melancholy tower.
The change of scene, the breaking up of custom, the fresh
flow of incidents, the sense of being homeless, and therefore
free, had done something for our poor Faun; these
circumstances had at least promoted a reaction, which
might else have been slower in its progress. Then, no
doubt, the bright day, the gay spectacle of the market-place,
and the sympathetic exhilaration of so many people's
cheerfulness, had each their suitable effect on a temper naturally
prone to be glad. Perhaps, too, he was magnetically
conscious of a presence that formerly sufficed to
make him happy. Be the cause what it might, Donatello's
eyes shone with a serene and hopeful expression,
while looking upward at the bronze pope, to whose widely
diffused blessing, it may be, he attributed all this good
influence.

“Yes, my dear friend,” said he, in reply to the sculptor's
remark, “I feel the blessing upon my spirit.”

“It is wonderful,” said Kenyon, with a smile, “wonderful
and delightful to think how long a good man's
beneficence may be potent, even after his death. How
great, then, must have been the efficacy of this excellent
pontiff's blessing while he was alive!”

“I have heard,” remarked the Count, “that there was
a brazen image set up in the Wilderness, the sight of
which healed the Israelites of their poisonous and rankling
wounds. If it be the blessed Virgin's pleasure, why
should not this holy image before us do me equal good?
A wound has long been rankling in my soul, and filling it
with poison.”

“I did wrong to smile,” answered Kenyon. “It is
not for me to limit Providence in its operations on man's
spirit.”

While they stood talking, the clock of the neighboring
cathedral told the hour, with twelve reverberating strokes,
which it flung down upon the crowded market-place, as if
warning one and all to take advantage of the bronze pontiff's
benediction, or of Heaven's blessing, however proffered,
before the opportunity were lost.

“High noon,” said the sculptor. “It is Miriam's
hour!”