approaching night on everything. If I had been murdered there, in
some former life, I could not have seemed to remember the place
more thoroughly, or with a more emphatic chilling of the blood; and
the mere remembrance of it acquired in that minute, is so
strengthened by the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think I
could forget it.
More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old Ferrara, than
any city of the solemn brotherhood! The grass so grows up in the
silent streets, that any one might make hay there, literally, while
the sun shines. But the sun shines with diminished cheerfulness in
grim Ferrara; and the people are so few who pass and re-pass
through the places, that the flesh of its inhabitants might be
grass indeed, and growing in the squares.
I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian town, always lives
next door to the Hotel, or opposite: making the visitor feel as if
the beating hammers were his own heart, palpitating with a deadly
energy! I wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom on all
sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can’t be shut, and
will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not
enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one’s dreams all
night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the
wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot,
of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to
reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots
are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat
when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold and
suffocation at all other times! I wonder, above all, why it is the
great feature of domestic architecture in Italian inns, that all
the fire goes up the chimney, except the smoke!
The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, portholes, smoke,
and faggots, are welcome to me. Give me the smiling face of the
attendant, man or woman; the courteous manner; the amiable desire
to please and to be pleased; the light-hearted, pleasant, simple
air – so many jewels set in dirt – and I am theirs again to-morrow!
ARIOSTO’S house, TASSO’S prison, a rare old Gothic cathedral, and
more churches of course, are the sights of Ferrara. But the long
silent streets, and the dismantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu
of banners, and where rank weeds are slowly creeping up the longuntrodden
stairs, are the best sights of all.
The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before sunrise one
fine morning, when I left it, was as picturesque as it seemed
unreal and spectral. It was no matter that the people were not yet
out of bed; for if they had all been up and busy, they would have
made but little difference in that desert of a place. It was best
to see it, without a single figure in the picture; a city of the
dead, without one solitary survivor. Pestilence might have ravaged
streets, squares, and market-places; and sack and siege have ruined
the old houses, battered down their doors and windows, and made
breaches in their roofs. In one part, a great tower rose into the
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Dickens, Charles – Pictures From Italy
air; the only landmark in the melancholy view. In another, a
prodigious castle, with a moat about it, stood aloof: a sullen
city in itself. In the black dungeons of this castle, Parisina and
her lover were beheaded in the dead of night. The red light,
beginning to shine when I looked back upon it, stained its walls
without, as they have, many a time, been stained within, in old
days; but for any sign of life they gave, the castle and the city
might have been avoided by all human creatures, from the moment
when the axe went down upon the last of the two lovers: and might
have never vibrated to another sound
Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock.
Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running fiercely,