Somebody, the other day, presented me with a bunch of crimson roses and purple nightshade, tied together.Roses and nightshade!I thought the combination worthy of a poem!For the rose, as all the world conceives, is the emblem of love; and the nightshade typifies silence.I put my posy in a little vase filled with water, and when night came, I lay down to rest, with my head full of vague rhymes and unfledged ideas, whose theme was still my eccentric nosegay. Sleep, however, overtook the muse, and the soft divinities of darkness, weaving their tender spells about me, dissolved my contemplated sonnet into a dream.It seemed to my sleeping fancy that I stood in a deep, serene light of shadowy purple, grave and sombre,--a light which suggested to me the sound of low minor chords, the last notes of some organ voluntary, dying beneath a master's touch, and rolling down the hazy aisles of an empty cathedral, out into the gloomy night, and upward to the stars. A spirit floated in the air before me,--a phantom draped in heavy sweeping robes of dense purple, but with eyes of such vivid and fiery brightness, that I could not look upon them; and my heart quailed in my bosom with a strange oppressive sense of fear and wonder. Then I felt that her awful gaze was fixed upon me, and a voice, low and sonorous as the tones of an organ, broke on my ear with an intense pathos, unutterably solemn:--Daughter of earth, I am the spirit of the purple Nightshade, the Atropa Belladonna of the south,--the scent of whose dusky chalice is the fume of bitterness; the taste of whose dark fruit is death. And because the children and the maidens shun my poisonous berries, when they go out into the woods to make garlands for Mary's shrine, or for wedding gala; and because the leech and herbalist find in me a marvellous balm to soothe the torments of physical anguish; because I give the sick man ease, and the sleepless man oblivion, and the miserable man eternal rest; because I am sombre of hue and unsweet of odour, able to calm, to hush, and to kill, the sons of earth have chosen me to be the emblem of silence. There is a shadow on your brow: my words sound strange and bitter to you; yet hear me: for once on earth I dwelt with one who thought and labored in silence. His name is inscribed upon no calendar of the world's heroes; it is written only in heaven!Not far from a certain large town in Piedmont there was once a miserable little cottage. It had been let when I knew it, to a poor invalid woman and her only child, a boy about nine or ten years old. They were very poor, this mother and son; and the little living they had, came mostly by means of needlework, which the woman did for people in the town, and by the sale of dried herbs and suchlike. As for the cottage itself, it was a crazy, tumble-down tenement, half in ruins, and all the outside walls of it were covered with clinging ivies and weeds and wild climbing plants. I was one of these. I grew just underneath the solitary window of the small chamber wherein the poor woman slept,--the whole but consisted of only two rooms,--and I climbed and sprouted and twisted my head in and out of the network of shrubs about me, and clung to the crumbling stone of the wall, and stretched myself out and up continually, until I grew so tall, that I could look in at the casement and see the inside of the room. It was in the summertime that I first managed to do this, and I remember well what a burning, sultry summer it was! Everything seemed parched and calcined under the pitiless Italian sun, and the whole sky was like a great blazing topaz,--yellow, and hard to look at; and the water disappeared from the runlets, and there was not a breath of wind from one end of the sky to the other.So it was no great marvel to me, when one day, not long after my first appearance at the windowsill, I saw the poor woman come into the room with a very faltering step, and a whiter, sicklier look on her wan face than was usual to it. She threw herself wearily down upon her bed in the corner, and panted for breath. She had been to the town to take thither the last piece of needlework she had done, and she laid on the wooden table by the bedside the money the people had given her for her labor. Hard-earned coins, and few of them! She put her thin, wasted hands to her head as she lay, and I heard her murmur to herself in broken words that seemed interspersed with half suppressed sobs, and I could not understand what she said. But by-and-by, when she had grown a little calmer,--there was a sharp, swift tap at the door of the room, and the boy entered, with a small book in his hand, and a sparkle of pleasure in his eyes."Look, mother!" he cried, holding up the volume gleefully; "this is one of the great German Professor's 'Treatises on Chemistry!' Herr Ritter has bought it for me! Isn't it good of him? And he is here, and wants to know if he may come and see you!"She smiled,--such a poor ghost of a smile as it was!--and answered feebly, "Let him come; 'Tista." But I suppose the Herr had heard even that broken message, for at the words the door was pushed open a little further, and an old man appeared, bare-headed, wearing a long white beard, and carrying a staff in his hand. He was bent with age, and his forehead and cheeks were marked about with many lines and crosses,--deep furrows ploughed by the harrow of thought and sorrow. I had often seen him before, for he came frequently to the cottage, but I had never been so close to him as on this occasion, and had never before noticed how poor and worn his garments were. He came into the room with a courteous greeting on his lips, half-Italian, half-German in its phraseology, and signed with a nod of his head to the boy Battista to be gone, who immediatelyobeyed, hugging his prize, and closed the door softly behind him."Herr Ritter," said the woman, raising herself on thepillow, and putting both her hands into his; "you are too good to, my 'Tista, and too good to me. Why will you do these things?"He smiled, as though the matter were not worth a word; but she went on,--"I say you are too good, dear friend. Never a day passes, but you bring me something,--wine or fruit or some piece of dainty fare; and as for 'Tista, there is nothing he does not owe to you! All he knows, you have taught him. We can never repay you.""My dear Frau 'Lora, who thinks of such things twice? Chut! But you look ill and over-tired this evening. You have been to the town again?""Yes.""I thought so. You must lie here and rest now. It will get cooler by-and-by; and look, I have brought you some bunches of grapes and some peaches. They will do you good.""Oh, Herr Ritter!""Don't cry 'oh, Herr Ritter!' in that reproachful manner, for this fruit really cost me nothing. It was given to me. Little Andrea Bruno brought it to me today.""The fruit-seller's child? Yes, yes, I daresay; but it was not meant for me! It's no use trying to hide your good deeds, Herr Ritter! 'Tista has told me how kind you were to Andrea's little sister when she sprained her foot last month; and how you bandaged it for her, and used to go and read to her all the morning, when her father and Andrea were out selling fruit, and she would have been left alone but for you; and I know, too, all about poor crippled Antonia and Catterina Pic--. Don't go away, I won't say any more about it! But I couldn't help telling you I knew; you dear, good Herr Ritter!"He had half-risen, but now he reseated himself, and drew his chair nearer her couch. In doing this his eyes met hers, and he looked earnestly into them a moment."Lora, you have been weeping. What is the matter?"She moved restlessly on her hard pillows, and dropped her gaze from his face, and I noted that a faint blush stole over her sunken cheeks and touched her forehead. With that tender glow, under the faded skin, she looked almost beautiful. She was young, certainly, not more than thirty at the utmost; but she was very poor and desolate, and there is nothing so quick at sapping the blood and withering the beauty of women as poverty and desolation. Nothing."Herr Ritter," she said, after a little pause, "I will tell you what is the matter. Perhaps you may be able to advise me; I don't quite know what to do. You know how very, very much my 'Tista wants to be a chemist, so I needn't say anything about that. Well, he must be brought up to something, you know; he must learn to be something when the time comes for him to live without me, and I don't think, Herr Ritter, it will be very long-- before--before that time comes, now."I noted again that the old man did not contradict her. He only watched her drooping face, and listened."I have worked early and late," she went on in low, swift tones, "to try and lay by a little money towards getting him apprenticed to some chemist in the town. He has worked, too, poor child. But it is little--nothing--we could save between us; for we must live meanwhile, you know, dear friend, and there is the rent to pay. Well, now I am coming to my story. When I was a young girl, I had a sister, ten years older than I. We were orphans, and an old aunt took care of us. I married--against my aunt's wish, in the face of my sister's warnings,--a poor improvisatore. We were poor enough, of course, before that, my sister and I, but we were not beggars, and the husband I took was below me. Well, my sister was very angry, dreadfully angry, but I was young and strong, and I was in love, so I didn't care much about it then. My husband traveled from place to place, telling his stories and singing his rhymes, and I went with him, and soon lost sight of my sister. At last we came to Rome. 'Tista was born there, and soon after I got some news of my old home from a wandering pedlar, who had passed through the village where I used to live. My aunt was dead, and my sister had married,--married a rich inn-keeper; a match as far above our station as mine had been below it. Well, Herr Ritter, my husband was badly hurt in a quarrel one evening in one of the squares. Somebody insulted him before all the people as he was telling one of his stories, and his blood got up and he struck the man, and they fought; and my husband was brought home to me that night, half-murdered. He didn't live long. He had had a heavy fall, I think, in that fight, for the back of his head was cut open, and he took brain-fever from it. I did my best, but our money was scarce, and our child was too young to be left alone with a sick man, and I could get no work to do at home. So one day, at noon, my husband died. Poor Battista! I could not help it! I could not save him! Ah Jesu! what a terrible thing poverty is! what a mournful thing it is to live!"She shrouded her face in her hands, but not to weep, for when, after a little silence, she raised her large dark eyes again to meet the old German's compassionate gaze, I saw that they were calm and tearless. "After that, I used to leave little 'Tista in the care of a woman, next door to me, while I went out as a model. I was handsome then, the painters said, and my hair and my complexion were worth something in the studio; but not for long. My color faded, and my hair grew thin, for I pined and sorrowed day and night after the husband I had lost, and at last no one would give two scudi for me, so I took 'Tista and left Rome to tramp. Sometimes I got hired out in the vine-harvest, and sometimes I sold fruit, or eggs, or fish in the markets, till at last I got a place as a servant in a big town, and 'Tista went to school a bit. But seven months ago my mistress died, and her daughters wouldn't keep me, because I had become weak and couldn't do the work of their house as well as I used to do it. And nobody else would take me, for all the people to whom I went said I looked halfway in my grave, and should be no use to them as a servant. So I gave it up at last, and came on here and got this cottage, almost for nothing, though it's something to me; but then they give me so little for my work, you see, in the town. Well, Herr Ritter, I daresay you think my story a very long one, don't you? I am just near the end of it now. I went into the town today, and while I was standing in the shop with my needlework, a lady came in. The shop-woman, who was talking to me about the price of the things I had done, left me when the lady came in, and went to serve her. So I had to stand and wait, and when the lady put back her veil to look at something she was going to buy, I saw her face. Oh, Herr Ritter! it was my sister, my sister Carlotta! I was certain of it! I was certain of it! Nevertheless; after she had gone, I asked the shop-woman some questions about the lady. She did not tell me much, for I fancy she thought me inquisitive; but she told me, at least, all I had need to know. Her customer, she said, was the wife of a very rich inn-keeper, and her name was Carlotta Nero. She is lodging, the woman told me, at the Casa d'Oro. I didn't go to see her then, of course, because she could not then have reached home; but I want to go tomorrow, if I can manage to walk so far, for I think she would like to see me again, and I am sure I should like to see her. And, shall I tell you what else I am thinking about, Herr Ritter? It is that, perhaps,--perhaps, her husband, being so rich, he might be able to put 'Tista in the way of doing something, or of getting me some work, so that we could save up the money for his apprenticeship by-and-by. What do you think of it now, Herr Ritter? My sister, you know, is the only friend I have in the world, except you, kind, dear Herr! and I don't think she would mind my asking her this, though we did part in anger; do you? For that was ten years ago."She paused again, and Herr Ritter gazed tenderly at the poor sharp face, with its purple eyelids and quivering parted lips, through which the heavy rapid breath came every moment with a sudden painful shudder, like a sob. I think he was wondering, pityingly, what such a feeble, shattered creature as she could have to do with work, at least, on this side of death."Herr Ritter! Herr Ritter!" cried 'Tista, bursting open the door of the little chamber, in a state of great delight; "look what Cristofero has just given me! These beautiful roses! Will you have them?""Not I, 'Tista, thank you. Gay colors and sweet odours are not for me. Put them here in this cup by your mother's side. Now, Frau 'Lora, I will not be contradicted!""Won't you have one of them, Herr Ritter?" asked the boy, wistfully, holding out towards the old man a spendid crimson bud.He answered hurriedly, with a gesture of avoidance."No, no, 'Tista! I never touch roses! See here, I'll take a cluster of this, 'tis more in my line a great deal." He turned away to the lattice as he spoke; rather, I thought, to conceal a certain emotion that had crossed his face at the sight of the roses than for any other reason, and laid his hand upon me."Why, that's nightshade!" cried the boy in surprise."No matter," answered the old German, breaking off my blossom-head, and tucking its stalk into the buttonhole of his rusty coat; "I like it, it suits me. Belladonna is not to be despised, as you ought to know, Master Chemist!" Then, in a softer tone, "I shall come and see you tomorrow morning, Frau 'Lora, before you start. Goodnight."He went out, shutting the door behind him gently, and I went with him. He did not walk very far. About half-a-mile from the town there stood three or four old-fashioned houses, with projecting gables and low green verandahs sloping over their wide balconies, and it was in the first of these houses that Herr Ritter lodged.He had only one room, a little dark, studious-looking apartment, scantily furnished, with a single window, opening on to the balcony, and in one corner a deep recess, within which was his bed. There were some shelves opposite the window, and upon these several ponderous old tomes in faded covers; a human skull, and a few fossils. Nothing else at all, except a tiny picture, hung upon the wall above the head of his couch; but this I did not see at first.Later, when he had taken me out of his coat, and put me in water, in a little glass bowl, I was able to turn my great yellow eyes full upon the painting, and I saw that it was the miniature of a beautiful young girl, dressed in a very old-fashioned costume, and wearing upon her fair bosom a knot of crimson roses. "Ah," I said to myself, "there has been a romance in this old German's life, and now there is--silence."
