Italian Journeys | Page 9

He took refuge in the
palace of his master, which was immediately assailed. The prince's own
life was threatened, and he was forced to surrender the fugitive to the
people, who tore Tortona limb from limb, and then, after parading the
city with the mutilated remains, quietly returned to their allegiance.
Niccolò, therefore, caused this castle to be built, which he strengthened

with massive walls and towers commanding the whole city, and
rendered inaccessible by surrounding it with a deep and wide canal
from the river Reno.], and modern civilization has not crossed the
castle moat, to undignify its exterior with any visible touch of the
present. To be sure, when you enter it, the magnificent life is gone out
of the old edifice; it is no stately halberdier who stands on guard at the
gate of the drawbridge, but a stumpy Italian soldier in baggy trousers.
The castle is full of public offices, and one sees in its courts and on its
stairways, not brilliant men-at-arms, nor gay squires and pages, but
whistling messengers going from one office to another with docketed
papers, and slipshod serving-men carrying the clerks their coffee in
very dirty little pots. Dreary-looking suitors, slowly grinding through
the mills of law, or passing in the routine of the offices, are the guests
encountered in the corridors; and all that bright-colored throng of the
old days, ladies and lords, is passed from the scene. The melodrama is
over, friends, and now we have a play of real life, founded on fact and
inculcating a moral.
Of course the custodians were slow to admit any change of this kind. If
you could have believed them,--and the poor people told as many lies
as they could to make you,--you would believe that nothing had ever
happened of a commonplace nature in this castle. The taking-off of
Hugo and Parisina they think the great merit of the castle; and one of
them, seeing us, made haste to light his taper and conduct us down to
the dungeons where those unhappy lovers were imprisoned. It is the
misfortune of memorable dungeons to acquire, when put upon show,
just the reverse of those properties which should raise horror and
distress in the mind of the beholder. It was impossible to deny that the
cells of Parisina and of Hugo were both singularly warm, dry, and
comfortable; and we, who had never been imprisoned in them, found it
hard to command, for our sensation, the terror and agony of the
miserable ones who suffered there. We, happy and secure in these
dungeons, could not think of the guilty and wretched pair bowing
themselves to the headsman's stroke in the gloomy chamber under the
Hall of Aurora; nor of the Marquis, in his night-long walk, breaking at
last into frantic remorse and tears to know that his will had been
accomplished. Nay, there upon its very scene, the whole tragedy faded

from us; and, seeing our wonder so cold, the custodian tried to kindle it
by saying that in the time of the event these cells were much dreadfuller
than now, which was no doubt true. The floors of the dungeons are
both below the level of the moat, and the narrow windows, or rather
crevices to admit the light, were cut in the prodigiously thick wall just
above the water, and were defended with four successive iron gratings.
The dungeons are some distance apart: that of Hugo was separated
from the outer wall of the castle by a narrow passage-way, while
Parisina's window opened directly upon the moat.
When we ascended again to the court of the castle, the custodian,
abetted by his wife, would have interested us in two memorable wells
there, between which, he said, Hugo was beheaded; and unabashed by
the small success of this fable, he pointed out two windows in
converging angles overhead, from one of which the Marquis, looking
into the other, discovered the guilt of the lovers. The windows are now
walled up, but are neatly represented to the credulous eye by a fresco of
lattices.
Valery mentions another claim upon the interest of the tourist which
this castle may make, in the fact that it once sheltered John Calvin, who
was protected by the Marchioness Renée, wife of Hercules II.; and my
Servitore di Piazza (the one who knows how to read and write) gives
the following account of the matter, in speaking of the domestic chapel
which Renée had built in the castle: "This lady was learned in
belles-lettres and in the schismatic doctrines which at that time were
insinuating themselves throughout France and Germany, and with
which Calvin, Luther, and other proselytes, agitated the people, and
threatened war to the Catholic religion. Nationally fond of innovation,
and averse to the court of Rome on