Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 331, May, 1843

"Soon after this the confessor of the Grand-duchess entered—a Capuchin, in a long robe. The Cardinal went up to him, and embraced him in his arms, recommending his sister most affectionately to his pious care. While embracing the good monk, the Cardinal felt, or thought he felt, something strange in his long sleeve. He groped under the Capuchin's robe, and drew out—a fine boy.

"'My dear brother,' said the Cardinal, 'I am now more tranquil. I am sure, at least, that my dear sister-in-law will not die this time in childbirth.'

"The monk saw that all that remained was to avoid, if possible, the scandal; and he asked the Cardinal himself what he should do. The Cardinal told him to enter into the chamber of the Duchess, whisper to her what had happened, and, as she acted, so would he act. Silence should purchase silence; clamour, clamour.

"Bianca saw that she must renounce at present her design to give a successor to the ducal crown; she submitted to a miscarriage. The Cardinal, on his side, kept his word, and the unsuccessful attempt was never betrayed.

"A few months passed on; there was an uninterrupted harmony between the brothers, and Francesco invited the Cardinal, who was fond of field-sports, to pass some time with him at a country palace, famous for its preserves Of game.

"On the very day of his arrival, Bianca, who knew that the Cardinal was partial to a certain description of tart, bethought her to prepare one for him herself. This flattering attention on the part of his sister-in-law was hinted to him by Francesco, who mentioned it as a new proof of the Duchess's amiability, but, as he had no great confidence in his reconciliation with Bianca, it was an intimation which caused him not a little disquietude. Fortunately, the Cardinal possessed an opal, given to him by Pope Sixtus V., which had the property of growing dim the moment it approached any poisonous substance. He did not fail to make trial of it on the tart prepared by Bianca. The opal grew dim and tarnished. The Cardinal said, with an assumed air of carelessness, that, on consideration, he would not eat to-day of the tart. The Duke pressed him; but not being able to prevail—'Well,' said he, 'since Ferdinand will not eat of his favourite dish, it shall not be said that a Grand-duchess had turned confectioner for nothing—I will eat of it.' And he helped himself to a piece of the tart.

"Bianca was in the act of bending forward to prevent him—but suddenly paused. Her position was horrible. She must either avow her crime, or suffer her husband to poison himself. She cast a quick retrospective glance along her past life; she saw that she had exhausted all the pleasures of the world, and attained to all its glories; her decision was rapid—as rapid as on that day when she had fled from Venice with Pietro. She also cut off a piece from the tart, and extending her hand to her husband, she smiled, and, with her other hand, eat of the poisoned dish.

"On the morrow, Francesco and Bianca were dead. A physician opened their bodies by order of Ferdinand, and declared that they had fallen victims to a malignant fever. Three days after, the Cardinal threw down his red hat, and ascended the ducal throne."—P. 63.

But presto! Mr Dumas is traveller as well as annalist He must leave the Middle Ages to themselves; the present moment has its exigences; he must look to himself and his baggage. He had great difficulty in doing this on his landing at the Port of Livorno; and now, on his departure, he is beset with vetturini . Let us recur to some of these miseries of travel, which may at least claim a wide sympathy, for most of us are familiar with them. It is not necessary even to leave our own island to find how great an embarrassment too much help may prove, but we certainly have nothing in our own experience quite equal to the lively picture of M. Dumas:—

"I have visited many ports—I have traversed many towns—I have contended with the porters of Avignon—with the facchini of Malta, and with the innkeepers of Messina, but I never entered so villanous a place as Livorno.

"In every other country of the world there is some possibility of defending your baggage, of bargaining for its transport to the hotel; and if no treaty can be made, there is at least liberty given to load your own shoulders with it, and be your own porter. Nothing of this kind at Livorno. The vessel which brings you has not yet touched the shore when it is boarded; commissionnaires absolutely rain upon you, you know not whence; they spring upon the jetty, throw themselves on the nearest vessel, and glide down upon you from the rigging. Seeing that your little craft is in danger of being capsized by their numbers, you think of self-preservation, and grasping hold of some green and slimy steps, you cling there, like Crusoe to his rock; then, after many efforts, having lost your hat, and scarified your knees, and torn your nails, you at length stand on the pier. So much for yourself. As to your baggage, it has been already divided into as many lots as there are articles; you have a porter for your portmanteau, a porter for your dressing-case, a porter for your hat-box, a porter for your umbrella, a porter for your cane. If there are two of you, that makes ten porters; if three, fifteen; as we were four, we had twenty. A twenty-first wished to take Milord (the dog,) but Milord, who permits no liberties, took him by the calf, and we had to pinch his tail till he consented to unlock his teeth. The porter followed us, crying that the dog had lamed him, and that he would compel us to make compensation. The people rose in tumult; and we arrived at the Pension Suisse with twenty porters before us, and a rabble of two hundred behind.

"It cost us forty francs for our portmanteaus, umbrellas, and canes, and ten francs for the bitten leg. 1 1 This was not the only case of compensation made out against this travelling companion. "Milord," says our tourist, "in his quality of bulldog, was so great a destroyer of cats, that we judged it wise to take some precautions against overcharges in this particular. Therefore, on our departure from Genoa, in which town Milord had commenced his practices upon the feline race of Italy, we enquired the price of a full-grown, well-conditioned cat, and it was agreed on all hands that a cat of the ordinary species—grey, white, and tortoiseshell—was worth two pauls—(learned cats, Angora cats, cats with two heads or three tails, are not, of course, included in this tariff.) Paying down this sum for two several Genoese cats which had been just strangled by our friend, we demanded a legal receipt, and we added successively other receipts of the same kind, so that this document became at length an indisputable authority for the price of cats throughout all Italy. As often as Milord committed a new assassination, and the attempt was made to extort from us more than two pauls as the price of blood, we drew this document from our pocket, and proved beyond a cavil that two pauls was what we were accustomed to pay on such occasions, and obstinate indeed must have been the man or woman who did not yield to such a weight of precedent." In all, fifty francs for about fifty steps."—P. 59.

This was on his landing at Livorno: on his departure he gives us an account, equally graphic, of the vetturini :—

"A diligence is a creature that leaves at a fixed hour, and its passengers run to it; a vetturino leaves at all hours, and runs after its passengers. Hardly have you set your foot out of the boat that brings you from the steam-vessel to the shore, than you are assailed, stifled, dragged, deafened by twenty drivers, who look on you as their merchandise, and treat you accordingly, and would end by carrying you off bodily, if they could agree among them who should have the booty. Families have been separated at the port of Livorno, to find each other how they could in the streets of Florence. In vain you jump into a fiacre , they leap up before, above, behind; and at the gate of the hotel, there you are in the midst of the same group of villains, who are only the more clamorous for having been kept waiting. Reduced to extremities, you declare that you have come to Livorno upon commercial business, and that you intend staying eight days at least, and you ask of the garçon , loud enough for all to hear, if there is an apartment at liberty for the next week. At this they will sometimes abandon the prey, which they reckon upon seizing at some future time; they run back with all haste to the port to catch some other traveller, and you are free.