Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General Part 3

She was out paying some bills, and only arrived a few minutes before dinner-hour.

"I want you, madam, for a moment here," said I, with something of Oth.e.l.lo, in the last act, in my voice and demeanour.

"I suppose I can take off my bonnet and shawl first, Mr O'Dowd," said she, snappishly.

"No, madam; you may probably find that you'll need them both at the end of our interview."

"What do you mean, sir?" asked she, haughtily.

"This is no time for grand airs or mock dignity, madam," said I, with the tone of the avenging angel. "Do you know these? are these in your hand? Deny it if you can."

"Why should I deny it? Of course they're mine."

"And you wrote this, and this, and this?" cried I, almost in a scream, as I shook forth one after another of the letters.

"Don't you know I did?" said she, as hotly; "and nothing beyond a venial mistake in one of them!"

"A what, woman? a what?"

"A mere slip of the pen, sir. You know very well how I used to sit up half the night at my exercises?"

"Exercises!"

"Well, themes, if you like better; the Count made me make clean copies of them, with all his corrections, and send them to him every day--here are the rough ones;" and she opened a drawer filled with a ma.s.s of papers all scrawled over and blotted. "And now, sir, once more, what do you mean?"

I did not wait to answer her, but rushed down to the landlord. "Where does that Count Castrocaro live?" I asked.

"Nowhere in particular, I believe, sir; and for the present he has left Turin--started for Genoa by the diligence five minutes ago. He's a Gran'

Galantuomo, sir," added he, as I stood stupefied.

"I am aware of that," said I, as I crept back to my room to finish my packing.

"Did you settle with the Count?" asked my wife at the door.

"Yes," said I, with my head buried in my trunk.

"And he was perfectly satisfied?"

"Of course he was--he has every reason to be so."

"I am glad of it," said she, moving away--"he had a deal of trouble with those themes of mine. No one knows what they cost him." I could have told what they cost _me_; but I never did, till the present moment.

I need not say with what an appet.i.te I dined on that day, nor with what abject humility I behaved to my wife, nor how I skulked down in the evening to the landlord to apologise for not being able to pay the bill before I left, an unexpected demand having left me short of cash.

All these, seventeen years ago as they are, have not yet lost their bitterness, nor have I yet arrived at the time when I can think with composure of this friend of Gioberti.

Admiral Dalrymple tells us, amongst his experiences as a farmer, that he gave twenty pounds for a dung-hill, "and he'd give ten more to any one who'd tell him what to do with it." I strongly suspect this is pretty much the case with the Italians as regards their fleet. There it is--at least, there is the beginning of it; and when it shall be complete, where is it to go? what is it to protect? whom to attack?

The very last thing Italians have in their minds is a war with England.

If we have not done them any great or efficient service, we have always spoken civilly of them, and bade them a G.o.d-speed. But, besides a certain goodwill that they feel for us, they entertain--as a nation with a very extended and ill-protected coast-line ought--a considerable dread of a maritime power that could close every port they possess, and lay some very important towns in ashes.

Now, it is exactly by the possession of a fleet that, in any future war between England and France, these people may be obliged to ally themselves to France. The French will want them in the Mediterranean, and they cannot refuse when called on.

Count Cavour always kept telling our Foreign Office, "A strong Italy is the best thing in the world for you. A strong Italy is the surest of all barriers against France." There may be some truth in the a.s.sertion if Italy could spring at once--Minerva fas.h.i.+on--all armed and ready for combat, and stand out as a first-rate power in Europe; but to do this requires years of preparation, long years too; and it is precisely in these years of interval that France can become all-dominant in Italy--the master, and the not very merciful master, of her destinies in everything. France has the guardians.h.i.+p of Italy--with this addition, that she can make the minority last as long as she pleases.

Perhaps my Garibaldian companion has impregnated me with an unreasonable amount of anti-French susceptibility, for certainly he abuses our dear allies with a zeal and a gusto that does one's heart good to listen to; and I do feel like that honest Bull, commemorated by Mathews, that "I hate prejudice--I hate the French." So it is: these revolutionists, these levellers, these men of the people, are never weary of reviling the French Emperor for being a _parvenu_. Human inconsistency cannot go much farther than this. Not but I perfectly agree with my Garibaldian, that we have all agreed to take the most absurdly exaggerated estimate of the Emperor's ability. Except in some attempts, and not always successful attempts, to carry out the policy and plans of the first Empire, there is really nothing that deserves the name of statesmans.h.i.+p in his career. Wherever he has ventured on a policy, and accompanied it by a prediction, it has been a failure. Witness the proud declaration of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic, with its corroboration in the Treaty of Villafranca! The Emperor, in his policy, resembles one of those whist-players who never plan a game, but play trick by trick, and rather hope to win by discovering a revoke than from any honest success of their own hand. It is all the sharp practice of statecraft that he employs: nor has he many resources in cunning. The same dodge that served him in the Crimea he revived at Villafranca. It is always the same ace he has in his sleeve!

The most ardent Imperialist will not pretend to say that he knows his road out of rome or Mexico, or even Madagascar. For small intrigue, short speeches to deputations, and mock stag-hunts, he has not his superior anywhere. And now, here we are in Genoa, at the Hotel Feder, where poor O'Connell died, and there's no fleet, not a frigate, in the port.

"Where are they?"

"At Spezia."

"Where is Spezia?"

The landlord, to whom this question is propounded, takes out of a pigeon-hole of his desk a large map and unfolds it, saying, proudly, "There, sir, that is Spezia--a harbour that could hold Portsmouth, and Plymouth, and Brest, and Cherbourg "--I'm not sure he didn't say Calais--"and yet have room for our Italian fleet, which, in two years'

time, will be one of the first in Europe."

"The s.h.i.+ps are building, I suppose?" said I.

"They are."

"And where?"

"In America, at Toulon, and in England."

"None in Italy?"

"Pardon me; there is a corvette on the stocks at Leghorn, and they are repairing a boiler at Genoa. Ah! Signor John Bull, take care; we have iron and coal mines, we have oak and hemp, and tallow and tar. There was a winged lion once that swept the seas before people sang 'Rule Britannia.' History is going to repeat itself."

"Let me be called at eight to-morrow morning, and my coffee be ready by nine."

"And we shall want a vetturino for Spezia," added my Garibaldian; "let him be here by eleven."

GARIBALDI'S WORs.h.i.+PPERS.

The road from Genoa to Spezia is one of the most beautiful in Europe. As the Apennines descend to the sea they form innumerable little bays and creeks, alongside of which the road winds--now coasting the very sh.o.r.e, now soaring aloft on high-perched cliffs, and looking down into deep dells, or to the waving tops of tall pine-trees. Seaward, it is a succession of yellow-stranded bays, land-locked and narrow; and on the land side are innumerable valleys, some waving with horse-chestnut and olive, and others stern and rock-bound, but varying in colour from the bluish-grey of marble to every shade of porphyry.

For several miles after we left Genoa, the road presented a succession of handsome villas, which, neglected and uncared for, and in most part untenanted, were yet so characteristically Italian in all their vast-ness--their ma.s.sive style and s.p.a.cious plan--as to be great ornaments of the scenery. Their gardens, too--such glorious wildernesses of rich profusion--where the fig and the oleander, the vine and the orange, tangle and intertwine--and cactuses, that would form the wonder of our conservatories, are trained into hedgerows to protect cabbages.

My companion pointed out to me one of these villas on a little jutting promontory of rock, with a narrow bay on one side, almost hidden by the overhanging chestnut-trees. "That," said he, "is the Villa Spinola. It was from there, after a supper with his friend Vecchi, that Garibaldi sailed on his expedition to Marsala. A sort of decent secrecy was maintained as to the departure of the expedition; but the cheers of those on sh.o.r.e, as the boats pulled off, told that the brave buccaneers carried with them the heartfelt good wishes of their countrymen."

Wandering on in his talk from the campaign of Sicily and Calabria, my companion spoke of the last wild freak of Garibaldi and the day of Aspromonte, and finally of the hero's imprisonment at Varignano, in the Gulf of Spezia.

It appeared from his account that the poor wounded sufferer would have fared very ill, had it not been for the provident kindness and care of his friends in England, who supplied him with everything he could want and a great deal he could by no possibility make use of. Wine of every kind, for instance, was largely sent to one who was a confirmed water-drinker, and who, except when obliged by the impure state of the water, never ventured to taste wine. If now and then the zealous anxiety to be of service had its ludicrous side--and packages arrived of which all the ingenuity of the General's followers failed to detect what the meaning might be--there was something very n.o.ble and very touching in this spontaneous sympathy of a whole people, and so Garibaldi felt it.

The personal homage of the admirers--the wors.h.i.+ppers they might be called--was, however, an infliction that often pushed the patience of Garibaldi's followers to its limit, and would have overcome the gentle forbearance of any other living creature than Garibaldi himself. They came in shoals. Steamboats and diligences were crammed with them, and the boatmen of Spezia plied as thriving a trade that summer as though Garibaldi were a saint, at whose shrine the devout of all Europe came to wors.h.i.+p. In vain obstacles were multiplied and difficulties to entrance invented. In vain it was declared that only a certain number of visitors were daily admitted, and that the number was already complete. In vain the doctors announced that the General's condition was prejudiced, and his feverish state increased, by these continual invasions. Each new arrival was sure to imagine that there was something special or peculiar in his case to make him an exception to any rule of exclusion.

"I knew Garibaldi in Monte Video. You have only to tell him it's Tomkins; he'll be overjoyed to see me." "I travelled with him from Manchester to Bridgeport; he'll remember me when he sees me; I lent him a wrapper in the train." "I knew his son Menotti when at school." "I was in New York when Garibaldi was a chandler, and I was always asking for his candles;" such and suchlike were the claims which would not be denied. At last the infliction became insupportable. Some nights of unusual pain and suffering required that every precaution against excitement should be taken, and measures were accordingly concerted how visitors should be totally excluded. There was this difficulty in the matter, that it might fall at this precise moment some person of real consequence might have, or some one whose presence Garibaldi would really have been well pleased to enjoy. All these considerations were, however, postponed to the patient's safety, and an order was sent to the several hotels where strangers usually stopped to announce that Garibaldi could not be seen.