to sprawl about his own private and particular drawing-room. I will not westernise her too rapidly. The Turkish educational system has its merits.
This, in its way is comforting. If only I could accept her as a human creature. But when I think of her callous reception of the tidings of the unhappy boy’s death, my spirit fails me. Such a being would run a carving-knife into you, as you slept, without any compunction, and when you squeaked, she would laugh. Look at her base ingratitude to the good Hamdi Effendi, who took her in before she was born and has treated her as a daughter all her life. No: her spiritual attitude all through has been that of the ladies who used to visit St. Anthony—in the leisure moments when they were not actively engaged in temptation. I don’t believe her father was an English vice-consul. He was Satan.
I wonder what she told Mrs. McMurray.
I have been thinking over the matter to-night. The good lady was wrong. Whatever were the morals of the Renaissance, personalities were essentially positive. They were devilishly wicked or angelically good. There was nothing rosse, non-moral about the Renaissance Italian. The women were strongly tempered. I love to believe the story told by Machiavelli and Muratori of Catherine Sforza in the citadel of Forli. “Surrender or we slay your children which we hold as hostages,” cried the besiegers. “Kill them if you like. I can breed more to avenge them.” It is the speech of a giant nature. It awakens something enthusiastic within me; although such a lady would be an undesirable helpmeet for a mild mannered man like myself.
And then again there is Bonna, the woman for whose career I desired to consult the prime authority Cristoforo da Costa. I have been sketching her into my chapter tonight. Here is a peasant girl caught up to his saddle-bow by a condottiere, Brunoro, during some village raid. She fights like a soldier by his side. He is imprisoned in Valencia by Alfonso of Naples, languishes in a dungeon for ten years. And for ten years Bonna goes from court to court in Europe and from prince to prince, across seas and mountains, unwearying, unyielding, with the passion of heaven in her heart and the courage of hell in her soul, urging and soliciting her man’s release. After ten long years she succeeds. And then they are married. What were her tumultuous feelings as she stood by that altar? The old historian does not say; but the very glory of God must have flooded her being when, in the silence of the bare church, the little bell tinkled to tell her that the Host was raised, and her love was made blessed for all eternity. And then she goes away with him and fights in the old way by his side for fifteen years. When he is killed, she languishes and dies within the year. Porcelli sees them in 1455. Brunoro, an old, squinting, paralysed man. Bonna, a little shrivelled, yellow old woman, with a quiver on her shoulder, a bow in her hand; her grey hair is covered by a helmet and she wears great military boots. The picture is magical. There is infinite pathos in the sight of the two withered, crippled, grotesque forms from which all the glamour of manhood and beauty have departed, and infinite awe in the thought of the holy communion of the unconquerable and passionate souls. I wonder it has not come down to us as one of the great love-stories of the world.
Elements such as these sway the Morals of the Renaissance.
But I am taking Mrs. McMurray too seriously; and it is really not a bad idea to have Carlotta taught type-writing.
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