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At the same time she addressed a letter to her old friend, Messer Matteo Boiardo, at Ferrara, requesting him to send her the concluding cantos of his poem, the "Orlando Innamorato," which had not as yet been given to the world.
And Panizzi has observed, with striking and conclusive truth, that "without Berni the Orlando Innamorato will be read and enjoyed; without Boiardo not even the name of the poem remains." Nevertheless this conclusion need not deprive us of either work.
The Orlando Furioso is, literally, a continuation of the Orlando Innamorato; so much so, that the story is not thoroughly intelligible without it.
It is difficult to suppose, however, that they would not be worth looking at. The author of the Orlando Innamorato could hardly write, even upon the driest matters of government, with the aridity of a common clerk. Some little lurking well-head of character or circumstance, interesting to readers of a later age, would probably break through the barren ground.
Sometimes the songs provoked conversation, which, as is usual in Italy, turned mostly upon 'le bellezze delle donne. I remember that once an animated discussion about the relative merits of blondes and brunettes nearly ended in a quarrel, when the youngest of the whole band, a boy of about seventeen, put a stop to the dispute by theatrically raising his eyes and arms to heaven and crying, 'Tu sei innamorato d' una grande Diana cacciatrice nera, ed io d' una bella Venere bionda. Though they were but village lads, they supported their several opinions with arguments not unworthy of Firenzuola, and showed the greatest delicacy of feeling in the treatment of a subject which could scarcely have failed to reveal any latent coarseness.
Un uom ti si prosterna Innamorato al suolo Volgi ver me la cruna Di tua pupilla bruna, Vaga come la luna, Ardente come il sole. "Here," says Boito, "is a myth both beautiful and deep.
So far they are in earnest, and it is the girl who takes the lead; her youthful innamorato ties these letters into bundles and returns them conscientiously, in due course, to their respective senders. Seldom does a boy make overtures in love; he gets more of it than he knows what to do with; he is still torpid, and slightly bored by all these attentions.
But in the midst of official labours and court duties, Matteo was all the while engaged in writing his great work of the "Orlando Innamorato," that wonderful epic in which classic and romantic ideas are mingled together as strangely as in Piero di Cosimo or Sandro Botticelli's paintings.
"Posso aver certezza, e non paura, Che raccontando quel che m' e accaduto, Il ver diro, ne mi sara creduto." "Orlando Innamorato," c. 5. st. 53.
The fortune-teller stopped talking, gathered the cards and locked them in the drawer. "The lady has restored peace to my spirit," he said, offering her his hand across the table and pressing that of the card-reader. She arose, laughing. "Go," she said. "Go, ragazzo innamorato ..." Italian for "love-sick boy," "young lover," etc. And arising, she touched his head with her index finger.
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