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I seemed an anomaly in so gloomy a place, and more than once did I think of departing and seeking out my poor old mother in her mountain home, contenting myself hereafter with labouring like any honest villano born to the soil. But there ever seemed to be a voice that bade me stay and wait, and the voice bore a suggestion of Madonna Paola. But why dissemble here?
It is true that the pride and local conceit supplied poets and novelists with abundant motives for making game of the 'villano, and what they left undone was taken charge of by the comic improvisers. But nowhere do we find a trace of that brutal and contemptuous class-hatred against the 'vilains' which inspired the aristocratic poets of Provence, and often, too, the French chroniclers.
Something like this is the speech of Don Juan, after the statue of Don Gonzales has gone out: "Pero todas son ideas Que da a la imaginacion El temor; y temer muertos Es muy villano temor. Que si un cuerpo noble, vivo, Con potencias y razon Y con alma no se tema, ?Quien cuerpos muertos temio?" El Burlador de Sevilla, A. iii. s. 15.
There was scarce a man, a woman or a child in the entire domains of Giovanni Sforza to whom Boccadoro, the Fool, was not known; and many a villano, who had never noticed the features of the Lord of Pesaro, could have told you the very colour of his jester's eyes; which, after all, is no strange thing, for sad reflection! in a world in which Wisdom may be overlooked, Folly goes never disregarded.
Romping, struggling, throwing things at one another's head, are the becoming pleasantries of the mob, but degrade a gentleman: 'giuoco di mano, giuoco di villano', is a very true saying, among the few true sayings of the Italians.
And again, accompanying the Dauphin in his expedition beyond the Alps, and taking the Castle of Villano by assault, and all within it being put to the sword by the fury of the soldiers, the governor and his ensign only excepted, he caused them both to be trussed up for the same reason; as also did the Captain Martin du Bellay, then governor of Turin, with the governor of San Buono, in the same country, all his people having been cut to pieces at the taking of the place.
This order undoubtedly came from the viceroy, and everybody knew the reason. I was sorry to have deprived the people of Barcelona of the only amusement they had in the evening, and resolved to stay indoors, thinking that would be the most dignified course I could adopt. Petrarch says, 'Amor che fa gentile un cor villano'. If he had known the lover of Nina he would have changed the line into
When he had climbed up, and stepping forward, stood ready to receive the terno, the crowd jeered and cheered the villano, making fine fun of his goat-skin, and not a little jealous that a contadino should take the money out of the city.
'It's always so, said a fat man next to Caper, 'these villani take the bread out of our mouths; but ecco! there is another one who has the terno; blessed be the Madonna, there is a third! Oh! diavolo, the villano will only have one third of the terno; and may he die of apoplexy! A vender of refreshments passing along, the fat man stopped him, and purchased a baioccho's worth of what?
Romping, struggling, throwing things at one another's head, are the becoming pleasantries of the mob, but degrade a gentleman: 'giuoco di mano, giuoco di villano', is a very true saying, among the few true sayings of the Italians.
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