Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What while the lamentation was at it highest, the good man, in whose house he had died, said to Salvestra, 'Harkye, put some mantlet or other on thy head and get thee to the church whither Girolamo hath been carried and mingle with the women and hearken to that which is discoursed of the matter; and I will do the like among the men, so we may hear if aught be said against us. The thing pleased the girl, who was too late grown pitiful and would fain look upon him, dead, whom, living, she had not willed to pleasure with one poor kiss, and she went thither.
Then said Salvestra, 'And so it behoveth us do'; and taking his hand, made him touch the dead youth; whereupon, all confounded, he arose, without entering into farther parley with his wife, and kindled a light; then, clothing the dead body in its own garments, he took it, without any delay, on his shoulders and carried it, his innocence aiding him, to the door of Girolamo's house, where he set it down and left it.
The women would have comforted her and bidden her arise, not yet knowing her; but after they had bespoken her awhile in vain, they sought to lift her and finding her motionless, raised her up and knew her at once for Salvestra and for dead; whereupon all who were there, overcome with double pity, set up a yet greater clamour of lamentation.
The women strove to comfort her, and bade her raise herself a little, for as yet they knew her not; then, as she did not arise, they would have helped her, but found her stiff and stark, and so, raising her up, they in one and the same moment saw her to be Salvestra and dead.
And as Girolamo could not give it up, she confided her distress to his guardians, speaking for by reason of her boy's great wealth she thought to make, as it were, an orange-tree out of a bramble on this wise: "This boy of ours, who is now scarce fourteen years old, is so in love with a daughter of one of our neighbours, a tailor Salvestra is the girl's name that, if we part them not, he will, peradventure, none else witting, take her to wife some day, and I shall never be happy again; or, if he see her married to another, he will pine away; to prevent which, methinks, you would do well to send him away to distant parts on the affairs of the shop; for so, being out of sight she will come at length to be out of mind, and then we can give him some well-born girl to wife."
Accordingly, ardently enamoured as he was, he betook himself to Paris and there, being still put off from one day to another, he was kept two years; at the end of which time, returning, more in love than ever, he found his Salvestra married to an honest youth, a tent maker.
Whereupon he got him to the place where he had seen Salvestra lie down, and said as he gently laid his hand upon her bosom: "O my soul, art thou yet asleep?" The girl was awake, and was on the point of uttering a cry, when he forestalled her, saying: "Hush! for God's sake. I am thy Girolamo."
Salvestra, having some little compassion of him, granted him this he asked, upon the conditions aforesaid, and he accordingly lay down beside her, without touching her.
Some readers will express a preference for The Building of the Dream, others for Lautrec or Salvestra , and others for the dazzling and mellifluous Prelude to Hafiz. Mr. A. C. Swinburne eulogised the "exquisite and clear cut Intaglios." D. G. Rossetti revelled in the Sonnets; Theodore de Banville, "roi des rimes," in the Songs of Life and Death, whose beauties blend like the tints in jewels. Mr.
"I think," said he, "I shall fix upon Boccaccio next." "My dear boy," followed Mr. Payne, "I've just done him." As his poem "Salvestra" shows, Mr. Payne's mind had for long been running on "that sheaf of flowers men call Decameron." His brilliant translation was, indeed, already in the press, and it appeared the following year in three volumes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking