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The prolonged sojourn of the Triomphante in the dock, and the distance of our dwelling from the town, have been my excuse these last two or three days for not going up to Diou-djen-dji to see Chrysantheme. It is dreary work in these docks.
When we have reached our destination he says "Goodnight," just touches Chrysantheme's hand, and descending once more by the slope which leads to the quays and the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a sampan, to get on board the 'Triomphante.
She understood, without exactly putting her feeling into language, that she was being talked at, not talked to. "Say, Jane," he exclaimed, "wasn't that 'Marche Triomphante to-night great?" He hummed a bar from the motif, "That's it my " he cried, hitting his chair arm with his fist, "but that's a big thing almost good enough for Wagner to have done; big and insistent and strong.
When we have reached our destination he says "Goodnight," just touches Chrysantheme's hand, and descending once more by the slope which leads to the quays and the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a sampan, to get on board the 'Triomphante.
Long lines of djins pass by, dragging, as fast as their naked legs can carry them, the crew of the 'Triomphante, who are shouting and fanning themselves. The Marseillaise is heard everywhere; English sailors are singing it, gutturally, with a dull and slow cadence like their own "God Save."
When we have reached our destination he says good-night, just touches Chrysanthème's hand, and descending once more, by the slope which leads to the quays and the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a sampan, to get on board the Triomphante.
She looked with pride on her daughter, the Duchess of Ferrara, "la plus triomphante princesse," as the biographer Bayard calls her. She never saw her again, for she would scarcely have ventured to undertake a journey to Ferrara, but she continued to correspond with her. In the archives of the house of Este are nine letters written by Vannozza in the years 1515, 1516, and 1517.
Long lines of djins pass by, dragging, as fast as their naked legs can carry them, the crew of the 'Triomphante, who are shouting and fanning themselves. The Marseillaise is heard everywhere; English sailors are singing it, gutturally, with a dull and slow cadence like their own "God Save."
History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colorless. The legend which made her a poison-brewing Mænad has been proved a lie but only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. The simple northern folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, and Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, could not understand that a woman should be irresponsible for all the crimes and scandals perpetrated in her name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not hers, but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her married life in Rome a byword. She sat and smiled through all the tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair port in the Duchy of Ferrara. Nursed in the corruption of Papal Rome, which Lorenzo de' Medici described to his son Giovanni as 'a sink of all the vices, consorting habitually with her father's concubines, and conscious that her own mother had been married for show to two successive husbands, it is not possible that Lucrezia ruled her conduct at any time with propriety. It is even probable that the darkest tales about her are true. The Lord of Pesaro, we must remember, told his kinsman, the Duke of Milan, that the assigned reasons for his divorce were false, and that the fact was what can scarcely be recorded. Still, there is no ground for supposing that, in the matter of her first husband's divorce and the second's murder, she was more than a passive agent in the hands of Alexander and Cesare. The pleasure-loving, careless woman of the Renaissance is very different from the Medea of Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most revolting to the modern conscience in her conduct is complacent acquiescence in scenes of debauchery devised for her amusement. Instead of viewing her with dread as a potent and malignant witch, we have to regard her with contempt as a feeble woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the cradle. It is also due to truth to remember that at Ferrara she won the esteem of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached the whole state to her by her sweetness of temper, and received the panegyrics of the two Strozzi, Bembo, Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of note. Foreigners who saw her surrounded by her brilliant Court exclaimed, like the French biographer of Bayard: 'J'ose bien dire que, de son temps, ni beau coup avant, il ne s'est point trouvé de plus triomphante princesse; car elle était belle, bonne douce, et courtoise
Japan is indeed most delightful this evening, so fresh and so sweet; and little Chrysanthème was very charming just now, as she silently walked beside me through the darkness of the lane. It is about two o'clock when we reach the Triomphante in a hired sampan, where I have heaped up all my cases till there is danger of sinking.
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