AT THE BATHS OF LUCCA By Neith Boyce ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. C. PEIXOTTO DAY of nearly a thousand no, heir presumptive of Pianura, but they years had this Tuscan water­ performed for Michel de Montaigne more ing-place, now in the twi­ than all the most noted springs of France, light of its fame—a twilight as the curious pages of his Journal witness. pleasanter to the contempla­ We may regret that this philosopher was so tive visitor than its gambling absorbed in the study of his own symptoms, and scandalous noon could have been. For and that he put them down in such Pepysian its beauty lies not in the modern places of detail. For he forgets, meanwhile, to tell us pleasure in the dusty valley, but in the sur­ whether the baths cured also that poor Cre- rounding hills, with their uncounted gray monese merchant whose head was so bad that little towns and flowery gorges; and it is this he couldn't remember what he had had for beauty, rather than the gayety the place once dinner; and he gives only brief ghmpses of had, or even the virtue of its waters, that the country and the people, as charming in has been the attraction, to poets and philoso­ that day as in this, evidently, and more phers, of the baths of Lucca. prosperous. But we do learn that he gave The three httle villages, Ponte Seraho, a ball there to one hundred well-dressed Villa and Bagni Caldi, straggKng up the hill­ women—certainly more than could be mus­ sides along the valley of the emerald green tered in the resort to-day! These country Lima, their outlying villas embedded in people spoke the purest Tuscan and ap­ " vines, myrtle-bushes, laurels, oleanders," peared like gentlefolk. And then—in 1581 as Heine describes them, and sentinelled by —some of the gray little towns which now the "solemn green cypresses," have had hang Uke fossil-shells on the hill-tops were many illustrious visitors. The charm of alive and gay. Benabbio, which Montaigne those chestnut-wooded slopes of the lower visited, was so well off that every woman in Apennines is celebrated in some pages of the town had a pair of white stockings. To­ Montaigne's "Journal deVoyage"; in some day they go barefoot and the only proofs of of the best lettersof Shelley and Mrs. Brown­ former opulence are the flaky gold picture, ing; and it inspires an amorous episode of Scuola di Giotto, in the church, and sundry Heine's "Reisebilder." Fewer philosophers columns and door-casings of fine design, and poets visit the place to-day; few gouty built into the rough peasant dwelhngs. Yet English, even. The sunset of its prosperity one should see Benabbio—by preference on came when, after the cession of the duchy a day of late July, when the sky burns into of Lucca to Tuscany, the archducal court purple through the gray of the olives, when made a summer residence at the Baths; built the grape-vines running everywhere have barracks, villas, and roads, and drew crowds. taken a golden tinge and glow against the But now the grand-duke's villa on the hill­ old gray-black walls and the black cypress. side is a hotel with few guests; the barracks There is a good road all the way to Be­ round the httle piazza, whence a fine long nabbio, but to Corsena, a few miles away, flight of stone steps leads up to the terrace, one must go by a foot-path which crosses, have been turned into pensioni, fiUed with on bridges made of halved tree-trunks, frugal Italians come for the baths; the from side to side of a rushing brown brook. casinos in the valley below, once gay with Yet in Montaigne's time the baths of Cor­ gaming and dancing, are deserted; and the sena were more fashionable than those of landlords' noses grow redder with despair Lucca, and its springs were most poetically every year. named,.Savoury, Amorous, Sweet-crowned, the Despairing One. To-day the httle place The water and the scarcely less celebrated on its hill, hidden away at the head of an un- air of Bagni di Lucca failed to cure the ter­ visited valley, almost never sees a stranger. tian fever of the young Marquess of Cerve- 614 PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED -^ ^^*IOJ ._4 Gray little towns that hang like fossil-shells upon the hill-tops. and is never seen even at a distance, except on the outer edge by a circle of vines, within by those given to exploring. t"rom its un­ which you see another circle of green corn; usual form, however, it attracts the curious; and the slope above this is covered with fruit the church lifted high on the crest of the hill, trees till you come to another circle of vines. and the town encircling it lower down, the And each little pocket of soil on the hill-side whole somehow suggesting a monastery or a or along the brook grows its trifle of wheat." fortress. The path to Corsena skirts the hill The reason for this economy is connected crowned by Lugliano, the picturesque jewel with the fact that the population consists al­ of the whole region; and then penetrates a most entirely of women and babies. In spite longnarrow valley, solitary and looking quite of its smihng look of plenty, its luxuriance of untouched, with its woods and little plats of oUve, fig, and garlanding vine, the country turf and wild flowers among the rocks. Yet is bitterly poor. The women and children in reality the peasant thrift noted by Mon­ can easily till the soil, thin on these rocky taigne still uses every available bit of ground slopes; and the men accordingly are "gone and water. Here one passes a gray old mill, to America." In Corsena there are but there a vineyard or a nursery of young olives, two this side of their dotage, and the aston­ or perhaps a hay-field ten yards square. ishment of the inhabitants at the sight of Now, as in the sixteenth century, and who strangers is oddly marked if one of these hap­ knows how much earlier, the hills, wherever pens to be a man. Cries of " Uomol" and possible, are cultivated and planted to the stares of curiosity greet him. However, these very top. "Each gradation of every hill," women and children—whose multitude re­ as the philosopher observed, "is surrounded ally presents a serious problem—seem ac- 615 PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 616 At the Baths of Lucca five, cheerful, and even prosperous. In mid- images—like the comparison of that old poet July theyare all busy gatheringin,fromnook; to "a withered vine shivering on a wintry and corner, the wheat. In even-laid golden hill-side, while the juice of his grapes is warm­ bundles it is stacked all along the walls of ing hearts far away." And, above all, it is the houses on both sides the main street, an the delightful spirit of youth and freshness irregular lane paved with cobbles, and covers with which Heine threw himself into his four the low gray wall that terraces the hill-side. weeks' adventure. The very air of those hills, A woman in an upper window is winnowing so soft, clear, bright, has got into his pages; her tiny harvest, tossing it in a basket while and even his malodorous remarks about the wind carries away the chaff. The babies Count Platen are naughty rather than bit­ in the street are carrying their bunches of ter. But this blowing up of Platen's poeti­ stalks, and by the bordering wall an old cal pretensionswas certainly an absurd waste woman is picking up the grains that have of time and gunpowder. Heinrich might fallen in the dust. have amused himself to more purpose with Matilda, the "rose sprinkled with pepper," Heine discovered a remarkable fact about or with the ballerina Francesca. Indeed, he this neighborhood of Lucca, when he was came to think so himself, and his apology writing at the Baths the third book of his should be better known than the original "Reisebilder." "There are no Philistine offence. Platen, he admitted, " might have faces here!" And he adds: "If there are been a great poet, if he had only had a breath Philistines, they are at least Italia Q orange- of poetry in him; he possessed everything Philistines, and not the plump, heavy, needful—pride, irritability, poverty, debts, German potato-Philistines." And these knowledge—everything with the exception Lucchese wear their cloaks and their in­ of poetry. In a word, he had thoroughly dividuality with a delightful flourish which learned the art of poetic cookery—he may even extend to the handles of their wanted nothing but meat and fire to be able knives on any provocation; whereas, he to cook. Still, that does not justify the at­ reminds you, if you offend one of a gather­ tack I made upon him." ing of a dozen Germans, they will call with Happily, in the intervals of war, Heinrich one voice for the police. found time to fall in love. It is true that Of that year of 1828 Heine wrote to at his first meeting with Francesca (it was Freda Roberts, "It was the most splendid then he fell in love) he found also that he year of my life." Young, vigorous, and had a rival—the memory of " Cecco," the exuberant, eager for experience and joy, young abate who had loved Francesca when the " German Apollo" had gone down into she was still a little girl, plaiting straw hats Italy, partly after material for the Morgen- in the valley of the Arno.