第 十一 章 · HISTORY OF THE OLD WOMAN.

"I had not always bleared eyes and red eyelids; neither did my nose

always touch my chin; nor was I always a servant. I am the daughter of

Pope Urban X,[10] and of the Princess of Palestrina. Until the age of

fourteen I was brought up in a palace, to which all the castles of your

German barons would scarcely have served for stables; and one of my

robes was worth more than all the magnificence of Westphalia. As I grew

up I improved in beauty, wit, and every graceful accomplishment, in the

midst of pleasures, hopes, and respectful homage. Already I inspired

love. My throat was formed, and such a throat! white, firm, and shaped

like that of the Venus of Medici; and what eyes! what eyelids! what

black eyebrows! such flames darted from my dark pupils that they

eclipsed the scintillation of the stars--as I was told by the poets in

our part of the world. My waiting women, when dressing and undressing

me, used to fall into an ecstasy, whether they viewed me before or

behind; how glad would the gentlemen have been to perform that office

for them!

"I was affianced to the most excellent Prince of Massa Carara. Such a

prince! as handsome as myself, sweet-tempered, agreeable, brilliantly

witty, and sparkling with love. I loved him as one loves for the first

time--with idolatry, with transport. The nuptials were prepared. There

was surprising pomp and magnificence; there were _fetes_, carousals,

continual _opera bouffe_; and all Italy composed sonnets in my praise,

though not one of them was passable. I was just upon the point of

reaching the summit of bliss, when an old marchioness who had been

mistress to the Prince, my husband, invited him to drink chocolate with

her. He died in less than two hours of most terrible convulsions. But

this is only a bagatelle. My mother, in despair, and scarcely less

afflicted than myself, determined to absent herself for some time from

so fatal a place. She had a very fine estate in the neighbourhood of

Gaeta. We embarked on board a galley of the country which was gilded

like the great altar of St. Peter's at Rome. A Sallee corsair swooped

down and boarded us. Our men defended themselves like the Pope's

soldiers; they flung themselves upon their knees, and threw down their

arms, begging of the corsair an absolution _in articulo mortis_.

"Instantly they were stripped as bare as monkeys; my mother, our maids

of honour, and myself were all served in the same manner. It is amazing

with what expedition those gentry undress people. But what surprised me

most was, that they thrust their fingers into the part of our bodies

which the generality of women suffer no other instrument but--pipes to

enter. It appeared to me a very strange kind of ceremony; but thus one

judges of things when one has not seen the world. I afterwards learnt

that it was to try whether we had concealed any diamonds. This is the

practice established from time immemorial, among civilised nations that

scour the seas. I was informed that the very religious Knights of Malta

never fail to make this search when they take any Turkish prisoners of

either sex. It is a law of nations from which they never deviate.

"I need not tell _you_ how great a hardship it was for a young princess

and her mother to be made slaves and carried to Morocco. You may easily

imagine all we had to suffer on board the pirate vessel. My mother was

still very handsome; our maids of honour, and even our waiting women,

had more charms than are to be found in all Africa. As for myself, I was

ravishing, was exquisite, grace itself, and I was a virgin! I did not

remain so long; this flower, which had been reserved for the handsome

Prince of Massa Carara, was plucked by the corsair captain. He was an

abominable negro, and yet believed that he did me a great deal of

honour. Certainly the Princess of Palestrina and myself must have been

very strong to go through all that we experienced until our arrival at

Morocco. But let us pass on; these are such common things as not to be

worth mentioning.

"Morocco swam in blood when we arrived. Fifty sons of the Emperor

Muley-Ismael[11] had each their adherents; this produced fifty civil

wars, of blacks against blacks, and blacks against tawnies, and tawnies

against tawnies, and mulattoes against mulattoes. In short it was a

continual carnage throughout the empire.

"No sooner were we landed, than the blacks of a contrary faction to that

of my captain attempted to rob him of his booty. Next to jewels and gold

we were the most valuable things he had. I was witness to such a battle

as you have never seen in your European climates. The northern nations

have not that heat in their blood, nor that raging lust for women, so

common in Africa. It seems that you Europeans have only milk in your

veins; but it is vitriol, it is fire which runs in those of the

inhabitants of Mount Atlas and the neighbouring countries. They fought

with the fury of the lions, tigers, and serpents of the country, to see

who should have us. A Moor seized my mother by the right arm, while my

captain's lieutenant held her by the left; a Moorish soldier had hold of

her by one leg, and one of our corsairs held her by the other. Thus

almost all our women were drawn in quarters by four men. My captain

concealed me behind him; and with his drawn scimitar cut and slashed

every one that opposed his fury. At length I saw all our Italian women,

and my mother herself, torn, mangled, massacred, by the monsters who

disputed over them. The slaves, my companions, those who had taken them,

soldiers, sailors, blacks, whites, mulattoes, and at last my captain,

all were killed, and I remained dying on a heap of dead. Such scenes as

this were transacted through an extent of three hundred leagues--and yet

they never missed the five prayers a day ordained by Mahomet.

"With difficulty I disengaged myself from such a heap of slaughtered

bodies, and crawled to a large orange tree on the bank of a neighbouring

rivulet, where I fell, oppressed with fright, fatigue, horror, despair,

and hunger. Immediately after, my senses, overpowered, gave themselves

up to sleep, which was yet more swooning than repose. I was in this

state of weakness and insensibility, between life and death, when I

felt myself pressed by something that moved upon my body. I opened my

eyes, and saw a white man, of good countenance, who sighed, and who said

between his teeth: '_O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni!_'"[12]

XII