第87章 Chapter 18(4)

While I write comes a deliciously fresh 'bouquet'from Mrs.Bronson,an American lady,--in short we shall find a week or two amusing enough;though --where are the pinewoods,mountains and torrents,and wonderful air?

Venice is under a cloud,--dull and threatening,--though we were apprehensive of heat,arriving,as we did,ten days earlier than last year....'

The evening's programme was occasionally varied by a visit to one of the theatres.The plays given were chiefly in the Venetian dialect,and needed previous study for their enjoyment;but Mr.Browning assisted at one musical performance which strongly appealed to his historical and artistic sensibilities:that of the 'Barbiere'of Paisiello in the Rossini theatre and in the presence of Wagner,which took place in the autumn of 1880.

Although the manner of his sojourn in the Italian city placed all the resources of resident life at his command,Mr.Browning never abjured the active habits of the English traveller.

He daily walked with his sister,as he did in the mountains,for walking's sake,as well as for the delight of what his expeditions showed him;and the facilities which they supplied for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mind one of the great merits of his autumn residences in Italy.

He explored Venice in all directions,and learned to know its many points of beauty and interest,as those cannot who believe it is only to be seen from a gondola;and when he had visited its every corner,he fell back on a favourite stroll along the Riva to the public garden and back again;never failing to leave the house at about the same hour of the day.

Later still,when a friend's gondola was always at hand,and air and sunshine were the one thing needful,he would be carried to the Lido,and take a long stretch on its farther shore.

The letter to Mrs.Fitz-Gerald,from which I have already quoted,concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place at Saint-Pierre just before his departure,and in which Mr.Browning's intuitions had played a striking part.

'And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence?

Our journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of the one mule of the village being requisitioned by the 'Juge d'Instruction'

from Grenoble,come to enquire into a murder committed two days before.

My sister and I used once a day to walk for a couple of hours up a mountain-road of the most lovely deion,and stop at the summit whence we looked down upon the minute hamlet of St.-Pierre d'Entremont,--even more secluded than our own:then we got back to our own aforesaid.

And in this Paradisial place,they found,yesterday week,a murdered man --frightfully mutilated --who had been caught apparently in the act of stealing potatoes in a field:such a crime had never occurred in the memory of the oldest of our folk.Who was the murderer is the mystery --whether the field's owner --in his irritation at discovering the robber,--or one of a band of similar 'charbonniers'(for they suppose the man to be a Piedmontese of that occupation)remains to be proved:

they began by imprisoning the owner,who denies his guilt energetically.

Now the odd thing is,that,either the day of,or after the murder,--as I and S.were looking at the utter solitude,I had the fancy "What should I do if I suddenly came upon a dead body in this field?

Go and proclaim it --and subject myself to all the vexations inflicted by the French way of procedure (which begins by assuming that you may be the criminal)--or neglect an obvious duty,and return silently."I,of course,saw that the former was the only proper course,whatever the annoyance involved.

And,all the while,there was just about to be the very same incident for the trouble of somebody.'

Here the account breaks off;but writing again from the same place,August 16,1882,he takes up the suspended narrative with this question:

'Did I tell you of what happened to me on the last day of my stay here last year?'And after repeating the main facts continues as follows:

'This morning,in the course of my walk,I entered into conversation with two persons of whom I made enquiry myself.They said the accused man,a simple person,had been locked up in a high chamber,--protesting his innocence strongly,--and troubled in his mind by the affair altogether and the turn it was taking,had profited by the gendarme's negligence,and thrown himself out of the window --and so died,continuing to the last to protest as before.

My presentiment of what such a person might have to undergo was justified you see --though I should not in any case have taken THAT way of getting out of the difficulty.

The man added,"it was not he who committed the murder,but the companions of the man,an Italian charcoal-burner,who owed him a grudge,killed him,and dragged him to the field --filling his sack with potatoes as if stolen,to give a likelihood that the field's owner had caught him stealing and killed him,--so M.Perrier the greffier told me."Enough of this grim story.

.....

'My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found:

"Vouz savez la croix au sommet de la colline?A cette distance de cela!"That is precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me.'

A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3clearly refers to some comment of Mrs.Fitz-Gerald's on the peculiar nature of this presentiment:

'No --I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing that was really about to take place.By a law of the association of ideas --CONTRARIES come into the mind as often as SIMILARITIES --and the peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jar with them.I have often thought of the trouble that might have befallen me if poor Miss Smith's death had happened the night before,when we were on the mountain alone together --or next morning when we were on the proposed excursion --only THEN we should have had companions.'

The letter then passes to other subjects.