I Did, Indeed, Remember Me Of An Old Bronze Lamp, By Vincenzo
Possenti, Hanging From The Roof, Which I Now
Revered the third time, at
intervals of twenty years; from its oscillation Galileo is said to have
got the notion
Of the pendulum; but it is now tied back with a wire,
being no longer needed for such an inspiration. Mostly in this last
visit I took Pisa as lightly as at the first, when, as I have noted from
the printed witness, I was gayly indifferent to the claims of her
objects of interest. If they came in my way, I looked at them, but I did
not put myself much about for them. I rested mostly in the twilight of
old associations, trusting to the guidance of our cicerone, whom, in
some form or under some name, the reader will find waiting for him at
the cathedral door as we did. But I have since recurred to the record of
my second visit in 1883, with amazement at the exact knowledge of events
shown there, which became, in 1908, all a blur of dim conjecture. It
appears that I was then acquainted with much more Pisan history than any
other author I have found own to. I had also surprising adventures of
different kinds, such as my poorer experience of the present cannot
parallel. I find, for instance, that in 1883 I gave a needy crone in the
cathedral a franc instead of the piece of five centimes which I meant
for her, and that the lamp of Galileo did nothing to light the gloom
into which this error plunged my spirit.
It appears to have jaundiced my view of the whole cathedral, which I did
not find at all comparable to that of Siena, whereas in 1908 I thought
it all beautiful. This may have been because I was so newly from the
ugliness of the Eoman churches; though I felt, as I had felt before,
that the whole group of sacred edifices at Pisa was too suggestive of
decorative pastry and confectionery. No more than at the second view of
it did I now attempt the ascent of the Leaning Tower; I had discharged
this duty for life when I first saw it; with my seventy-one years upon
me, I was not willing to climb its winding stairs, and I doubted if I
could keep it from falling, as I then did, by inclining myself the other
way. I resolved that I would leave this to the new-comer; but I gladly
followed our cicerone across the daisied green from the cathedral to the
baptistery, where I found the famous echo waiting to welcome me back,
and greet me with its angelic sweetness, when the custodian who has it
in charge appealed to it; though its voice seemed to have been weakened
and coarsened in its forced replies to some rude Americans there, who
shouted out to it and mocked at it. One wished to ask them if they did
not know that this echo was sacred, and that their challenges of it were
a species of sacrilege.
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