Her Wars With These
Republics Were Really Incessant; They Were Not So Much Wars As Battles
In One Long War, With A Peace Occasionally Made During The Five Or Ten
Or Fifteen Years, Which Was No Better Than A Truce.
When she fell under
the Medici, together with her enemy Florence, she shared the death-quiet
the tyrants brought that prepotent republic, and it was the Medicean
strength probably which saved her from Lucca and Genoa, though it left
them to continue republics down to the nineteenth century.
She was at
one time an oligarchy, and at another a democracy, and at another the
liege of this prince or that priest, but she was never out of trouble as
long as she possessed independence or the shadow of it. In the safe hold
of united Italy she now sits by her Arno and draws long, deep breaths,
which you may almost hear as you pass; and I hope the prospect of
increasing prosperity will not tempt her to work too hard. It does not
look as if it would.
We were getting a little anxious, but not very anxious, for that one
cannot be in Pisa, about our train back to Leghorn; though we did not
wish to go, we did not wish to be left; but our driver reassured us, and
would not let us shirk the duty of seeing the house where Galileo was
born. We found it in a long street on the thither side of the river, and
in such a poor quarter that our driver could himself afford to live only
a few doors from it. As if they had expected him to pass about this
time, his wife and his five children were sitting at his door and
playing before it. He proudly pointed them out with his whip, and one of
the little ones followed on foot far enough to levy tribute. They were
sufficiently comely children, but blond, whereas the boy on the box was
both black-eyed and black-haired. When we required an explanation of the
mystery, the father easily solved it; this boy was the child of his
first wife. If there were other details, I have forgotten them, but we
made our romance to the effect that the boy, to whose beautiful eyes we
now imputed a lurking sadness, was not happy with his step-mother, and
that he took refuge from her on the box with his father. They seemed
very good comrades; the boy had shared with his father the small cakes
we had given him at the cafe. At the station, in recognition of his
hapless lot, I gave him half a franc. By that time his father was
radiant from the small extortion I had suffered him to practice with me,
and he bade the boy thank me, which he did so charmingly that I almost,
but not quite, gave him another half-franc. Now I am sorry I did not.
Pisa was worth it.
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