THE HISTORY OF THE OLD WOMAN
I have not always been blear-eyed. My nose did not always touch my chin;
nor was I always a servant. You must know that I am the daughter of Pope
Urban X, and of the Princess of Palestrina. To the age of fourteen I was
brought up in a castle, compared with which all the castles of the German
barons would not have been fit for stabling, and one of my robes would have
bought half the province of Westphalia. I grew up, and improved in beauty,
wit, and every graceful accomplishment; and in the midst of pleasures,
homage, and the highest expectations. I already began to inspire the men
with love. My breast began to take its right form, and such a breast! white,
firm, and formed like that of the Venus de' Medici; my eyebrows were as
black as jet, and as for my eyes, they darted flames and eclipsed the luster
of the stars, as I was told by the poets of our part of the world. My maids,
when they dressed and undressed me, used to fall into an ecstasy in
viewing me before and behind; and all the men longed to be in their places.
"I was contracted in marriage to a sovereign prince of Massa Carrara. Such
a prince! as handsome as myself, sweet-tempered, agreeable, witty, and in
love with me over head and ears. I loved him, too, as our sex generally do
for the first time, with rapture, transport, and idolatry. The nuptials were
prepared with surprising pomp and magnificence; the ceremony was
attended with feasts, carousals, and burlesques: all Italy composed sonnets
in my praise, though not one of them was tolerable.
"I was on 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. In less than two hours after he returned from the
visit, he died of most terrible convulsions.
"But this is a mere trifle. My mother, distracted to the highest degree, and
yet less afflicted than I, determined to absent herself for some time from so
fatal a place. As she had a very fine estate in the neighborhood of Gaeta,
we embarked on board a galley, which was gilded like the high altar of St.
Peter's, at Rome. In our passage we were boarded by a Sallee rover. Our
men defended themselves like true Pope's soldiers; they flung themselves
upon their knees, laid down their arms, and begged the corsair to give them
absolution in articulo mortis.
"The Moors presently stripped us as bare as ever we were born. My mother,
my maids of honor, and myself, were served all in the same manner. It is
amazing how quick these gentry are at undressing people. But what
surprised me most was, that they made a rude sort of surgical examination
of parts of the body which are sacred to the functions of nature. I thought it
a very strange kind of ceremony; for thus we are generally apt to judge of
things when we have not seen the world. I afterwards learned that it was to
discover if we had any diamonds concealed. This practice had been
established since time immemorial among those civilized nations that scour
the seas. I was informed that the religious Knights of Malta never fail to
make this search whenever any Moors of either sex fall into their hands. It is
a part of the 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 what we must have suffered on board a corsair. My mother was still
extremely handsome, our maids of honor, and even our common
waiting-women, had more charms than were to be found in all Africa.
"As to myself, I was enchanting; I was beauty itself, and then I had my
virginity. But, alas! I did not retain it long; this precious flower, which had
been reserved for the lovely Prince of Massa Carrara, was cropped by the
captain of the Moorish vessel, who was a hideous Negro, and thought he did
me infinite honor. Indeed, both the Princess of Palestrina and myself must
have had very strong constitutions to undergo all the hardships and
violences we suffered before our arrival at Morocco. But I will not detain you
any longer with such common things; they are hardly worth mentioning.
"Upon our arrival at Morocco we found that kingdom deluged with blood.
Fifty sons of the Emperor Muley Ishmael were each at the head of a party.
This produced fifty civil wars of blacks against blacks, of tawnies against
tawnies, and of mulattoes against mulattoes. In short, the whole empire was
one continued scene of carnage.
"No sooner were we landed than a party of blacks, of a contrary faction to
that of my captain, came to rob him of his booty. Next to the money and
jewels, we were the most valuable things he had. I witnessed on this
occasion such a battle as you never beheld in your cold European climates.
The northern nations have not that fermentation in their blood, nor that
raging lust for women that is so common in Africa. The natives of Europe
seem to have their veins filled with milk only; but fire and vitriol circulate in
those of the inhabitants of Mount Atlas and the neighboring provinces. They
fought with the fury of the lions, tigers, and serpents of their country, to
decide who should have us. A Moor seized my mother by the right arm,
while my captain's lieutenant held her by the left; another Moor laid hold of
her by the right leg, and one of our corsairs held her by the other. In this
manner almost all of our women were dragged by four soldiers.
"My captain kept me concealed behind him, and with his drawn scimitar cut
down everyone who opposed him; at length I saw all our Italian women and
my mother mangled and torn in pieces by the monsters who contended for
them. The captives, my companions, the Moors who took us, the soldiers,
the sailors, the blacks, the whites, the mulattoes, and lastly, my captain
himself, were all slain, and I remained alone expiring upon a heap of dead
bodies. Similar barbarous scenes were transacted every day over the whole
country, which is of three hundred leagues in extent, and yet they never
missed the five stated times of prayer enjoined by their prophet Mahomet.
"I disengaged myself with great difficulty from such a heap of corpses, and
made a shift to crawl to a large orange tree that stood on the bank of a
neighboring rivulet, where I fell down exhausted with fatigue, and
overwhelmed with horror, despair, and hunger. My senses being
overpowered, I fell asleep, or rather seemed to be in a trance. Thus I lay in
a state of weakness and insensibility between life and death, when I felt
myself pressed by something that moved up and down upon my body. This
brought me to myself. I opened my eyes, and saw a pretty fair-faced man,
who sighed and muttered these words between his teeth, 'O che sciagura
d'essere senza coglioni!'"