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CHAPTER X.

A new home in Heidelberg;—and a last home beneath it.—What is Olympia Morata to us?

THE distance to be traversed by the little family in their journey from Erbach to Heidelberg, is about ten leagues, through a country of wooded hills, then crossed by no roads except the bridle-paths that led from village to village. They were accompanied by guides provided by their noble hosts at Erbach, and made the little journey by easy stages. Their more pressing necessities had been relieved by the generosity of the same kind friends. Olympia especially records having received as a present from the Countess a dress worth a thousand crowns.* Moreover, it was in summer— the summer of 1554-fresh hopes were before them; and the journey was probably not a sad one.

A letter from Grünthler's friend Andreas Campanus,† schoolmaster at Mossbach, written to Curione at Bâle, after Olympia's death, records a pleasing little incident of this journey: The travellers had reached the little town of Hirschhorn, in the valley of the Neckar, where they were to pass the night. And there, in the common room of the inn, were the schoolmaster of the place,

*"Quin et pallam egregiam donavit, plus quam mille sestertium nummorum æstimatam."-Letter to her sister.

+ Letter, 74. of the collection of Olympia's letters.

AN EVENING IN AN INN.

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one Dominus Georgius Treuthuger, and his scholars,

German fashion. The made, as it would seem, Whereupon Olympia,

practising part-singing in "ludimagister" and his boys but a lame business of it. coming forward, helped them out of the difficulty, singing the notes with them, and encouraging them. Ludimagister Treuthuger was delighted, as he might well be, at so charming a "Deus ex machinâ;" and, entering into conversation with the strangers-in Latin, of course passed most of the evening in learned discourse before discovering who the travellers were. On learning their names, he rushed off to his house, and returned with several pieces of Andreas Grünthler's music, which had, he said, long been favourites of his; "which infinitely delighted and surprised the Doctor and Olympia;"* the surprise, it must be supposed, being occasioned by the fact that Grünthler's music should have found its way to the obscure little town in the Neckar valley. "I have often heard him," says Campanus, "telling his scholars never to forget the lady who sang with them so beautifully, and that at sight, too."

On the following day they reached Heidelberg safely, and Grünthler at once entered on the duties of his office.

Hubert Thomas, who was secretary to the Elector Palatine, and a friend, as we have seen, of Grünthler and his wife, has written † that a professor's chair of the Greek language was offered to Olympia by the Elector, at the same time that he appointed her hus

* "Id quod doctorem etiam et Olympiam in summam admirationem adduxit."

Annales de Vitâ et Rebus gestis Federici II., Electoris Palatini lib. xiv. Ann. 1554, quoted by Bonnet.

band to one of medicine. He speaks of "Doctor Andreas Grünthler, whose wife Olympia, to describe her justly, should be called Sappho of Lesbos;" and goes on to say, that "Both of them were invited by our prince to be the ornaments of his University; he to be professor of medicine, she to teach the Greek language, which she hath hitherto deferred doing, on account of ill health." M. Bonnet thinks, that this offer of a Greek professorship must be deemed a mistake and rejected as incredible, because Olympia does not speak of it in her letters to the brothers Sinapi and Curione. These letters contain, he argues, even the smallest details of her life, and would not therefore have omitted a circumstance of such importance. But these letters, though containing many a little incident which happened to be in the mind of the writer at the moment, do not in any wise purport to give a journal, or even a general view of the history of her life. And even if they were of this nature, it appears to me far more easy to imagine reasons why Olympia may never have mentioned this offer, than to suppose that the Elector's secretary, writing annals at the time the events were passing,-(for the word "hactenus" in the passage quoted, “quod hactenus distulit (Olympia) morbo comprehensa," joined to the date of her death, show that the passage must have been written within a year, at least, of the circumstances recorded) could either have been mistaken, or have written wilfully what was false. Olympia knew but too well that she would never be able to avail herself of such a proposal. Her health and strength had been too much shattered. Probably enough, her reminiscences of public lecturing, and the applause of large auditories, may have made the idea of again presenting herself to such an ordeal altogether

THE GREEK PROFESSORSHIP.

185

distasteful to her present tone of mind and feeling, even had her health permitted her to hope that she might ever again be physically able to do so. And she may have felt, that to give the physical reason for refusing to her kind friends, was to sadden them needlessly by dwelling on a subject which, in all her letters, she touches as lightly as possible; while to assign such a moral reason as has been suggested, would probably give rise to troublesome remonstrances and persuasions. Besides, we have no apparent means of knowing that she did not mention this circumstance to some one, or to all of these friends. Curione's title-page to her works expressly tells us that we have in that volume the writings of Olympia, "quæ hactenus inveniri potuerunt." Many of her letters may have been, and in all probability were, lost. To set aside, therefore, the direct assertion of a perfectly competent and perfectly trustworthy authority, on no other ground than the silence, on the subject, of these letters, seems altogether unreasonable and contrary to every principle of historical investigation.

There is, then, I think, no reason to discredit the assertion of Hubert Thomas, that a chair in Greek, which she was so eminently well qualified to occupy, was offered to Olympia by the Elector, who, finding that this celebrated and highly gifted Italian woman was to be his subject, and a resident in his capital, probably thought that he could in no manner contribute more to the renown and attractions of his University, than by imitating a step for which Italy, the great authority on matters of learning and literature, had already furnished more than one precedent.

In a letter from Olympia to her sister, written immediately after their arrival at Heidelberg, on the silence

of which as to the Greek professorship M. Bonnet, who erroneously supposes it to be written to Curione, specially rests his disbelief of any such proposal having been made, she thus announces to her correspondent their new prospects.

"My husband," she writes, "has beeen called to Heidelberg, where we now are, by the most illustrious Prince Palatine, Elector of the Empire, to teach medicine in the public schools; although in this time of calamitous and turbulent tempest, arms are more in request than science."

Yet, had it not been for the consequences of the sufferings endured that fatal night of the flight from Schweinfurth, the aspects of the life now before them might have seemed brighter than any that had hitherto been their lot. Heidelberg was at that time, perhaps the most flourishing and important centre of intellectual movement and learning in Germany. Its University held the highest rank, and its professors numbered among them several of the most distinguished names of Transalpine Europe. A professional chair among such colleagues was no mean promotion.

Next to health, the most irreparable loss in the Schweinfurth catastrophe was that of the library. And we find their friends exerting themselves to repair, as far as possible, this disaster. By a singular chance, one volume, the Lives of Plutarch, belonging to their former library, was recovered to form the nucleus of a new collection. It had been found among the ruins at Schweinfurth, with the name of Olympia written on the last page; and John Sinapi had the pleasure of sending it to her with a letter of consolations and exhortations to fortitude under the calamities to which they had been exposed.

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