The Viper of Milan
The
Viper of Milan
A Romance of Lombardy
BY MARJORIE BOWEN
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMVI
Copyright, 1906, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
To My Mother
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE
So long as man retains his reminiscent interest in the past of which heis the product, so long will he continue to take possession of that pastfor the purposes of imaginative expression. And so long shall we havethe historical as that form of fiction which of all is perhaps the mostpotent and the most perennial in its fascination.
It is significant that at this precise moment when the historical novelshows so much apparent exhaustion, that there should appear such anexample as The Viper of Milan, which, while actually the latest of itsclass, might almost be the first, so free is it from any trace offatigue or affectation. Here is a novel in which the author writes ofthe past with as much sans-gêne as though she were writing of thepresent. She moves there so perfectly at home in the mind of her periodthat she does not need to note all those minor details which are itsouter manifestation. She makes no attempt at an elaborate reconstructionof an epoch, but surrenders herself rather to that plastic spirit of anage which molds the souls of its men and women and makes them thechannel of characteristic expression in thought, feeling and action.Actually, we know of no novel that gives a more concrete, vivid andbrilliant impression of the Italy of the early Renaissance; but as amatter of fact there is a total absence of that set description whichforms the staple of the ordinary historical novel. The method of theauthor is strictly dramatic and narrative, her story is given asexclusively as possible through dialogue and[Pg viii] action. What descriptionthere is is wholly incidental, and there is never any slacking of theemotional tension, any interruption of the swift course of events forthe sake of mere word-painting which, however gorgeous, is bound to beobtrusive.
In all this, of course, Miss Bowen receives some assistance, someinspiration, as it were, from that particular phase of the past withwhich she deals. It would be difficult for anyone to write of Italy asit emerges from the Middle Ages without catching something in thenarrative itself of that swift play of passion and impulse, of thattense, highly-wrought tendency to dramatic climax, which starts intolife from the pages of the barest records of the period. And what aperiod it was! At the moment which Miss Bowen has chosen, Visconti, thatsinister embodiment of the Lombard blend of Gothic vigor and