“ ‘Man, troubled and perplexed about the relation between divinity and humanity, is ever striving to find a foothold in the matter by drawing on his own normal experience. He will view it in the light of relations between tutor and pupil, or of commander and soldier, and he will lose breath—and heart—in search and investigation. The ladies, whose nature is nearer to the nature of the deity, take no such trouble; they see the relation between the Cosmos and the Creator quite plainly as a love affair. And in a love affair search and investigation is an absurdity, and unseemly. There are, thus, no genuine female atheists. If a lady tells you that she is an atheist, she is either, still, an adorable person, and it is coquetry, or she is a depraved creature, and it is a lie. Woman even wonders at man’s perseverance in questioning, for they are aware that he will never get any other kind of answer than the kind which King Alexander the Great got from the Sibylla of Babylon. You may have forgotten the tale, I shall recount it to you.
“ ‘King Alexander, on his triumphant return from the Indies, in Babylon heard of a young Sibylla who was able to foretell the future, and had her brought before him. When the black-eyed woman demanded a price to part with her knowledge, he let a soldier bring up a box filled with precious stones which had been collected over half the world. The Sibylla rummaged in the box and picked out two emeralds and a pearl; then she gave in to the King’s wish and promised to tell him what till now she had told nobody.
“ ‘Very slowly and conscientiously, all the time holding up one finger and begging him—since she must never speak any word of hers over again—to give his utmost attention to her words, she explained to him with what rare woods to build up the sacred pile, with what incantations to kindle it, and what parts of a cat and a crocodile to place upon it. After that she was silent for a long time. “Now, King Alexander,” she at last said, “I am coming to the core of my secret. But I shall not speak one more word unless you give me the big ruby which, before your soldier brought up the box, you told him to lay aside.” Alexander was loath to part with the ruby, for he had meant to give it to his mistress Thaïs at home, but by this time he felt that he could not live without having been told the final part of the spell, so had it brought and handed over to her.
“ ‘ “Listen then, Alexander,” the woman said, laying her finger on the King’s lips. “At the moment when you gaze into the smoke, you must not think of the left eye of a camel. To think of its right eye is dangerous enough. But to think of the left is perdition.” ’
“So much for my grandfather’s philosophy,” said Matteo.
Taddeo smiled a little at the account of his friend.
“It was,” Matteo went on after a while, “this time brought back to me by the sight of the young ladies before us, moving with such perfect freedom in such severely regulated figures. Almost all of them, you will know, have been brought up in convents, and have been taken out from there to be married a few years, a year—or perhaps a week—ago.
“How, now, is the Cosmos made to look to a girl in a convent school? From my cousin, who is Mother Superior of the most ancient of such schools, I have some knowledge of the matter. You will not, my friend, find a mirror in the whole building, and a girl may spend ten years in it and come out not knowing whether she be plain or pretty. The little cells are whitewashed, the nuns are dressed in black and white, and the young pupils are put in gray smocks, as if there were in the whole world but the two colors, and the cheerless mixture of them. The old gardener in charge of the convent garden has a small bell tied round his leg, so that by the tinkling of it the maidens may be warned of the approach of a man and may absent themselves like fawns before the huntsman. Any little sisterly kisses or caresses between school friends—light and innocent butterflies of Eros—by the alarmed nuns are chased off the grounds with fly-flaps, as if they were wasps.
“From this stronghold of unworldliness our blossoming virginal ascetic is fetched out into the world and is married. What is now, from the very first day, the object of her existence? To make herself desirable to all men and the incarnation of desire to one. The mirror is given her as her chief instructress and confidante; the knowledge of fashion, of silks, laces and fans, becomes her chief study; the care of her fair body, from the brushing and curling of the hair to the polishing of the toenails, the occupation of her day; and the embrace and caresses of an ardent young husband is the prize for her teachability.
“My friend—a boy brought up for his task in life in an equally incongruous manner would protest and argue, and storm against his tutor—as, alas, all men do protest, argue and storm against the Almighty! But a young girl agrees with her mother, with her mother’s mother and with the common, divine Mother of the Universe, that the only method of turning out a dazzling and adorable woman of the world is a convent education.
“I might,” he said after a pause, “tell you a story which goes to prove in what good understanding a young girl is with the Paradox.”
“A nobleman married a girl fresh from the convent, with whom he was deeply in love, and on the evening of their wedding drove with her to his villa. In the coach he said to her: ‘My beloved, I am this evening going to make some alterations in my household, and to hand over to you a proportion of my property. But I must tell you beforehand that there is in my house one object which I am keeping to myself, and to the ownership of which you must never make any claim. I beg you: ask me no questions, and make no investigation in the matter.’
“In the frescoed room within which he sat down to sup with his wife he called before him the master of his stables and said to him: ‘Listen to my order and mark it well. From this hour my stables, and everything in them, are the property of the Princess my wife. None of my horses or coaches, none of my saddlery or harness, down to the coachman’s whips, in the future belongs to me myself.’
“He next called up his steward and said to him: ‘Mark my words well. From this hour all objects of value in my house, all gold and silver, all pictures and statues are the property of the Princess my wife, and I myself shall have nothing to say over them.’
“In the same way he had the housekeeper of the villa called and told her: ‘From today all linen and silk bedding, all lace and satin curtains within my house belong to the Princess my wife, and I myself renounce all rights of property in them. Be not forgetful of my bidding, but behave according to it.’
“In the end he called in the old woman who had been maid to his mother and grandmother, and informed her: ‘My faithful Gelsomina, hear me. All jewelry, which has before belonged to my mother, my grandmother, or to any former mistress of the house, from tonight belongs solely to the Princess my wife—who will wear it with the same grace as my mama and grandmama—to do with what she likes.’
“He here kissed his wife’s hand and offered her his arm. ‘You will now, dear heart,’ he said, ‘come with me, in order that I may show you the one precious object which, alone of all my belongings, I am keeping to myself.’
“With these words he led her upstairs to her bedroom and set her, all puzzled, in the middle of the floor. He lifted the bridal veil from her head and removed her pearls and diamonds. He undid her heavy bridal gown with its long train and made her step out of it, and one by one he took off her petticoats, stays and shift, until she stood before him, blushing and confused, as lovely as Eve in Paradise in her first hour with Adam. Very gently he turned her round to the tall mirror on the wall.
“ ‘There,’ he said, ‘is the one thing of my estate solely reserved for me myself.’
“My friend,” Matteo said, “a soldier receiving from his commander-in-chief corresponding instructions would shake his head at them and protest that surely this was no strategy to adopt, and that if he could, he would desert. But a young woman, faced with the instructions, nods her head.”
“But,” Taddeo asked, “did the nobleman of your tale, good Matteo, succeed in making his wife happy?”
“It is always, good Taddeo,” Matteo answered, “diffic
ult for a husband to know whether he is making his wife happy or not. But as to the husband and wife of my tale, the lady, on the twentieth anniversary of their wedding, took her husband’s hand, gazed archly into his eyes and asked him whether he still remembered this first evening of their married life. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘how terrified was I not then for half an hour, how did I not tremble. Why!’ she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms, ‘if you had not included in your directions that last clause of yours, I should have felt disdained and betrayed! My God, I should have been lost!’ ”
The contradance before the two old gentlemen changed into a waltz, and the whole ballroom waved and swayed like a garden under a summer breeze. The seductive Viennese tune then again died away.
“I should like to tell you,” Taddeo said, “another tale. It may go to support your grandfather’s theology, or it may not.”
“A nobleman of an ambitious nature, and with a brilliant career behind him, when he was no longer quite young decided to marry and looked round for a wife. On a visit to the town of Bergamo he made the acquaintance of a family of an ancient, great name but of modest means. There were at the time seven daughters in the tall gloomy palazzo, and at the end of the pretty row an only son, who was still a child. The seven young sisters were fully aware that their individual existence might with reason be disputed or denied, since they had come into the world as failures in the attempt at acquiring an heir to the name, and were—so to say—blanks drawn by their ancient house in its lottery on life and death. But their family arrogance was fierce enough to make them bear their sad lot high-handedly, as a privilege out of reach to the common people.
“It so happened that the youngest sister, the one whose arrival, he felt, to the poor Prince and Princess would have been the hardest blow of all, caught our nobleman’s eye, so that he returned to the house, and again returned.
“The girl, who was then but seventeen years old, was far from being the prettiest of the group. But the visitor was a connoisseur of feminine loveliness, and spied in her youthful face and form the promise of coming, unusual beauty. Yet much more than by this, he was attracted by a particular trait in her. He guessed behind her demure and disciplined bearing the fruit of an excellent education, an ambition kindred to his own, but more powerful because less blasé, a longing—and an energy to satisfy the longing—a long way out of the ordinary. It would be, he reflected, a pleasant, an entertaining experience to encourage this youthful ambition, still but faintly conscious of itself, to fledge the cygnet and watch it soaring. At the same time, he thought, a young wife of high birth and brought up in Spartan simplicity, with a nostalgia for glory, would be an asset in his future career. He applied for the girl’s hand, and her father and mother, surprised and delighted at having their daughter make such a splendid match, handed her over to him.
“Our nobleman had every reason to congratulate himself on his decision. The flight feathers of his young bird grew with surprising quickness; soon in his brilliant circle one would not find a lady of greater beauty and finer grace, of more exquisite and dignified comportment, or of more punctilious tact. She wore the heavy ornaments that he gave her with as much ease as a rosebush its roses, and had he, he thought, been able to set a crown on her head, the world would have felt her to be born with it. And she was still soaring, inspired by, as well as enraptured with, her successes. He himself, within the first two years of their married life, acquired two supreme decorations at his native and at a foreign court.
“But when he and his wife had been married for three years he observed a change in her. She became pensive, as if stirred by some new mighty emotion, obscure to him. At times she did not hear what he spoke to her. It also seemed to him that she would now prefer to show herself in the world on such occasions where he was not with her, and to excuse herself from others where she would have to appear by his side. ‘I have spoilt her,’ he reflected. ‘Is it indeed possible that, against the very order of things, her ambition and her vanity now make her aspire to outshine her lord, to whom she owes all?’ His feelings were naturally badly hurt at the idea of so much ingratitude, and at last, on an evening when they were alone together, he resolved to take her to account.
“ ‘Surely, my dear,’ he said to her, ‘you will realize that I am not going to play the part of that husband in the fairy tale who, owing to his connection with higher powers, raised his wife to the rank of queen and empress, only to hear her, in the end, demanding to have the sun rise at her word. Recall to yourself the place from which I took you, and remember that the response of higher powers to the too indulgent husband forwarding his wife’s claim was this: “return, and find her back in her hovel.” ’
“His wife for a long time did not answer him; in the end she rose from her chair as if about to leave the room. She was tall and willowy; her ample skirts at each of her movements made a little chirping sound.
“ ‘My husband,’ she said in her low, sonorous voice. ‘Surely you will realize that to an ambitious woman it comes hard, in entering a ballroom, to know that she is entering it on the arm of a cuckold.’
“As, very quietly and without another word, she had gone out of the door, the nobleman sat on, wondering, as till now he had never done, at the complexity of the Universe.”
THE CARDINAL’S THIRD TALE
And I, too,” with these words Cardinal Salviati broke the silence that followed upon the Spanish Ambassador’s story. “I, too, can tell a tale which may somehow illuminate our theme.”
As ever he spoke slowly and gently, and as ever the sweetness and authority of his voice captured the circle round him. He sat leaned back in his deep chair, so that his face with the ugly scar was in shadow. But his two hands, the beauty of which the great painter Camuccini has immortalized in his Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, rested on the arms of the chair, in the light of the candelabra, and from time to time, in an almost imperceptible movement, accompanied the modulations of his speech.
“I myself,” he continued, “have not been in a position to follow from beginning to end the happenings which I shall have the honor of relating to you. But I am as firmly convinced of their veracity as if they had been part of my own experience. For they were told me by the friend of my childhood, Father Jacopo Parmecianino, who was the most honest and candid human being I have ever known. Aye, he was more than that—of humble birth and appearance and hampered by a defect of speech, a slight stammer, he was in reality a saint, in whose modest dwelling miracles were at home. The heroine of my story, too, I have met. Her name was Lady Flora Gordon.
“I first made this lady’s acquaintance in one of the drawing rooms of Rome, at a time when she was, I believe, in the middle forties. Her apparition in our party was the sensation of the evening. Many tales were told of her great wealth, which was exceptional even among her countrymen, those headstrong, restless milords who travel through our land and with their swarms of attendants occupy our palazzos. On that evening I was told that she was one of the three richest women in Britain. And for other reasons than that the Scots lady was bound to impress anyone with whom she came into contact.
“The Lady Flora was by no means ugly. But all the same a presence like hers would be difficult for any lady to carry. For she was a giantess, mightier than any of those whom, as a child, I have seen shown in our fairs. Wherever she went, she stood head and shoulders above the men with whom she conversed. She was correspondingly vast of hips and chest. Her hands and feet, in themselves beautiful, were of a size to match those of the marble angels in my own chapel, and her white teeth compared with those of the faithful dapple-gray on the back of which I have passed many happy hours of my youth. Nose, jaw, ears and bosom, as well, in this lady were of goddess-like dimensions. She had rich red hair, but her grandly swung eyebrows and her thick eyelashes were almost colorless. Her skin was fresh and white, although slightly freckled. Her voice was full, clear and harmonious.
“As if Lady Flora meant to show that under a
ll conditions she owned to her nature and her worth, she carried herself exceedingly straight, her head high. Her attire was always costly, but severe in color and style and never embellished with a silk ribbon, a bow or any of the falbalas by which our own ladies do manifest not only a charming disposition, but the wish to charm. Her only jewels were a single row of pearls, an heirloom in her family, the match of which, according to rumor, was not to be found among the regalia of Britain. From time to time she donned garments of particular color and pattern, of which she was very proud. For, strange to say, such fabrics, down through the ages, to the noble houses of Scotland have held the significance of a coat of arms.
“Lady Flora had traveled in many countries, but till now had not visited Rome. She spoke our language freely and fluently, as she spoke French and German, even if with that particular accent which her countrymen cannot or will not put off. She had great connections all over Europe, and she was as much at her ease talking to a cabman as to a prince. At the same time something in her manner would remind her partner that the motto of her country is Noli me tangere. She also declined to follow the British custom of shaking hands in meeting or parting.
“On the evening in question I only exchanged a few words with Lady Flora. From our short conversation I gathered that she had come to Rome, by no means attracted by the beauty or holiness of the Eternal City, but on the contrary in order to confirm by personal observation her deep distrust of all that its name implies—from the Holy Father himself and us, his humble servants, to the music of our churches, the art of our museums, and the customs of our simple Roman people. Lady Flora had been brought up in one of those North-European denominations which most of all despise and abhor beauty, and when later in life she rejected its teachings, she at the same time, through her own experience, adopted a still harder view of life. In the course of our talks I felt that she had, wherever she had traveled, inspected the loveliest and most famous countries and cities of our poor earth with this same purpose: to corroborate her essential suspicion of both Creator and creation. The lady inspired me with profound pity, but at the same time with profound respect. For in everything she said and did there was nobility and truthfulness.