CHAPTER VIII. "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN"
And now, lest I grow tedious and weary you with this narrative of mine,it may be well that I but touch with a fugitive pen upon the events ofthe next three years of the history of Pesaro.
Early in 1498 the Lord Giovanni showed himself once more abroad, and heseemed again the same weak, cruel, pleasure-loving tyrant he had beenbefore shame overtook him and drove him for a season into hiding.Madonna Paola and her brother, Filippo di Santafior, remained in Pesaro,where they now appeared to have taken up their permanent abode. MadonnaPaola--following her inclinations--withdrew to the Convent of SantaCaterina, there to pursue in peace the studies for which she had ataste, whilst her splendid, profligate brother became the ornament--thearbiter elegantiarum--of our court.
Thus were they left undisturbed; for in the cauldron of Borgia politicsa stew was simmering that demanded all that family's attention, and ofwhose import we guessed something when we heard that Cesare Borgia hadflung aside his cardinalitial robes to put on armour and give freer reinto the boundless ambition that consumed him.
With me life moved as if that winter excursion and adventure had neverbeen. Even the memory of it must have faded into a haze that scarce leftdiscernible any semblance of reality, for I was once again Boccadoro,the golden-mouthed Fool, whose sayings were echoed by every jesterthroughout Italy. My shame that for a brief season had risen up in armsseemed to be laid to rest once more, and I was content with the burdenthat was mine. Money I had in plenty, for when I pleased him the LordGiovanni's vails were often handsome, and much of my earnings went tomy poor mother, who would sooner have died starving than have boughtherself bread with those ducats could she have guessed at what manner oftrade Lazzaro Biancomonte had earned them.
The Lord Giovanni was a frequent visitor at the Convent of SantaCaterina, whither he went, ever attended by Filippo di Santafior, to payhis duty to his fair cousin. In the summer of 1500, she being then cometo the age of eighteen, and as divinely beautiful a lady as you couldfind in Italy, she allowed herself to be persuaded by her brother--who,I make no doubt had been, in his turn, persuaded by the Lord ofPesaro--to leave her convent and her studies, and to take up her lifeat the Sforza Palace, where Filippo held by now a sort of petty court ofhis own.
And now it fell out that the Lord Giovanni was oftener at the Palacethan at the Castle, and during that summer Pesaro was given over tosuch merrymaking as it had never known before. There was endlesslute-thrumming and recitation of verses by a score of parasite poetswhom the Lord Giovanni encouraged, posing now as a patron of letters;there were balls and masques and comedies beyond number, and we were asgay as though Italy held no Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who wassweeping northward with his all-conquering flood of mercenaries.
But one there was who, though the very centre of all these merry doings,the very one in whose honour and for whose delectation they were setafoot, seemed listless and dispirited in that boisterous crowd. Thiswas Madonna Paola, to whom, rumour had it, that her kinsman, the LordGiovanni, was paying a most ardent suit.
I saw her daily now, and often would she choose me for her solecompanion; often, sitting apart with me, would she unburden her heartand tell me much that I am assured she would have told no other. Astrange thing may it have seemed, this confidence between the Fool andthe noble Lady of Santafior--my Holy Flower of the Quince, as in mythoughts I grew to name her. Perhaps it may have been because she foundme ever ready to be sober at her bidding, when she needed sober companyas those other fools--the greater fools since they accounted themselveswise--could not afford her.
That winter adventure betwixt Cagli and Pesaro was a link that bound ustogether, and caused her to see under my motley and my masking smilethe true Lazzaro Biancomonte whom for a little season she had known. Andwhen we were alone it had become her wont to call me Lazzaro, leavingthat other name that they had given me for use when others were at hand.Yet never did she refer to my condition, or wound me by seeking to spurme to the ambition to become myself again. Haply she was content that Ishould be as I sas, since had I sought to become different it must haveentailed my quitting Pesaro, and this poor lady was so bereft of friendsthat she could not afford to lose even the sympathy of the despisedjester.
It was in those days that I first came to love her with as pure a flameas ever burned within the heart of man, for the very hopelessness of itpreserved its holy whiteness. What could I do, if I would love her,but love her as the dog may love his mistress? More was surely not forme--and to seek more were surely a madness that must earn me less. Andso, I was content to let things be, and keep my heart in check,thanking God for the mercy of her company at times, and for the preciousconfidences she made me, and praying Heaven--for of my love was I growndevout--that her life might run a smooth and happy course, and ready,in the furtherance of such an object, to lay down my own should the needarise. Indeed there were times when it seemed to me that it was a goodthing to be a Fool to know a love of so rare a purity as that--such alove as I might never have known had I been of her station, and in suchcase as to have hoped to win her some day for my own.
One evening of late August, when the vines were heavy with ripe fruit,and the scent of roses was permeating the tepid air, she drew me fromthe throng of courtiers that made merry in the Palace, and led me outinto the noble gardens to seek counsel with me, she said, upon a matterof gravest moment. There, under the sky of deepest blue, crimsoning tosaffron where the sun had set, we paced awhile in silence, my own sensesheld in thrall by the beauty of the eventide, the ambient perfumesof the air and the strains of music that faintly reached us from thePalace. Madonna's head was bent, and her eyes were set upon the groundand burdened, so my furtive glance assured me, with a gentle sorrow.At length she spoke, and at the words she uttered my heart seemed for amoment to stand still.
"Lazzaro," said she, "they would have me marry."
For a little spell there was a silence, my wits seeming to have growntoo numbed to attempt to seek an answer. I might be content, indeed, tolove her from a distance, as the cloistered monk may love and worshipsome particular saint in Heaven; yet it seems that I was not proofagainst jealousy for all the abstract quality of my worship.
"Lazzaro," she repeated presently, "did you hear me? They would have memarry."
"I have heard some such talk," I answered, rousing myself at last; "andthey say that it is the Lord Giovanni who would prove worthy of yourhand."
"They say rightly, then," she acknowledged. "The Lord Giovanni it is."
Again there was a silence, and again it was she who broke it.
"Well, Lazzaro?" she asked. "Have you naught to say?"
"What would you have me say, Madonna? If this wedding accords with yourown wishes, then am I glad."
"Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not."
"How should I know it, Madonna?"
"Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me. Think you thispetty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceiveaffection for? Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded ushere; but my love--that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for somevery different man. When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight, agentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address."
"An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonnamia. But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him?"
"Are there, then, no such men?"
"In the pages of Bojardo and those other poets whom you have read tooearnestly there may be."
"Nay, there speaks your cynicism," she chided me. "But even if myideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of sucha pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni--a weak-spirited craven, aswitnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle him;a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to seek nofurther instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool, devoid of witand barren of ambition? Such is the man they would have me wed. Don
ot tell me, Lazzaro, that it were difficult to find a better one thanthis."
"I do not mean to tell you that. After all, though it be my trade tojest, it is not my way to deal in falsehood. I think, Madonna, that ifwe were to have you write for us such an appreciation of the High andMighty Giovanni Sforza, you would leave a very faithful portrait for theenlightenment of posterity."
"Lazzaro, do not jest!" she cried. "It is your help I need. That is thereason why I am come to you with the tale of what they seek to force meinto doing."
"To force you?" I cried. "Would they dare so much?"
"Aye, if I resist them further."
"Why, then," I answered, with a ready laugh, "do not resist themfurther."
"Lazzaro!" she cried, her accents telling of a spirit wounded by whatshe accounted a flippancy.
"Mistake me not," I hastened to elucidate. "It is lest they shouldemploy force and compel you at once to enter into this union that Icounsel you to offer no resistance. Beg for a little time, vaguelysuggesting that you are not indisposed to the Lord Giovanni's suit."
"That were deceit," she protested.
"A trusty weapon with which to combat tyranny," said I.
"Well? And then?" she questioned. "Such a state of things cannot endurefor ever. It must end some day."
I shook my head, and I smiled down upon her a smile that was very fullof confidence.
"That day will never dawn, unless the Lord Giovanni's impatiencetranscends all bounds."
She looked at me, a puzzled glance in her eyes, a bewildered expressionknitting her fine brows.
"I do not take your meaning, my friend," she complained.
"Then mark the enucleation. I will expound this meaning of mine throughthe medium of a parable. In Babylon of old, there dwelt a king whosename was Belshazzar, who, having fallen into habits of voluptuousnessand luxury, was so enslaved by them as to feast and make merry whilsta certain Darius, King of the Medes, was marching in arms against hiscapital. At a feast one night the fingers of a man's hand were seen towrite upon the wall, and the words they wrote were a belated warning:'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.'"
She looked at me, her eyes round with inquiry, and a faint smile ofuncertainty on her lips.
"Let me confess that your elucidation helps me but little."
"Ponder it, Madonna," I urged her. "Substitute Giovanni Sforza forBelshazzar, Cesare Borgia for King Darius, and you have the key to myparable."
"But is it indeed so? Does danger threaten Pesaro from that quarter?"
"Aye, does it," I answered, almost impatiently. "The tide of war issurging up, and presently will whelm us utterly. Yet here sits the LordGiovanni making merry with balls and masques and burle and banquets,wholly unprepared, wholly unconscious of his peril. There may be no handto write a warning on his walls--or else, as in the case of Babylon, thehand will write when it is too late to avert the evil--yet there are notwanting other signs for those that have the wit to read them; nor is awondrous penetration needed."
"And you think then--" she began.
"I think that if you are obdurate with him, he and your brothermay hurry you by force into this union. But if you temporise withhalf-promises, with suggestions that before Christmas you may growreconciled to his wishes, he will be patient."
"But what if Christmas comes and finds us still in this position?"
"It will need a miracle for that; or, at least, the death of CesareBorgia--an unlikely event, for they say he uses great precautions.Saving the miracle, and providing Cesare lives, I will give the LordGiovanni's reign in Pesaro at most two months."
We had halted now, and were confronting each other in the descendinggloom.
"Lazzaro, dear friend," she cried, almost with gaiety, "I was wise totake counsel with you. You have planted in my heart a very vigorousgrowth of hope."
We turned soon after, and started to retrace our steps, for she might beill-advised to remain absent overlong.
I left her on the terrace in a very different spirit from that in whichshe had come to me, bearing with me her promise that she would act as Ihad advised her. No doubt I had taken a load from her gentle soul, andoddly enough I had taken, too, a load from mine.
Things fell out as I said they would in far as Giovanni Sforza andFilippo were concerned. Madonna's seeming amenability to their wishesstayed their insistence, and they could but respect her wishes to letthe betrothal be delayed yet a little while. And during the weeks thatfollowed, it was I scarce know whether more pitiable or more amusingto see the efforts that Giovanni made to win her ardently desiredaffection.
Love has sharp eyes at times, and a dullard under the influence of thebaby god will turn shrewd and exert rare wiles in the conduct of hiswooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature,seemed to divine what manner of man would be Madonna Paola's ideal, andstrove to pass himself off as possessed of the attributes of that ideal,with an ardour that was pitiably comical. He became an actor by the sideof whom those comedians that played impromptus for his delectation werethe merest bunglers with the art. He gathered that Madonna Paola lovedthe poets and their stately diction, and so, to please her better, hebecame a poet for the season.
"Poeta nascitur" the proverb runs, and that proverb's truth wasdoubtless forced home upon the Lord Giovanni at an early stage of hisexcursions into the flowery meads of prosody. Fortunately he lacked thesupreme vanity that is the attribute of most poetasters, and he was ableto see that such things as after hours of midnight-labour he contrivedto pen, would evoke nothing but her amusement--unless, indeed, it wereher scorn--and render him the laughing-stock of all his Court.
So, in the wisdom of despair, he came to me, and with a gentleness thatin the past he had rarely manifested for me, he asked me was I skilledin writing verse. There were not wanting others to whom he might havegone, for there was no lack of rhymsters about his Court; but perhaps hethought he could be more certain of my silence than of theirs.
I answered him that were the subject to my taste, I might succeed inthrowing off some passable lines upon it. He pressed gold upon me, andbade me there and then set about fashioning an ode to Madonna Paola, andto forget, when they were done, under pain of a whipping to the bone,that I had written them.
I obeyed him with a right good-will. For what subject of all subjectspossible was there that made so powerful an appeal to my inclinations?Within an hour he had the ode--not perhaps such a poem as might standcomparison with the verses of Messer Petrarca, yet a very passableeffusion, chaste of conceit and palpitating with sincerity andadoration. It was in that that I addressed her as the "Holy Flower ofthe Quince," which was the symbol of the House of Santafior.
So great an impression made that ode that on the morrow the LordGiovanni came to me with a second bribe and a second threat of torture.I gave him a sonnet of Petrarchian manner which went near to outshiningthe merits of the ode. And now, these requests of the Lord Giovanni'sassumed an almost daily regularity, until it came to seem that didaffairs continue in this manner for yet a little while, I should haveearned me enough to have repurchased Biancomonte, and, so, ended mytroubles. And good was the value that I gave him for his gold. How good,he never knew; for how was he, the clod, to guess that this despisedjester of his Court was pouring out his very soul into the lines hewrote to the tyrant's orders?
It is scant wonder that, at last, Madonna Paola who had begun bysmiling, was touched and moved by the ardent worship that sighed fromthose perfervid verses. So touched, indeed, was she as to believe theLord Giovanni's love to be the pure and holy thing those lines presentedit, and to conclude that his love had wrought in him a wondrous andennobling transformation. That so she thought I have the best of allreasons to affirm, for I had it from her very lips one day.
"Lazzaro," she sighed, "it is occurring to me that I have done the LordGiovanni an injustice. I have misgauged his character. I held him tobe a shallow, unlettered clown, devoid of any finer feelings. Yet hisverses have a merit that is far above the common no
te of these writings,and they breathe such fine and lofty sentiments as could never springfrom any but a fine and lofty soul."
How I came to keep my tongue from wagging out the truth I scarcely know.It may be that I was frightened of the punishment that might overtakeme did I betray my master; but I rather think that it was the fear ofbetraying myself, and so being flung into the outer darkness where therewas no such radiant presence as Madonna Paola's. For had I told her itwas I had penned those poems that were the marvel of the Court, she mustof necessity have guessed my secret, for to such quick wits as hers itmust have been plain at once that they were no vapourings of artistry,but the hot expressions of a burning truth. It was in that--in theirsupreme sincerity--that their chief virtue lay.
Thus weeks wore on. The vintage season came and went; the roses fadedin the gardens of the Palazzo Sforza, and the trees put on their autumngarb of gold. October was upon us, and with it came, at last, the fearthat long ago should have spurred us into activity. And now that itcame it did not come to stimulate, but to palsy. Terror-stricken at theconquering advance of Valentino--which was the name they now gave CesareBorgia; a name derived from his Duchy of Valentinois--Giovanni Sforzaabruptly ceased his revelling, and made a hurried appeal for help toFrancesco Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua--his brother-in-law, through theLord of Pesaro's first marriage. The Mantuan Marquis sent him a hundredmercenaries under the command of an Albanian named Giacomo. As wellmight he have sent him a hundred figs wherewith to pelt the army ofValentino!
Disaster swooped down swiftly upon the Lord of Pesaro. His very people,seeing in what case they were, and how unprepared was their tyrant todefend them, wisely resolved that they would run no risks of fire andpillage by aiding to oppose the irresistible force that was being hurledagainst us.
It was on the second Sunday in October that the storm burst over theLord Giovanni's head. He was on the point of leaving the Castle toattend Mass at San Domenico, and in his company were Filippo Sforza ofSantafior and Madonna Paola, besides courtiers and attendants, amountingin all to perhaps a score of gallant cavaliers and ladies. The cavalcadewas drawn up in the quadrangle, and Giovanni was on the point ofmounting, when, of a sudden, a rumbling noise, as of distant thunder,but too continuous for that, arrested him, his foot already in thestirrup.
"What is that?" he asked, an ashen pallor overspreading his effeminateface, as, doubtless, the thought of the enemy came uppermost in hismind.
Men looked at one another with fear in their eyes and some of the ladiesraised their voices in querulous beseeching for reassurance. They hadtheir answer even as they asked. The Albanian Giacomo, who was nowvirtually the provost of the Castle, appeared suddenly at the gates withhalf a score of men. He raised a warning hand, which compelled the LordGiovanni to pause; then he rasped out a brisk command to his followers.The winches creaked, and the drawbridge swung up even as with a clankand rattle of chains the portcullis fell.
That done, he came forward to impart the ominous news which one of hisriders had brought him at the gallop from the Porta Romana.
A party of some fifty men, commanded by one of Cesare's captains, hadridden on in advance of the main army to call upon Pesaro to yieldto the forces of the Church. And the people, without hesitation, hadbutchered the guard and thrown wide the gates, inviting the enemy toenter the town and seize the Castle. And to the end that this might bethe better achieved, a hundred or so had traitorously taken up arms, andwere pressing forward to support the little company that came, withsuch contemptuous daring, to storm our fortress and prepare the way forValentino.
It was a pretty situation this for the Lord Giovanni, and here were fineopportunities for some brave acting under the eyes of his adored MadonnaPaola. How would he bear himself now? I wondered.
He promised mighty well once the first shock of the news was overcome.
"By God and His saints!" he roared, "though it may be all that it isgiven me to do, I'll strike a blow to punish these dastards who havebetrayed me, and to crush the presumption of this captain who attacks uswith fifty men. It is a contempt which he shall bitterly repent him."
Then he thundered to Giacomo to marshal his men, and he called uponthose of his courtiers who were knights to put on their armour that theymight support him. Lastly he bade a page go help him to arm, that hemight lead his little force in person.
I saw Madonna Paola's eyes gleam with a sudden light of admiration,and I guessed that in the matter of Giovanni's valour her opinions wereundergoing the same change as the verses had caused them to undergo inthe matter of his intellect.
Myself, I was amazed. For here was a Lord Giovanni I seemed never tohave known, and I was eager to behold the sequel to so fine a prologue.