CHAPTER II. HUMANITIES
As the days passed and swelled into weeks, and these, in their turn,accumulated into months, I grew rapidly learned in worldly matters atDoctor Fifanti's house.
The curriculum I now pursued was so vastly different from that which mymother had bidden Fra Gervasio to set me, and my acquaintance with theprofane writers advanced so swiftly once it was engaged upon, that Iacquired knowledge as a weed grows.
Fifanti flung into strange passions when he discovered the extent of myignorance and the amazing circumstance that whilst Fra Gervasio had madeof me a fluent Latin scholar, he had kept me in utter ignorance of theclassic writers, and almost in as great an ignorance of history itself.This the pedant set himself at once to redress, and amongst the earliestworks he gave me as preparation were Latin translations of Thucydidesand Herodotus which I devoured--especially the glowing pages of thelatter--at a speed that alarmed my tutor.
But mere studiousness was not my spur, as he imagined. I was enthralledby the novelty of the matters that I read, so different from all thosewith which I had been allowed to become acquainted hitherto.
There followed Tacitus, and after him Cicero and Livy, which latter twoI found less arresting; then came Lucretius, and his De Rerum Naturaeproved a succulent dish to my inquisitive appetite.
But the cream and glory of the ancient writers I had yet to taste. Myfirst acquaintance with the poets came from the translation of Virgilupon which Messer Caro was at the time engaged. He had definitely takenup his residence in Piacenza, whither it was said that Farnese, hismaster, who was to be made our Duke, would shortly come. And in theinterval of labouring for Farnese, as Caro was doing, he would toil athis translation, and from time to time he would bring sheaves of hismanuscript to the doctor's house, to read what he had accomplished.
He came, I remember, one languid afternoon in August, when I had beenwith Messer Fifanti for close upon three months, during which time mymind had gradually, yet swiftly, been opening out like a bud under thesunlight of much new learning. We sat in the fine garden behind thehouse, on the lawn, in the shade of mulberry trees laden with yellowtranslucent fruit, by a pond that was all afloat with water-lilies.
There was a crescent-shaped seat of hewn marble, over which MesserGambara, who was with us, had thrown his scarlet cardinal's cloak, theday being oppressively hot. He was as usual in plain, walking clothes,and save for the ring on his finger and the cross on his breast, youhad never conceived him an ecclesiastic. He sat near his cloak, uponthe marble seat, and beside him sat Monna Giuliana, who was all in whitesave for the gold girdle at her waist.
Caro, himself, stood to read, his bulky manuscript in his hands. Againstthe sundial, facing the poet, leaned the tall figure of Messer Fifanti,his bald head uncovered and shining humidly, his eyes ever and anonstealing a look at his splendid wife where she sat so demurely at theprelate's side.
Myself, I lay on the grass near the pond, my hand trailing in the coolwater, and at first I was not greatly interested. The heat of the dayand the circumstance that we had dined, when played upon by the poet'sbooming and somewhat monotonous voice, had a lulling effect from whichI was in danger of falling asleep. But anon, as the narrative warmedand quickened, the danger was well overpast. I was very wide-awake, mypulses throbbing, my imagination all on fire. I sat up and listenedwith an enthralled attention, unconscious of everything and everybody,unconscious even of the very voice of the reader, intent only upon theamazing, tragic matter that he read.
For it happened that this was the Fourth Book of the Aeneid, and themost lamentable, heartrending story of Dido's love for Aeneas, of hisdesertion of her, of her grief and death upon the funeral pyre.
It held me spellbound. It was more real then anything that I had everread or heard; and the fate of Dido moved me as if I had known and lovedher; so that long ere Messer Caro came to an end I was weeping freely ina most exquisite misery.
Thereafter I was as one who has tasted strong wine and finds his thirstfired by it. Within a week I had read the Aeneid through, and wasreading it a second time. Then came the Comedies of Terence, theMetamorphoses of Ovid, Martial, and the Satires of Juvenal. Andwith those my transformation was complete. No longer could I findsatisfaction in the writings of the fathers of the church, or incontemplating the lives of the saints, after the pageantries which theeyes of my soul had looked upon in the profane authors.
What instructions my mother supposed Fifanti to have received concerningme from Arcolano, I cannot think. But certain it is that she could neverhave dreamed under what influences I was so soon to come, no more thanshe could conceive what havoc they played with all that hitherto I hadlearnt and with the resolutions that I had formed--and that she hadformed for me--concerning the future.
All this reading perturbed me very oddly, as one is perturbed who havinglong dwelt in darkness is suddenly brought into the sunlight and dazzledby it, so that, grown conscious of his sight, he is more effectivelyblinded than he was before. For the process that should have been agradual one from tender years was carried through in what amounted tolittle more than a few weeks.
My Lord Gambara took an odd interest in me. He was something ofa philosopher in his trivial way; something of a student of hisfellow-man; and he looked upon me as an odd human growth that was beingsubjected to an unusual experiment. I think he took a certain delight inhelping that experiment forward; and certain it is that he had more todo with the debauching of my mind than any other, or than any readingthat I did.
It was not that he told me more than elsewhere I could have learnt; itwas the cynical manner in which he conveyed his information. He had away of telling me of monstrous things as if they were purely normal andnatural to a properly focussed eye, and as if any monstrousness theymight present to me were due to some distortion imparted to them solelyby the imperfection of my intellectual vision.
Thus it was from him that I learnt certain unsuspected things concerningPier Luigi Farnese, who, it was said, was coming to be our Duke, and onwhose behalf the Emperor was being importuned to invest him in the Duchyof Parma and Piacenza.
One day as we walked together in the garden--my Lord Gambara and I--Iasked him plainly what was Messer Farnese's claim.
"His claim?" quoth he, checking, to give me a long, cool stare. Helaughed shortly and resumed his pacing, I keeping step with him. "Why,is he not the Pope's son, and is not that claim enough?"
"The Pope's son!" I exclaimed. "But how is it possible that the HolyFather should have a son?"
"How is it possible?" he echoed mockingly. "Why, I will tell you, sir.When our present Holy Father went as Cardinal-legate to the Mark ofAncona, he met there a certain lady whose name was Lola, who pleasedhim, and who was pleased with him. Alessandro Farnese was a handsomeman, Ser Agostino. She bore him three children, of whom one is dead,another is Madonna Costanza, who is wed to Sforza of Santafiora, and thethird--who really happens to have been the first-born--is Messer PierLuigi, present Duke of Castro and future Duke of Piacenza."
It was some time ere I could speak.
"But his vows, then?" I exclaimed at last.
"Ah! His vows!" said the Cardinal-legate. "True, there were his vows.I had forgotten that. No doubt he did the same." And he smiledsardonically, sniffing at his pomander-ball.
From that beginning in a fresh branch of knowledge much followedquickly. Under my questionings, Messer Gambara very readily made meacquainted through his unsparing eyes with that cesspool that was knownas the Roman Curia. And my horror, my disillusionment increased at everyword he said.
I learnt from him that Pope Paul III was no exception to the rule, nosuch scandal as I had imagined; that his own elevation to the purple wasdue in origin to the favour which his sister, the beautiful Giulia, hadfound in the eyes of the Borgia Pope, some fifty years ago. Through himI came to know the Sacred College as it really was; not the very homeand fount of Christianity, as I had deemed it, controlled and guidedby men of a sublime saintliness of ways, but a gat
hering of ambitiousworldlings, who had become so brazen in their greed of temporal powerthat they did not even trouble to cloak the sin and evil in which theylived; men in whom the spirit that had actuated those saints the studyof whose lives had been my early delight, lived no more than it mightlive in the bosom of a harlot.
I said so to him one day in a wild, furious access of boldness, in oneof those passionate outbursts that are begotten of illusions blighted.
He heard me through quite calmly, without the least trace of anger,smiling ever his quiet mocking smile, and plucking at his little, auburnbeard.
"You are wrong, I think," he said. "Say that the Church has fallena prey to self-seekers who have entered it under the cloak of thepriesthood. What then? In their hands the Church has been enriched. Shehas gained power, which she must retain. And that is to the Church'sgood."
"And what of the scandal of it?" I stormed.
"O, as to that--why, boy, have you never read Boccaccio?"
"Never," said I.
"Read him, then," he urged me. "He will teach you much that you needto know. And read in particular the story of Abraam, the Jew, who uponvisiting Rome was so scandalized by the licence and luxury of theclergy that he straightway had himself baptized and became a Christian,accounting that a religion that could survive such wiles of Satan todestroy it must indeed be the true religion, divinely inspired." Helaughed his little cynical laugh to see my confusion increased by thatbitter paradox.
It is little wonder that I was all bewildered, that I was like some poormariner upon unknown waters, without stars or compass.
Thus that summer ebbed slowly, and the time of my projected minorordination approached. Messer Gambara's visits to Fifanti's grew moreand more frequent, until they became a daily occurrence; and now mycousin Cosimo came oftener too. But it was their custom to come in theforenoon, when I was at work with Fifanti. And often I observed thedoctor to be oddly preoccupied, and to spend much time in creeping tothe window that was all wreathed in clematis, and in peeping throughthat purple-decked green curtain into the garden where his excellencyand Cosimo walked with Monna Giuliana.
When both visitors were there his anxiety seemed less. But if onlyone were present he would give himself no peace. And once when MesserGambara and she went together within doors, he abruptly interrupted mystudies, saying that it was enough for that day; and he went below tojoin them.
Half a year earlier I should have had no solution for his strangebehaviour. But I had learnt enough of the world by now to perceive whatmaggot was stirring in that egg-shaped head. Yet I blushed for him, andfor his foul and unworthy suspicions. As soon would I have suspected thepainted Madonna from the brush of Raffaele Santi that I had seen overthe high altar of the Church of San Sisto, as suspect the beautifuland noble-souled Giuliana of giving that old pedant cause for hisuneasiness. Still, I conceived that this was the penalty that such awithered growth of humanity must pay for having presumed to marry ayoung wife.
We were much together in those days, Monna Giuliana and I. Our intimacyhad grown over a little incident that it were well I should mention.
A young painter, Gianantonio Regillo, better known to the world as IlPordenone, had come to Piacenza that summer to decorate the Churchof Santa Maria della Campagna. He came furnished with letters to theGovernor, and Gambara had brought him to Fifanti's villa. From MonnaGiuliana the young painter heard the curious story of my having beenvowed prenatally to the cloister by my mother, learnt her name and mine,and the hope that was entertained that I should walk in the ways of St.Augustine after whom I had been christened.
It happened that he was about to paint a picture of St. Augustine, as afresco for the chapel of the Magi of the church I have named. And havingseen me and heard that story of mine, he conceived the curious notionof using me as the model for the figure of the saint. I consented, anddaily for a week he came to us in the afternoons to paint; and all thetime Monna Giuliana would be with us, deeply interested in his work.
That picture he eventually transferred to his fresco, and there--Obitter irony!--you may see me to this day, as the saint in whose ways itwas desired that I should follow.
Monna Giuliana and I would linger together in talk after the painter hadgone; and this would be at about the time that I had my first lessonsof Curial life from my Lord Gambara. You will remember that he mentionedBoccaccio to me, and I chanced to ask her was there in the library acopy of that author's tales.
"Has that wicked priest bidden you to read them?" she inquired, 'twixtseriousness and mockery, her dark eyes upon me in one of those glancesthat never left me easy.
I told her what had passed; and with a sigh and a comment that I wouldget an indigestion from so much mental nourishment as I was consuming,she led me to the little library to find the book.
Messer Fifanti's was a very choice collection of works, and every onein manuscript; for the doctor was something of an idealist, and greatlyaverse to the printing-press and the wide dissemination of books towhich it led. Out of his opposition to the machine grew a dislike toits productions, which he denounced as vulgar; and not even theircomparative cheapness and the fact that, when all was said, he was a manof limited means, would induce him to harbour a single volume that wasso produced.
Along the shelves she sought, and finally drew down four heavy tomes.Turning the pages of the first, she found there, with a readiness thatargued a good acquaintance with the work, the story of Abraam the Jew,which I desired to read as it had been set down. She bade me read italoud, which I did, she seated in the window, listening to me.
At first I read with some constraint and shyness, but presently warmingto my task and growing interested, I became animated and vivacious in mymanner, so that when I ceased I saw her sitting there, her hands claspedabout one knee, her eyes upon my face, her lips parted a little, thevery picture of interest.
And with that it happened that we established a custom, and very often,almost daily, after dinner, we would repair together to the library, andI--who hitherto had no acquaintance with any save Latin works--began tomake and soon to widen my knowledge of our Tuscan writers. We varied ourreading. We dipped into our poets. Dante we read, and Petrarca, and bothwe loved, though better than the works of either--and this for the sakeof the swift movement and action that is in his narrative, though hismelodies, I realized, were not so pure--the Orlando of Ariosto.
Sometimes we would be joined by Fifanti himself; but he never stayedvery long. He had an old-fashioned contempt for writings in what hecalled the "dialettale," and he loved the solemn injuvenations ofthe Latin tongue. Soon, as he listened, he would begin to yawn, andpresently grunt and rise and depart, flinging a contemptuous word atthe matter of my reading, and telling me at times that I might find moreprofitable amusement.
But I persisted in it, guided ever by Fifanti's lady. And whateverwe read by way of divergence, ever and anon we would come back to thestilted, lucid, vivid pages of Boccaccio.
One day I chanced upon the tragical story of "Isabetta and the Pot ofBasil," and whilst I read I was conscious that she had moved from whereshe had been sitting and had come to stand behind my chair. And when Ireached the point at which the heart-broken Isabetta takes the head ofher murdered lover to her room, a tear fell suddenly upon my hand.
I stopped, and looked up at Giuliana. She smiled at me through unshedtears that magnified her matchless eyes.
"I will read no more," I said. "It is too sad."
"Ah, no!" she begged. "Read on, Agostino! I love its sadness."
So I read on to the story's cruel end, and when it was done I sat quitestill, myself a little moved by the tragedy of it, whilst Giulianacontinued to lean against my chair. I was moved, too, in another way;curiously and unaccountably; and I could scarcely have defined what itwas that moved me.
I sought to break the spell of it, and turned the pages. "Let me readsomething else," said I. "Something more gay, to dispel the sadness ofthis."
But her hand fell suddenly upon mine,
enclasping and holding it. "Ah,no!" she begged me gently. "Give me the book. Let us read no moreto-day."
I was trembling under her touch--trembling, my every nerve a-quiver andmy breath shortened--and suddenly there flashed through my mind a lineof Dante's in the story of Paolo and Francesca:
"Quel giorno piu non vi leggemo avanti."
Giuliana's words: "Let us read no more to-day"--had seemed an echo ofthat line, and the echo made me of a sudden conscious of an unsuspectedparallel. All at once our position seemed to me strangely similar tothat of the ill-starred lovers of Rimini.
But the next moment I was sane again. She had withdrawn her hand, andhad taken the volume to restore it to its shelf.
Ah, no! At Rimini there had been two fools. Here there was but one. Letme make an end of him by persuading him of his folly.
Yet Giuliana did nothing to assist me in that task. She returned fromthe book-shelf, and in passing lightly swept her fingers over my hair.
"Come, Agostino; let us walk in the garden," said she.
We went, my mood now overpast. I was as sober and self-contained aswas my habit. And soon thereafter came my Lord Gambara--a rare thing tohappen in the afternoon.
Awhile the three of us were together in the garden, talking of trivialmatters. Then she fell to wrangling with him concerning something thatCaro had written and of which she had the manuscript. In the end shebegged me would I go seek the writing in her chamber. I went, and huntedwhere she had bidden me and elsewhere, and spent a good ten minutesvainly in the task. Chagrined that I could not discover the thing, Iwent into the library, thinking that it might be there.
Doctor Fifanti was writing busily at the table when I intruded. Helooked up, thrusting his horn-rimmed spectacles high upon his peakedforehead.
"What the devil!" quoth he very testily. "I thought you were in thegarden with Madonna Giuliana."
"My Lord Gambara is there," said I.
He crimsoned and banged the table with his bony hand. "Do I not knowthat?" he roared, though I could see no reason for all this heat. "Andwhy are you not with them?"
You are not to suppose that I was still the meek, sheepish lad who hadcome to Piacenza three months ago. I had not been learning my world anddiscovering Man to no purpose all this while.
"It has yet to be explained to me," said I, "under what obligation Iam to be anywhere but where I please. That firstly. Secondly--but ofinfinitely lesser moment--Monna Giuliana has sent me for the manuscriptof Messer Caro's Gigli d'Oro."
I know not whether it was my cool, firm tones that quieted him. Butquiet he became.
"I... I was vexed by your interruption," he said lamely, to explain hislate choler. "Here is the thing. I found it here when I came. MesserCaro might discover better employment for his leisure. But there,there"--he seemed in sudden haste again. "Take it to her in God's name.She will be impatient." I thought he sneered. "O, she will praise yourdiligence," he added, and this time I was sure that he sneered.
I took it, thanked him, and left the room intrigued. And when I rejoinedthem, and handed her the manuscript, the odd thing was that the subjectof their discourse having meanwhile shifted, it no longer interestedher, and she never once opened the pages she had been in such haste tohave me procure.
This, too, was puzzling, even to one who was beginning to know his world
But I was not done with riddles. For presently out came Fifanti himself,looking, if possible, yellower and more sour and lean than usual. Hewas arrayed in his long, rusty gown, and there were the usual shabbyslippers on his long, lean feet. He was ever a man of most indifferentpersonal habits.
"Ah, Astorre," his wife greeted him. "My Lord Cardinal brings you goodtidings."
"Does he so?" quoth Fifanti, sourly as I thought; and he looked atthe legate as though his excellency were the very reverse of a happyharbinger.
"You will rejoice, I think, doctor," said the smiling prelate, "to hearthat I have letters from my Lord Pier Luigi appointing you one of theducal secretaries. And this, I doubt not, will be followed, on hiscoming hither, by an appointment to his council. Meanwhile, the stipendis three hundred ducats, and the work is light."
There followed a long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grewfirst red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with hisscarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomanderand smiling almost insolently into the other's face; and some of theinsolence of his look, I thought, was reflected upon the pale, placidcountenance of Giuliana.
At last, Fifanti spoke, his little eyes narrowing.
"It is too much for my poor deserts," he said curtly.
"You are too humble," said the prelate. "Your loyalty to the House ofFarnese, and the hospitality which I, its deputy, have received..."
"Hospitality!" barked Fifanti, and looked very oddly at Giuliana; sooddly that a faint colour began to creep into her cheeks. "You would payfor that?" he questioned, half mockingly. "Oh, but for that a stipend ofthree hundred ducats is too little."
And all the time his eyes were upon his wife, and I saw her stiffen asif she had been struck.
But the Cardinal laughed outright. "Come now, you use me with an amiablefrankness," he said. "The stipend shall be doubled when you join thecouncil."
"Doubled?" he said. "Six hundred...?" He checked. The sum was vast. Isaw greed creep into his little eyes. What had troubled him hitherto,I could not fathom even yet. He washed his bony hands in the air, andlooked at his wife again. "It... it is a fair price, no doubt, my lord,"said he, his tone contemptuous.
"The Duke shall be informed of the value of your learning," lisped theCardinal.
Fifanti knit his brows. "The value of my learning?" he echoed, as ifslowly puzzled. "My learning? Oh! Is that in question?"
"Why else should we give you the appointment?" smiled the Cardinal, witha smile that was full of significance.
"It is what the town will be asking, no doubt," said Messer Fifanti. "Ihope you will be able to satisfy its curiosity, my lord."
And on that he turned, and stalked off again, very white and trembling,as I could perceive.
My Lord Gambara laughed carelessly again, and over the pale face ofMonna Giuliana there stole a slow smile, the memory of which was to behateful to me soon, but which at the moment went to increase my alreadyprofound mystification.