CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE OF ASTORRE FIFANTI. Let me not follow in too closedetail the incidents of that journey lest I be in danger of becomingtedious. In themselves they contained laughable matter enough, but inthe mere relation they may seem dull.
Down the borgo, ahead of us, ran the rumour that here was the Madonninoof Mondolfo, and the excitement that the announcement caused wassomething at which I did not know whether to be flattered or offended.
The houses gave up their inhabitants, and all stood at gaze as wepassed, to behold for the first time this lord of theirs of whom theyhad heard Heaven knows what stories--for where there are elements ofmystery human invention can be very active.
At first so many eyes confused me; so that I kept my own steadily uponthe glossy neck of my mule. Very soon, however, growing accustomed tobeing stared at, I lost some of my shyness, and now it was that I becamea trouble to Messer Arcolano. For as I looked about me there were ahundred things to hold my attention and to call for inquiry and nearerinspection.
We had come by this into the market-place, and it chanced that it was amarket-day and that the square was thronged with peasants from the Valdi Taro who had come to sell their produce and to buy their necessaries.
I was for halting at each booth and inspecting the wares, and each timethat I made as if to do so, the obsequious peasantry fell away beforeme, making way invitingly. But Messer Arcolano urged me along, sayingthat we had far to go, and that in Piacenza there were better shops andthat I should have more time to view them.
Then it was the fountain with its surmounting statues that caught myeye--Durfreno's arresting, vigorous group of the Laocoon--and I mustdraw rein and cry out in my amazement at so wonderful a piece of work,plaguing Arcolano with a score of questions concerning the identity ofthe main figure and how he came beset by so monstrous a reptile, andwhether he had succeeded in the end in his attempt to strangle it.
Arcolano, out of patience by now, answered me shortly that the reptilewas the sculptor's pious symbolization of sin, which St. Hercules wasovercoming.
I am by no means sure that such was not indeed his own conception of thematter, and that there did not exist in his mind some confusion as towhether the pagan demigod had a place in the Calendar or not. For he wasan uncultured, plebeian fellow, and what my mother should have foundin him to induce her to prefer him for her confessor and spiritualcounsellor to the learned Fra Gervasio is one more of the many mysterieswhich an attempt to understand her must ever present to me.
Then there were the young peasant girls who thronged about and stood ingroups, blushing furiously under my glance, which Arcolano vainlybade me lower. A score of times did it seem to me that one of thesebrown-legged, lithe, comely creatures was my little Luisina; and morethan once I was on the point of addressing one or another, to discovermy mistake and be admonished for my astounding frivolousness by MesserArcolano.
And when once or twice I returned the friendly laughter of these girls,whilst the grinning serving-men behind me would nudge one another andwink to see me--as they thought--so very far off the road to priesthoodto which I was vowed, hot anathema poured from the fat cleric's lips,and he urged me roughly to go faster.
His tortures ended at last when we came into the open country. We rodein silence for a mile or two, I being full of thought of all that I hadseen, and infected a little by the fever of life through which I hadjust passed. At last, I remember that I turned to Arcolano, who wasriding with the ears of his mule in line with my saddle-bow, and askedhim to point out to me where my dominions ended.
The meek question provoked an astonishingly churlish answer. I wasshortly bidden to give my mind to other than worldly things; and withthat he began a homily, which lasted for many a weary mile, upon thevanities of the world and the glories of Paradise--a homily of the verytritest, upon subjects whereupon I, myself, could have dilated to betterpurpose than could His Ignorance.
The distance from Mondolfo to Piacenza is a good eight leagues, andthough we had set out very early, it was past noon before we caught ourfirst glimpse of the city by the Po, lying low as it does in the vastAemilian plain, and Arcolano set himself to name to me this church andthat whose spires stood out against the cobalt background of the sky.
An hour or so after our first glimpse of the city, our weary beastsbrought us up to the Gate of San Lazzaro. But we did not enter, as Ihad hoped. Messer Arcolano had had enough of me and my questions atMondolfo, and he was not minded to expose himself to worse behaviour onmy part in the more interesting thoroughfares of this great city.
So we passed it by, and rode under the very walls by way of an avenueof flowering chestnuts, round to the northern side, until we emergedsuddenly upon the sands of Po, and I had my first view at close quartersof that mighty river flowing gently about the islands, all thick withwillows, that seemed to float upon its gleaming waters.
Fishermen were at work in a boat out in mid-stream, heaving their netsto the sound of the oddest cantilena, and I was all for pausing thereto watch their operations. But Arcolano urged me onward with thatimpatience of his which took no account of my very natural curiosity.Presently I drew rein again with exclamations of delight and surprise tosee the wonderful bridge of boats that spanned the river a little higherup.
But we had reached our destination. Arcolano called a halt at the gatesof a villa that stood a little way back from the road on slightly risingground near the Fodesta Gate. He bade one of the grooms get down andopen, and presently we ambled up a short avenue between tall banks oflaurel, to the steps of the villa itself.
It was a house of fair proportions, though to me at the time, accustomedto the vast spaces of Mondolfo, it seemed the merest hut. It was paintedwhite, and it had green Venetian shutters which gave it a cool andpleasant air; and through one of the open windows floated a sound ofmerry voices, in which a woman's laugh was predominant.
The double doors stood open and through these there emerged a momentafter our halting a tall, thin man whose restless eyes surveyed usswiftly, whose thin-lipped mouth smiled a greeting to Messer Arcolanoin the pause he made before hurrying down the steps with a slip-slop ofill-fitting shoes.
This was Messer Astorre Fifanti, the pedant under whom I was to study,and with whom I was to take up my residence for some months to come.
Seeing in him one who was to be set in authority over me, I surveyed himwith the profoundest interest, and from that instant I disliked him.
He was, as I have said, a tall, thin man; and he had long handsthat were very big and bony in the knuckles. Indeed they looked likemonstrous skeleton hands with a glove of skin stretched over them. Hewas quite bald, save for a curly grizzled fringe that surrounded theback of his head, on a level with his enormous ears, and his foreheadran up to the summit of his egg-shaped head. His nose was pendulous andhis eyes were closely set, with too crafty a look for honesty. He woreno beard, and his leathery cheeks were blue from the razor. His agemay have been fifty; his air was mean and sycophantic. Finally he wasdressed in a black gaberdine that descended to his knees, and he endedin a pair of the leanest shanks and largest feet conceivable.
To greet us he fawned and washed his bony hands in the air.
"You have made a safe journey, then," he purred. "Benedicamus Dominum!"
"Deo gratias!" rumbled the fat priest, as he heaved his rotundity fromthe saddle with the assistance of one of the grooms.
They shook hands, and Fifanti turned to survey me for the second time.
"And this is my noble charge!" said he. "Salve! Be welcome to my house,Messer Agostino."
I got to earth, accepted his proffered hand, and thanked him.
Meanwhile the grooms were unpacking my baggage, and from the house camehurrying an elderly servant to receive it and convey it within doors.
I stood there a little awkwardly, shifting from leg to leg, what timeDoctor Fifanti pressed Arcolano to come within and rest; he spoke, too,of some Vesuvian wine that had been sent him from the South and uponwhich he desired
the priest's rare judgment.
Arcolano hesitated, and his gluttonous mouth quivered and twitched. Buthe excused himself in the end. He must on. He had business to dischargein the town, and he must return at once and render an account of oursafe journey to the Countess at Mondolfo. If he tarried now it wouldgrow late ere he reached Mondolfo, and late travelling pleased him notat all. As it was his bones would be weary and his flesh tender from somuch riding; but he would offer it up to Heaven for his sins.
And when the too-amiable Fifanti had protested how little there couldbe the need in the case of one so saintly as Messer Arcolano, thepriest made his farewells. He gave me his blessing and enjoined upon meobedience to one who stood to me in loco parentis, heaved himself backon to his mule, and departed with the grooms at his heels.
Then Doctor Fifanti set a bony hand upon my shoulder, and opined thatafter my journey I must be in need of refreshment; and with that he ledme within doors, assuring me that in his house the needs of the bodywere as closely cared for as the needs of the mind.
"For an empty belly," he ended with his odious, sycophantic geniality,"makes an empty heart and an empty head."
We passed through a hall that was prettily paved in mosaics, into achamber of good proportions, which seemed gay to me after the gloom bywhich I had been surrounded.
The ceiling was painted blue and flecked with golden stars, whilst thewalls were hung with deep blue tapestries on which was figured in greyand brownish red a scene which, I was subsequently to learn, representedthe metamorphosis of Actaeon. At the moment I did not look too closely.The figures of Diana in her bath with her plump attendant nymphs causedme quickly to withdraw my bashful eyes.
A good-sized table stood in the middle of the floor, bearing, upon abroad strip of embroidered white napery, sparkling crystal and silver,vessels of wine and platters of early fruits. About it sat a very noblecompany of some half-dozen men and two very resplendent women. One ofthese was slight and little, very dark and vivacious with eyes full ofa malicious humour. The other, of very noble proportions, of a fine,willowy height, with coiled ropes of hair of a colour such as I hadnever dreamed could be found upon human being. It was ruddy and glowedlike metal. Her face and neck--and of the latter there was a veryconsiderable display--were of the warm pale tint of old ivory. She hadlarge, low-lidded eyes, which lent her face a languid air. Her brow waslow and broad, and her lips of a most startling red against the pallorof the rest.
She rose instantly upon my entrance, and came towards me with a slowsmile, holding out her hand, and murmuring words of most courteouswelcome.
"This, Ser Agostino," said Fifanti, "is my wife."
Had he announced her to be his daughter it would have been more credibleon the score of their respective years, though equally incredible on thescore of their respective personalities.
I gaped foolishly in my amazement, a little dazzled, too, by theeffulgence of her eyes, which were now raised to the level of my own. Ilowered my glance abashed, and answered her as courteously as I could.Then she led me to the table, and presented me to the company, namingeach to me.
The first was a slim and very dainty young gentleman in a scarletwalking-suit, over which he wore a long scarlet mantle. A gold cross wassuspended from his neck by a massive chain of gold. He was delicatelyfeatured, with a little pointed beard, tiny mustachios, and long, fairhair that fell in waves about his effeminate face. He had the whitestof hands, very delicately veined in blue, and it was--as I soonobserved--his habit to carry them raised, so that the blood might notflow into them to coarsen their beauty. Attached to his left wrist by afine chain was a gold pomander-ball of the size of a small apple, verybeautifully chiselled. Upon one of his fingers he wore the enormoussapphire ring of his rank.
That he was a prince of the Church I saw for myself; but I was far frombeing prepared for the revelation of his true eminence--never dreamingthat a man of the humble position of Doctor Fifanti would entertain aguest so exalted.
He was no less a person than the Lord Egidio Oberto Gambara, Cardinal ofBrescia, Governor of Piacenza and Papal Legate to Cisalpine Gaul.
The revelation of the identity of this elegant, effeminate, perfumedpersonage was a shock to me; for it was not thus by much that I hadpictured the representative of our Holy Father the Pope.
He smiled upon me amiably and something wearily, the satiate smile ofthe man of the world, and he languidly held out to me the hand bearinghis ring. I knelt to kiss it, overawed by his ecclesiastical rank,however little awed by the man within it.
As I rose again he looked up at me considering my inches.
"Why," said he, "here is a fine soldier lost to glory." And as he spoke,he half turned to a young man who sat beside him, a man at whom I waseager to take a fuller look, for his face was most strangely familiar tome.
He was tall and graceful, very beautifully dressed in purple and gold,and his blue-black hair was held in a net or coif of finest gold thread.His garments clung as tightly and smoothly as if he had been kneadedinto them--as, indeed, he had. But it was his face that held my eyes. Itwas a sun-tanned, shaven hawk-face with black level brows, black eyes,and a strong jaw, handsome save for something displeasing in the linesof the mouth, something sardonic, proud, and contemptuous.
The Cardinal addressed him. "You breed fine fellows in your family,Cosimo," were the words with which he startled me, and then I knew whereI had seen that face before. In my mirror.
He was as like me--save that he was blacker and not so tall--as if hehad been own brother to me instead of merely cousin as I knew at oncehe was. For he must be that guelphic Anguissola renegade who servedthe Pope and was high in favour with Farnese, and Captain of Justice inPiacenza. In age he may have been some seven or eight years older thanmyself.
I stared at him now with interest, and I found attractions in him, thechief of which was his likeness to my father. So must my father havelooked when he was this fellow's age. He returned my glance with a smilethat did not improve his countenance, so contemptuously languid was it,so very supercilious.
"You may stare, cousin," said he, "for I think I do you the honour to besomething like you."
"You will find him," lisped the Cardinal to me, "the mostself-complacent dog in Italy. When he sees in you a likeness to himselfhe flatters himself grossly, which, as you know him better, you willdiscover to be his inveterate habit. He is his own most assiduouscourtier." And my Lord Gambara sank back into his chair, languishing,the pomander to his nostrils.
All laughed, and Messer Cosimo with them, still considering me.
But Messer Fifanti's wife had yet to make me known to three others whosat there, beside the little sloe-eyed lady. This last was a cousin ofher own--Donna Leocadia degli Allogati, whom I saw now for the first andlast time.
The three remaining men of the company are of little interest save one,whose name was to be well known--nay, was well known already, though notto one who had lived in such seclusion as mine.
This was that fine poet Annibale Caro, whom I have heard judged to beall but the equal of the great Petrarca himself. A man who had less theair of a poet it would not be easy to conceive. He was of middle heightand of a habit of body inclining to portliness, and his age may havebeen forty. His face was bearded, ruddy, and small-featured, and therewas about him an air of smug prosperity; he was dressed with care, buthe had none of the splendour of the Cardinal or my cousin. Let me addthat he was secretary to the Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, and that he washere in Piacenza on a mission to the Governor in which his master'sinterests were concerned.
The other two who completed that company are of no account, and indeedtheir names escape me, though I seem to remember that one was namedPacini and that he was said to be a philosopher of considerable parts.
Bidden to table by Messer Fifanti, I took the chair he offered me besidehis lady, and presently came the old servant whom already I had seen,bearing meat for me. I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what timea pleasant ripple of talk ran round th
e board. Facing me sat my cousin,and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with whatan insistence he regarded me. At last, however, our eyes met across theboard. He smiled that crooked, somewhat unpleasant smile of his.
"And so, Ser Agostino, they are to make a priest of you?" said he.
"God pleasing," I answered soberly, and perhaps shortly.
"And if his brains at all resemble his body," lisped theCardinal-legate, "you may live to see an Anguissola Pope, my Cosimo."
My stare must have betrayed my amazement at such words. "Not so,magnificent," I made answer. "I am destined for the life monastic."
"Monastic!" quoth he, in a sort of horror, and looking as if a bad smellhad suddenly been thrust under his nose. He shrugged and pouted andhad fresh recourse to his pomander. "O, well! Friars have become popesbefore to-day."
"I am to enter the hermit order of St. Augustine," I again corrected.
"Ah!" said Caro, in his big, full voice. "He aspires not to Rome but toHeaven, my lord."
"Then what the devil does he in your house, Fifanti?" quoth theCardinal. "Are you to teach him sanctity?"
And the table shook with laughter at a jest I did not understand anymore than I understood my Lord Cardinal.
Messer Fifanti, sitting at the table-head, shot me a glance of anxiousinquiry; he smiled foolishly, and washed his hands in the air again, hismind fumbling for an answer that should turn aside that barbed jest. Buthe was forestalled by my cousin Cosimo.
"The teaching might come more aptly from Monna Giuliana," said he, andsmiled very boldly across at Fifanti's lady who sat beside me, whilst afrown grew upon the prodigious brow of the pedant.
"Indeed, indeed," the Cardinal murmured, considering her throughhalf-closed eyes, "there is no man but may enter Paradise at herbidding." And he sighed furiously, whilst she chid him for his boldness;and for all that much of what they said was in a language that mighthave been unknown to me, yet was I lost in amazement to see a prelatemade so free with. She turned to me, and the glory of her eyes fellabout my soul like an effulgence.
"Do not heed them, Ser Agostino. They are profane and wicked men,"she said, "and if you aspire to holiness, the less you see of them thebetter will it be for you."
I did not doubt it, yet I dared not make so bold as to confess it, and Iwondered why they should laugh to hear her earnest censure of them.
"It is a thorny path, this path of holiness," said the Cardinal sighing.
"Your excellency has been told so, we assume," quoth Caro, who had avery bitter tongue for one who looked so well-nourished and contented.
"I might have found it so for myself but that my lot has been cast amongsinners," answered the Cardinal, comprehending the company in his glanceand gesture. "As it is, I do what I can to mend their lot."
"Now here is gallantry of a different sort!" cried the little Leocadiawith a giggle.
"O, as to that," quoth Cosimo, showing his fine teeth in a smile, "thereis a proverb as to the gallantry of priests. It is like the love ofwomen, which again is like water in a basket--as soon in as out." Andhis eyes hung upon Giuliana.
"When you are the basket, sir captain, shall anyone blame the women?"she countered with her lazy insolence.
"Body of God!" cried the Cardinal, and laughed wholeheartedly, whilstmy cousin scowled. "There you have the truth, Cosimo, and the truth isbetter than proverbs."
"It is unlucky to speak of the dead at table," put in Caro.
"And who spoke of the dead, Messer Annibale?" quoth Leocadia.
"Did not my Lord Cardinal mention Truth?" answered the brutal poet.
"You are a derider--a gross sinner," said the Cardinal languidly. "Stickto your verses, man, and leave Truth alone."
"Agreed--if your excellency will stick to Truth and quit writing verses.I offer the compact in the interest of humanity, which will be thegainer."
The company shook with laughter at this direct and offensive hit. But myLord Gambara seemed nowise incensed. Indeed, I was beginning to concludethat the man had a sweetness and tolerance of nature that bordered onthe saintly.
He sipped his wine thoughtfully, and held it up to the light so that thedeep ruby of it sparkled in the Venetian crystal.
"You remind me that I have written a new song," said he.
"Then have I sinned indeed," groaned Caro.
But Gambara, disregarding the interruption, his glass still raised, hismild eyes upon the wine, began to recite:
"Bacchus saepe visitans Mulierum genus Facit eas subditas Tibi, O tu Venus!"
Without completely understanding it, yet scandalized beyond measure atas much as I understood, to hear such sentiments upon his priestly lips,I stared at him in candid horror.
But he got no farther. Caro smote the table with his fist.
"When wrote you that, my lord?" he cried.
"When?" quoth the Cardinal, frowning at the interruption. "Why,yestereve."
"Ha!" It was something between a bark and a laugh from Messer Caro. "Inthat case, my lord, memory usurped the place of invention. That song wassung at Pavia when I was a student--which is more years ago than I careto think of."
The Cardinal smiled upon him, unabashed. "And what then, pray? Can weavoid these things? Why, the very Virgil whom you plagiarize so freelywas himself a plagiarist."
Now this, as you may well conceive, provoked a discussion about theboard, in which all joined, not excepting Fifanti's lady and DonnaLeocadia.
I listened in some amazement and deep interest to matters that wereentirely strange to me, to the arguing of mysteries which seemed tome--even from what I heard of them--to be strangely attractive.
Anon Fifanti joined in the discussion, and I observed how as soon as hebegan to speak they all fell silent, all listened to him as to a master,what time he delivered himself of his opinions and criticisms of thisVirgil, with a force, a lucidity and an eloquence that revealed hislearning even to one so ignorant as myself.
He was listened to with deference by all, if we except perhaps my LordGambara, who had no respect for anything and who preferred to whisperto Leocadia under cover of his hand, ogling her what time she simpered.Once or twice Monna Giuliana flashed him an unfriendly glance, and thisI accounted natural, deeming that she resented this lack of attention tothe erudite dissertation of her husband.
But as for the others, they were attentive, as I have said, and evenMesser Caro, who at the time--as I gathered then--was engaged upona translation of Virgil into Tuscan, and who, therefore, might beaccounted something of an authority, held his peace and listened whattime the doctor reasoned and discoursed.
Fifanti's mean, sycophantic air fell away from him as by magic. Warmedby his subject and his enthusiasm he seemed suddenly ennobled, and Ifound him less antipathic; indeed, I began to see something admirable inthe man, some of that divine quality that only deep culture and learningcan impart.
I conceived that now, at last, I held the explanation of how it came topass that so distinguished a company frequented his house and gatheredon such familiar terms about his board.
And I began to be less amazed at the circumstance that he should possessfor wife so beautiful and superb a creature as Madonna Giuliana. Ithought that I obtained glimpses of the charm which that elderly manmight be able to exert upon a fine and cultured young nature withaspirations for things above the commonplace.