The Hound of Florence

  Lucas remained rooted to the spot for some time. Caligula, the mulatto, passed him and squinting searchingly at him, slipped out through the little gate. But Lucas did not notice him.

  • • •

  That night the whole party was assembled in the osteria where Bandini’s pupils had a private apartment of their own in which they could drink and enjoy themselves. Lucas paced restlessly up and down the stuffy old room. He found it impossible to remain seated. The fragrance of Claudia’s golden hair was still about him, and his senses were still alive to the pulsating presence of her body. He was glad he could spend this evening with the others. He felt more at home with them now than he had done hitherto and more closely bound to them in heart and soul. Their presence blunted the exquisite sharpness of his joy, forcing him to moderate his spirits’ wild exuberance.

  Nevertheless it was impossible for him to sit still. He wandered round the table, almost dancing as he moved, making his way along the wall. The clatter of goblets and the twanging of a lute, mingled with the rise and fall of desultory conversation, fell pleasantly on his ear. He heard the sound of familiar voices, but the words they uttered sank unheeded into his being, swallowed up in the agitated flood of his thoughts, as drops of rain are swallowed up in the sea.

  His restless eyes gazed round the walls, from which a strange array of figures, heads and arabesques seemed to beckon to him. There were saints and courtesans, kings and fools, mountains, churches and Palaces, all jumbled together. Licentious love scenes were depicted, while the heads of well-known men and women, often bewilderingly lifelike, looked down on him as though they were about to speak, only to become mere caricatures again on the whitewashed walls. Everything was there that the wanton spirits of young artists, in the fullness of youth and vigor and under the inspiration of unbridled fancy, could splash on to the wall. Lucas feasted his eyes on the mute tumult of color and charcoal, delighting in the consummate harmony achieved by the endless medley of forms, picking out with all the extravagant joy of recognition the writing that was familiar to him, and noting other kinds that were strange and probably belonged to days long since gone by. With his hand in his pocket, he was turning a piece of charcoal about in his fingers, stimulated by the multifarious forms he saw before him, but shyness prevented him from going any further. He did not feel sufficiently advanced to dare set any product of his meager talent beside the daring achievements of the others.

  All he felt he wanted to do was to wander round and round the table. Then suddenly he overheard a remark: “The Archduke will not wait. He is going home . . . he won’t wait until Bandini’s picture is finished!”

  He stood rooted to the spot and listened. It was Filippo Volta who had just spoken.

  “Bandini will finish it in a fortnight . . . he won’t take a day longer,” replied Rossellino sullenly.

  Filippo Volta laughed good-naturedly. “And I tell you the Prince is going off in three or four days’ time . . . not a moment later!”

  Lucas clapped his hands together and listened—nay, his whole soul expanded and laid itself bare as though it were harkening to the strains of the sweetest music.

  Presently Cosimo Rubinardo came along and joined in the conversation. He spoke with modest dignity, as he had done in the old days when he was a rich man and used to shower down ducats on the artists with a liberal hand. He seemed to regard his poverty with indifference, and even with a touch of pride.

  “It’s quite true, Pietro,” he said, leaning toward Rossellino, “the Archduke is not going to stop here more than three or four days now. They were discussing the subject this morning at Claudia’s.”

  Lucas’s heart leaped with the joy and confidence that flooded his being, making his chest heave, loosening the choking he had felt in his throat for weeks, so that he could have shouted for joy. He almost capered round the room on his toes—three, four days; they might be five for all he cared! His thoughts shouted one against the other in his brain, until his ears buzzed. Three, four days—and then freedom! Freedom! Then I shall be here in Florence; here, or in Rome, but at all events where I choose to be. Oh how easy it has all been! How foolish of me to have been so miserable! What have I suffered after all? Suffered? Why it was nothing! A joke—a dream—three or four days . . . and then I shall be like other men!

  “No, he’s not going back to Vienna,” he heard the Captain’s rich, sonorous voice saying. “He’s going to travel about the Empire—going to Worms, I believe, or perhaps to Augsburg.”

  Lucas went up to the table and dropped into his seat. “What’s all this about Worms?” he asked with a laugh.

  The Captain turned his merry eyes toward him.

  “What’s all this about Worms?” Lucas repeated scornfully. “Worms! . . . Florence is better!” he added, accentuating his words so as to make them sound comical.

  “In a fortnight Bandini will have finished the picture,” repeated Rossellino stubbornly.

  “Then I can look forward to the feast,” said Ercole da Moreno contentedly.

  “What feast?” cried Lucas at the top of his voice.

  The Captain looked down at him, cheerful though surprised.

  “A magnificent feast, my son,” he explained, and under his white mustache he seemed to be smacking his lips in luxurious anticipation. “Bandini always gives a feast when he has finished a picture. His house is open from one morning to the next, authors come and make speeches or recite impromptu verses. All kinds of mountebanks come in; in fact the whole town is there. Anyone who likes can drink a glass of wine and go in and have a look at Bandini’s picture. But he himself sits down to table with us from one morning to the next, and we have him all to ourselves. I’m delighted!”

  Lucas brought his fist down on the table. “Quite right! I’m delighted too!” And he crowed for joy. “I’m delighted too!” Everyone laughed.

  Suddenly a thin man in a black coat slipped into the room. The fact that he was very lame was hardly noticeable for he did not walk, but hopped, skipped and jumped about continuously. His face was very thin and so yellow that he might just have been recovering from the jaundice. His head was covered with thick iron-gray hair, springing from a low forehead; his black eyes shone feverishly and he held his toothless mouth ecstatically open.

  “Here she is!” he cried in a half-audible whisper. “I’ll bring her to you!” and he pointed convulsively to a little girl who was standing at the door. “Allow me to introduce you to the little marchioness, the Principessa Leonora . . . there she stands before the galaxy of illustrious artists and her magnificent young life is about to begin.” He spoke very fast, as though he were reading, and so low that he might almost have been talking to himself. “Come in, Leonora! Come in, Principessa!”

  The child stepped innocently up to the table. She might have been twelve or thirteen years of age, and the youthful contours of her gracefully molded little body were outlined under her flimsy frock. Her pale face was extraordinarily noble, and full of a mysterious pride. She turned her beautiful eyes gravely from one to the other.

  The thin man continued to jump and skip about. “First inspect her, inspect her carefully . . . and the artist among you, the master among you, the man who has eyes will be able to see at once. . . . The man who cannot see that she is an aristocrat, Leonora, a Principessa, will perhaps remember that Zacco Zaccone never descends to common prostitutes. He will perhaps remember that Zacco Zaccone can recognize Aphrodite’s favorites when they are still in their cots, nay, even before they have quickened in the womb. Don’t forget that Zacco Zaccone brought up Superba, whom the King of Naples made his slave; that he discovered Vittoria, who is sought after in Rome by cardinals, cardinals’ favorites and German princes, and that he presented you with Claudia, who is now sparkling in Florence like a diamond! Come, Principessa Leonora!” he cried, and putting to his chin a little violin which he had been flourishing in his hand, he began to play.


  Rossellino and Filippo Volta moved the table aside, and Lucas, making room, went and sat close to the Captain.

  The rich tone of the little violin was almost like a human voice. Zacco Zaccone played a solemn melody, and in the space previously occupied by the table, the girl began to dance, slowly, with stirring grace, her proud pale face uplifted.

  Suddenly Zacco Zaccone stopped and, darting toward the girl and prancing round her, undressed her with a few lightning touches. “She can be painted . . . and she can be modelled in bronze and in silver,” he said as he did so, while the white young body gradually emerged from the clothes. “In silver or in ivory . . . she is in fact ivory herself . . . Eleanora . . . she can be painted as a saint or as an angel of God . . . as a young nymph. . . .” He stopped for a moment, and pointed at the girl’s firm little breasts. . . . “She would do equally well for Psyche or for Artemis . . . you can paint her and you can love her,” he continued, squatting on the floor and pulling the child’s clothes away from under her feet. She stood calm and naked before the men. “You can love her as she is, and intoxicate yourselves with her, for she is so full of fire that my fingers burn when I touch her. . . .”

  And getting up, he seized the violin. “Come, Leonora . . . she will be just what Superba was . . . she will be as great as Vittoria . . . and she will be what Claudia is . . . from this day onward! Today her young life, blessed by all the gods, begins . . . !” The sound of the violin drowned his voice, but he seemed to be muttering to himself as he played.

  Leonora danced. The men, sitting in a semi-circle round her, looked on in silence as they drank.

  She danced in slow, smooth, rhythmic movements, as though she were playing and yet serious as thought. Her frail body, which looked as though it had but then been created, twisting and turning, bending and swaying, with graceful pride, seemed, like her close shut lips, to know more than her eyes. Her eyes, as they gazed calmly in front of her, seemed to know more than her soul, and the mild radiance of her soul suffused her sweet childish features.

  “Magnificent!” muttered Rossellino hoarsely, leaning toward the Captain.

  “Yes . . . she must have been very beautiful once,” Lucas heard Ercole da Moreno reply calmly.

  He glanced in astonishment at the Captain. “What does he mean?” he whispered, turning to Filippo Volta.

  Filippo smiled courteously. “Oh . . . that’s Ercole’s way. . . . Didn’t you know?”

  Zacco Zaccone was helping little Leonora to dress. “We shall come back again,” he said, still tripping about. “We shall come back! . . . We shall be sent for . . . you will dream about us . . . you will long for us. . . .”

  “In a fortnight’s time Bandini’s picture will be finished,” interrupted Filippo Volta, “and then we shall have a feast.”

  Zacco Zaccone gave a tittering laugh. “In a fortnight’s time we shall long have been famous . . . in a fortnight’s time we shall be as flooded with light as the earth is two minutes before dawn . . . but we shall come . . . your feast would not be a feast if we were not there. . . .”

  So saying, he went off with the girl, who left the room without vouchsafing a glance to anyone.

  Rossellino and Volta pushed the table back into its place, and they all drank again.

  “I shall make a statuette of her,” said Rossellino to himself. His face was flushed and he held his head thrown back thoughtfully between his shoulders. “A silver statuette.”

  Whereupon the Captain began to sing, sitting erect in his chair, with one hand on his goblet, and his white hair flaming high above his fine brow. His voice seemed to flood the room with light.

  “Pray let me live right long, O Lord!

  Pray leave me here below!

  And show me love and grace, O Lord!

  For dead men cannot pray, O Lord,

  But only they can praise Thee, Lord,

  Who stay down here below!”

  The others leaned back in their chairs, looking up at the ceiling, as though they were following the song with their eyes, as it hovered above their heads. Right reverently they listened, and their souls were filled with joy by the wondrous rhythm of that song. Lucas took a deep breath. “In three, four days!” he thought.

  Presently they got up to go.

  Outside the square lay bathed in the light of the full moon. They were walking close together round the Captain, when suddenly, from the dark shadow of a wall, three men dashed out. They seemed to be a band of drunken revellers, too intoxicated to move out of the way of the group of artists. But everything that followed happened so quickly that no one could tell what really took place, and it was only when they found themselves being violently hustled that Lucas and his companions discovered that the men were masked. Their hands immediately flew to their swords and daggers. But the next moment the Captain, with a stifled groan, dropped heavily to the ground, and the three men vanished like lightning into the blackness of a little alley. In the twinkling of an eye they had completely disappeared and not even the echo of their footsteps could be heard.

  Ercole da Moreno was lying with his face on the white, moonlit cobblestones.

  Lucas, like his companions, stood speechless staring down at him. He saw his arms move in a strange uncontrolled way, and his legs twitch, and with feelings of horror he was suddenly reminded of the last spasmodic movements of a slaughtered animal. They turned the poor man over, and found that he was already lying in a pool of blood that had collected under his chest, and that his face was covered with the blood that was pouring from his mouth.

  The others shouted and raised a clamor. Cosimo Rubinardo burst into loud sobs. “This is Peretti’s doing!” bellowed Rossellino, mad with rage.

  Lucas stared down at the dead man. With his ghastly white, blood-stained face and dim eyes staring up at the moon, he certainly bore a remote resemblance to the beloved friend of a moment ago, and yet he had suddenly become so strange that Lucas felt as though be were looking on him for the first time.

  • • •

  The dog was creeping restlessly about the courtyard of the Palace. There were signs of activity everywhere—in the stables and on the stairs. It was early morning but servants were running hither and thither, shouting to one another. The grooms were polishing the harness and the trappings, and the dog, who had searched all the rooms, had not succeeded in finding his master anywhere.

  Count Waltersburg had laughed when the dog entered his room, and had driven him out again. Master Pointner, who came across him in the vestibule, kicked him as he bounded up to him with a look of enquiry in his eyes.

  Cambyses then proceeded to skulk about the courtyard, not knowing what to do. He ran into the garden, whining to himself and bounded along the passage and up the steps, sniffing as he went. At last he went back to the stables.

  Here Caspar, the young groom, caught sight of him and looked at him for a moment laughing. “Well, Cambyses,” he said at last, “looking for your master, eh?”

  The dog went up to him wagging his tail.

  “You must wait a bit,” said Caspar, bending over him and patting him. “Yes, my friend . . . today your master is doing exactly what you are always doing. . . . He’s away! Yes, yes, the master has gone away to enjoy himself, just as Cambyses does . . . he has a sweetheart and has been spending the night with her. Yes, just look at me, Cambyses. Do you imagine that only dogs do that sort of thing? Oh no, my friend, we men have hearts as well as you.” And Caspar laughed.

  Suddenly the dog pricked up his ears and capered and bounded round the courtyard. Along the passage, from the direction of the street, heavy footsteps could be heard marching in step. A closely curtained sedan chair was being carried in, but the dog knew at once that his master was in it.

  The sedan chair was set down at the foot of the steps and the Archduke alighted. The dog followed him and lay at his feet on the floor while breakfa
st was served. The Archduke breakfasted alone, eating quickly as though he were very hungry. Presently Master Pointner came in. He cleared his throat and remained standing at the door.

  “Well, what is it, Pointner?”

  “His Imperial Highness might perhaps like to come up to the room just overhead. . . .”

  “Why? I’m tired. I would like to have a couple of hours’ sleep.”

  “Well, I mean just look in as you pass—just for fun.”

  The Archduke rose from the table. Pointner showed the way.

  “There’s a cat up there in the marble hall,” he explained. “I have had all the chairs taken out and the doors closed. But one door has a grill, so we can see everything.”

  “See what?”

  “Why, Cambyses chasing the cat. She can’t possibly get away. He’ll chase her and break her neck.”

  “Cats! Fetch ’em! Where are they?” exclaimed the Archduke, turning to Cambyses.

  They had reached the door with the grill and Pointner pushed the dog in. “Fetch ’em!” he shouted.

  In the empty, gleaming white, marble hall, a tabby cat was creeping along the wall. When the dog sprang in, she stood still, arching her back and hissing and spitting.

  “Catch her! Fetch her!” cried the two voices from the door.

  The dog ran forward; the cat swept along in front of him, retreating in orderly fashion, quickly glancing round for some means of escape or a ledge upon which to take refuge. But the smooth marble walls offered no hope. At last with one spring she succeeded in getting on to a window-ledge. When the dog, rushing forward, came to a standstill in front of her, she hissed at him, and taking advantage of a moment’s hesitation on his part, she jumped across him into the middle of the hall. Whereupon the dog chased her round and round, bowled her over, making her roll up like a ball, circled round her and gave her time to assume the defensive once more, when he again advanced toward her wagging his tail, as though he were trying to persuade her to give him another run.