I must, in the fulness of my heart, agree with those that speak in favor
of Messer Simone dei Bardi. It is the native, intimate, and commendable
wish of a man to abolish his enemies--I speak here after the fashion of
the worldling that I was, for the cell and the cloister have no concern
with mortal passions and frailties--and Messer Simone was in this, as in
divers other qualities, of a very manly disposition. He thought in all
honesty that it would be very good for him to be the ruler of Florence,
yet, also, and no less, that it would be very good for Florence to be
ruled by him. This is the way of such great personages, as indeed it is
the way of meaner creatures: to persuade themselves very pleasantly that
what they desire for themselves they are justified in desiring on
account of the benefit their accomplished wishes must bear to others.
Messer Simone, having the idea once lodged in his skull--a
dwelling-place of unusual thickness, that was well made for keeping any
idea that ever entered it a prisoner--that it would be well for him to
take charge of Florence, had no room in his pate for tender or merciful
consideration of those that sought or seemed to seek to cross him in his
purpose. They were his enemies; there was no more to be said about it,
and for his enemies, when it was possible, he had ever a short way. Now,
Messer Guido Cavalcanti, and those of his inclining, were very curiously
and truly his enemies, and he had been longing for a great while to get
them out of the way of his ambitions and his purposes, yet could find no
ready means to compass their destruction. But of late he had found a new
enemy in the person of my friend Dante, and a formidable enemy for all
his seeming insignificance; and if Simone sought to crush Dante, I
cannot blame him for the attempt, however much I may rejoice in his
failure.
I believe Messer Simone to have been as much in love with Monna Beatrice
as it was humanly possible for such a man to be in love with such a
maid. He was in love, of course, with the great houses that Messer Folco
owned, with the broad lands that fattened Messer Folco's vineyards; for
though he had houses of his own and broad lands in abundance, wealth
ever covets wealth. But I conceive that whatever of god-like essence was
muffled in the hulk of his composition was quickened by the truly
unearthly beauty of that pale face with its mystic smile and the sweet
eyes that seemed to see sights denied to the commonalty. I think Messer
Simone was in love with Beatrice very much as I might have been, out of
very wonder at a thing so rare and fair and unfamiliar. I was never, as
I have said, in love with Folco's daughter; my tastes are simpler, more
carnal; give me an Ippolita in my affectionate hours, and I ask nothing
better. Love for me must be a jolly companion, never squeamish, never
chilly, never expecting other homage than such salutations as swordsmen
may use for preliminary to a hot engagement. Messer Dante has written a
very beautiful book on his business, its words all fire and golden air,
but I wrote my rhymes in a tavern with red wine at my elbow and a doxy
on my knee. I wonder which of us will be remembered longest.
Yet if I was never in love with Beatrice, I could understand the matter,
and feel how the thick-headed, thick-hearted, thick-fingered giant must
shiver at the unfamiliar twinges and rigors. When a man of such a kind
finds himself in such a dilemma, he is in much such a case as if he were
sick of some childish ailment more dangerous to maturity than to youth.
The thought that another should challenge his right or traverse his
desire galled him to a choler little short of madness. Wherefore, if he
had hated the Cavalcanti faction before, he hated them a thousand times
more now, seeing that Dante was of their number, this Dante that had
gained a rose of lady Beatrice, and wore it next his heart no doubt, and
had denied him and defied him with such cheer and cunning, and dared to
make verses in praise of his lady. If Simone had wished ere this that
the Cavalcanti party was ruined, now he was resolved upon its ruin, and
for no reason more strongly than because it included Dante in its
company. In this resolve, I say again, I cannot honestly blame Messer
Simone. He only acted as most of us would have acted if we had been in
his place.
Messer Simone, I must cheerfully admit, had calculated his plans
cleverly enough. Long before his magnificent appearance at Messer
Folco's house he had been at the pains to make himself aware that the
bulk of the youth of the city were with him hand and heart in his
desperate adventure. To do the youth of Florence the merest justice, it
was every ready to risk its life cheerfully for the advantage of the
city, and, furthermore, for the sheer lust of fighting. What Messer
Simone had hoped to gain at Folco's house, and, indeed, had succeeded in
gaining, was the allegiance of certain young men of the Cavalcanti
inclining, adherents of the Reds, that were not in the natural way of
things affected over kindly to him. All this he had accomplished very
successfully. The heady enthusiasm upon which he had cunningly counted,
the presence of fair women whose sweet breaths are ever ready to fan
the flame of the war-like spirit, the stimulating influences of wine and
light and laughter and dancing--all these had played their parts in
furthering Messer Simone's aims by spurring the Florentine chivalry to a
pitch of exuberance, at which any proposal made in a sounding voice in
the name of the God of War might be relied upon to carry them away. As
you know, it did so carry them away, and Messer Simone's book was
scrawled thick with hurried signatures, and, best of all for his
pleasure, it carried at last the name of Messer Dante, and best of all,
perhaps, for his personal advantage, it carried the name of Messer Guido
Cavalcanti.
I know very well, looking back on those old days, that were so much
better than these new days, that if Messer Simone had failed to lure
Messer Dante into that immediate scheme of his, and had so compelled a
postponement of his revenge, he would still have carried out his purpose
of sending the others that were his enemies to their deaths. But, in his
piggish way, Messer Simone had a kind of knowledge of men. He that was
all ungenerous and bestial--he, this most unknightly giant--he could
realize, strangely enough, what a generous and uplifted nature might do
on certain occasions when the trumpets of the spirit were loudly
blowing. And it was a proof of his mean insight that he had spread his
net in the sight of the bird and had snared his quarry.
Having won so briskly the first move in his game, Messer Simone lost no
time in making the second move. Fortified, as he was, by the friendship
and the approval of certain of the leaders of the city, he could
confidently count upon immunity from blame if any seeming blunder of his
delivered to destruction a certain number of young gentlemen whose
opinions were none too popular with many of those in high office. So,
while still the flambeaux of the festival were burning, and while still
a few late guests were carousing at Messer Folco's tables, the
emissaries of Messer Simone were busy in Florence doing what they had to
do. Thus it was that so many of the fiery-hearted, fiery-headed youths
who had set their names in Messer Simone's Golden Book found, as they
returned gay and belated from Messer Folco's house, the summons awaiting
them--the summons that was not to be disobeyed, calling upon them at
once to prove their allegiance to the Company of Death and obey its
initial command. It is well to recollect that not one single man of all
the men so summoned failed to answer to his name.
It is in that regard, too, that I can scarcely do less than extend my
admiration to Messer Simone. For, in spite of the fact that he was a
very great villain, as he needs must be counted, being the enemy of our
party, he had in him so much as it were of the sovereign essence of
manhood that he could read aright men's tempers. And he knew very well
that such words as "patriotism" and "service of the sweet city" and
"honorable death for a great cause" are as so many flames that will set
the torch of a young man's heart alight. There was no generosity in
Messer Simone, yet--and this I think is the marvel--he could guess at
and count upon the generosity of others, and know that they would be
ready to do in an instant what he would never do nor never dream of
doing. He was not impulsive, he was not high-spirited, he was not
chivalrous; yet he could play upon the impulses, the high spirits, and
the chivalries of those whom he wished to destroy as dexterously as your
trained musician can play upon the strings of a lute. Of course it is
impossible not to admire such a cunning, however perverted the
application of that cunning may be. For there is many a rascal in the
broad world that has no wit to appreciate anything outside the compass
of his own inclinations, and takes it for granted that because he is a
rogue with base instincts, that can only be appealed to by base lures,
all other men are rogues likewise, and only basely answerable to some
base appeal.
Nor can I do otherwise than admire him for the ingenuity of the means by
which he sought to attain his end. It was in its way a masterpiece of
imagination, for one that throve upon banking, to conceive that scheme
of the Company of Death, with its trumpet-call to youth and courage and
the noble heart. It was excellently clever, too, of Messer Simone so to
engineer his contrivance that while he seemingly included in its ranks
the young bloods of every party in the state, he was able, by the wise
adjustment of his machinery, to deal, or at least to intend, disaster
only to those that were opposed to him. Cæsar might well have been
praised for so intelligent an artifice, and yet Messer Simone of the
Bardi, for all that he was brave enough, was very far from being a
Cæsar. However, he planned his plan well, and I praise him for it all
the more light-heartedly because it came to grief so signally, and all
through one whose enmity he rated at too light a price.
It is ever the way of such fellows as Simone, that are of the suspicious
temperament and quick to regard folk as their enemies, to overlook, in
their computation of the perils that threaten their cherished purposes,
the gravest danger of all. Simone had plenty of enemies in Florence, and
he thought that he had provided against all of them, or, at the least,
all that were seriously to be reputed troublesome, when he swaddled and
dandled and matured his precious invention of the Company of Death. But
while he grinned as he read over the list of the recruits to that
delectable regiment, and hugged himself at the thought of how he would
in a morning's work thoroughly purge it of all that were his
antagonists, he suffered his wits to go wool-gathering in one instance
where they should have been most alert. Either he clean forgot or he
disdained to remember a certain wager of his, and a certain very fair
and very cunning lady with whom he had laid it, and to whose very
immediate interest it was that she should win the wager. Messer Simone
seemed either to think that Madonna Vittoria was not in earnest, or that
she might be neglected with safety. Whichever his surmise, Messer Simone
made a very great mistake.
It proved to be one of the greatest factors in the sum of Messer
Simone's blunder that he should have been tempted by ironic fortune to
turn for aid in the ingenious plot he was hatching to the particular man
upon whom he pitched for assistance. Already in those days of which I
write, far-away days as they seem to me now in this green old age--or
shall I, with an eye to my monkish habit, call it gray old age?--of
mine, those gentry existed who have now become so common in Italy, the
gentry that were called Free Companions. These worthy personages were
adventurers, seekers after fortune, men eager for wealth and power, and
heedless of the means by which they attained them. Italian, some of
them, but very many strangers from far-away lands. It was the custom of
these fellows to gather about them a little army of rough-and-ready
resolutes like themselves, whom they maintained at their cost, and whose
services they were always prepared to sell to any person or state that
was willing to pay the captain's price for their aid. And these
captains, as their fortunes waxed, increased the numbers of their
following till they often had under their command as many lances as
would go to the making of a little army. Of these captains that were
then in Italy, and, as I have said, they were fewer in that time than
they are to-day, the most famous and the most fortunate was the man who
was known as Messer Griffo of the Claw. He was so nicknamed, I think,
because of the figure on the banner that he flew--a huge dragon with one
fiercely clawed foot lifted as if to lay hold of all that came its way.
Messer Griffo was a splendid fellow to look at, as big every way as
Messer Simone, but built more shapely, and he had a finer face, and one
that showed more self-control, and he was never given to the beastly
intemperances that degraded the Messer Simone. Messer Griffo and his
levy of lances lived in a castle that he held in the hills some half-way
between Florence and Arezzo. He was, as I believe, by his birth an
Englishman, with some harsh, unmusical, outlandish name of his own that
had been softened and sweetened into the name by which he was known and
esteemed in all the cities of Italy. He had been so long a-soldiering
in our country that he spoke the vulgar tongue very neatly and swiftly,
and was, indeed, ofttimes taken by the people of one town or province in
our peninsula for a citizen of some other city or province of Italy. So
that his English accent did him no more harm in honest men's ears than
his English parentage offended their susceptibilities. For the rest, he
was of more than middle age, but seemed less, was of amazing strength
and daring, and a great leader of Free Companions.
At the time of which I tell he was in command of a force of something
like five hundred lances, that were very well fed, well kept, well
equipped, and ready to serve the quarrel of any potentate of Italy that
was willing to pay for them. He had just captained his rascals very
gallantly and satisfactorily in the service of Padua, and having made a
very considerable amount of money by the transaction, was now resting
pleasantly on his laurels, and in no immediate hurry to further
business. For if Messer Griffo liked fighting, as is said to be the way
of those islanders, he did not like fighting only, but recognized
frankly and fully that life has other joys to offer to a valiant
gentleman. His long sojourn in our land had so civilized and humanized
him that he could appreciate, after a fashion, the delicate pleasures
that are known to us and that are denied to those that abide in his
frozen, fog-bound, rain-whipped island--the delights of fine eating,
fine drinking, fine living, fine loving. Honestly, I must record that he
took to all these delectations very gayly and naturally, for all the
world as if he had the grace to be born, I will not say a Florentine,
but say a man of Padua, of Bologna, or Ferrara. In a word, he had all
the semblance of a very fine gentleman, and when he was not about his
proper business of cutting throats at so much a day, he moved at his
ease with a very proper demeanor.
When Messer Simone began to hatch his little conspiracy of the Company
of Death, he bethought him of Messer Griffo, that was then at liberty
and living at ease, and he sent to the Free Companion a message,
entreating him to visit Florence and be his guest for a season, as he
had certain matters of moment to communicate to him. Now if this Griffo
liked idling very well, he did not like it to the degree that would
permit him to push on one side a promising piece of business. This is, I
believe, the way of his country-people, that are said to be traders
before all, though thereafter they are sailors and soldiers. When the
message of Messer Simone reached him, he appreciated very instantly the
value of Messer Simone's acquaintance, and the probability of good pay
and good pickings if he found reason to enter the Bardi's service. So
with no more unwillingness than was reasonable, considering that he was
passing the time very happily in his house with pretty women and jolly
pot-companions, he made answer to the message that he would wait upon
Messer Simone very shortly in the fair city of Florence. In no very long
time after he kept his word, and came to Florence to have speech with
Messer Simone and drink his wine and consider what propositions he might
have to make.
It was, perhaps, unfortunate for Simone dei Bardi that while there were
many points of resemblance between himself and the Free Companion that
was his guest, the advantages were on the side of the stranger rather
than of the Florentine. Both were big men, both were strong men, both
were practised to the top in all manner of manly exercises. But while
there was a something gross about the greatness of Simone of the Bardi,
the bulk of the Englishman was so well proportioned and rarely adjusted
that a woman's first thought of him would be rather concerning his grace
than his size. While Messer Simone's face betrayed too plainly in its
ruddiness its owner's gratification of his appetites, Messer Griffo's
face carried a clean paleness that commended him to temperate eyes,
albeit he could, when he pleased, eat and drink as much as ever Messer
Simone.
Messer Simone's plan had one great merit to the mind of a foreigner
denied the lucidity of our Italian intelligence--it was adorably
simple. I can give it to you now in a nutshell as I learned it later,
not as I knew it then, for I did not know it then. Nobody knew it then
except Messer Simone of the one part, and Messer Griffo of the other
part, and one other who was not meant to know it or supposed to know it,
but who, in defence of special interests, first guessed at it, and then
made certain of it, with results that were far from satisfactory to
Messer Simone, though they proved in the end entirely pleasing to Messer
Griffo.
Here and now, in few words, was Messer Simone's plan. Messer Griffo was
to enter his, Simone's, service at what rate of pay he might, weighed in
the scale of fairness and with a proper calculation of market values,
demand. At least Messer Simone was not inclined to haggle, and the five
hundred lances would find him a good paymaster. In return for so many
stipulated florins, Messer Griffo was to render certain services to
Messer Simone--obvious services, and services that were less obvious,
but that were infinitely more important.
In the first place, the Free Companion was ostensibly to declare himself
Messer Simone's very good and zealous subaltern in the interests of the
city of Florence, and very especially in those interests which led her
to detest and honestly long to destroy the city of Arezzo. For this
proclaimed purpose he was to hold himself and his men in readiness to
march, when the time came, against Arezzo. This was the first page of
the treaty. But there was a second page of the treaty that, if it were
really written out, would have to be written in cipher. By its
conditions Messer Griffo bound himself to wait with his fellows on a
certain appointed night at a certain appointed place some half-way
between Florence and Arezzo. What his business was to be at this
appointed time and place makes pretty reading even now, when almost all
that were concerned in the conspiracy have passed away and are no more
than moth-like memories.
When Messer Simone dei Bardi contrived to chain upon the Company of
Death that law which bound every member of the fellowship to
unquestioning obedience to its founder, he had in his mind from the
start the goal for which he was playing. At a certain given hour a
certain given number of the Company of Death would be called upon to
foregather outside the walls of Florence, bent on a special adventure
for the welfare of the state. By a curious chance those that were thus
summoned were all to be members of the party that was opposed to Messer
Simone, and would include all those youths who, like Guido Cavalcanti
and Dante Alighieri, had incurred the special detestation of the
would-be dictator.
The rest of the scheme was as easy as whistling. The hot-headed,
hot-hearted gallants of the Company of Death were to ride swiftly in the
direction of Arezzo, carrying with them the information that they would
be reinforced half-way upon their journey by a levy of mercenaries under
the command of Griffo. It was, however, privately arranged between
Simone and Griffo that when the young Florentines made their appearance
they were to be very promptly and decisively put to the sword, after
which deed Messer Griffo and his followers were to betake themselves to
Arezzo, declare themselves the saviors of that city, and insist on
entering its service at a price. After a little while Messer Griffo was
to make his peace with indignant Florence by offering to betray, and, in
due course, by betraying, the town of Arezzo into the hands of her
enemies. By such ingenious spider-spinnings of sin did Messer Simone of
the Bardi promise himself that he would within a very little space of
time cleanse Florence of the pick of his enemies, and also earn the
gratitude of her citizens by placing Arezzo within their power. This was
a case of killing two birds with one stone that mightily delighted
Messer Simone, and he made sure that he had found the very stone that
was fit for his fingers in the excellent, belligerent Free Companion.
It is whimsical to reflect that all would probably, nay, almost
certainly, have gone as Messer Simone desired if only Messer Simone had
not been so bullishly besotted as to leave the name of a certain lady
out of his table of calculations; for Messer Griffo liked the scheme
well enough. Though it was, as it were, a double-edged weapon, cutting
this way at the Florentines of one party and that way at Arezzo, it was
a simple scheme enough that required no feigning to sustain it, no
dissimulation--qualities these apparently repugnant to the English
heart. Griffo also liked the florins of Messer Simone that were to be
spent so plenteously into his exchequer, and he liked exceedingly the
prospect of the later plunder of Arezzo. That he did not like Messer
Simone very much counted for little in the business. It was no part of
his practice to like or dislike his employers, so long as they paid him
his meed. Still, perhaps the fact that if Simone had not been his
employer he would have disliked him may have counted as an influence to
direct the course of later events.
Certainly Messer Griffo had no compunctions, no prickings of the
conscience, to perturb or to deflect the energy of his keen intelligence
from following the line marked out for it. That he was to dispatch
without quarter the flower of the youth of Florence troubled him, as I
take it, no whit. He was too imperturbable, too phlegmatic for that. Had
he been of our race he might, perhaps, have sighed over their fate, for
we that are of the race of Rome have some droppings of the old Roman
pity as ingredients in our composition. Messer Griffo was no such
fantastico, but a plain, straightforward, journeyman sword-bearer that
would kill any mortal or mortals whom he was paid to kill, unless--and
here is the key to his character and the explanation of all that
happened after--unless he was paid a better price by some one else not
to kill his intended victims. In this particular business he was, maugre
Messer Simone's beard, paid a better price not to do what Simone paid a
less price to have done. What that price was you shall learn in due
course.