I
It is not generally known that the learned Aristotle once spent the
night in a basket dangled midway betwixt attic and basement of a castle;
nor that, having suffered himself to be saddled for the business, he
went on all-fours, ambling round the terrace-walk with a lady on his
back, a lady who, it is said, plied the whip with more heartiness than
humanity. But there seems no doubt of the fact. The name of the lady
(she was Countess of Cyprus), the time of the escapade, which was upon
the sage's return from India in the train of the triumphant
Alexander--these and many other particulars are at hand. The story does
not lack of detail, though it is noteworthy that Petrarch, in his
"Trionfo d'Amore," decently veils the victim in a periphrasis. "Quell'
el gran Greco"--there is the great Grecian, says he, and leaves you to
choose between the Stagyrite, Philip of Macedon, and Theseus. The
painters, however, have had no mercy upon him. I remember him in a
pageant at Siena, in a straw hat, with his mouth full of grass; the lady
rides him in the mannish way. In pictures he is always doting, humbled
to the dust or cradled in his basket, when he is not showing his paces
on the lawn. By all accounts it was a bad case of green-sickness, as
such late cases are. You are to understand that he refused all
nourishment, took delight in no manner of books, could not be stayed by
the nicest problems of Physical Science--such as whether the beaver does
indeed catch fish with his tail, the truth concerning the eyesight of
the lynxes of Boeotia, or what gave the partridge such a reputation
for heedless gallantry. But it would be unprofitable to inquire into all
this; Aristotle was not the first enamoured sage in history, nor was he
the last. And where he bowed his laborious front it was to be hoped that
Messer Cino of Pistoja might do the like. It is of him that I am to
speak. The story is of Selvaggia Vergiolesi, the beautiful romp, and of
Messer Guittoncino de' Sigibuldi, that most eminent jurist, familiarly
known as Cino da Pistoja in the affectionate phrasing of his native
town.
Love-making was the mode in his day (which was also Dante's), but Master
Cino had been all for the Civil Law. The Digest, the Pandects, the
Institutes of Gaius and what not, had given him a bent back before his
time, so that he walked among the Pistolese beauties with his eyes on
the ground and his hands knotted behind his decent robe. Love might have
made him fatter, yet he throve upon his arid food; he sat in an
important chair in his University; he had lectured at Bologna (hive of
sucking Archdeacons), at Siena, at Perugia. Should he prosper, he looked
to Florence for his next jump. As little as he could contrive was he
for Pope or Emperor, Black or White, Farinata or Cerchi; banishment came
that road. His friend Dante was footsore with exile, halfway over
Apennine by this time; Cino knew that for him also the treading was very
delicate. Constitutionally he was Ghibelline with his friend Dante, and
such politics went well in Pistoja for the moment. But who could tell?
The next turn of the wheel might bring the Pope round; Pistoja might go
Black (as indeed she did in more senses than one), and pray where would
be his Assessorship of Civil Causes, where his solemn chair, where his
title to doffing of caps and a chief seat at feasts? Cino, meditating
these things over his morning sop and wine, rubbed his chin sore and
determined to take a wife. His family was respectable, but Ghibelline;
his means were happy; his abilities known to others as well as to
himself. Good! He would marry a sober Guelphish virgin, and establish a
position to face both the windy quarters. It was when his negotiations
to this end had reached maturity, when the contract for his espousals
with the honourable lady, Monna Margherita degli Ughi, had actually been
signed, that Messer Cino of Pistoja was late for his class, got cold
feet, and turned poet.