There is hardly a sonnet, there are certainly neither _ballate_,
_canzoni_, nor _capitoli_ which do not contain some reference to Monna
Selvaggia's fine eyes, and always to the same tune. They scorch him,
they beacon him, they flash out upon him in the dark, so that he falls
prone as Saul (who got up with a new name and an honourable addition);
they are lodestones, swords, lamps, torches, fires, fixed and ambulatory
stars, the sun, the moon, candles. They hold lurking a thief to prey
upon the vitals of Cino; they are traitors, cruel lances; they kill him
by stabbing day after day. You can picture the high-spirited young lady
from his book--her noble bearing, her proud head, her unflinching
regard, again the sparks in her grey-green eyes, and so on. He plays
upon her _forte nome_, her dreadful name of Selvaggia; so she comes to
be Ferezza itself. "Tanto è altiera," he says, so haughtily she goes
that love sets him shaking; but, kind or cruel, it is all one to the
enamoured Master Cino; for even if she "un pochettin sorride (light him
a little smile)," it melts him as sun melts snow. In any case,
therefore, he must go, like Dante's cranes, trailing his woes. It
appears that she had very little mercy upon him; for all that in one
place he records that she was "of all sweet sport and solace amorous,"
in many more than one he complains of her bringing him to "death and
derision," of her being in a royal rage with her poet. At last he cries
out for Pity to become incarnate and vest his lady in her own robe. It
may be that he loved his misery; he is always on the point of dying,
but, like the swan, he was careful to set it to music first. Selvaggia,
in fact, laughed at him (he turned once to call her a Jew for that)
egged on as she was by her brother and her own vivacious habit. She had
no Nicoletta at Pitecchio, no mother anywhere, and a scheming father too
busy to be anything but shrugging towards poets. She accepted his rhymes
(she would probably have been scared if they ceased), his services, his
lowered looks, his bent knee; and then she tripped away with an arm
round Gianbattista's neck to laugh at all these praiseworthy attentions.
As for Cino, Selvaggia was become his religion, and his rhyming her
reasonable service. His goddess may have been as thirsty as the Scythian
Artemis; may be that she asked blood and stripes of her devotees. All
this may well be; for, by the Lord, did she not have them?
Ridolfo and Ugolino Vergiolesi, the two elder brothers of Selvaggia, had
stayed behind in Pistoja to share the fighting in the streets. They had
plenty of it, given and received. Ridolfo had his head cut open, Ugolino
went near to losing his sword arm; but in spite of these heroic
sufferances the detested Cancellieri became masters of the city, and the
chequer-board flag floated over the Podestà. Pistoja was now no place
for a Ghibelline. So the two young men rode up to the hill-fortress,
battered, but in high spirits. Selvaggia flew down the cypress-walk to
meet them; they were brought in like wounded heroes. That was a bad
day's work for Messer Cino the amorist; Apollo and the Muses limped in
rags, and Mars was the only God worth thinking about, except on Sundays.
Ridolfo, with his broken head-piece, was a bluff youth,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed, a great eater, grimly silent for the
most part. Ugolino had a trenchant humour of the Italian sort. What this
may be is best exampled by our harlequinades, in which very much of
Boccaccio's bent still survives. You must have a man drubbed if you want
to laugh, and do your rogueries with a pleasant grin if you are inclined
to heroism. Ridolfo, reading Selvaggia's sheaf of rhymes that night, was
for running Master Cino through the body, jurist or no jurist; but
Ugolino saw his way to a jest of the most excellent quality, and
prevailed. He was much struck by the poet's preoccupation with his
sister's eyes.
"Candles, are they," he chuckled, "torches, fires, suns, moons, and
stars? You seem to have scorched this rhymester, Vaggia."
"He has frequently told me so, indeed," said Selvaggia.
"It reminds me of Messer San Giovanni Vangelista," Ugolino continued,
"who was made to sing rarely by the touching of a hot cinder."
Selvaggia snatched the scrolls out of her brother's hand. "Nay, nay, but
wait," she cried, with a gulp of laughter; "I have done that to Messer
Cino, or can if I choose." She turned over the delicate pen-work in a
hurry. "Here," she said eagerly, "read this!"
Ugolino scampered through a couple of quatrains. "There's nothing out of
common here," said he.
"Go on, go on," said the girl, and nudged him to attend.