He came out of a wood, and appeared to be journeying somewhere.
Morgante, who had the great bell-clapper in his hand above-mentioned,
struck it on the ground with astonishment, as much as to say, "Who the
devil is this?" and then set himself on a stone by the way-side to
observe the creature.
"What's your name, traveller?" said Morgante, as it came up.
"My name's Margutte," said the phenomenon. "I intended to be a giant
myself, but altered my mind, you see, and stopped half-way; so that I am
only twenty feet or so."
"I'm glad to see you," quoth his brother-giant. "But tell me, are you
Christian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or in _Apollo_?"
"To tell you the truth," said the other, "I believe neither in black
nor blue, but in a good capon, whether it be roast or boiled. I
believe sometimes also in butter, and, when I can get it, in new wine,
particularly the rough sort; but, above all, I believe in wine that's
good and old. Mahomet's prohibition of it is all moonshine. I am the
son, you must know, of a Greek nun and a Turkish bishop; and the first
thing I learned was to play the fiddle. I used to sing Homer to it.
I was then concerned in a brawl in a mosque, in which the old bishop
somehow happened to be killed; so I tied a sword to my side, and went to
seek my fortune, accompanied by all the possible sins of Turk and Greek.
People talk of the seven deadly sins; but I have seventy-seven that
never quit me, summer or winter; by which you may judge of the amount
of my venial ones. I am a gambler, a cheat, a ruffian, a highwayman, a
pick-pocket, a glutton (at beef or blows); have no shame whatever; love
to let every body know what I can do; lie, besides, about what I can't
do; have a particular attachment to sacrilege; swallow perjuries like
figs; never give a farthing to any body, but beg of every body, and
abuse them into the bargain; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as
the chief of all the cardinal virtues; but must own I am not much given
to assassination, murder being inconvenient; and one thing I am bound to
acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate."
"That's as well," observed Morgante; "because you see, as you don't
believe in any thing else, I'd have you believe in this bell-clapper of
mine. So now, as you have been candid with me, and I am well instructed
in your ways, we'll pursue our journey together."
The best of giants, in those days, were not scrupulous in their modes of
living; so that one of the best and one of the worst got on pretty well
together, emptying the larders on the road, and paying nothing but
douses on the chops. When they could find no inn, they hunted elephants
and crocodiles. Morgante, who was the braver of the two, delighted to
banter, and sometimes to cheat, Margutte; and he ate up all the fare;
which made the other, notwithstanding the credit he gave himself for
readiness of wit and tongue, cut a very sorry figure, and seriously
remonstrate: "I reverence you," said Margutte, "in other matters; but in
eating, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at
meals is no friend; at every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to
lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no
better than a fig."
"You are a fine fellow," said Morgante; "you gain upon me very much. You
are 'the master of those who know.'"[6]
So saying, he made him put some wood on the fire, and perform a hundred
other offices to render every thing snug; and then he slept: and next
day he cheated his great scoundrelly companion at drink, as he had
done the day before at meat; and the poor shabby devil complained; and
Morgante laughed till he was ready to burst, and again and again always
cheated him.
There was a levity, nevertheless, in Margutte, which restored his
spirits on the slightest glimpse of good fortune; and if he realised a
hearty meal, he became the happiest, beastliest, and most confident of
giants. The companions, in the course of their journey, delivered a
damsel from the clutches of three other giants. She was the daughter of
a great lord; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to
an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of
bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice,
cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a
thousand lies.
Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents.
Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his
face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in
his hand, demanded "something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him
a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it
with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that
when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the
earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced
him for ever.
"Softly!" said the brute-beast. "Didn't you take me with you, knowing
what sort of fellow I was? Didn't I tell you I had every sin and shame
under heaven; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single
virtue?"
Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excessive nature.
So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested
themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep. He had a pair
of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see
what he would do on waking. He accordingly did so, and threw them to a
little distance among the bushes. The sleeper awoke in good time,
and, looking and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of
laughter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off,
making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the
light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the
new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at
length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a
laughing-fit. In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers
would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room
to play. They couldn't do it; so he laughed and roared till he burst.
The snap was like the splitting of a cannon. Morgante ran up to him, but
it was of no use. He was dead.
Alas! it was not the only death; it was not even the most trivial cause
of a death. Giants are big fellows, but Death's a bigger, though he may
come in a little shape. Morgante had succeeded in joining his master.
He helped him to take Babylon; he killed a whale for him at sea that
obstructed his passage; he played the part of a main-sail during a
storm, holding out his arms and a great hide; but on coming to shore,
a crab bit him in the heel; and behold the lot of the great giant--he
died! He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a
mighty one.
"He made the East tremble," said Orlando; "and the bite of a crab has
slain him!"
O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy![7]
Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Babylon, and
honourably interred; and, after many an adventure, in which he regretted
him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a
cause.
How shall I speak of it? exclaims the poet. How think of the horrible
slaughter about to fall on the Christians and their greatest men, so
that not a dry eye shall be left in France? How express my disgust at
the traitor Gan, whose heart a thousand pardons from his sovereign, and
the most undeserved rescues of him by the warrior he betrayed, could not
shame or soften? How mourn the weakness of Charles, always deceived by
him, and always trusting? How dare to present to my mind the good,
the great, the ever-generous Orlando, brought by the traitor into the
doleful pass of Roncesvalles and the hands of myriads of his enemies, so
that even his superhuman strength availed not to deliver him out of the
slaughterhouse, and he blew the blast with his dying breath, which was
the mightiest, the farthest heard, and the most melancholy sound that
ever came to the ears of the undeceived?
Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sovereign. The
Paladins knew him well; and in their moments of indignant disgust often
told him so, though they spared him the consequences of his misdeeds,
and even incurred the most frightful perils to deliver him out of the
hands of his enemies. But he was brave; he was in favour with the
sovereign, who was also their kinsman; and they were loyal and loving
men, and knew that the wretch envied them for the greatness of their
achievements, and might do the state a mischief; so they allowed
themselves to take a kind of scornful pleasure in putting up with him.
Their cousin Malagigi, the enchanter, had himself assisted Gan, though
he knew him best of all, and had prophesied that the innumerable
endeavours of his envy to destroy his king and country would bring some
terrible evil at last to all Chistendom. The evil, alas! is at hand. The
doleful time has come. It will be followed, it is true, by a worse fate
of the wretch himself; but not till the valleys of the Pyrenees have run
rivers of blood, and all France is in mourning.
[Footnote 1: A common pleasantry in the old romances--"Galaor went in,
and then the halberders attacked him on one side, and the knight on the
other. He snatched an axe from one, and turned to the knight and smote
him, so that he had no need of a surgeon."--Southey's _Amadis of Gaul_,
vol. i. p. 146.]
[Footnote 2:
"Sonsi i nostri dottori accordati,
Pigliando tutti una conclusione,
Che que' che son nel ciel glorificati,
S' avessin nel pensier compassione
De' miseri parenti che dannati
Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione,
La lor felicità nulla sarebbe
E vedi the qui ingiusto Iddio parebbe.
Ma egli anno posto in Gesù ferma spene;
E tanto pare a lor, quanto a lui pare:
Afferman cio ch' e' fu, che facci bene,
E che non possi in nessun modo errare:
Se padre o madre è ne l'eterne pene,
Di questo non si posson conturbare:
Che quel che piace a Dio, sol piace a loro
Questo s'osserva ne l'eterno core.
Al savio suol bastar poche parole,
Disse Morgante: tu il potrai vedere,
De' miei fratelli, Orlando, se mi duole,
E s'io m'accordero di Dio al volere,
Come tu di che in ciel servar si suole:
Morti co' morti; or pensiam di godere:
Io vo' tagliar le mani a tutti quanti,
E porterolle a que' monaci santi."
This doctrine, which is horrible blasphemy in the eyes of natural
feeling, is good reasoning in Catholic and Calvinistic theology.
They first make the Deity's actions a necessity from some barbarous
assumption, then square them according to a dictum of the Councils, then
compliment him by laying all that he has made good and kindly within us
mangled and mad at his feet. Meantime they think themselves qualified to
denounce Moloch and Jugghanaut!]
[Footnote 3:
"E furno al here infermi, al mangiar sani."
I am not sure that I am right in my construction of this passage.
Perhaps Pulci means to say, that they had the appetites of men in
health, and the thirst of a fever.]
[Footnote 5: Cagnazzo, Farfarello. Libicocco, and Malacoda; names of
devils in Dante.]
[Footnote 6: "Il maestro di color che sanno." A jocose application of
Dante's praise of Aristotle.]
[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace!"]
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
Notice.
This is the
"sad and fearful story
Of the Roncesvalles fight;"
an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on
the popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish ballads:
hence the famous passage in Milton,
"When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia:"
hence Dante's record of the _dolorosa rotta_ (dolorous rout) in the
_Inferno_, where he compares the voice of Nimrod with the horn sounded
by the dying Orlando: hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don
Quixote singing the battle as he comes along the road in the morning:
and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of
William the Conqueror as they advanced against the English.
But Charlemagne did not "fall," as Milton has stated. Nor does Pulci
make him do so. In this respect, if in little else, the Italian poet
adhered to the fact. The whole story is a remarkable instance of what
can be done by poetry and popularity towards misrepresenting and
aggrandising a petty though striking adventure. The simple fact was the
cutting off the rear of Charlemagne's army by the revolted Gascons, as
he returned from a successful expedition into Spain. Two or three only
of his nobles perished, among whom was his nephew Roland, the obscure
warden of his marches of Brittany. But Charlemagne was the temporal head
of Christendom; the poets constituted his nephew its champion; and hence
all the glories and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and
Ariosto. The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens,
particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci's authority,
the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was nothing
but a pious fraud; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person
than the great and good Abdoùlrahmaùn the First, who wrested the
dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his
family-rights. Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant
fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day we
read of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but
with the liveliest emotion.
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died
in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether
impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of
this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, than
melancholy; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die
before him, and that makes a tragedy of all. I had a doubt whether,
consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry
satisfaction; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando's
cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and
there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away
from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt; and how was I to suppose that he
could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees? But an angel
upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poliziano, the glory of his
age and country. He informed me how Arnauld, the Provençal poet, had
written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to
France by means of the wonderful skill in occult science possessed by
his cousin Malagigi--a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to
those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have
different modes of relating the same events. By and by, a great many
things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now,
and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in
fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects,
whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not; for evil
itself can work only in subordination to good. So listen when the
astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best. Meantime, we must
speak of another and more truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs
of mortal flesh and blood.
The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the
infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Emperor
Charles; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had conquered them all.
The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court
of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited
in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had
succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador
into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting
the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando.
Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one
was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The
traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying
him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with
Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his
villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch. He fastened with
equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and
thought to himself, "You may make as many fair speeches as you choose,
but you lie." All the other Paladins who were present thought the same
and they said as much to the emperor; adding, that on no account should
Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius. But Charles was infatuated. His
beard and his credulity had grown old together.
Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius. The king,
attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him,
and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight. There
was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions
of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French
knights, and the people shouting "France! France! Mountjoy and St.
Denis!"
Gan made a speech, "like a Demosthenes," to King Marsilius in public;
but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself. The king
and he were sitting in a garden; they were traitors both, and began
to understand, from one another's looks, that the real object of the
ambassador was yet to be discussed. Marsilius accordingly assumed a more
than usually cheerful and confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor
by the hand, said, "You know the proverb, Mr. Ambassador--'At dawn, the
mountain; afternoon, the fountain.' Different things at different hours.
So here is a fountain to accommodate us."
It was a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in
it as in a mirror; and the spot was encircled with fruit-trees that
quivered with the fresh air. Gan praised it very much, contriving to
insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he
got into another. Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the
conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their
thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to
do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its
expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime,
saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By degrees, he began to touch
on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew
was in both their minds: he lamented, not as to the ambassador, but as
to the friend, the injuries which he said he had received from Charles
in the repeated attacks on his dominions, and the emperor's wish to
crown Orlando king of them; till at length he plainly uttered his
belief, that if that tremendous Paladin were but dead, good men would
get their rights, and his visitor and himself have all things at their
disposal.
Gan heaved a sigh, as if he was unwillingly compelled to allow the force
of what the king said; but, unable to contain himself long, he lifted up
his face, radiant with triumphant wickedness, and exclaimed, "Every word
you utter is truth. Die he must; and die also must Uliviero, who struck
me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like
those? I have planned every thing--I have settled every thing already
with their besotted master. Orlando could not be expected to be brought
hither, where he has been accustomed to look for a crown; but he will
come to the Spanish borders--to Roncesvalles--for the purpose of
receiving the tribute. Charles will await him, at no great distance, in
St. John Pied de Port. Orlando will bring but a small band with him;
you, when you meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back.
You surround him; and who receives tribute then?"
The new Judas had scarcely uttered these words, when the delight of him
and his associate was interrupted by a change in the face of nature.
The sky was suddenly overcast; it thundered and lightened; a laurel was
split in two from head to foot; the fountain ran into burning blood;
there was an earthquake, and the carob-tree under which Gan was sitting,
and which was of the species on which Judas Iscariot hung himself,
dropped some of its fruit on his head. The hair of the head rose in
horror.
Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen; but on assembling
his soothsayers, they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned
the omen against the emperor, the successor of the Cæsars; though one
of them renewed the consternation of Gan, by saying that he did not
understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps
the ambassador could explain it. Gan relieved his consternation with
anger; the habit of wickedness prevailed over all considerations; and
the king prepared to march for Roncesvalles at the head of all his
forces.
Gan wrote to Charlemagne, to say how humbly and properly Marsilius was
coming to pay the tribute into the hands of Orlando, and how handsome it
would be of the emperor to meet him halfway, as agreed upon, at St. John
Pied de Port, and so be ready to receive him, after the payment, at
his footstool. He added a brilliant account of the tribute and its
accompanying presents. They included a crown in the shape of a garland
which had a carbuncle in it that gave light in darkness; two lions of
an "immeasurable length, and aspects that frightened every body;" some
"lively buffalos," leopards, crocodiles, and giraffes; arms and armour
of all sorts; and apes and monkeys seated among the rich merchandise
that loaded the backs of the camels. This imaginary treasure contained,
furthermore, two enchanted spirits, called "Floro and Faresse," who were
confined in a mirror, and were to tell the emperor wonderful things,
particularly Floro (for there is nothing so nice in its details as
lying): and Orlando was to have heaps of caravans full of Eastern
wealth, and a hundred white horses, all with saddles and bridles of
gold. There was a beautiful vest, too, for Uliviero, all over jewels,
worth ten thousand "seraffi," or more.
The good emperor wrote in turn to say how pleased he was with the
ambassador's diligence, and that matters were arranged precisely as
he wished. His court, however, had its suspicions still. Nobody could
believe that Gan had not some new mischief in contemplation. Little,
nevertheless, did they imagine, after the base endeavours he had but
lately made against them, that he had immediately plotted a new
and greater one, and that his object in bringing Charles into the
neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was to deliver him more speedily into the
hands of Marsilius, in the event of the latter's destruction of Orlando.
Orlando, however, did as his lord and sovereign desired. He went to
Roncesvalles, accompanied by a moderate train of warriors, not dreaming
of the atrocity that awaited him. Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on
to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in
the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while
Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of
Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on
the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
He had also, by Gan's advice, brought heaps of wine and good cheer to
be set before his victims in the first instance; "for that," said the
traitor, "will render the onset the more effective, the feasters being
unarmed; and, supposing prodigies of valour to await even the attack of
your second army, you will have no trouble with your third. One thing,
however, I must not forget," added he; "my son Baldwin is sure to be
with Orlando; you must take care of his life for my sake." "I give him
this vest off my own body," said the king; "let him wear it in the
battle, and have no fear. My soldiers shall be directed not to touch
him."
Gan went away rejoicing to France. He embraced the court and his
sovereign all round, with the air of a man who had brought them nothing
but blessings; and the old king wept for very tenderness and delight.