THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI
From the old butler, whom he found to be a very gracious and affable
personage, Kenyon soon learned many curious particulars about the family
history and hereditary peculiarities of the Counts of Monte Beni. There
was a pedigree, the later portion of which--that is to say, for a little
more than a thousand years--a genealogist would have found delight in
tracing out, link by link, and authenticating by records and documentary
evidences. It would have been as difficult, however, to follow up the
stream of Donatello’s ancestry to its dim source, as travellers have
found it to reach the mysterious fountains of the Nile. And, far beyond
the region of definite and demonstrable fact, a romancer might have
strayed into a region of old poetry, where the rich soil, so long
uncultivated and untrodden, had lapsed into nearly its primeval state
of wilderness. Among those antique paths, now overgrown with tangled and
riotous vegetation, the wanderer must needs follow his own guidance, and
arrive nowhither at last.
The race of Monte Beni, beyond a doubt, was one of the oldest in Italy,
where families appear to survive at least, if not to flourish, on their
half-decayed roots, oftener than in England or France. It came down in
a broad track from the Middle Ages; but, at epochs anterior to those,
it was distinctly visible in the gloom of the period before chivalry put
forth its flower; and further still, we are almost afraid to say, it was
seen, though with a fainter and wavering course, in the early morn of
Christendom, when the Roman Empire had hardly begun to show symptoms of
decline. At that venerable distance, the heralds gave up the lineage in
despair.
But where written record left the genealogy of Monte Beni, tradition
took it up, and carried it without dread or shame beyond the Imperial
ages into the times of the Roman republic; beyond those, again, into the
epoch of kingly rule. Nor even so remotely among the mossy centuries did
it pause, but strayed onward into that gray antiquity of which there
is no token left, save its cavernous tombs, and a few bronzes, and some
quaintly wrought ornaments of gold, and gems with mystic figures and
inscriptions. There, or thereabouts, the line was supposed to have had
its origin in the sylvan life of Etruria, while Italy was yet guiltless
of Rome.
Of course, as we regret to say, the earlier and very much the larger
portion of this respectable descent--and the same is true of many
briefer pedigrees--must be looked upon as altogether mythical. Still,
it threw a romantic interest around the unquestionable antiquity of the
Monte Beni family, and over that tract of their own vines and fig-trees
beneath the shade of which they had unquestionably dwelt for immemorial
ages. And there they had laid the foundations of their tower, so long
ago that one half of its height was said to be sunken under the surface
and to hide subterranean chambers which once were cheerful with the
olden sunshine.
One story, or myth, that had mixed itself up with their mouldy
genealogy, interested the sculptor by its wild, and perhaps grotesque,
yet not unfascinating peculiarity. He caught at it the more eagerly,
as it afforded a shadowy and whimsical semblance of explanation for the
likeness which he, with Miriam and Hilda, had seen or fancied between
Donatello and the Faun of Praxiteles.
The Monte Beni family, as this legend averred, drew their origin
from the Pelasgic race, who peopled Italy in times that may be called
prehistoric. It was the same noble breed of men, of Asiatic birth,
that settled in Greece; the same happy and poetic kindred who dwelt in
Arcadia, and--whether they ever lived such life or not--enriched the
world with dreams, at least, and fables, lovely, if unsubstantial, of a
Golden Age. In those delicious times, when deities and demigods appeared
familiarly on earth, mingling with its inhabitants as friend with
friend,--when nymphs, satyrs, and the whole train of classic faith or
fable hardly took pains to hide themselves in the primeval woods,--at
that auspicious period the lineage of Monte Beni had its rise. Its
progenitor was a being not altogether human, yet partaking so largely of
the gentlest human qualities, as to be neither awful nor shocking to
the imagination. A sylvan creature, native among the woods, had loved
a mortal maiden, and--perhaps by kindness, and the subtile courtesies
which love might teach to his simplicity, or possibly by a ruder
wooing--had won her to his haunts. In due time he gained her womanly
affection; and, making their bridal bower, for aught we know, in the
hollow of a great tree, the pair spent a happy wedded life in that
ancient neighborhood where now stood Donatello’s tower.
From this union sprang a vigorous progeny that took its place
unquestioned among human families. In that age, however, and long
afterwards, it showed the ineffaceable lineaments of its wild paternity:
it was a pleasant and kindly race of men, but capable of savage
fierceness, and never quite restrainable within the trammels of social
law. They were strong, active, genial, cheerful as the sunshine,
passionate as the tornado. Their lives were rendered blissful by art
unsought harmony with nature.
But, as centuries passed away, the Faun’s wild blood had necessarily
been attempered with constant intermixtures from the more ordinary
streams of human life. It lost many of its original qualities, and
served for the most part only to bestow an unconquerable vigor, which
kept the family from extinction, and enabled them to make their own part
good throughout the perils and rude emergencies of their interminable
descent. In the constant wars with which Italy was plagued, by the
dissensions of her petty states and republics, there was a demand for
native hardihood.
The successive members of the Monte Beni family showed valor and policy
enough’ at all events, to keep their hereditary possessions out of the
clutch of grasping neighbors, and probably differed very little from the
other feudal barons with whom they fought and feasted. Such a degree
of conformity with the manners of the generations through which it
survived, must have been essential to the prolonged continuance of the
race.
It is well known, however, that any hereditary peculiarity--as a
supernumerary finger, or an anomalous shape of feature, like the
Austrian lip--is wont to show itself in a family after a very wayward
fashion. It skips at its own pleasure along the line, and, latent for
half a century or so, crops out again in a great-grandson. And thus, it
was said, from a period beyond memory or record, there had ever and
anon been a descendant of the Monte Benis bearing nearly all the
characteristics that were attributed to the original founder of the
race. Some traditions even went so far as to enumerate the ears, covered
with a delicate fur, and shaped like a pointed leaf, among the proofs
of authentic descent which were seen in these favored individuals. We
appreciate the beauty of such tokens of a nearer kindred to the great
family of nature than other mortals bear; but it would be idle to ask
credit for a statement which might be deemed to partake so largely of
the grotesque.
But it was indisputable that, once in a century or oftener, a son of
Monte Beni gathered into himself the scattered qualities of his
race, and reproduced the character that had been assigned to it from
immemorial times. Beautiful, strong, brave, kindly, sincere, of
honest impulses, and endowed with simple tastes and the love of homely
pleasures, he was believed to possess gifts by which he could associate
himself with the wild things of the forests, and with the fowls of the
air, and could feel a sympathy even with the trees; among which it was
his joy to dwell. On the other hand, there were deficiencies both of
intellect and heart, and especially, as it seemed, in the development of
the higher portion of man’s nature. These defects were less perceptible
in early youth, but showed themselves more strongly with advancing
age, when, as the animal spirits settled down upon a lower level, the
representative of the Monte Benis was apt to become sensual, addicted to
gross pleasures, heavy, unsympathizing, and insulated within the narrow
limits of a surly selfishness.
A similar change, indeed, is no more than what we constantly observe to
take place in persons who are not careful to substitute other graces for
those which they inevitably lose along with the quick sensibility and
joyous vivacity of youth. At worst, the reigning Count of Monte Beni,
as his hair grew white, was still a jolly old fellow over his flask of
wine, the wine that Bacchus himself was fabled to have taught his sylvan
ancestor how to express, and from what choicest grapes, which would
ripen only in a certain divinely favored portion of the Monte Beni
vineyard.
The family, be it observed, were both proud and ashamed of these
legends; but whatever part of them they might consent to incorporate
into their ancestral history, they steadily repudiated all that referred
to their one distinctive feature, the pointed and furry ears. In a great
many years past, no sober credence had been yielded to the mythical
portion of the pedigree. It might, however, be considered as typifying
some such assemblage of qualities--in this case, chiefly remarkable for
their simplicity and naturalness--as, when they reappear in successive
generations, constitute what we call family character. The sculptor
found, moreover, on the evidence of some old portraits, that the
physical features of the race had long been similar to what he now saw
them in Donatello. With accumulating years, it is true, the Monte
Beni face had a tendency to look grim and savage; and, in two or three
instances, the family pictures glared at the spectator in the eyes like
some surly animal, that had lost its good humor when it outlived its
playfulness.
The young Count accorded his guest full liberty to investigate the
personal annals of these pictured worthies, as well as all the rest
of his progenitors; and ample materials were at hand in many chests of
worm-eaten papers and yellow parchments, that had been gathering into
larger and dustier piles ever since the dark ages. But, to confess the
truth, the information afforded by these musty documents was so much
more prosaic than what Kenyon acquired from Tomaso’s legends, that even
the superior authenticity of the former could not reconcile him to its
dullness. What especially delighted the sculptor was the analogy between
Donatello’s character, as he himself knew it, and those peculiar traits
which the old butler’s narrative assumed to have been long hereditary
in the race. He was amused at finding, too, that not only Tomaso but the
peasantry of the estate and neighboring village recognized his friend
as a genuine Monte Beni, of the original type. They seemed to cherish a
great affection for the young Count, and were full of stories about his
sportive childhood; how he had played among the little rustics, and been
at once the wildest and the sweetest of them all; and how, in his very
infancy, he had plunged into the deep pools of the streamlets and never
been drowned, and had clambered to the topmost branches of tall trees
without ever breaking his neck. No such mischance could happen to the
sylvan child because, handling all the elements of nature so fearlessly
and freely, nothing had either the power or the will to do him harm.
He grew up, said these humble friends, the playmate not only of all
mortal kind, but of creatures of the woods; although, when Kenyon
pressed them for some particulars of this latter mode of companionship,
they could remember little more than a few anecdotes of a pet fox, which
used to growl and snap at everybody save Donatello himself.
But they enlarged--and never were weary of the theme--upon the
blithesome effects of Donatello’s presence in his rosy childhood and
budding youth. Their hovels had always glowed like sunshine when he
entered them; so that, as the peasants expressed it, their young master
had never darkened a doorway in his life. He was the soul of vintage
festivals. While he was a mere infant, scarcely able to run alone, it
had been the custom to make him tread the winepress with his tender
little feet, if it were only to crush one cluster of the grapes. And the
grape-juice that gushed beneath his childish tread, be it ever so small
in quantity, sufficed to impart a pleasant flavor to a whole cask of
wine. The race of Monte Beni--so these rustic chroniclers assured
the sculptor--had possessed the gift from the oldest of old times of
expressing good wine from ordinary grapes, and a ravishing liquor from
the choice growth of their vineyard.
In a word, as he listened to such tales as these, Kenyon could have
imagined that the valleys and hillsides about him were a veritable
Arcadia; and that Donatello was not merely a sylvan faun, but the genial
wine god in his very person. Making many allowances for the poetic
fancies of Italian peasants, he set it down for fact that his friend, in
a simple way and among rustic folks, had been an exceedingly delightful
fellow in his younger days.
But the contadini sometimes added, shaking their heads and sighing, that
the young Count was sadly changed since he went to Rome. The village
girls now missed the merry smile with which he used to greet them.
The sculptor inquired of his good friend Tomaso, whether he, too,
had noticed the shadow which was said to have recently fallen over
Donatello’s life.
“Ah, yes, Signore!” answered the old butler, “it is even so, since
he came back from that wicked and miserable city. The world has grown
either too evil, or else too wise and sad, for such men as the old
Counts of Monte Beni used to be. His very first taste of it, as you see,
has changed and spoilt my poor young lord. There had not been a single
count in the family these hundred years or more, who was so true a Monte
Beni, of the antique stamp, as this poor signorino; and now it brings
the tears into my eyes to hear him sighing over a cup of Sunshine! Ah,
it is a sad world now!”
“Then you think there was a merrier world once?” asked Kenyon.
“Surely, Signore,” said Tomaso; “a merrier world, and merrier Counts of
Monte Beni to live in it! Such tales of them as I have heard, when I was
a child on my grandfather’s knee! The good old man remembered a lord of
Monte Beni--at least, he had heard of such a one, though I will not make
oath upon the holy crucifix that my grandsire lived in his time who used
to go into the woods and call pretty damsels out of the fountains, and
out of the trunks of the old trees. That merry lord was known to dance
with them a whole long summer afternoon! When shall we see such frolics
in our days?”
“Not soon, I am afraid,” acquiesced the sculptor. “You are right,
excellent Tomaso; the world is sadder now!”
And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild fables, he sighed
in the same breath to think how the once genial earth produces, in every
successive generation, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preceding
ones. Not that the modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment
are rarer in our refined and softened era,--on the contrary, they never
before were nearly so abundant,--but that mankind are getting so far
beyond the childhood of their race that they scorn to be happy any
longer. A simple and joyous character can find no place for itself
among the sage and sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated
cheerfulness to shame. The entire system of man’s affairs, as at present
established, is built up purposely to exclude the careless and happy
soul. The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should
endeavor to take life and the world as w what we might naturally suppose
them meant for--a place and opportunity for enjoyment.
It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in
life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which
can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than
we were born in. It insists upon everybody’s adding somewhat--a mite,
perhaps, but earned by incessant effort--to an accumulated pile of
usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with
even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own. No life
now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the
tiniest rivulet to turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution
to go all right.
Therefore it was--so, at least, the sculptor thought, although partly
suspicious of Donatello’s darker misfortune--that the young Count found
it impossible nowadays to be what his forefathers had been. He could
not live their healthy life of animal spirits, in their sympathy with
nature, and brotherhood with all that breathed around them. Nature, in
beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old;
but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the
world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest to go
astray.
“At any rate, Tomaso,” said Kenyon, doing his best to comfort the old
man, “let us hope that your young lord will still enjoy himself at
vintage time. By the aspect of the vineyard, I judge that this will be
a famous year for the golden wine of Monte Beni. As long as your grapes
produce that admirable liquor, sad as you think the world, neither the
Count nor his guests will quite forget to smile.”
“Ah, Signore,” rejoined the butler with a sigh, “but he scarcely wets
his lips with the sunny juice.”
“There is yet another hope,” observed Kenyon; “the young Count may fall
in love, and bring home a fair and laughing wife to chase the gloom out
of yonder old frescoed saloon. Do you think he could do a better thing,
my good Tomaso?”
“Maybe not, Signore,” said the sage butler, looking earnestly at him;
“and, maybe, not a worse!”
The sculptor fancied that the good old man had it partly in his mind to
make some remark, or communicate some fact, which, on second thoughts,
he resolved to keep concealed in his own breast. He now took his
departure cellarward, shaking his white head and muttering to himself,
and did not reappear till dinner-time, when he favored Kenyon, whom he
had taken far into his good graces, with a choicer flask of Sunshine
than had yet blessed his palate.
To say the truth, this golden wine was no unnecessary ingredient towards
making the life of Monte Beni palatable. It seemed a pity that Donatello
did not drink a little more of it, and go jollily to bed at least,
even if he should awake with an accession of darker melancholy the next
morning.
Nevertheless, there was no lack of outward means for leading an
agreeable life in the old villa. Wandering musicians haunted the
precincts of Monte Beni, where they seemed to claim a prescriptive
right; they made the lawn and shrubbery tuneful with the sound of
fiddle, harp, and flute, and now and then with the tangled squeaking of
a bagpipe. Improvisatori likewise came and told tales or recited verses
to the contadini--among whom Kenyon was often an auditor--after their
day’s work in the vineyard. Jugglers, too, obtained permission to do
feats of magic in the hall, where they set even the sage Tomaso, and
Stella, Girolamo, and the peasant girls from the farmhouse, all of a
broad grin, between merriment and wonder. These good people got food and
lodging for their pleasant pains, and some of the small wine of Tuscany,
and a reasonable handful of the Grand Duke’s copper coin, to keep up
the hospitable renown of Monte Beni. But very seldom had they the young
Count as a listener or a spectator.
There were sometimes dances by moonlight on the lawn, but never since he
came from Rome did Donatello’s presence deepen the blushes of the
pretty contadinas, or his footstep weary out the most agile partner or
competitor, as once it was sure to do.
Paupers--for this kind of vermin infested the house of Monte Beni worse
than any other spot in beggar-haunted Italy--stood beneath all the
windows, making loud supplication, or even establishing themselves on
the marble steps of the grand entrance. They ate and drank, and filled
their bags, and pocketed the little money that was given them, and went
forth on their devious ways, showering blessings innumerable on the
mansion and its lord, and on the souls of his deceased forefathers, who
had always been just such simpletons as to be compassionate to
beggary. But, in spite of their favorable prayers, by which Italian
philanthropists set great store, a cloud seemed to hang over these once
Arcadian precincts, and to be darkest around the summit of the tower
where Donatello was wont to sit and brood.