shortly, whatever your Highness may determine.
_Henry._ Yet thou appearest hale and resolute, and (they tell me)
smirkest and smilest to everybody.
_Anne._ The withered leaf catches the sun sometimes, little as it can
profit by it; and I have heard stories of the breeze in other climates
that sets in when daylight is about to close, and how constant it is,
and how refreshing. My heart, indeed, is now sustained strangely; it
became the more sensibly so from that time forward, when power and
grandeur and all things terrestrial were sunk from sight. Every act of
kindness in those about me gives me satisfaction and pleasure, such as
I did not feel formerly. I was worse before God chastened me; yet I
was never an ingrate. What pains have I taken to find out the
village-girls who placed their posies in my chamber ere I arose in the
morning! How gladly would I have recompensed the forester who lit up a
brake on my birthnight, which else had warmed him half the winter! But
these are times past: I was not Queen of England.
_Henry._ Nor adulterous, nor heretical.
_Anne._ God be praised!
_Henry._ Learned saint! thou knowest nothing of the lighter, but
perhaps canst inform me about the graver, of them.
_Anne._ Which may it be, my liege?
_Henry._ Which may it be? Pestilence! I marvel that the walls of this
tower do not crack around thee at such impiety.
_Anne._ I would be instructed by the wisest of theologians: such is
your Highness.
_Henry._ Are the sins of the body, foul as they are, comparable to
those of the soul?
_Anne._ When they are united, they must be worse.
_Henry._ Go on, go on: thou pushest thy own breast against the sword.
God hath deprived thee of thy reason for thy punishment. I must hear
more: proceed, I charge thee.
_Anne._ An aptitude to believe one thing rather than another, from
ignorance or weakness, or from the more persuasive manner of the
teacher, or from his purity of life, or from the strong impression of
a particular text at a particular time, and various things beside, may
influence and decide our opinion; and the hand of the Almighty, let us
hope, will fall gently on human fallibility.
_Henry._ Opinion in matters of faith! rare wisdom! rare religion!
Troth, Anne! thou hast well sobered me. I came rather warmly and
lovingly; but these light ringlets, by the holy rood, shall not shade
this shoulder much longer. Nay, do not start; I tap it for the last
time, my sweetest. If the Church permitted it, thou shouldst set forth
on thy long journey with the Eucharist between thy teeth, however
loath.
_Anne._ Love your Elizabeth, my honoured lord, and God bless you! She
will soon forget to call me. Do not chide her: think how young she is.
Could I, could I kiss her, but once again! it would comfort my
heart--or break it.
JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGNE
_Montaigne._ What could have brought you, M. de l'Escale, to visit the
old man of the mountain, other than a good heart? Oh, how delighted
and charmed I am to hear you speak such excellent Gascon. You rise
early, I see: you must have risen with the sun, to be here at this
hour; it is a stout half-hour's walk from the brook. I have capital
white wine, and the best cheese in Auvergne. You saw the goats and
the two cows before the castle.
Pierre, thou hast done well: set it upon the table, and tell Master
Matthew to split a couple of chickens and broil them, and to pepper
but one. Do you like pepper, M. de l'Escale?
_Scaliger._ Not much.
_Montaigne._ Hold hard! let the pepper alone: I hate it. Tell him to
broil plenty of ham; only two slices at a time, upon his salvation.
_Scaliger._ This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library: here
are your everyday books.
_Montaigne._ Faith! I have no other. These are plenty, methinks; is
not that your opinion?
_Scaliger._ You have great resources within yourself, and therefore
can do with fewer.
_Montaigne._ Why, how many now do you think here may be?
_Scaliger._ I did not believe at first that there could be above
fourscore.
_Montaigne._ Well! are fourscore few?--are we talking of peas and
beans?
_Scaliger._ I and my father (put together) have written well-nigh as
many.
_Montaigne._ Ah! to write them is quite another thing: but one reads
books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady Vanity. How do you
like my wine?--it comes from the little knoll yonder: you cannot see
the vines, those chestnut-trees are between.
_Scaliger._ The wine is excellent; light, odoriferous, with a
smartness like a sharp child's prattle.
_Montaigne._ It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves, which
many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple of bottles a
day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for it. You gentlemen
of the Agennois have better in your province, and indeed the very best
under the sun. I do not wonder that the Parliament of Bordeaux should
be jealous of their privileges, and call it Bordeaux. Now, if you
prefer your own country wine, only say it: I have several bottles in
my cellar, with corks as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not
know, M. de l'Escale, whether you are particular in these matters: not
quite, I should imagine, so great a judge in them as in others?
_Scaliger._ I know three things: wine, poetry, and the world.
_Montaigne._ You know one too many, then. I hardly know whether I know
anything about poetry; for I like Clem Marot better than Ronsard.
Ronsard is so plaguily stiff and stately, where there is no occasion
for it; I verily do think the man must have slept with his wife in a
cuirass.
_Scaliger._ It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His versions of
the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the New Testament of
Geneva.
_Montaigne._ It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel of
vinegar, which will never grow the sweeter for it.
_Scaliger._ Surely, you do not think in this fashion of the New
Testament!
_Montaigne._ Who supposes it? Whatever is mild and kindly is there.
But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol upon it, and whoever
but touches the cover dirties his fingers or burns them.
_Scaliger._ Calvin is a very great man, I do assure you, M. de
Montaigne.
_Montaigne._ I do not like your great men who beckon me to them, call
me their begotten, their dear child, and their entrails; and, if I
happen to say on any occasion, 'I beg leave, sir, to dissent a little
from you,' stamp and cry, 'The devil you do!' and whistle to the
executioner.
_Scaliger._ You exaggerate, my worthy friend!
_Montaigne._ Exaggerate do I, M. de l'Escale? What was it he did the
other day to the poor devil there with an odd name?--Melancthon, I
think it is.
_Scaliger._ I do not know: I have received no intelligence of late
from Geneva.
_Montaigne._ It was but last night that our curate rode over from
Lyons (he made two days of it, as you may suppose) and supped with me.
He told me that Jack had got his old friend hanged and burned. I could
not join him in the joke, for I find none such in the New Testament,
on which he would have founded it; and, if it is one, it is not in my
manner or to my taste.
_Scaliger._ I cannot well believe the report, my dear sir. He was
rather urgent, indeed, on the combustion of the heretic Michael
Servetus some years past.
_Montaigne._ A thousand to one, my spiritual guide mistook the name.
He has heard of both, I warrant him, and thinks in his conscience that
either is as good a roast as the other.
_Scaliger._ Theologians are proud and intolerant, and truly the
farthest of all men from theology, if theology means the rational
sense of religion, or indeed has anything to do with it in any way.
Melancthon was the very best of the reformers; quiet, sedate,
charitable, intrepid, firm in friendship, ardent in faith, acute in
argument, and profound in learning.
_Montaigne._ Who cares about his argumentation or his learning, if he
was the rest?
_Scaliger._ I hope you will suspend your judgment on this affair until
you receive some more certain and positive information.
_Montaigne._ I can believe it of the Sieur Calvin.
_Scaliger._ I cannot. John Calvin is a grave man, orderly and
reasonable.
_Montaigne._ In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason of my
cook. Mat never took a man for a sucking-pig, cleaning and scraping
and buttering and roasting him; nor ever twitched God by the sleeve
and swore He should not have His own way.
_Scaliger._ M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine of
predestination?
_Montaigne._ I should not understand it, if I had; and I would not
break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern. I would not
give a fig or a fig-leaf to know the truth of it, as far as any man
can teach it me. Would it make me honester or happier, or, in other
things, wiser?
_Scaliger._ I do not know whether it would materially.
_Montaigne._ I should be an egregious fool then to care about it. Our
disputes on controverted points have filled the country with
missionaries and cut-throats. Both parties have shown a disposition to
turn this comfortable old house of mine into a fortress. If I had
inclined to either, the other would have done it. Come walk about it
with me; after a ride, you can do nothing better to take off fatigue.
_Scaliger._ A most spacious kitchen!
_Montaigne._ Look up!
_Scaliger._ You have twenty or more flitches of bacon hanging there.
_Montaigne._ And if I had been a doctor or a captain, I should have
had a cobweb and predestination in the place of them. Your soldiers of
the _religion_ on the one side, and of the _good old faith_ on the
other, would not have left unto me safe and sound even that good old
woman there.
_Scaliger._ Oh, yes! they would, I hope.
_Old Woman._ Why dost giggle, Mat? What should he know about the
business? He speaks mighty bad French, and is as spiteful as the
devil. Praised be God, we have a kind master, who thinks about us, and
feels for us.
_Scaliger._ Upon my word, M. de Montaigne, this gallery is an
interesting one.
_Montaigne._ I can show you nothing but my house and my dairy. We have
no chase in the month of May, you know--unless you would like to bait
the badger in the stable. This is rare sport in rainy days.
_Scaliger._ Are you in earnest, M. de Montaigne?
_Montaigne._ No, no, no, I cannot afford to worry him outright: only a
little for pastime--a morning's merriment for the dogs and wenches.
_Scaliger._ You really are then of so happy a temperament that, at
your time of life, you can be amused by baiting a badger!
_Montaigne._ Why not? Your father, a wiser and graver and older man
than I am, was amused by baiting a professor or critic. I have not a
dog in the kennel that would treat the badger worse than brave Julius
treated Cardan and Erasmus, and some dozens more. We are all childish,
old as well as young; and our very last tooth would fain stick, M. de
l'Escale, in some tender place of a neighbour. Boys laugh at a person
who falls in the dirt; men laugh rather when they make him fall, and
most when the dirt is of their own laying.
Is not the gallery rather cold, after the kitchen? We must go through
it to get into the court where I keep my tame rabbits; the stable is
hard by: come along, come along.
_Scaliger._ Permit me to look a little at those banners. Some of them
are old indeed.
_Montaigne._ Upon my word, I blush to think I never took notice how
they are tattered. I have no fewer than three women in the house, and
in a summer's evening, only two hours long, the worst of these rags
might have been darned across.
_Scaliger._ You would not have done it surely!
_Montaigne._ I am not over-thrifty; the women might have been better
employed. It is as well as it is then; ay?
_Scaliger._ I think so.
_Montaigne._ So be it.
_Scaliger._ They remind me of my own family, we being descended from
the great Cane della Scala, Prince of Verona, and from the House of
Hapsburg, as you must have heard from my father.
_Montaigne._ What signifies it to the world whether the great Cane was
tied to his grandmother or not? As for the House of Hapsburg, if you
could put together as many such houses as would make up a city larger
than Cairo, they would not be worth his study, or a sheet of paper on
the table of it.
BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA
_Boccaccio._ Remaining among us, I doubt not that you would soon
receive the same distinctions in your native country as others have
conferred upon you: indeed, in confidence I may promise it. For
greatly are the Florentines ashamed that the most elegant of their
writers and the most independent of their citizens lives in exile, by
the injustice he had suffered in the detriment done to his property,
through the intemperate administration of their laws.
_Petrarca._ Let them recall me soon and honourably: then perhaps I may
assist them to remove their ignominy, which I carry about with me
wherever I go, and which is pointed out by my exotic laurel.
_Boccaccio._ There is, and ever will be, in all countries and under
all governments, an ostracism for their greatest men.
_Petrarca._ At present we will talk no more about it. To-morrow I
pursue my journey towards Padua, where I am expected; where some few
value and esteem me, honest and learned and ingenious men; although
neither those Transpadane regions, nor whatever extends beyond them,
have yet produced an equal to Boccaccio.
_Boccaccio._ Then, in the name of friendship, do not go thither!--form
such rather from your fellow-citizens. I love my equals heartily; and
shall love them the better when I see them raised up here, from our
own mother earth, by you.
_Petrarca._ Let us continue our walk.
_Boccaccio._ If you have been delighted (and you say you have been) at
seeing again, after so long an absence, the house and garden wherein I
have placed the relaters of my stories, as reported in the _Decameron_,
come a little way farther up the ascent, and we will pass through the
vineyard on the west of the villa. You will see presently another on
the right, lying in its warm little garden close to the roadside, the
scene lately of somewhat that would have looked well, as illustration,
in the midst of your Latin reflections. It shows us that people the
most serious and determined may act at last contrariwise to the line
of conduct they have laid down.
_Petrarca._ Relate it to me, Messer Giovanni; for you are able to give
reality the merits and charms of fiction, just as easily as you give
fiction the semblance, the stature, and the movement of reality.
_Boccaccio._ I must here forgo such powers, if in good truth I possess
them.
_Petrarca._ This long green alley, defended by box and cypresses, is
very pleasant. The smell of box, although not sweet, is more agreeable
to me than many that are: I cannot say from what resuscitation of
early and tender feeling. The cypress, too, seems to strengthen the
nerves of the brain. Indeed, I delight in the odour of most trees and
plants.
Will not that dog hurt us?--he comes closer.
_Boccaccio._ Dog! thou hast the colours of a magpie and the tongue of
one; prithee be quiet: art thou not ashamed?
_Petrarca._ Verily he trots off, comforting his angry belly with his
plenteous tail, flattened and bestrewn under it. He looks back, going
on, and puffs out his upper lip without a bark.
_Boccaccio._ These creatures are more accessible to temperate and just
rebuke than the creatures of our species, usually angry with less
reason, and from no sense, as dogs are, of duty. Look into that white
arcade! Surely it was white the other day; and now I perceive it is
still so: the setting sun tinges it with yellow.
_Petrarca._ The house has nothing of either the rustic or the
magnificent about it; nothing quite regular, nothing much varied. If
there is anything at all affecting, as I fear there is, in the story
you are about to tell me, I could wish the edifice itself bore
externally some little of the interesting that I might hereafter turn
my mind toward it, looking out of the catastrophe, though not away
from it. But I do not even find the peculiar and uncostly decoration
of our Tuscan villas: the central turret, round which the kite
perpetually circles in search of pigeons or smaller prey, borne
onward, like the Flemish skater, by effortless will in motionless
progression. The view of Fiesole must be lovely from that window; but
I fancy to myself it loses the cascade under the single high arch of
the Mugnone.
_Boccaccio._ I think so. In this villa--come rather farther off: the
inhabitants of it may hear us, if they should happen to be in the
arbour, as most people are at the present hour of day--in this villa,
Messer Francesco, lives Monna Tita Monalda, who tenderly loved Amadeo
degli Oricellari. She, however, was reserved and coy; and Father
Pietro de' Pucci, an enemy to the family of Amadeo, told her nevermore
to think of him, for that, just before he knew her, he had thrown his
arm round the neck of Nunciata Righi, his mother's maid, calling her
most immodestly a sweet creature, and of a whiteness that marble would
split with envy at.
Monna Tita trembled and turned pale. 'Father, is the girl really so
very fair?' said she anxiously.
'Madonna,' replied the father, 'after confession she is not much
amiss: white she is, with a certain tint of pink not belonging to her,
but coming over her as through the wing of an angel pleased at the
holy function; and her breath is such, the very ear smells it: poor,
innocent, sinful soul! Hei! The wretch, Amadeo, would have endangered
her salvation.'
'She must be a wicked girl to let him,' said Monna Tita. 'A young man
of good parentage and education would not dare to do such a thing of
his own accord. I will see him no more, however. But it was before he
knew me: and it may not be true. I cannot think any young woman would
let a young man do so, even in the last hour before Lent. Now in what
month was it supposed to be?'
'Supposed to be!' cried the father indignantly: 'in June; I say in
June.'
'Oh! that now is quite impossible: for on the second of July,
forty-one days from this, and at this very hour of it, he swore to me
eternal love and constancy. I will inquire of him whether it is true:
I will charge him with it.'
She did. Amadeo confessed his fault, and, thinking it a venial one,
would have taken and kissed her hand as he asked forgiveness.
_Petrarca._ Children! children! I will go into the house, and if their
relatives, as I suppose, have approved of the marriage, I will
endeavour to persuade the young lady that a fault like this, on the
repentance of her lover, is not unpardonable. But first, is Amadeo a
young man of loose habits?
_Boccaccio._ Less than our others: in fact, I never heard of any
deviation, excepting this.
_Petrarca._ Come, then, with me.
_Boccaccio._ Wait a little.
_Petrarca._ I hope the modest Tita, after a trial, will not be too
severe with him.
_Boccaccio._ Severity is far from her nature; but, such is her purity
and innocence, she shed many and bitter tears at his confession, and
declared her unalterable determination of taking the veil among the
nuns of Fiesole. Amadeo fell at her feet, and wept upon them. She
pushed him from her gently, and told him she would still love him if
he would follow her example, leave the world, and become a friar of
San Marco. Amadeo was speechless; and, if he had not been so, he never
would have made a promise he intended to violate. She retired from
him. After a time he arose, less wounded than benumbed by the sharp
uncovered stones in the garden-walk; and, as a man who fears to fall
from a precipice goes farther from it than is necessary, so did Amadeo
shun the quarter where the gate is, and, oppressed by his agony and
despair, throw his arms across the sundial and rest his brow upon it,
hot as it must have been on a cloudless day in August. When the
evening was about to close, he was aroused by the cries of rooks
overhead; they flew towards Florence, and beyond; he, too, went back
into the city.
Tita fell sick from her inquietude. Every morning ere sunrise did
Amadeo return; but could hear only from the labourers in the field
that Monna Tita was ill, because she had promised to take the veil and
had not taken it, knowing, as she must do, that the heavenly
bridegroom is a bridegroom never to be trifled with, let the spouse be
young and beautiful as she may be. Amadeo had often conversed with the
peasant of the farm, who much pitied so worthy and loving a gentleman;
and, finding him one evening fixing some thick and high stakes in the
ground, offered to help him. After due thanks, 'It is time,' said the
peasant, 'to rebuild the hovel and watch the grapes.'
'This is my house,' cried he. 'Could I never, in my stupidity, think
about rebuilding it before? Bring me another mat or two: I will sleep
here to-night, to-morrow night, every night, all autumn, all winter.'
He slept there, and was consoled at last by hearing that Monna Tita
was out of danger, and recovering from her illness by spiritual means.
His heart grew lighter day after day. Every evening did he observe the
rooks, in the same order, pass along the same track in the heavens,
just over San Marco; and it now occurred to him, after three weeks,
indeed, that Monna Tita had perhaps some strange idea, in choosing his
monastery, not unconnected with the passage of these birds. He grew
calmer upon it, until he asked himself whether he might hope. In the
midst of this half-meditation, half-dream, his whole frame was shaken
by the voices, however low and gentle, of two monks, coming from the
villa and approaching him. He would have concealed himself under this
bank whereon we are standing; but they saw him, and called him by
name. He now perceived that the younger of them was Guiberto Oddi,
with whom he had been at school about six or seven years ago, and who
admired him for his courage and frankness when he was almost a child.
'Do not let us mortify poor Amadeo,' said Guiberto to his companion.
'Return to the road: I will speak a few words to him, and engage him
(I trust) to comply with reason and yield to necessity.' The elder
monk, who saw he should have to climb the hill again, assented to the
proposal, and went into the road. After the first embraces and few
words, 'Amadeo! Amadeo!' said Guiberto, 'it was love that made me a
friar; let anything else make you one.'
'Kind heart!' replied Amadeo. 'If death or religion, or hatred of me,
deprives me of Tita Monalda, I will die, where she commanded me, in
the cowl. It is you who prepare her, then, to throw away her life and
mine!'
'Hold! Amadeo!' said Guiberto, 'I officiate together with good Father
Fontesecco, who invariably falls asleep amid our holy function.'
Now, Messer Francesco, I must inform you that Father Fontesecco has
the heart of a flower. It feels nothing, it wants nothing; it is pure
and simple, and full of its own little light. Innocent as a child, as
an angel, nothing ever troubled him but how to devise what he should
confess. A confession costs him more trouble to invent than any
Giornata in my _Decameron_ cost me. He was once overheard to say on
this occasion, 'God forgive me in His infinite mercy, for making it
appear that I am a little worse than He has chosen I should be!' He is
temperate; for he never drinks more than exactly half the wine and
water set before him. In fact, he drinks the wine and leaves the
water, saying: 'We have the same water up at San Domenico; we send it
hither: it would be uncivil to take back our own gift, and still more
to leave a suspicion that we thought other people's wine poor
beverage.' Being afflicted by the gravel, the physician of his convent
advised him, as he never was fond of wine, to leave it off entirely;
on which he said, 'I know few things; but this I know well--in water
there is often gravel, in wine never. It hath pleased God to afflict
me, and even to go a little out of His way in order to do it, for the
greater warning to other sinners. I will drink wine, brother
Anselmini, and help His work.'
I have led you away from the younger monk.
'While Father Fontesecco is in the first stage of beatitude, chanting
through his nose the _Benedicite_, I will attempt,' said Guiberto, 'to
comfort Monna Tita.'
'Good, blessed Guiberto!' exclaimed Amadeo in a transport of
gratitude, at which Guiberto smiled with his usual grace and suavity.
'O Guiberto! Guiberto! my heart is breaking. Why should she want you
to comfort her?--but--comfort her then!' and he covered his face
within his hands.