quiet sailor, who had always declined his invitations, and had always
heard his arguments at a distance and in silence, being pressed and
urged by him, and reproved somewhat arrogantly and loudly, as less
docile than his messmates, at last lifted up his leg behind him,
pulled off his right slipper, and counted deliberately and distinctly
thirty-nine sound strokes of the same, on the canonico's broadest
tablet, which (please your Holiness) might be called, not inaptly,
from that day the tablet of memory. In vain he cried out. Some of the
mariners made their moves at chess and waved their left hands as if
desirous of no interruption; others went backward and forward about
their business, and took no more notice than if their messmate was
occupied in caulking a seam or notching a flint. The master himself,
who saw the operation, heard the complaint in the evening, and lifted
up his shoulders and eyebrows, as if the whole were quite unknown to
him. Then, acting as judge-advocate, he called the young man before
him and repeated the accusation. To this the defence was purely
interrogative. 'Why would he convert me? I never converted him.'
Turning to his spiritual guide, he said, 'I quite forgive thee: nay, I
am ready to appear in thy favour, and to declare that, in general,
thou hast been more decorous than people of thy faith and profession
usually are, and hast not scattered on deck that inflammatory language
which I, habited in the dress of a Greek, heard last Easter. I went
into three churches; and the preachers in all three denounced the
curse of Allah on every soul that differed from them a tittle. They
were children of perdition, children of darkness, children of the
devil, one and all. It seemed a matter of wonder to me, that, in such
numerous families and of such indifferent parentage, so many slippers
were kept under the heel. Mine, in an evil hour, escaped me: but I
quite forgive thee. After this free pardon I will indulge thee with a
short specimen of my preaching. I will call none of you a generation
of vipers, as ye call one another; for vipers neither bite nor eat
during many months of the year: I will call none of you wolves in
sheep's clothing; for if ye are, it must be acknowledged that the
clothing is very clumsily put on. You priests, however, take people's
souls aboard whether they will or not, just as we do your bodies: and
you make them pay much more for keeping these in slavery than we make
you pay for setting you free body and soul together. You declare that
the precious souls, to the especial care of which Allah has called and
appointed you, frequently grow corrupt, and stink in His nostrils.
Now, I invoke thy own testimony to the fact that thy soul, gross as I
imagine it to be from the greasy wallet that holds it, had no carnal
thoughts whatsoever, and that thy carcass did not even receive a
fly-blow, while it was under my custody. Thy guardian angel (I speak
it in humility) could not ventilate thee better. Nevertheless, I
should scorn to demand a single maravedi for my labour and skill, or
for the wear and tear of my pantoufle. My reward will be in Paradise,
where a houri is standing in the shade, above a vase of gold and
silver fish, with a kiss on her lip, and an unbroken pair of green
slippers in her hand for me.' Saying which, he took off his foot
again, the one he had been using, and showed the sole of it, first to
the master, then to all the crew, and declared it had become (as they
might see) so smooth and oily by the application, that it was
dangerous to walk on deck in it.
_Eugenius._ See! what notions these creatures have, both of their
fool's paradise and of our holy faith! The seven Sacraments, I warrant
you, go for nothing! Purgatory, purgatory itself, goes for nothing!
_Filippo._ Holy Father! we must stop thee. _That_ does not go for
nothing, however.
_Eugenius._ Filippo! God forbid I should suspect thee of any heretical
taint; but this smells very like it. If thou hast it now, tell me
honestly. I mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are rather lax. Even
Son Cosimo might be stricter: so they say: perhaps his enemies. The
great always have them abundantly, beside those by whom they are
served, and those also whom they serve. Now would I give a silver
rose with my benediction on it, to know of a certainty what became of
those poor creatures the abbates. The initiatory rite of Mohammedanism
is most diabolically malicious. According to the canons of our
Catholic Church, it disqualifies the neophyte for holy orders, without
going so far as adapting him to the choir of the pontifical chapel.
They limp; they halt.
_Filippo._ Beatitude! which of them?
_Eugenius._ The unbelievers: they surely are found wanting.
_Filippo._ The unbelievers too?
_Eugenius._ Ay, ay, thou half renegade! Couldst not thou go over with
a purse of silver, and try whether the souls of these captives be
recoverable? Even if they should have submitted to such unholy rites,
I venture to say they have repented.
_Filippo._ The devil is in them if they have not.
_Eugenius._ They may become again as good Christians as before.
_Filippo._ Easily, methinks.
_Eugenius._ Not so easily; but by aid of Holy Church in the
administration of indulgences.
_Filippo._ They never wanted those, whatever they want.
_Eugenius._ The corsair then is not one of those ferocious creatures
which appear to connect our species with the lion and panther.
_Filippo._ By no means, Holy Father! He is an honest man; so are many
of his countrymen, bating the Sacrament.
_Eugenius._ Bating! poor beguiled Filippo! Being unbaptized, they are
only as the beasts that perish: nay worse: for the soul being
imperishable, it must stick to their bodies at the last day, whether
they will or no, and must sink with it into the fire and brimstone.
_Filippo._ Unbaptized! why, they baptize every morning.
_Eugenius._ Worse and worse! I thought they only missed the stirrup;
I find they overleap the saddle. Obstinate blind reprobates! of whom
it is written ... of whom it is written ... of whom, I say, it is
written ... as shall be manifest before men and angels in the day of
wrath.
_Filippo._ More is the pity! for they are hospitable, frank, and
courteous. It is delightful to see their gardens, when one has not the
weeding and irrigation of them. What fruit! what foliage! what
trellises! what alcoves! what a contest of rose and jessamine for
supremacy in odour! of lute and nightingale for victory in song! And
how the little bright ripples of the docile brooks, the fresher for
their races, leap up against one another, to look on! and how they
chirrup and applaud, as if they too had a voice of some importance in
these parties of pleasure that are loath to separate.
_Eugenius._ Parties of pleasure! birds, fruits, shallow-running
waters, lute-players, and wantons! Parties of pleasure! and composed
of these! Tell me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what complexion in
general have the discreeter females of that hapless country.
_Filippo._ The colour of an orange-flower, on which an overladen bee
has left a slight suffusion of her purest honey.
_Eugenius._ We must open their eyes.
_Filippo._ Knowing what excellent hides the slippers of this people
are made of, I never once ventured on their less perfect theology,
fearing to find it written that I should be abed on my face the next
fortnight. My master had expressed his astonishment that a religion so
admirable as ours was represented should be the only one in the world
the precepts of which are disregarded by all conditions of men. 'Our
Prophet,' said he, 'our Prophet ordered us to go forth and conquer; we
did it: yours ordered you to sit quiet and forbear; and, after
spitting in His face, you threw the order back into it, and fought
like devils.'
_Eugenius._ The barbarians talk of our Holy Scriptures as if they
understood them perfectly. The impostor they follow has nothing but
fustian and rodomontade in his impudent lying book from beginning to
end. I know it, Filippo, from those who have contrasted it, page by
page, paragraph by paragraph, and have given the knave his due.
_Filippo._ Abdul is by no means deficient in a good opinion of his own
capacity and his Prophet's all-sufficiency, but he never took me to
task about my faith or his own.
_Eugenius._ How wert thou mainly occupied?
_Filippo._ I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments
and of his character. He was going one evening to a country-house,
about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered me to accompany him. I
found there a spacious garden, overrun with wild flowers and most
luxuriant grass, in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the
humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped the lemon and
orange-trees; and the perennial pea sent forth here a pink blossom,
here a purple, here a white one, and after holding (as it were) a
short conversation with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old
cypress, played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. White
pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day, looked down on us
and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom they had
more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter boughs, or
alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A
few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could
take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and
pretending querulous fear in the midst of petulant approaches.
_Eugenius._ Is it of pigeons thou art talking, O Filippo? I hope it
may be.
_Filippo._ Of Abdul's pigeons. He was fond of taming all creatures;
men, horses, pigeons, equally: but he tamed them all by kindness. In
this wilderness is an edifice not unlike our Italian chapter-houses
built by the Lombards, with long narrow windows, high above the
ground. The centre is now a bath, the waters of which, in another part
of the enclosure, had supplied a fountain, at present in ruins, and
covered by tufted canes, and by every variety of aquatic plants. The
structure has no remains of roof: and, of six windows, one alone is
unconcealed by ivy. This had been walled up long ago, and the cement
in the inside of it was hard and polished. 'Lippi!' said Abdul to me,
after I had long admired the place in silence, 'I leave to thy
superintendence this bath and garden. Be sparing of the leaves and
branches: make paths only wide enough for me. Let me see no mark of
hatchet or pruning-hook, and tell the labourers that whoever takes a
nest or an egg shall be impaled.'
_Eugenius._ Monster! so then he would really have impaled a poor
wretch for eating a bird's egg? How disproportionate is the punishment
to the offence!
_Filippo._ He efficiently checked in his slaves the desire of
transgressing his command. To spare them as much as possible, I
ordered them merely to open a few spaces, and to remove the weaker
trees from the stronger. Meanwhile I drew on the smooth blank window
the figure of Abdul and of a beautiful girl.
_Eugenius._ Rather say handmaiden: choicer expression; more decorous.
_Filippo._ Holy Father! I have been lately so much out of practice, I
take the first that comes in my way. Handmaiden I will use in
preference for the future.
_Eugenius._ On then! and God speed thee!
_Filippo._ I drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden. One of his feet
is resting on her lap, and she is drying the ankle with a saffron
robe, of which the greater part is fallen in doing it. That she is a
bondmaid is discernible, not only by her occupation, but by her
humility and patience, by her loose and flowing brown hair, and by her
eyes expressing the timidity at once of servitude and of fondness. The
countenance was taken from fancy, and was the loveliest I could
imagine: of the figure I had some idea, having seen it to advantage in
Tunis. After seven days Abdul returned. He was delighted with the
improvement made in the garden. I requested him to visit the bath. 'We
can do nothing to that,' answered he impatiently. 'There is no
sudatory, no dormitory, no dressing-room, no couch. Sometimes I sit an
hour there in the summer, because I never found a fly in it--the
principal curse of hot countries, and against which plague there is
neither prayer nor amulet, nor indeed any human defence.' He went away
into the house. At dinner he sent me from his table some quails and
ortolans, and tomatoes and honey and rice, beside a basket of fruit
covered with moss and bay-leaves, under which I found a verdino fig,
deliciously ripe, and bearing the impression of several small teeth,
but certainly no reptile's.
_Eugenius._ There might have been poison in them, for all that.
_Filippo._ About two hours had passed, when I heard a whir and a crash
in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep),
occasioned by the settling and again the flight of some pheasants.
Abdul entered. 'Beard of the Prophet! what hast thou been doing? That
is myself! No, no, Lippi! thou never canst have seen her: the face
proves it: but those limbs! thou hast divined them aright: thou hast
had sweet dreams then! Dreams are large possessions: in them the
possessor may cease to possess his own. To the slave, O Allah! to the
slave is permitted what is not his!... I burn with anguish to think
how much ... yea, at that very hour. I would not another should, even
in a dream.... But, Lippi! thou never canst have seen above the
sandal?' To which I answered, 'I never have allowed my eyes to look
even on that. But if any one of my lord Abdul's fair slaves resembles,
as they surely must all do, in duty and docility, the figure I have
represented, let it express to him my congratulation on his
happiness.' 'I believe,' said he, 'such representations are forbidden
by the Koran; but as I do not remember it, I do not sin. There it
shall stay, unless the angel Gabriel comes to forbid it.' He smiled in
saying so.
_Eugenius._ There is hope of this Abdul. His faith hangs about him
more like oil than pitch.
_Filippo._ He inquired of me whether I often thought of those I loved
in Italy, and whether I could bring them before my eyes at will. To
remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always could, and that one
beautiful object occupied all the cells of my brain by night and day.
He paused and pondered, and then said, 'Thou dost not love deeply.' I
thought I had given the true signs. 'No, Lippi! we who love ardently,
we, with all our wishes, all the efforts of our souls, cannot bring
before us the features which, while they were present, we thought it
impossible we ever could forget. Alas! when we most love the absent,
when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her image back
to us. The troubled heart shakes and confounds it, even as ruffled
waters do with shadows. Hateful things are more hateful when they
haunt our sleep: the lovely flee away, or are changed into less
lovely.'
_Eugenius._ What figures now have these unbelievers?
_Filippo._ Various in their combinations as the letters or the
numerals; but they all, like these, signify something. Almeida (did I
not inform your Holiness?) has large hazel eyes....
_Eugenius._ Has she? thou never toldest me that. Well, well! and what
else has she? Mind! be cautious! use decent terms.
_Filippo._ Somewhat pouting lips.
_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! What did they pout at?
_Filippo._ And she is rather plump than otherwise.
_Eugenius._ No harm in that.
_Filippo._ And moreover is cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine
gathered before sunrise.
_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! do not remind me of nectarines. I am very fond of
them; and this is not the season! Such females as thou describest are
said to be among the likeliest to give reasonable cause for suspicion.
I would not judge harshly, I would not think uncharitably; but,
unhappily, being at so great a distance from spiritual aid,
peradventure a desire, a suggestion, an inkling ... ay? If she, the
lost Almeida, came before thee when her master was absent ... which I
trust she never did.... But those flowers and shrubs and odours and
alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold, perplex, and
entangle, two incautious young persons ... ay?
_Filippo._ I confessed all I had to confess in this matter the evening
I landed.
_Eugenius._ Ho! I am no candidate for a seat at the rehearsal of
confessions: but perhaps my absolution might be somewhat more pleasing
and unconditional. Well! well! since I am unworthy of such confidence,
go about thy business ... paint! paint!
_Filippo._ Am I so unfortunate as to have offended your Beatitude?
_Eugenius._ Offend _me_, man! who offends _me_? I took an interest in
thy adventures, and was concerned lest thou mightest have sinned; for
by my soul! Filippo! those are the women that the devil hath set his
mark on.
_Filippo._ It would do your Holiness's heart good to rub it out again,
wherever he may have had the cunning to make it.
_Eugenius._ Deep! deep!
_Filippo._ Yet it may be got at; she being a Biscayan by birth, as she
told me, and not only baptized, but going by sea along the coast for
confirmation, when she was captured.
_Eugenius._ Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this tender young
thing devoted! Poor soul!
_Filippo._ I sigh for her myself when I think of her.
_Eugenius._ Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the thought
recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power to examine her
myself on her condition. What thinkest thou? Speak.
_Filippo._ Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.
_Eugenius._ So lost!
_Filippo._ She declared to me she thought she should have died, from
the instant she was captured until she was comforted by Abdul: but
that she was quite sure she should if she were ransomed.
_Eugenius._ Has the wretch then shaken her faith?
_Filippo._ The very last thing he would think of doing. Never did I
see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in the
laughing, light-hearted Almeida.
_Eugenius._ Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world and in
the next.
_Filippo._ What could she do? how could she help herself?
_Eugenius._ She might have torn his eyes out, and have died a martyr.
_Filippo._ Or have been bastinadoed, whipped, and given up to the
cooks and scullions for it.
_Eugenius._ Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the indignities
it endures.
_Filippo._ Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in our Tuscany
who would jump at the crown over those sloughs and briers, rather than
perish without them: she never sighs after the like.
_Eugenius._ Nevertheless, what must she witness! what abominations!
what superstitions!
_Filippo._ Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superstition
than ablutions.
_Eugenius._ Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture to
affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or
nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would
shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the
unbeliever. For the washing of the feet indeed we have the authority
of the earlier Christians; and it may be done; but solemnly and
sparingly. Thy residence among the Mahomedans, I am afraid, hath
rendered thee more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, and thy
mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.
_Filippo._ While I continued in that country, although I was well
treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends in
Florence, of music, of painting, of our villeggiatura at the
vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino,
with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells
about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together ambiguously; or
amid the grey quarries, or under the majestic walls of modern Fiesole;
or down in the woods of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a
girth that, when a youth stands against one of them, and a maiden
stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands at the time do little
more than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which heaven smiles eternally,
how often has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this
country can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he
lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and serener
stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the blessing of climate;
and although I do not desire to be there again, I feel sometimes a
kind of regret at leaving it. A bell warbles the more mellifluously in
the air when the sound of the stroke is over, and when another swims
out from underneath it, and pants upon the element that gave it birth.
In like manner the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing
than the actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the space between.
There is in Abdul a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected
with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and
distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man, excepting
a fondness for low company, and an aptitude to shy and start at every
spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or before them. Abdul
was solitary, but affable: he was proud, but patient and complacent. I
ventured once to ask him how the master of so rich a house in the
city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such
cornfields, of such pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains,
should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open
sea, the high-road of nations. Instead of answering my question, he
asked me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine
who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared
to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On my reply in the
affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions
in Spain much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could
ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were
threatened with ruin and expulsion. 'I do not fight,' said he,
'whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the
caprice of two silly, quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in
perfectly good humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just
when I begin to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own account; not
as a hired assassin, or still baser journeyman.'
_Eugenius._ It appears then really that the Infidels have some
semblances of magnanimity and generosity?
_Filippo._ I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine
linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom
of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.
_Eugenius._ Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things, I would
fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite
many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo,
that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia,
daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.
_Filippo._ I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.
_Eugenius._ Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.
_Filippo._ Alas! 'tis undeniable.
_Eugenius._ I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by _motu
proprio_ and rescript to consistory and chancery....
_Filippo._ Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a
word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope
for salvation, I have but forty left, and thirty-nine would not serve
them.
_Eugenius._ Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have
promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be
demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint
Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.
_Filippo._ Man and wife!
_Eugenius._ Moderate thy transport.
_Filippo._ O Holy Father! may I speak?
_Eugenius._ Surely she is not the wife of another?
_Filippo._ No, indeed.
_Eugenius._ Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?
_Filippo._ No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory and chancery
are nothing to this fulmination.
_Eugenius._ How so?
_Filippo._ It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man
ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and
the decimal is the unit.
_Eugenius._ What, then, can I do for thee?
_Filippo._ I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me. I can
make her at any time what she is not; I could never make her again
what she is.
_Eugenius._ The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget
that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must
hear it first.
_Filippo._ In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its
idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and looking
over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward to Pistoja,
there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited by the sisters
to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own
sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her
blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by
the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.
_Eugenius._ Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.
_Filippo._ But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking
with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful
delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? 'Twere a
pity! There was enough for me; there is never enough for the Madonna.
Resolving on a sudden that the object of my love should be the object
of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across
the maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl
screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.
_Eugenius._ In the chapel?
_Filippo._ I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.
_Eugenius._ If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a
brush against a Madonna's mouth is worse than a beard against her
votary's.
_Filippo._ I thought so too, Holy Father!
_Eugenius._ Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try in due
season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure
forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray God my son Filippo, to have
thee alway in His holy keeping.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called _abbati_.
TASSO AND CORNELIA
_Tasso._ She is dead, Cornelia! she is dead!
_Cornelia._ Torquato! my Torquato! after so many years of separation
do I bend once more your beloved head to my embrace?
_Tasso._ She is dead!
_Cornelia._ Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most
unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven, so bewilders you?
_Tasso._ Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her.
_Cornelia._ Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out of
spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this season of
the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent.
_Tasso._ How! What is this?
_Cornelia._ The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of the
car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves to one
of the oxen. And did you happen to be there at the moment?