elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with
greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas!
these collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if
you measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision.
Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us
forbearance and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil
spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most
wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been
so. Why then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins
against the children of Israel? By their own declaration, not only are
they our enemies, but enemies the most spiteful and untractable. When
I came quietly, lawfully, and in the name of the Lord, for their
plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering it like honest and
conscientious men, they attacked me and my people on horseback, with
syllogisms and enthymemes, and the Lord knows with what other such
gimcracks; such venomous and rankling old weapons as those who have
the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning
should not make folks mockers ... should not make folks malignants ...
should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.
_Sir Oliver._ That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards and
wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt
them.
_Oliver._ We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
_Sir Oliver._ How can these learned societies raise the money you
exact from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
_Oliver._ In Cambridge, Uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the Blessed
Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
_Sir Oliver._ Well ... at last thou hast some mercy.
_Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclaw! advance!
Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up
behind you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you
at the country places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and
equitable that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the
mancipular office of discharging the account. If there be any spare
beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same ...
they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that more than three
lie in each ... they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and
unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they
have not always been accustomed to the service of guards and ushers.
The Lord be with ye!... Slow trot! And now, Uncle Sir Oliver, I can
resist no longer your loving kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in
heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of
your invitation to dine and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of
your family and kinsfolk. After the refreshment of needful food, more
needful prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the innocent like
the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak I proceed on my journey
Londonward.
_Sir Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Ho, there! [_To a servant._] Let dinner be
prepared in the great dining-room; let every servant be in waiting,
each in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed
upon the table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the
sideboard: a gentleman by descent ... a stranger ... has claimed my
hospitality. [_Servant goes._]
Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
further attendance on you.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer
and Roger Bacon, whom England had produced from its first discovery
down to our own times, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, and
the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir
Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Eliot, Selden, Taylor,
Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime;
and several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
[13] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
THE COUNT GLEICHEM: THE COUNTESS: THEIR CHILDREN, AND ZAIDA.
_Countess._ Ludolph! my beloved Ludolph! do we meet again? Ah! I am
jealous of these little ones, and of the embraces you are giving them.
Why sigh, my sweet husband?
Come back again, Wilhelm! Come back again, Annabella! How could you
run away? Do you think you can see better out of the corner?
_Annabella._ Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name of mercy, can
have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall never be like that;
and yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.
_Wilhelm._ Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your
knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the
Turks, and how you ran away from them.
_Countess._ Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we
should not have been deprived of him two whole years.
_Wilhelm._ I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian
knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians
are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog
Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear,
and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them.
_Annabella._ Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as
to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs
that are better and faithfuller and stronger.
_Wilhelm._ [_To his father._] I can hardly help laughing to think what
curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a
dog-spirit with three horsetails.
_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure
you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at
me, and did tell you some mischief.
_Count._ I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again.
_Annabella._ And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very
easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But
forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes,
or anywhere.
_Count._ And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.
_Annabella._ At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot
how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying.
And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again.
_Count._ Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?
_Annabella._ Because you really are so very very brown: just like
those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood,
and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and
I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once.
_Wilhelm._ Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the
other seemed to bless us.
_Count._ Are they still living?
_Countess._ One of them is.
_Wilhelm._ The fierce one.
_Count._ We will set him free, and wish it were the other.
_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad you are come back without your spurs.
_Countess._ Hush, child, hush.
_Annabella._ Why, mamma? Do not you remember how they tore my frock
when I clung to him at parting? Now I begin to think of him again: I
lose everything between that day and this.
_Countess._ The girl's idle prattle about the spurs has pained you:
always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon offended.
_Count._ O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the loss of spurs
I now must blush for.
_Annabella._ Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until you cut
that horrid beard off.
_Countess._ Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do; for most
gallant was your bearing in the battle.
_Count._ Ah! why was it ever fought?
_Countess._ Why were most battles? But they may lead to glory even
through slavery.
_Count._ And to shame and sorrow.
_Countess._ Have I lost the little beauty I possessed, that you hold
my hand so languidly, and turn away your eyes when they meet mine? It
was not so formerly ... unless when first we loved.
That one kiss restores to me all my lost happiness.
Come; the table is ready: there are your old wines upon it: you must
want that refreshment.
_Count._ Go, my sweet children! you must eat your supper before I do.
_Countess._ Run into your own room for it.
_Annabella._ I will not go until papa has patted me again on the
shoulder, now I begin to remember it. I do not much mind the beard: I
grow used to it already: but indeed I liked better to stroke and pat
the smooth laughing cheek, with my arm across the neck behind. It is
very pleasant even so. Am I not grown? I can put the whole length of
my finger between your lips.
_Count._ And now, will not _you_ come, Wilhelm?
_Wilhelm._ I am too tall and too heavy: she is but a child.
[_Whispers._] Yet I think, papa, I am hardly so much of a man but you
may kiss me over again ... if you will not let her see it.
_Countess._ My dears! why do not you go to your supper?
_Annabella._ Because he has come to show us what Turks are like.
_Wilhelm._ Do not be angry with her. Do not look down, papa!
_Count._ Blessings on you both, sweet children!
_Wilhelm._ We may go now.
_Countess._ And now, Ludolph, come to the table, and tell me all your
sufferings.
_Count._ The worst begin here.
_Countess._ Ungrateful Ludolph!
_Count._ I am he: that is my name in full.
_Countess._ You have then ceased to love me?
_Count._ Worse; if worse can be: I have ceased to deserve your love.
_Countess._ No: Ludolph hath spoken falsely for once; but Ludolph is
not false.
_Count._ I have forfeited all I ever could boast of, your affection
and my own esteem. Away with caresses! Repulse me, abjure me; hate,
and never pardon me. Let the abject heart lie untorn by one remorse.
Forgiveness would split and shiver what slavery but abased.
_Countess._ Again you embrace me; and yet tell me never to pardon you!
O inconsiderate man! O idle deviser of impossible things!
But you have not introduced to me those who purchased your freedom, or
who achieved it by their valour.
_Count._ Mercy! O God!
_Countess._ Are they dead? Was the plague abroad.
_Count._ I will not dissemble ... such was never my intention ... that
my deliverance was brought about by means of----
_Countess._ Say it at once ... a lady.
_Count._ It was.
_Countess._ She fled with you.
_Count._ She did.
_Countess._ And have you left her, sir?
_Count._ Alas! alas! I have not; and never can.
_Countess._ Now come to my arms, brave, honourable Ludolph! Did I not
say thou couldst not be ungrateful? Where, where is she who has given
me back my husband?
_Count._ Dare I utter it! in this house.
_Countess._ Call the children.
_Count._ No; they must not affront her: they must not even stare at
her: other eyes, not theirs, must stab me to the heart.
_Countess._ They shall bless her; we will all. Bring her in.
[_Zaida is led in by the Count._]
_Countess._ We three have stood silent long enough: and much there
may be on which we will for ever keep silence. But, sweet young
creature! can I refuse my protection, or my love, to the preserver of
my husband? Can I think it a crime, or even a folly, to have pitied
the brave and the unfortunate? to have pressed (but alas! that it ever
should have been so here!) a generous heart to a tender one?
Why do you begin to weep?
_Zaida._ Under your kindness, O lady, lie the sources of these tears.
But why has he left us? He might help me to say many things which I
want to say.
_Countess._ Did he never tell you he was married?
_Zaida._ He did indeed.
_Countess._ That he had children?
_Zaida._ It comforted me a little to hear it.
_Countess._ Why? prithee why?
_Zaida._ When I was in grief at the certainty of holding but the
second place in his bosom, I thought I could at least go and play with
them, and win perhaps their love.
_Countess._ According to our religion, a man must have only one wife.
_Zaida._ That troubled me again. But the dispenser of your religion,
who binds and unbinds, does for sequins or services what our Prophet
does purely through kindness.
_Countess._ We can love but one.
_Zaida._ We indeed can love only one: but men have large hearts.
_Countess._ Unhappy girl!
_Zaida._ The very happiest in the world.
_Countess._ Ah! inexperienced creature!
_Zaida._ The happier for that perhaps.
_Countess._ But the sin!
_Zaida._ Where sin is, there must be sorrow: and I, my sweet sister,
feel none whatever. Even when tears fall from my eyes, they fall only
to cool my breast: I would not have one the fewer: they all are for
him: whatever he does, whatever he causes, is dear to me.
_Countess._ [_Aside._] This is too much. I could hardly endure to have
him so beloved by another, even at the extremity of the earth. [_To
Zaida._] You would not lead him into perdition?
_Zaida._ I have led him (Allah be praised!) to his wife and children.
It was for those I left my father. He whom we love might have stayed
with me at home: but there he would have been only half happy, even
had he been free. I could not often let him see me through the
lattice; I was too afraid; and I dared only once let fall the
water-melon; it made such a noise in dropping and rolling on the
terrace: but, another day, when I had pared it nicely, and had swathed
it up well among vine-leaves, dipped in sugar and sherbet, I was quite
happy. I leaped and danced to have been so ingenious. I wonder what
creature could have found and eaten it. I wish he were here, that I
might ask him if he knew.
_Countess._ He quite forgot home then!
_Zaida._ When we could speak together at all, he spoke perpetually of
those whom the calamity of war had separated from him.
_Countess._ It appears that you could comfort him in his distress, and
did it willingly.
_Zaida._ It is delightful to kiss the eye-lashes of the beloved: is it
not? but never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.
_Countess._ And even this too? you did this?
_Zaida._ Fifty times.
_Countess._ Insupportable!
He often then spoke about me?
_Zaida._ As sure as ever we met: for he knew I loved him the better
when I heard him speak so fondly.
_Countess._ [_To herself._] Is this possible? It may be ... of the
absent, the unknown, the unfeared, the unsuspected.
_Zaida._ We shall now be so happy, all three.
_Countess._ How can we all live together?
_Zaida._ Now he is here, is there no bond of union?
_Countess._ Of union? of union? [_Aside_.] Slavery is a frightful
thing! slavery for life, too! And she released him from it. What then?
Impossible! impossible! [_To Zaida._] We are rich....
_Zaida._ I am glad to hear it. Nothing anywhere goes on well without
riches.
_Countess._ We can provide for you amply....
_Zaida._ Our husband....
_Countess._ _Our!... husband!..._
_Zaida._ Yes, yes; I know he is yours too; and you, being the elder
and having children, are lady above all. He can tell you how little I
want: a bath, a slave, a dish of pilau, one jonquil every morning, as
usual; nothing more. But he must swear that he has kissed it first.
No, he need not swear it; I may always see him do it, now.
_Countess._ [_Aside._] She agonizes me. [_To Zaida._] Will you never
be induced to return to your own country? Could not Ludolph persuade
you?
_Zaida._ He who could once persuade me anything, may now command me
everything: when he says I must go, I go. But he knows what awaits me.
_Countess._ No, child! he never shall say it.
_Zaida._ Thanks, lady! eternal thanks! The breaking of his word would
break my heart; and better _that_ break first. Let the command come
from you, and not from him.
_Countess._ [_Calling aloud._] Ludolph! Ludolph! hither! Kiss the hand
I present to you, and never forget it is the hand of a preserver.
THE PENTAMERON;
OR,
INTERVIEWS OF MESSER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
AND MESSER FRANCESCO PETRARCA
WHEN
SAID MESSER GIOVANNI LAY INFIRM AT HIS VILLETTA
HARD BY CERTALDO;
AFTER WHICH THEY SAW NOT EACH OTHER ON OUR SIDE
OF PARADISE.
FIRST DAY'S INTERVIEW
_Boccaccio._ Who is he that entered, and now steps so silently and
softly, yet with a foot so heavy it shakes my curtains?
Frate Biagio! can it possibly be you?
No more physic for me, nor masses neither, at present.
Assunta! Assuntina! who is it?
_Assunta._ I cannot say, Signor Padrone! he puts his finger in the
dimple of his chin, and smiles to make me hold my tongue.
_Boccaccio._ Fra Biagio! are you come from Samminiato for this? You
need not put your finger there. We want no secrets. The girl knows her
duty and does her business. I have slept well, and wake better.
[_Raising himself up a little._]
Why? who are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the
sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I
must not have the window-shutters opened, they tell me.
_Petrarca._ Dear Giovanni! have you then been very unwell?
_Boccaccio._ O that sweet voice! and this fat friendly hand of thine,
Francesco!
Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers, and all the
wholesomest herbs of spring, into my breast already.
What showers we have had this April, ay! How could you come along such
roads? If the devil were my labourer, I would make him work upon these
of Certaldo. He would have little time and little itch for mischief
ere he had finished them, but would gladly fan himself with an
Agnus-castus, and go to sleep all through the carnival.
_Petrarca._ Let us cease to talk both of the labour and the labourer.
You have then been dangerously ill?
_Boccaccio._ I do not know: they told me I was: and truly a man might
be unwell enough, who has twenty masses said for him, and fain sigh
when he thinks what he has paid for them. As I hope to be saved, they
cost me a lira each. Assunta is a good market-girl in eggs, and
mutton, and cow-heel; but I would not allow her to argue and haggle
about the masses. Indeed she knows best whether they were not fairly
worth all that was asked for them, although I could have bought a
winter cloak for less money. However, we do not want both at the same
time. I did not want the cloak: I wanted _them_, it seems. And yet I
begin to think God would have had mercy on me, if I had begged it of
him myself in my own house. What think you?
_Petrarca._ I think he might.
_Boccaccio._ Particularly if I offered him the sacrifice on which I
wrote to you.
_Petrarca._ That letter has brought me hither.
_Boccaccio._ You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise, the
moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.
_Petrarca._ Promise! none was made. You only told me that, if it
pleased God to restore you to your health again, you are ready to
acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your _Decameron_. What proof
have you that God would exact it? If you could destroy the _Inferno_
of Dante, would you?
_Boccaccio._ Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn a copy
of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.
_Petrarca._ You are the only author who would not rather demolish
another's work than his own; especially if he thought it better: a
thought which seldom goes beyond suspicion.
_Boccaccio._ I am not jealous of any one: I think admiration
pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I did not come forward at the same
time, nor take the same walks. His flames are too fierce for you and
me: we had trouble enough with milder. I never felt any high
gratification in hearing of people being damned; and much less would I
toss them into the fire myself. I might indeed have put a nettle under
the nose of the learned judge in Florence, when he banished you and
your family; but I hardly think I could have voted for more than a
scourging to the foulest and fiercest of the party.
_Petrarca._ Be as compassionate, be as amiably irresolute, toward your
own _Novelle_, which have injured no friend of yours, and deserve more
affection.
_Boccaccio._ Francesco! no character I ever knew, ever heard of, or
ever feigned, deserves the same affection as you do; the tenderest
lover, the truest friend, the firmest patriot, and, rarest of glories!
the poet who cherishes another's fame as dearly as his own.
_Petrarca._ If aught of this is true, let it be recorded of me that my
exhortations and entreaties have been successful, in preserving the
works of the most imaginative and creative genius that our Italy, or
indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.
_Boccaccio._ I would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or think I
told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in general keep only
one of God's commandments, keep it rigidly in regard to Dante--
Love them who curse you.
He called them all scoundrels, with somewhat less courtesy than
cordiality, and less afraid of censure for veracity than adulation: he
sent their fathers to hell, with no inclination to separate the child
and parent: and now they are hugging him for it in his shroud! Would
you ever have suspected them of being such lovers of justice?
You must have mistaken my meaning; the thought never entered my head:
the idea of destroying a single copy of Dante! And what effect would
that produce? There must be fifty, or near it, in various parts of
Italy.
_Petrarca._ I spoke of you.
_Boccaccio._ Of me! My poetry is vile; I have already thrown into the
fire all of it within my reach.
_Petrarca._ Poetry was not the question. We neither of us are such
poets as we thought ourselves when we were younger, and as younger men
think us still. I meant your _Decameron_; in which there is more
character, more nature, more invention, than either modern or ancient
Italy, or than Greece, from whom she derived her whole inheritance,
ever claimed or ever knew. Would you consume a beautiful meadow
because there are reptiles in it; or because a few grubs hereafter may
be generated by the succulence of the grass?
_Boccaccio._ You amaze me: you utterly confound me.
_Petrarca._ If you would eradicate twelve or thirteen of the
_Novelle_, and insert the same number of better, which you could
easily do within as many weeks, I should be heartily glad to see it
done. Little more than a tenth of the _Decameron_ is bad: less than a
twentieth of the _Divina Commedia_ is good.
_Boccaccio._ So little?
_Petrarca._ Let me never seem irreverent to our master.
_Boccaccio._ Speak plainly and fearlessly, Francesco! Malice and
detraction are strangers to you.
_Petrarca._ Well then: at least sixteen parts in twenty of the
_Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ are detestable, both in poetry and
principle: the higher parts are excellent indeed.
_Boccaccio._ I have been reading the _Paradiso_ more recently. Here it
is, under the pillow. It brings me happier dreams than the others, and
takes no more time in bringing them. Preparation for my lectures made
me remember a great deal of the poem. I did not request my auditors to
admire the beauty of the metrical version:
Osanna sanctus deus Sabbaoth,
Super-illustrans charitate tuâ
Felices ignes horum Malahoth,
nor these, with a slip of Italian between two pales of Latin:
Modicum,[14] et non videbitis me,
Et iterum, sorelle mie dilette,
Modicum, et vos videbitis me.
I dare not repeat all I recollect of
Pepe Setan, Pepe Setan, aleppe,
as there is no holy-water-sprinkler in the room: and you are aware
that other dangers awaited me, had I been so imprudent as to show the
Florentines the allusion of our poet. His _gergo_ is perpetually in
play, and sometimes plays very roughly.
_Petrarca._ We will talk again of him presently. I must now rejoice
with you over the recovery and safety of your prodigal son, the
_Decameron_.
_Boccaccio._ So then, you would preserve at any rate my favourite
volume from the threatened conflagration.
_Petrarca._ Had I lived at the time of Dante, I would have given him
the same advice in the same circumstances. Yet how different is the
tendency of the two productions! Yours is somewhat too licentious; and
young men, in whose nature, or rather in whose education and habits,
there is usually this failing, will read you with more pleasure than
is commendable or innocent. Yet the very time they occupy with you,
would perhaps be spent in the midst of those excesses or
irregularities, to which the moralist, in his utmost severity, will
argue that your pen directs them. Now there are many who are fond of
standing on the brink of precipices, and who nevertheless are as
cautious as any of falling in. And there are minds desirous of being
warmed by description, which without this warmth might seek excitement
among the things described.