noted of the nymphs that turned into witches and the old man with horns
on his brow, whose voice quavered in the woods like a last sigh of the
Classic flute and a first prelude of the Christian harp. While he wrote,
the birds sang; and night closed in slowly, blotting out the bright
colours of the day. The Monk lighted his lamp, and went on with his
writing. As he recounted each several marvel he had made acquaintance
with, he carefully expounded its literal, and its spiritual,
signification, all according to the rules of rhetoric and theology. And
just as men fence about cities with walls and towers to make them
strong, so he supported all his arguments with texts of Scripture. He
concluded from the singular revelations he had received: firstly, that
Jesus Christ is Lord of all creatures, and is God of the Satyrs and the
Pans, as well as of men. This is why St. Jerome saw in the Desert
Centaurs that confessed Jesus Christ; secondly, that God had
communicated to the Pagans certain glimmerings of light, to the end they
might be saved. Likewise the Sibyls, for instance the Cumaean, the
Egyptian and the Delphic, did these not foreshadow, amid the darkness of
the Gentiles, the Holy Cradle, the Rods, the Reed, the Crown of Thorns
and the Cross itself? For which reason St. Augustine admitted the
Erythraean Sibyl into the City of God. Fra Mino gave thanks to God for
having taught him so much learning; and a great joy flooded his heart to
think Virgil was among the elect. And he wrote gleefully at the bottom
of the last leaf:
"_Here endeth the Apocalypse of Brother Mino, the poor man of Jesus
Christ. I have seen the aureole of the blessed Saints crowning the
horned forehead of the Satyr, in token that Jesus Christ hath redeemed
from the shades of limbo the sages and poets of Antiquity._"
The night was already far spent when, having finished his task, Fra Mino
stretched himself upon his bed to snatch a little repose. Just as he was
dropping asleep, an old woman came in at the window, riding on a
moonbeam. He recognized her instantly for the ugliest of the witches he
had seen in the Chapel of San Michele.
"My sweet," she said, addressing him, "what have you been doing this
day? Yet we warned you, I and my pretty sisters, you must not reveal our
secrets. For if you betrayed us, we told you we should kill you. And
sorry I should be, for indeed I love you tenderly."
She clipped him in her arms, called him her heavenly Adonis, her
darling, her little white ass, and lavished a thousand ardent caresses
on him.
Anon, when he repulsed her with a spasm of disgust,
"Child, child!" she said to him, "you scorn me, because my eyes are
rimmed with red, my nostrils rotted with the acrid, fetid humour they
distil, and my gums adorned with a single tooth, and that black and
extravagantly long. Such is your Neaera to-day, it is too true. But if
you love me, I shall once more become, by you and for you, what I was in
the golden days of Saturn, when my youth was in blossom amid the
blossoms of the young, flower-decked world. 'Tis love, oh! my young god,
that makes the beauty of things. To restore my beauty, all that is
needed is a little courage. Up, Mino, be bold and show your mettle!"
At these words, which were accompanied by appropriate gestures, Fra
Mino, shuddering with fear and horror, felt himself swoon away, and
slipped from his bed on to the pavement of his cell. As he fell, he
seemed to catch a glimpse, between his half-closed lids, of a nymph of
perfect shape and peerless beauty, whose naked body rolled over his like
waves of milk.
He woke in broad daylight, bruised and broken by his fall. The leaves of
the manuscript he had written the night before still littered the desk.
He read them through again, folded and sealed them with his seal, put
the roll inside his gown, and unheeding the menaces the witches had
twice over given him, started to carry his revelations to the Lord
Bishop, whose Palace lifted its battlements above the roofs in the
middle of the city. He found him donning his spurs in the Great Hall,
surrounded by his men-at-arms. For the Bishop was just then at war with
the Ghibellines of Florence. He asked the Monk to what he owed his
visit, and on being informed of the matter, invited him there and then
to read out his report. Fra Mino obeyed, and the Bishop heard out his
tale to the end. He had no special lights on the subject of apparitions;
but he was animated with an ardent zeal for the interests of the Faith.
Without a day's delay, and not suffering the cares of the War to
distract him from his purpose, he appointed twelve famous Doctors in
Theology and Canon Law to examine into the affair, urging them to give
a definite and speedy decision. After mature inquiry and not without
again and again cross-questioning Fra Mino, the Doctors determined the
best thing to do was to open the tomb of San Satiro in the Chapel of San
Michele, and go through a course of special exorcisms on the spot. As to
the points of doctrine raised by Fra Mino, they declined to pronounce a
formal opinion, inclining however to regard as rash, frivolous and
new-fangled the arguments advanced by the Franciscan.
Agreeably to the advice of the learned Doctors and by order of the
Bishop, the tomb of San Satiro was opened. It was found to contain
nothing but a handful of ashes, which the priests sprinkled with holy
water. At this there rose a white vapour, from which issued a sound of
faint and feeble groans.
The night following this pious ceremony Fra Mino dreamed that the
witches, bending over his bed, were tearing his heart out of his bosom.
He rose at dawn, tortured with sharp pains and devoured by a raging
thirst. He dragged himself as far as the cloister well, where the doves
used to drink. But no sooner had he drained down a few drops of water
that filled a hollow in the well-head than he felt his heart swell
within him like a sponge, and with a stifled cry to God, he choked and
died.
MESSER GUIDO CAVALCANTI
TO JULES LEMAITRE
MESSER GUIDO CAVALCANTI
_Guido, di Messer Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, fu un de' migliori loici
che avesse il mondo, et ottimo filosofo naturale.... E percio che egli
alquanto tenea della opinione degli Epicuri, si diceva tra la gente
volgare che queste sue speculazioni eran solo in cercare se trovar si
potesse che Iddio non fosse._[1] (The _Decameron_ of Messer Giovanni
Boccaccio, Sixth Day, Novella IX.)
DIM
NON. FVI. ME.
MINI. NON. SVM.
NON. CVRO. DO.
NNIA. ITALIA. AN.
NORVM. XX. HIC.
QVIESCO.[2]
(Inscription from the _Cippus of Donnia Italia_ as read by M.
Jean-Francois Blade.)
[Footnote 1: "Guido, son of Messer Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, was one of
the best Logicians the world held, and a most finished Natural
Philosopher.... And forasmuch as in some degree he held by the opinion
of the Epicureans, it was therefore said among the vulgar folk how that
these his speculations were only pursued for to discover if it might be
there was no God."]
[Footnote 2: "To the Gods of the Lower World.--I was not. I remember. I
am not and I heed not. I, Donnia Italia, a maid of twenty, rest here."]
Messer Guido Cavalcanti was, in the twentieth year of his age, the most
agreeable and the best-built man of all the Florentine nobles. Beneath
his long, dark locks, which escaping from under his cap, fell in jetty
curls over his white brow, his eyes, that had a golden gleam in them,
shone out with a dazzling brilliance. He possessed the arms of Hercules
and the hands of a Nymph. His shoulders were broad, and his figure slim
and supple. He was well skilled in breaking difficult horses and
wielding heavy weapons, and a peerless rider at the ring. Whenever he
passed along the city streets to hear Mass at San Giovanni or San
Michele, or walked by Arno side in the water-meadows, that were pranked
with flowers like a beautiful picture, if any fair ladies, going in a
troop together, met him in the way, they never failed to say the one to
the other with a blush: "See, yonder is Messer Guido, son of the Lord
Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. 'Tis a very St. George for comeliness,
pardi!" And men report that Madonna Gemma, wife of Sandro Bujamonte, one
day sent her Nurse to let him know how she loved him with all her soul,
and was like to die of longing. Nor less ardently was he invited to join
the Companies the young Florentine lords were used in those days to form
among themselves, feasting, supping, gaming and hunting together, and
sometimes so dearly loving each other that one and all would wear
garments of a like cut and colour. But with equal disdain he shunned the
society of Florentine ladies and the assemblages of her young Nobles;
for so proud and fierce was his humour, he took no pleasure but in
solitude.
He would often stay all the day shut up in his chamber, then forth to
wander solitary beneath the holm-oaks that bordered the Ema road at the
hour when the first stars are a-tremble in the pale evening sky. If by
chance he encountered riders of his own age, he never laughed, and said
little--and that little was not always comprehensible. His strange
bearing and ambiguous words were a grief and a grievance to his
comrades--and above all to Messer Betto Brunelleschi, for he dearly
loved Messer Guido, and had no fonder wish than to make him one of the
Brotherhood which embraced the richest and the handsomest young noblemen
of Florence, and of which he was himself the glory and the delight. For
indeed Messer Betto Brunelleschi was reputed the fine flower of chivalry
and the most perfect knight of all Tuscany--after Messer Guido.
One day as the latter was just entering the Porch of Santa Maria
Novella, where the Monks of the Order of Saint Dominic kept at that time
a number of books that had been brought to Italy by the Greeks, Messer
Betto, who was crossing the Piazza at the moment, loudly hailed his
friend:
"Hola! Guido mine," he shouted, "whither away now, this bright day,
that invites you, methinks, to go fowling in the hills rather than hide
in the gloom of the Cloister yonder? Do me a favour, and come to my
house at Arezzo, where I will play the flute to you, for the pleasure of
seeing you smile."
"Grammercy!" replied Messer Guido, without so much as deigning to turn
his head. "I am away to see my Lady."
And so saying, he entered the Church, which he crossed with a rapid
step, recking as little of the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the
Altar as of Messer Betto, sitting stiff on his horse outside the
door, astounded at the words he had just heard. Guido pushed open a
low portal leading to the Cloisters, followed the Cloister wall, and
arrived in the Library, where Fra Sisto was painting the figures of
angels. There, after saluting the good Brother, he drew out from a
great painted chest one of the books newly come from Constantinople,
laid it on a desk and began to turn over the leaves. It was a
Treatise on Love, writ in Greek by the divine Plato. Messer Guido
sighed; his hands began to tremble and his eyes filled with tears.
"Alas!" he muttered; "hid beneath these signs is the Light, and I cannot
see it."
He said thus to himself, because the knowledge of the Greek tongue was
then altogether lost in the West. After many a long-drawn groan, he took
the book, and kissing it, laid it in the iron chest like a beautiful
dead woman in her coffin. Then he asked the good Fra Sisto to give him
the Manuscript of the Speeches of Cicero, which he read, till the shades
of evening, glooming down on the cypresses in the Cloister garden,
spread their batlike wings over the pages of his book. For you must know
Messer Guido Cavalcanti was a searcher after truth in the writings of
the Ancients, and was for treading the arduous ways that lead mankind to
immortality. Devoured by the noble longing of discovery, he would set
out in canzones the doctrines of the old-world Sages concerning Love
which is the path to Virtue.
A few days later, Messer Betto Brunelleschi came to visit him at his own
house on the promenade of the Adimari, at the peep of day, the hour when
the lark sings in the corn. He found him still abed, and after kissing
him, said tenderly:
"My Guido, my Guido lad! put me out of my pain. Last week you told me
you were on your way to visit your Lady in the Church and Cloister of
Santa Maria Novella. Ever since I have been turning, turning your words
in my head, without fathoming their meaning. I shall have no peace till
you have given me an explanation of them. I beseech you, tell me what
you meant--so far, that is, as your discretion shall suffer you, seeing
the matter doth concern a lady."
Messer Guido burst out a-laughing. Raising himself on his elbow in bed,
he looked Messer Betto in the eyes.
"Friend!" said he, "the Lady I spoke to you of hath more than one
habitation. The day you saw me going to visit her, I found her in the
Library of Santa Maria Novella. But alack! I heard but the one half of
her discourse, for she spoke to me in both of the two languages that
flow like honey from her adorable lips. First she delivered me a
discourse in the tongue of the Greeks, which I could not comprehend,
then she addressed me in the dialect of the Latins with a wondrous
wisdom. And so well pleased was I with her conversation that I am right
fain to marry her."
"Tis at the least," said Messer Betto, "a niece of the Emperor of
Constantinople, or his natural daughter.... How name you her?"
"If needs be," answered Messer Guido, "we must give her a love name,
such as every poet gives to his mistress. I will call her Diotima, in
memory of Diotima of Megara, who showed the way to the lovers of Virtue.
But her public and avowed name is Philosophy, and 'tis the most
excellent bride a man can find. I want no other, and I swear by the gods
to be faithful unto death, which doth put an end to life and thought."
When he heard these sentiments, Messer Betto struck his forehead with
his hand and cried:
"Per Bacco! but I never guessed the riddle! Friend Guido, you have the
subtlest wit under the red lily of Florence. I heartily commend your
taking to wife so high a dame. Of a surety, will spring of this union a
numerous progeny of canzones, sonnets and ballades. I promise to baptize
you these pretty babes to the sound of my flute, with dainty mottoes
galore and gallant devices. I am the more rejoiced at this spiritual
wedlock, seeing it will never hinder you, when the time comes, to marry
according to the flesh some fair and goodly lady of the city."
"Nay! you are out," returned Messer Guido. "They that celebrate the
espousals of the mind should leave carnal marriage to the profane
vulgar, which includes the great Lords, the Merchants and the
Handicraftsmen. If like me you had known my Diotima, you would have
learned, friend Betto, that she doth distinguish two sorts of men, on
the one hand such as, being fruitful only by the body, strive but for
that coarse and commonplace immortality that is won by the generation of
children, on the other they whose soul conceives and engenders what is
meet for the soul to produce, to wit the Good and Beautiful. My Diotima
hath willed I should be of the second sort, and I will not go against
her good pleasure, and copy the mere brutes that breed and procreate."
Messer Betto Brunelleschi by no means approved of this resolution. He
pointed out to his friend that in life we must adapt ourselves to the
different conditions and modes of existence suitable to the different
ages, that after the epoch of pleasures comes that of ambition, and that
it was good and prudent, as youth waned, to contract alliance with some
rich and noble family, affording access to the great offices of the
Republic, such as Prior of the Arts and Liberty, Captain of the People,
or Gonfalonier of Justice.
Seeing however that his friend only received his advice with a lip of
disgust, as if it were some bitter drug, he said no more on the point,
for fear of angering him, deeming it wise to trust to time, which will
change men's hearts and reverse the strongest resolutions.
"Sweet Guido," he interposed gaily, "tell me this much at any rate.
Doth your lady suffer you to have delight with pretty maids and to take
part in our diversions?"
"For that matter," replied Messer Guido, "she hath no more care of such
things than of the encounters that small dog you see asleep yonder at
the foot of my bed may make in the street. And in very deed they are of
no account, provided a man doth himself attach no value to them."
Messer Betto left the room a trifle piqued at his friend's scornful
bearing. He continued to feel the liveliest affection for his friend,
but thought it unbecoming to press him overmuch to attend the fetes and
entertainments he gave all the Winter long with an admirable liberality.
At the same time the gentlemen of his Company resented hotly the slight
the son of the Signor Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti did them by refusing to
share their society. They began to rally him on, his studies and poring
over books, declaring that by dint of so feeding on parchment, like the
Monks and the rats, he would end up by growing to resemble these, and
would anon have nothing to show but a pointed snout and three long hairs
for beard, peeping out from under a black hood, and that Madonna Gemma
herself would cry out at sight of him:
"Venus, my Patroness! what a pass have his books brought my handsome St.
George to! He is good for naught now but to throw away his lance and
hold a writing-reed in hand instead." So they miscalled him sore, saying
he toyed only with the bookworms and spiders, and was tied to the
apron-strings of Mistress Philosophia. Nor did they stop short at
such-like light raillery, but let it be understood he was too learned by
far to be a good Christian, that he was given over to Magic Arts, and
held converse with the Devils of Hell.
"Folk do not lurk in hiding like that," they said to each other, "for
any reason but to foregather with the Devils, male and female, and get
gold of them as the price of revolting and shameful acts."
To crown all, they charged him with sharing those false and pernicious
doctrines of Epicurus which had already seduced an Emperor at Naples and
a Pope in Rome, and threatened to turn the peoples of Europe into a herd
of swine, without a thought of God and their own immortal souls. "A
mighty fine gain," they ended up, "when his studies have brought him to
forswear the Holy Trinity!" This last charge they bruited abroad was the
most formidable of all, and might easily work ruin on Messer Guido.
Now Messer Guido Cavalcanti was well aware of the mockery they made of
him in the Companies by reason of the careful heed he had of eternal
things; and this was why he shunned the society of living men and sought
rather to the dead.
In those days the Church of San Giovanni was surrounded with Roman
tombs. Thither would Messer Guido often come at _Ave Maria_ and meditate
far into the silent night. He believed, as the Chronicles reported, that
this fair Church of San Giovanni had been a Pagan Temple before it was a
Christian Church, and the thought pleased his soul, which was enamoured
of the old-world mysteries. Especially he loved to look on these tombs,
where the sign of the Cross found no place, but which bore Latin
inscriptions and were adorned with carven figures of men and gods. They
were long cubes of white marble, on the sides of which could be made out
representations of banquets and hunting parties, the death of Adonis,
the fight of Lapithae and Centaurs, the refusal of the chaste Hippolytus,
the Amazons. Messer Guido would read the lettering with anxious care,
and try hard to penetrate the meaning of these fables. One tomb in
particular occupied him more than all the rest, for it showed him two
Loves, each holding a torch, and he was curious to discover the nature
of these two Loves. Well! one night that he was pondering on these
things more deeply than ever, a shadow rose up above the lid of the
tomb--a luminous shadow, as when you see, or fancy you see, the moon
shining faintly through a cloud. Gradually it took the shape of a
beautiful virgin, and said thus in a voice softer than the reeds waving
in the wind:
"I am she that sleeps within this tomb, and I am called Julia Laeta. I
lost the light on my marriage-day, at the age of sixteen years, three
months and nine days. Since then, whether I am, or am not, I cannot
tell. Never question the dead, stranger, for they see naught, and a
thick night environs them. 'Tis said that such as in life knew the cruel
joys of Venus roam the glades of a dense forest of myrtles. For me who
died a virgin, I sleep a dreamless sleep. They have graven two Loves on
the stone of my sepulchre. One gives mortals the light of day; the other
quenches it in their tender eyes for ever. The countenance of both is
the same, a smiling countenance, for birth and death are two twin
brothers, and all is joy to the Immortal Gods. I have spoken."
The voice fell silent, like the rustling of leaves when the wind drops.
The transparent shadow vanished away in the light of dawn, which
descended clear and white on the hills; and the tombs of San Giovanni
grew wan and silent once again in the morning air. And Messer Guido
pondered:
"The truth I foresaw, hath been made manifest to me. Is it not writ in
the Book the Priests use, 'Shall the dead praise Thee, O Lord?' The dead
are without thought or knowledge, and the divine Epicurus was well
advised when he enfranchised the living from the vain terrors of the
life to come."
A troop of horsemen pricking across the Piazza abruptly broke up his
meditations. It was Messer Betto and his Company away to hunt the cranes
along the brookside of Peretola.
"So ho!" cried one of them, whose name was Bocca, "see yonder, Messer
Guido the Philosopher, who scorns us for our good life and gentle ways
and merry doings. He seems half frozen."
"And well he may be," put in Messer Doria, who was reputed a wag. "His
lady, the Moon, whom he kisses tenderly all night, hath hied her behind
the hills to sleep with some shepherd swain. He is eat up with jealousy;
look you, how green he is!"
They spurred their horses among the tombs, and drew up in a ring about
Messer Guido.
"Nay! nay! Messer Doria," returned Bocca, "the lady Moon is too round
and bright for so black a gallant. If you would know his mistresses,
they be here. Here he comes to find them in their bed, where he is less
like to be stung of fleas than of scorpions."
"Fie! Out upon the vile necromancer!" exclaimed Messer Giordano,
crossing himself; "see what learning leads to! Folk disown God, and go
fornicating in Pagan graveyards."
Leaning against the Church wall, Messer Guido let the riders have their
say. When he judged they had voided all the froth of their shallow
brains over him:
"Gentle cavaliers," he answered, smiling, "you are at home. I am your
host, and courtesy constrains me to receive your insults without reply."
So saying, he bounded over the tombs and walked quietly away. The
horsemen looked at one another in amazement; then bursting out laughing,
they gave spur to their steeds. As they were galloping along the
Peretola Road, Messer Bocca said to Messer Betto:
"Who can doubt now but this Guido is gone mad? He told us we were at
home in the graveyard. And to say such a thing, he must needs have lost
his wits."
"True it is," replied Messer Betto, "I cannot imagine what he meant to
have us understand by talking in such a sort. But he is used to
expressing himself in dark sayings and subtle parables. He hath tossed
us a bone this time must be opened to find the marrow."
"Pardi!" ejaculated Messer Giordano; "my dog may have this bone to gnaw,
and the Pagan that threw it to boot."
They soon reached the banks of the Peretola brook, whence the cranes may
be seen rising in flocks at daybreak. During the chase, which was
abundantly successful, Messer Betto Brunelleschi never ceased pondering
the words Guido had used. And by dint of much thinking, he discovered
their signification. Hailing Messer Bocca with loud cries, he said to
him:
"Come hither, Messer Bocca! I have just guessed what it was Messer Guido
meant us to understand. He told us we were at home in a graveyard,
because the ignorant be for all the world like dead men, who, according
to the Epicurean doctrine, have no faculty of thought or knowledge."
Messer Bocca replied, shrugging his shoulders, he understood better than
most how to fly a Flanders hawk, to make knife-play with his enemies,
and to upset a girl, and this was knowledge sufficient for his state in
life.