Buffalmacco by reason of his merry humour, served his apprenticeship in
the workshop of Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic. Now the said
Tafi was a very knowledgeable master. Sojourning at Venice in the days
when Apollonius was covering the walls of San Marco with mosaics, he had
discovered by means of a trick certain secrets the Greek craftsmen were
for keeping sedulously to themselves. Returning to his native city, he
won so high a repute in the art of composing pictures by arranging
together a countless number of little differently coloured cubes of
glass, he could not supply all the demands addressed to him for works of
the sort, and all day and every day, from matins to vespers, he was
busy, mounted on a scaffold in some Church or other, depicting the dead
Christ, or Christ in His glory, the Patriarchs and Prophets, or the
history of Job or of Noah. And as he was likewise keen to paint in
fresco, with pounded colours, in the manner of the Greeks, which was
then the only one known, he refused himself all rest, and gave his
apprentices none either. He used to tell them:
"They who like myself are in possession of noble secrets and excel in
their art should keep both mind and hand ceaselessly active to carry out
their enterprises, so as to win much wealth and leave a long memory
behind them. And if I, old and broken down as I am, spare myself no
trouble, you are bound to do your utmost to help me with all your
strength, which is fresh, hearty and undiminished."
And in order that his colours, his tesserae of molten glass and his
impastos might be all ready prepared by dawn of day, he forced the lads
to rise in the middle of the night. Nothing could well be more hateful
to Buffalmacco, who was in the habit of supping plentifully, and loved
to run the streets at an hour when, as they say, all cats are grey. He
went to bed late and slept sound, his conscience being clear enough
after all. Accordingly, when Tafi's shrill voice woke him up out of his
beauty sleep, he would only turn round on his pillow and pretend to be
deaf. But his master invariably persisted, and at a pinch would go into
the apprentice's room and very soon have the sheets dragged off the bed
and a jug of cold water emptied over the sluggard's head.
Poor Buffalmacco, shivering and half dressed, would away grumbling, to
grind the colours in the dark, cold workroom, cudgelling his wits the
while, grinding and cursing all the time, to think of some way of
escaping such harsh and humiliating treatment in future. Long he sought
in vain; but his mind was an active one, and one morning early a happy
thought struck him.
To put this in execution, Buffalmacco waited till his master was out of
the way. Directly day broke, Andrea Tafi, as his habit was, pocketed the
flask of Chianti and the three eggs that formed his regular breakfast,
and bidding his pupils melt the glass tesserae according to the
directions, and take every possible pains, went off to work in the
famous church of San Giovanni, a marvellously beautiful building,
constructed with admirable art in the Classical manner. At the time he
was executing on its walls a series of mosaics representing the Angels,
Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, Powers, Thrones and Dominions; the
chief acts of the Almighty, from the Creation of Light to the Deluge;
the history of Joseph and his brethren, the history of Jesus Christ from
the moment He was conceived in His Mother's womb till His Ascension
into Heaven, and the life of St. John Baptist. Seeing the infinite pains
he took to fix the pieces truly in the cement and arrange them
artistically, he expected both profit and fame as the result of this
great work and the host of figures it contained. Then, directly the
master was gone, Buffalmacco hastened to make his preparations for the
enterprise he was bent upon. He went down into the cellar, which,
communicating as it did with a baker's next door, was full of
cockroaches drawn thither by the smell of the sacks of flour. Everybody
knows how cockroaches, or kitchen-beetles, swarm in bakeries, inns and
corn-mills. These are a sort of crawling, stinking insects, with long,
ungainly, shaggy legs and an ugly shell of a dirty yellow.[1]
During the Civil Wars that stained the Arbia red and fertilized the
olive-yards with the blood of nobles, these loathsome insects had two
names in Tuscany: the Florentines called them Siennese, and the Siennese
Florentines.[2]
[Footnote 1: It would be better to speak of the wing-cases. "Shell" is
an utterly unsuitable word--not in the least fitting. The Oriental
cockroach is in question, an insect familiar in almost every part of
Europe.]
[Footnote 2: In Russia they are termed Prussians, and in Prussia
Russians. The French call them _cafards_ (canting creatures,
hypocrites).]
The good Buffalmacco laughed to see the creatures all moving up and
down and in and out, looking for all the world like tiny shields of a
host of pigmy knights jousting in a fairy tourney.
"Ah, ah!" he cried to himself, "they are may-bugs bedevilled, that's
what they are! They would not enjoy the springtime, and Jupiter punished
them for their sluggishness. He has condemned them to crawl about in the
dark, weighed down by their useless wings--an object-lesson to men to
make the most of life in the heyday of youth and love."
This was what Buffalmacco said to himself; for he was ready enough, like
other folk, to see in nature a symbol of his own passions and
inclinations, which were to drink, to divert himself with pretty women
and sleep his fill in a warm bed in winter and a nice cool one in
summer.
However, he had not visited the cellar to ponder on symbols and emblems,
and he was not long in carrying out his plan. He caught two dozen of the
cockroaches, without regard to sex or age, and popped them in a bag he
had brought with him for the purpose. This done, he proceeded to hide
the bag under his bed, and returned to the workroom, where his comrades
Bruno and Calendrino were painting, from the master's sketches, the good
St. Francis receiving the stigmata, and meantime devising some way of
hoodwinking Memmi the cobbler, whose wife was comely and obliging.
Buffalmacco, who was not less expert, far from it, than his two
comrades, mounted the ladder and started painting the wings of the
seraphic crucifix that came down from heaven to mark the Blessed Saint
with the five wounds of love, taking the utmost pains to blend in the
celestial pinions all the tenderest hues of the rainbow. The task
occupied him all day, and when old Tafi came back from San Giovanni, he
could not refrain from bestowing a few words of commendation on his
pupil. This cost him no small effort, for age and riches had made him
both cross and critical.
"My lads," he said, addressing the apprentices, "those wings are painted
with a good deal of spirit. Buffalmacco might go far in the art of
painting, if he would only apply himself more vigorously. But there, his
mind is far too much set on self-indulgence; and great achievements can
only be accomplished by steady labour. Now Calendrino here would beat
you all, with his industry--if he were not a born fool."
In such fashion Andrea Tafi improved the occasion with a proper
severity. Then, having said his say, he went to the kitchen to take his
supper, which consisted of a bit of salt fish; after that he betook
himself to his chamber, lay down in his bed, and was soon snoring.
Meantime Buffalmacco made his usual round through every quarter of the
city where wine was to be had cheap and girls cheaper still. This done,
he got home again half an hour or so before the time Tafi generally
woke. He drew out the bag from under his bed, took the cockroaches one
by one, and by means of a short, sharp needle fastened a little wax
taper on the back of each. Lighting the tapers, he let the insects
loose, one after the other, in the room. The creatures are too stupid to
feel pain, or if they do, to manifest any great panic. They set off
crawling over the floor, at a pace which surprise and perhaps some vague
terror made a trifle quicker than usual. Before long they started
describing circles, not because it is, as Plato says, a perfect figure,
but as a result of the instinct that always makes insects turn round and
round, in their efforts to escape any unknown danger. Buffalmacco looked
on from the vantage-ground of his bed, on which he had thrown himself,
and congratulated himself on the success of his device. And indeed
nothing could be more marvellous than these lights showing a miniature
presentment of the harmony of the spheres, such as it is set out by
Aristotle and his commentators. The cockroaches themselves were
invisible; only the little flames they carried could be seen, which
seemed to be all alive. Just as these same lights were weaving in the
darkness of the room more cycles and epicycles than ever Ptolemy and the
Arabs observed as they watched the motions of the planets, Tafi's voice
made itself heard, shriller than ever, what with a cold in the head and
what with annoyance.
"Buffalmacco! Buffalmacco, I say!" screamed the old fellow, coughing and
spitting, "get up, I say! Get up, you scoundrel! In less than an hour's
time, it will be broad daylight. The bugs in your bed must be built like
very Venuses, you are so loath to leave 'em. Up, you sluggard! If you
don't rise this instant, I'll drag you from between the sheets by the
hair of your head and your long ears!"
These were the sort of terms in which the master would call his pupil
out of bed in the dusk of every morning, such was his zeal for painting
and mosaic-work. On this occasion receiving no reply, he drew on his
hose, but without taking time to pull them any higher than his knees,
and started for his apprentice's bedroom, stumbling at every step. This
was exactly what Buffalmacco expected, and directly he heard the clatter
of his master's footsteps on the stairs, he turned his nose to the wall
and pretended to be fast asleep. And there was old Tafi shouting up the
stairs:
"Hilloa! but you're a grand sleeper. I'll have you out of your slumbers,
I will, though you should be dreaming this very moment that the eleven
thousand virgins are slipping into your bed, begging you to teach 'em
what's what."
With these words on his lips, Andrea Tafi shoved the door of the room
violently open.
Then, catching sight of the points of fire running all over the floor,
he stopped dead on the landing and fell a-trembling in every limb.
"They're devils," he thought, "never a doubt of it,--devils and evil
spirits. Why! they move with a sort of mathematical precision, which is
their strong point, I've always been told. Naturally the Demons hate us
painters, who depict them under hideous shapes, in contrast with the
Angels we represent in glory, an aureole about their brows and waving
wings of dazzling splendour. The unhappy boy is beset with devils; I can
count at least a thousand around his pallet. No doubt he has angered
Lucifer himself, by drawing some horrible picture of him. 'Tis only too
likely these ten thousand imps here will leap upon him and carry him off
alive to Hell. His doom is fixed. And alack! I have myself figured, in
mosaic and other ways, very odious caricatures of Devils, and they have
good reason to bear me a grudge too."
The thought redoubled his fears, and hauling up his hose, he took to
his heels, too much terrified to think of facing the hundred thousand
hobgoblins he had seen wheeling round and round with bodies of fire, and
dashed down the stairs as fast as ever his old legs would carry him.
Buffalmacco had a fine laugh under the sheets, and for once in a way
slept on till broad daylight. Nor did his master ever again dare to go
and wake him.
II
THE ASCENDING UP OF ANDREA TAFI
Andrea Tafi, of Florence, being chosen to decorate the cupola of San
Giovanni with mosaics, carried out the said work in the most perfect
fashion. Every figure was treated in the Greek manner, which Tafi had
learned during his sojourn at Venice, where he had seen workmen busy
adorning the walls of San Marco. He had even brought back with him from
that city a Greek by name Apollonius, who knew excellent secrets for
designing in mosaic. This Apollonius was a skilful workman and a very
clever man. He knew the proportions to be given to the different parts
of the human body and the material for mixing the best cement.
Fearing the Greek might carry his knowledge and address to some other
painter of the city, Andrea Tafi never left his side day or night Every
morning he took him with him to San Giovanni, and brought him home
every evening to his own house, facing San Michele, and made him sleep
there with his two apprentices, Bruno and Buffalmacco, in a room
separated merely by a partition from his own bed-chamber. And as this
partition left half a foot between the top and the beams of the ceiling,
whatever was said in one room could easily be overheard in the other.
Now Tafi was a man of decent manners and pious. He was not like some
painters who, on leaving the Churches where they have been depicting God
creating the world and the infant Jesus in his holy mother's arms, go
straight to houses of ill fame to play dice and drink, play the pipes
and cuddle the girls. He had never wished for better than his good wife,
albeit she was by no means made and moulded by the Creator to afford any
great delight to men; for she was a very dry and a very chilling
personage. Then, after God had removed her from this world to a better,
in his loving mercy, Andrea took no other woman to his bosom either by
marriage or otherwise. On the contrary he was strictly continent, as
became his years, sparing himself both expense and vexation, and
pleasing God to boot, who recompenses in the next world the privations
men endure in this. Andrea Tafi was chaste, sober and well-advised.
He said his prayers with unfailing regularity, and being got to bed, he
never fell asleep without first invoking the Blessed Virgin in these
words:
"Holy Virgin, Mother of God, which for Thy merits wast exalted alive to
Heaven, stretch forth Thy hand full of grace and mercy to me, to lift me
up to that blessed Paradise where Thou sittest on a chair of gold."
And this petition old Tafi did not mumble between the two or three teeth
he had left, but spoke it out in a loud, strong voice, persuaded it is
the singing, as they say, makes the song, and that if you want to be
heard, it is best to shout. Thus it came about that Master Tafi's
supplication was overheard every night by Apollonius the Greek and the
two young Florentines who lay in the next chamber. Now it so happened
Apollonius was likewise of a merry humour, every whit as ready for a
jest as Bruno or Buffalmacco. All three itched sore to play off some
trick on the old painter, who was a just man and a god-fearing, but
hard-fisted withal and a cruel taskmaster. Accordingly one night, after
listening to the old fellow's customary address to the Virgin, the three
comrades fell a-laughing under the bed-clothes and cutting a hundred
jokes. Presently, when they heard him snoring, they began asking each
other in whispers what jape they could play off on him. Well knowing the
holy terror the old man had of the Devil, Apollonius proposed to go,
dressed in red, with horns and a mask, to drag him out of bed by the
feet. But the ingenious Buffalmacco had a better suggestion to offer:
"To-morrow we will provide ourselves with a good stout rope and a
pulley, and I undertake to give you the same evening a highly diverting
exhibition."
Apollonius and Bruno were curious to know what the pulley and rope were
to be used for, but Buffalmacco refused to say. Nevertheless they
promised faithfully to get him what he wanted; for they knew him to
possess the merriest wit in the world and the most fertile in amusing
contrivances, having earned his nickname of Buffalmacco for these very
qualities. And truly he knew some excellent turns, that have since
become legendary.
The three friends, having nothing now to keep them awake, fell asleep
under the moon, which looking in at the garret window, pointed the tip
of one of her horns, as if in mockery, at old Tafi. They slept sound
till daybreak, when the master began hammering on the partition, and
called out, coughing and spitting as usual.
"Get up, master Apollonius! Up with you, apprentices! Day's come;
Ph[oe]bus has blown out the sky candles! Quick's the word! 'Life is
short, and art long.'"
Then he began threatening Bruno and Buffalmacco he would come and start
them out with a bucket of cold water, jeering and asking them:
"Is your bed so delicious, eh? Have you got Helen of Troy there, you're
so loath to quit the sheets?"
Meanwhile he was slipping on his hose and his old, worn hood. This done,
he sallied out, to find the lads waiting on the landing, fully dressed
and with their tools all ready.
That morning, in the fair Church of San Giovanni, on the planking that
mounted to the cornice, the work went on merrily for a while. For the
last week the master had been trying his hardest to give a good
representation according to the recognized rules of art of the baptism
of Jesus Christ. He had just begun putting in the fishes swimming in the
Jordan. Apollonius was mixing the cement with bitumen and chopped straw,
pronouncing words of might known only to himself; while Bruno and
Buffalmacco were picking the little cubes of stone to be used, and Tafi
arranging them according to the sketch he had made on a slab of slate he
held in his hand. But just when the master was busiest over the job, the
three friends sprang lightly down the ladder and slipped out of the
Church. Bruno went off to the house of Calendrino, outside the walls, in
search of a pulley that was used for hoisting corn into the granary. At
the same time Apollonius hurried away to Ripoli to see an old lady, the
wife of a Judge, whom he had promised to provide with a philtre to draw
lovers to her side, and persuading her that hemp was indispensable for
compounding the potion, got her to hand him over the well-rope, a good
stout piece of cord.
The two friends next met at Tafi's house, where they found Buffalmacco
awaiting them. The latter at once set to work to attach the pulley
firmly to the king-post of the roof, above the partition separating the
master's sleeping-room from his apprentices'. Then, after passing the
old lady's well-rope through the pulley, he left one end hanging down in
their own chamber, while he went into his master's apartment and
fastened the bed to the other extremity, by each corner. He took good
care the rope should be concealed behind the curtains, so that nothing
out of the way might be visible. When all was done, the three companions
went back to San Giovanni.
The old man, who had been so busily engaged as scarcely to have noticed
their absence, addressed them with a beaming face:
"Look you," he said, "how those fish sparkle with divers colours, and
particularly with gold, purple and blue, as creatures should which
inhabit the ocean and the rivers, and which possess so marvellous a
brilliancy of hues only because they were the first to submit to the
empire of the goddess Venus, as is all explained in the legend."
Thus the master discoursed in a way full of grace and good sense. For
you must know he was a man of wit and learning, albeit his humour was so
saturnine and grasping, above all when his thoughts turned toward filthy
lucre. He went on:
"Now is not a painter's trade a good one and deserving of all praise? it
wins him riches in this world and happiness in the next. For be sure Our
Lord Jesus Christ will welcome gratefully in His holy Paradise craftsmen
like myself who have portrayed His veritable likeness."
And Andrea Tafi was glad at heart to be at work upon this great picture
in mosaic, whereof several portions are yet visible at San Giovanni to
this day. Presently when night came and effaced both form and colour in
all the Church, he tore himself regretfully from the river Jordan and
sought his house. He supped in the kitchen off a couple of tomatoes and
a scrap of cheese, went upstairs to his room, undressed in the dark and
got into bed.
No sooner was he laid down than he made his customary prayer to the
Blessed Virgin:
"Holy Virgin, Mother of God, which for Thy merits wast exalted alive to
Heaven, stretch forth Thy hand full of grace and mercy to me, to lift me
up to Paradise!"
The moment was come which the three companions had been eagerly awaiting
in the neighbouring room.
They grasped the rope's end that hung down the partition from the
pulley, and scarcely had the good old fellow finished his supplication
when at a sign from Buffalmacco they hauled so vigorously on the cord,
that the bed fastened at the other end began to rise from the floor.
Master Andrea, feeling himself being hoisted aloft, yet without seeing
how, got it into his head it was the Blessed Virgin answering his prayer
and drawing him up to Heaven. He was panic-stricken and fell a-screaming
in a quavering voice:
"Stop, stop, sweet Lady! I never asked it should be now!"
And as the bed rose higher and higher, the rope working smoothly and
noiselessly over the pulley, the old man poured out the most pitiful
supplications to the Virgin Mary:
"Good Lady! sweet Lady! don't pull so! Ho, there! Let go, I say!" But
she seemed not to hear a word. At this he grew furiously angry and
bellowed:
"You must be deaf, you wooden-head! Let go, _bitch of a Madonna_!"
Seeing he was leaving the floor for good and all, his terror increased
yet further; and, calling upon Jesus, he besought Him to make His holy
Mother listen to reason. It was high time, he asseverated, she should
give up this mischancy Assumption. Sinner that he was, and son of a
sinner, he could not, and he would not, go up to Heaven before he'd
finished the river Jordan, the waves and the fishes, and the rest of Our
Blessed Lord's history. Meanwhile the canopy of the bed was all but
touching the beams of the roofing, and Tafi was crying in desperation:
"Jesus, unless you stop your Blessed Mother this instant, the roof of my
house, which cost a fine penny, will most certainly be burst up. For I
see for sure I'm going slap through it. Stop! stop! I can hear the tiles
cracking."
Buffalmacco perceived that by now his master's voice was actually
strangling in his throat, and he ordered his companions to let go the
rope. This they did, the result being that the bed, tumbling suddenly
from roof to floor of the room, crashed down on the boards, breaking the
legs and splitting the panels; simultaneously the bedposts toppled over
and the canopy, curtains, hangings and all fell atop of Master Andrea,
who, thinking he was going to be smothered, started howling like a devil
incarnate. His very soul staggered under the shock, and he could not
tell whether he was fallen back again into his chamber or pitched
headlong into Hell.
At this point the three apprentices rushed in, as if just awakened by
the noise. Seeing the ruins of the bed lying smothered in clouds of
dust, they feigned intense surprise, and instead of going to the old
man's help, asked him if it was the Devil had done the mischief. But he
only sighed heavily, and said:
"It's all up with me; pull me out of this. I'm a dying man!"
At last they dragged him from among the debris, under which he was ready
to suffocate, and placed him sitting up with his back to the wall. He
breathed hard, coughed and spat, and:
"My lads," he said, "but for the timely succour of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hurled me back to earth again with a violence you can
plainly see the effects of, I should at this present moment be in the
circle of Heaven named the crystalline or _primum mobile_. His holy
Mother would not listen to a word. In my fall, I have lost three teeth,
which, without being exactly sound, still did me good service.
Moreover, I have an agonizing pain in my right side and in the arm that
holds the brush."
"My master," said Apollonius pityingly, "you must have received some
internal hurts, which is a very dangerous thing. At Constantinople, in
the risings, I discovered how much more deadly such injuries are than
mere external wounds. But never fear, I am going to charm away the
mischief with spells."
"Not for worlds!" put in the old man; "that were a deadly sin. But come
hither, all three, and do me the service, an you will, of rubbing me
well in the worst places."
They did as he asked, and never left him till they had pretty well
scarified every bit of skin off the old fellow's back and loins.