through the city. This they did to such good effect that there was not
man, woman nor child in Florence could look Master Andrea Tafi in the
face without bursting out laughing. Now one morning Buffalmacco was
passing down the Corso, Messer Guido, the son of the Signor Cavalcanti,
who was on his way to the marshes to shoot crane, stopped his horse,
called the apprentice to him, and tossed him his purse with the words:
"Ho! gentle Buffalmacco, here's somewhat to drink to the health of
Epicurus and his disciples."
You must know Messer Guido was of the sect of the Epicureans and loved
to marshal well-arranged arguments against the existence of God. He was
used to declare the death of men is precisely the same as that of
beasts.
"Buffalmacco," added the young nobleman, "this purse I have given you is
for payment of the very instructive, complete and profitable experiment
you made, when you sent old Tafi to Heaven--who, seeing his carcass
taking the road to the Empyrean, began to squeal like a pig being
killed. This proves plainly he had no real assurance in the promised
joys of Paradise--which are, it must be allowed, far from certain. In
the same way as nurses tell children fairy-tales, vague things are
talked concerning the immortality of mortal men. The vulgar herd thinks
it believes these tales, but it does not really and truly. Hard fact
comes and shivers the poets' fables. There is nothing assured but the
sad life of this world. Horace, the Roman poet, is of my opinion when he
says: _Serus in caelum redeas_."[1]
[Footnote 1: "_May it be long ere you return to heaven your home._"--Ode
2 of Book I, addressed to Augustus.]
III
THE MASTER
Having learned the art of preparing and using the proper coats and
colours, as well as the secret of painting figures in the good manner of
Cimabue and Giotto, the young Buonamico Cristofani, the Florentine,
surnamed Buffalmacco, abandoned the workshop of his master Andrea Tafi,
and proceeded to establish himself in the quarter of the fullers,
immediately opposite to the house known by the sign of the Goose's Head.
Now in those days, like fair ladies outvying one another in wearing
gowns broidered with flowers, the towns of Italy made it their pride to
cover the walls of their Churches and Cloisters with paintings. Among
all these, Florence was the most sumptuous and magnificent, and was the
place of all others for a Painter to live in. Buffalmacco knew how to
give his figures movement and expression; and, while far behind the
divine Giotto for beauty of design, he pleased the eye by the gay
exuberance of his inventions. So he was not long in getting commissions
in considerable numbers. It only depended on himself to win riches and
fame with all speed. But his chief idea was to amuse himself in company
of Bruno di Giovanni and Nello, and squander along with them, in
debauchery, all the money he made.
Now the Abbess of the Ladies of Faenza, established at Florence,
determined about this time to have the Church of their Nunnery decorated
with frescoes. Hearing that there lived in the quarter of the fullers
and wool-carders a very clever painter named Buffalmacco, she despatched
her Steward thither to come to an arrangement with him as to the
execution of the proposed paintings. The master agreed to the terms
offered and undertook the commission readily enough. He had a
scaffolding erected in the Nunnery Church and on the still moist plaster
began to paint, with wondrous vigour of execution, the history of Jesus
Christ. First of all, to the right of the Altar, he illustrated the
massacre of the Holy Innocents, and succeeded in expressing so vividly
the grief and rage of the mothers trying vainly to save their little
ones from the Roman soldiers' hands, that the very wall seemed to chant
like the faithful in Church, "_Cur, Crudelis Herodes?..._" Drawn thither
by curiosity, the Nuns used to come, two or three of them together, to
watch the master at work. At sight of all these despairing mothers and
murdered babes, they could not help sobbing and shedding tears. In
particular there was one little fellow Buffalmacco had drawn lying in
his swaddling bands, smiling and sucking his thumb, between a soldier's
legs. The Nuns begged and prayed this one might not be killed:
"Oh! spare him," they said to the Painter. "Do take care the soldiers
don't see him and kill him!"
The good Buffalmacco answered:
"For love of you, dear sisters, I will protect him all I can. But these
murderers are filled with so savage a rage, it will be a difficult
matter to stop them."
When they declared "The baby _is_ such a little darling!..." he offered
to make each of them a little darling prettier still.
"Thank you kindly!" they answered back, laughing.
The Abbess came in her turn to assure herself with her own eyes that the
work was being done satisfactorily. She was a lady of very high birth,
named Usimbalda, a proud, severe and careful personage. Seeing a man
working without cloak or hood, and like a common labourer wearing only
shirt and hose, she mistook him for some apprentice lad and did not
condescend so much as to speak to him. She came again and again, five or
six times, to the Chapel, without ever seeing any one more important
than this working fellow she deemed only fit to grind the colours. Out
of all patience at last, she showed him she was far from satisfied.
"My lad," she bade him, "tell your master from me he must come and work
himself at the pictures I commissioned him to paint. I meant them to be
the work of his own hand, not a mere apprentice's."
Far from declaring himself, Buffalmacco put on the look and voice of a
poor working-man, and humbly answered Usimbalda, that he saw plain
enough he was not of the sort to inspire confidence in so noble a lady,
and that his duty was to obey.
"I will inform my master," he went on; "and he will not fail to put
himself at the orders of My Lady Abbess."
With this assurance, the Lady Usimbalda left the Church. No sooner was
he alone than Buffalmacco arranged on the scaffolding, just at the spot
where he was at work, two stools with a crock on the top. Then going to
the corner where he had laid them, he pulled out his cloak and hat,
which as it happened were in a very fair state of freshness, and put
them on the lay figure he had improvised; next, he stuck a brush in the
spout of the crock, which was turned towards the wall. This done, after
assuring himself the thing had quite the look of a man busy painting, he
decamped with all speed, determined to keep away till he had seen what
happened.
Next day the Nuns paid their usual visit to the scene of action. But
finding instead of the merry fellow they were accustomed to, a stately
gentleman who held himself In the stiffest of attitudes and seemed
entirely indisposed to laugh and talk, they were afraid and took to
flight.
Madame Usimbalda on the contrary, when _she_ returned to the Church, was
delighted to see the master at work in lieu of the apprentice.
She proceeded to give him much valuable advice, exhorting him for a good
ten minutes to paint figures that should be modest, noble and
expressive--before she discovered she was addressing her remarks to a
crock.
She would hardly have found out her mistake even then, had she not grown
impatient at receiving no reply, and pulling the master by his cloak,
brought crock, stool, hat, brush and all tumbling at her feet. Then, as
she was by no means wanting in sense, she saw it was intended as a
lesson not to judge the artist by his dress. She sent her steward to
Buffalmacco, and begged him to finish what he had begun.
He completed the work greatly to his credit. Connoisseurs especially
admired in these frescoes the figure of the Crucified Redeemer, the
three Marys weeping at the foot of the Cross, Judas hanged on a tree,
and a man blowing his nose. Unfortunately the paintings were all
destroyed along with the Church of the Nunnery of the Ladies of Faenza.
IV
THE PAINTER
Equally famous for his wit and humour and for his skill in devising
figure subjects on the walls of Church and Cloister, Buonamico, surnamed
Buffalmacco, had already left his youth behind when he was invited from
Florence to Arezzo by the Lord Bishop of that city, who wished the halls
of his Palace decorated with paintings. Buffalmacco undertook the
commission, and directly the walls were duly laid with stucco, started
on a picture of the Adoration of the Wise Men.
In the course of a few days he had painted in King Melchior complete,
mounted on a white horse, looking for all the world as if he were alive.
His horse's saddle-cloth was scarlet, dotted with precious stones.
Now all the time he was at work, the Bishop's pet monkey sat staring
intently at his proceedings, never taking his eyes off him. Whether the
painter was squeezing his tubes, mixing his colours, beating up his eggs
or laying on the colour with his brush on the moist surface, the
creature never lost one of his movements. It was a baboon brought from
Barbary for the Doge of Venice in one of the State Galleys. The Doge
made a present of it to the Bishop of Arezzo, who thanked his
Magnificence, reminding him prettily how King Solomon's ships had in
like fashion imported from the land of Ophir apes and peacocks, as is
related in the First Book of Kings (x. 22). And there was nothing in all
his Palace Bishop Guido held more precious than this baboon.
He left the animal to roam at liberty about the halls and gardens, where
it was for ever at some mischievous trick or another. One Sunday, during
the painter's absence, the creature climbed up on the scaffolding, laid
hold of the tubes, mixed up the colours in a way of its own, broke all
the eggs it could find, and began plying the brush on the wall, as it
had seen the other do. It worked away at King Melchior and his horse,
never leaving off till the whole composition was repainted according to
its own ideas.
Next morning Buffalmacco, finding his colours all topsy-turvy and his
work spoiled, was both grieved and angry. He was persuaded some painter
of Arezzo, who was jealous of his superior skill, had played him this
dirty trick, and went straight to the Bishop to complain. The latter
urged him to set to work again and repair with all speed what had been
ruined in a manner so mysterious. He undertook that for the future two
soldiers should keep guard night and day before the frescoes, with
orders to drive their lances through any one who should dare to come
near. On this condition, Buffalmacco agreed to resume his task, and two
soldiers were put on sentry close at hand. One evening, just as he was
leaving the hall, his day's work finished, the soldiers saw the Lord
Bishop's ape spring so nimbly into his place on the scaffold and seize
the colour-tubes and brushes with such rapidity there was no possibility
of stopping him. They shouted lustily to the painter, who came back just
in time to see the baboon paint over for the second time King Melchior,
the white horse and the scarlet saddle-cloth. The sight was like to move
poor Buffalmacco at one and the same time to laughter and tears.
He went off to the Bishop and thus addressed him:
"My Lord Bishop, you are good enough to admire my style of painting; but
your baboon prefers a different. What need to have had me summoned here,
when you had a master painter in your own household? It may be he
lacked experience. But now he has nothing left to learn, my presence
here is quite unnecessary, and I will back to Florence."
Having so said, the good Buffalmacco returned to his inn, in great
vexation. He ate his supper without appetite and went to bed in a very
dismal frame of mind.
Then the Lord Bishop's ape appeared to him in a dream, not a mere
mannikin as he was in reality, but as tall as Monte San Gemignano,
cocking up a prodigious tail and tickling the moon. He was squatted in
an olive wood among the farms and oil-presses, while betwixt his legs a
narrow road ran alongside a row of flourishing vineyards. Now the said
road was thronged with a multitude of pilgrims, who defiled one by one
before the painter's eyes. And lo! Buffalmacco recognized the countless
victims of his practical jokes and merry humour generally.
He saw, to begin with, his old master Andrea Tafi, who had taught him
how men win renown by practice of the arts, and whom in return he had
befooled again and again, making him mistake for devils of hell a dozen
wax tapers pinned on the backs of a lot of great cockroaches, and
hoisting him in his bed to the joists of the ceiling, so that the poor
old fellow thought he was being carried up to heaven and was in mortal
terror.
He saw the wool-carder of the _Gooses Head_, and his wife, that notable
woman, at the spinning-wheel. Into this good dame's cooking-pot
Buffalmacco had been wont every evening to throw big handfuls of salt
through a crack in the wall, so that day after day the wool-carder would
spit out his porridge and beat his wife.
He saw Master Simon de Villa, the Bolognese physician, to be known by
his Doctor's cap, the same he had pitched into the cesspool beside the
Convent of the Nuns of Ripoli. The Doctor ruined his best velvet gown,
but nobody pitied him, for regardless of his good wife's claims, a plain
woman but a Christian, he had longed to bed with Prester John's
Chinchimura, who wears horns betwixt her sinful buttocks. Good
Buffalmacco had persuaded the Doctor he could take him o' nights to the
Witches' Sabbath, where he went himself with a merry company to make
love to the Queen of France, who gave him wine and spices for his
doughty deeds. Simon accepted the invitation, hoping he should be
treated right royally too. Then Buffalmacco having donned a beast's skin
and a horned mask such as they wear at merry-makings, came to Master
Simon, declaring he was a devil ordered to conduct him to the Sabbath.
Taking him on his shoulders, he carried him to the edge of a pit full of
filth, where he pitched him in head first.
Next Buffalmacco saw Calendrino, whom he had got to believe that the
stone Heliotropia was to be found in the plain of the Mugnone, which
stone possesses the virtue of rendering invisible whosoever bears it
about his person. He took him to Mugnone along with Bruno da Giovanni,
and when Calendrino had picked up a very large number of stones,
Buffalmacco suddenly pretended he could not see him, crying out: "The
scamp has given us the slip; an I catch him, I'll bang his behind with
this paving-stone!" And he landed the stone exactly where he said he
would, without Calendrino having any right to complain, because he was
invisible. This same Calendrino was without any sense of humour, and
Buffalmacco played on his simplicity so far as to make him actually
believe he was with child, and got a brace of fat capons out of him as
fee for his safe delivery.
Next Buffalmacco saw the countryman for whom he had painted the Blessed
Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, afterwards changing the babe
into a bear's cub.
He saw moreover the Abbess of the Nuns of Faenza, who had commissioned
him to paint the walls of the Convent Church in fresco, and he told her
on his oath and honour you must mix good wine with the colours, if the
flesh tints are to be really brilliant. So the Abbess gave him for every
Saint, male or female, depicted in his pictures a flask of the wine
reserved for Bishops' drinking, which he poured down his throat,
trusting to vermilion to bring out the warm tints. The same Lady Abbess
it was he deceived, making her take a pitcher with a cloak thrown over
it for a master painter, as has been already recounted.
Buffalmacco saw, besides, a long line of other folks he had befooled,
cajoled, cozened and bemocked. Closing the rear, marched with crozier,
mitre and cope, the great Sant' Ercolano, whom in a merry mood he had
represented in the Great Square of Perugia, girt about with a garland of
gudgeons.
All as they passed paid their compliment to the ape which had avenged
them; and the monster, opening a great mouth wider than the jaws of
hell, broke into a mocking laugh.
For the first time in his life Buffalmacco had a downright bad night's
rest.
THE LADY OF VERONA
TO HUGUES REBELL
THE LADY OF VERONA
"_Puella autem moriens dixit: 'Satanas, trado tibi corpus meum cum
anima mea.'" (Quadragesimale opus declamatum Parisiis in ecclesia Sti.
Johannis in Gravia per venerabilem patrem Sacrae scripturae
interpretem eximium Ol. Maillardum, 1511._)[1]
[Footnote 1: "But the dying girl said, 'Satan, I give over my body to
you along with my soul.'" (Lenten Sermon preached at Paris in the Church
of St. Jean-en-Greve by that venerable father and excellent expounder of
Holy Scripture, Olivier Maillard, 1511.)]
_The following was found by the Reverend Father Adone Doni, in the
Archives of the Monastery of Santa Croce, at Verona._
Signora Eletta of Verona was so wondrous fair and of so perfect a grace
of body, that the learned of the city, they who had knowledge of history
and legend, were used to call her lady mother by the names of Latona,
Leda and Semele, making implication thereby of their belief that the
fruit of her womb had been framed in her by a god, Jupiter, rather than
by any mortal man, such as were her husband and lovers. But the wiser
heads, notably the Fra Battista, whose successor I am as Superior of
Santa Croce, held that such exceeding beauty of the flesh came of the
operation of the Devil, who is an artist in the sense the dying Nero
understood the word when he said, "_Qualis artifex pereo!_"[1] And we
may be sure Satan, the enemy of God, who is cunning to work the metals,
excels likewise in the moulding of human flesh.
[Footnote 1: "What an artist dies in me!" "Oh! the loss to Art! the loss
to Art!"]
I myself, who am writing these lines, possessing no small acquaintance
with the world, have many a time seen church bells and figures of men
wrought by the Enemy of Mankind--and the craftsmanship thereof
admirable. Likewise have I had knowledge of children engendered in women
by the Devil, but on this matter my tongue is tied by the obligation of
secrecy binding on every Confessor. I will limit myself, therefore, to
saying that many strange tales were bruited concerning the birth of the
Signora Eletta. I saw this lady for the first time on the Piazza of
Verona on Good Friday of the year 1320, when she had just completed her
fourteenth year. And I have beheld her since in the public walks and the
Churches ladies most favour. She was like a picture painted by a very
excellent limner.
She had hair of wavy gold, a white brow, eyes of a colour never seen but
in the precious stone called aquamarine, cheeks of rose, a nose straight
and finely cut. Her mouth was a Cupid's bow, that wounded with its
smiles; and the chin was as full of laughter as the mouth. Her whole
body was framed to perfection for the delight of lovers. The breasts
were not of exaggerated size; yet showed beneath the muslin two swelling
globes of a full and most winsome roundness. As well by reason of my
sacred character, as because I never saw her but clad in her walking
dress and her limbs half hidden, I will not describe the other parts of
her fair body, which one and all proclaimed their perfection through the
stuffs that veiled them. I will only assure you, that when she was in
her accustomed place in the Church of San Zenone, there was never a
movement she could make, whether to rise to her feet or drop on her
knees or prostrate herself with forehead touching the stones, as is meet
to do at the instant of the elevation of the blessed body of Jesus
Christ, without straightway inspiring the men that saw her with an
ardent longing to hold her pressed to their bosom.
Now it came about that Signora Eletta married, when about the age of
fifteen, Messer Antonio Torlota, an Advocate. He was a very learned
man, of good repute, and wealthy, but already far advanced in years, and
so heavy and misshapen, that seeing him carrying his papers in a great
leathern bag, you could scarcely tell which bag it was dragging about
the other.
It was pitiful to think how, as the result of the holy sacrament of
wedlock, which is instituted among men for their glory and eternal
salvation, the fairest lady of Verona was bedded with so old a man, all
ruinate in health and vigour. And wise folk saw with more pain than
wonder that, profiting by the freedom allowed her by her husband, busied
all night long as he was solving the problems of justice and injustice,
Messer Torlota's young wife welcomed to her bed the handsomest and most
proper cavaliers of the city. But the pleasure she took therein came
from herself, not from them at all. It was her own self she loved, and
not her lovers. All her enjoyment was of the loveliness of her own
proper flesh, and of nothing else. Herself was her own desire and
delight, and her own fond concupiscence. Whereby, methinks, the sin of
carnal indulgence was, in her case, enormously aggravated.
For, albeit, this sin must ever divide us from God--a sufficient sign of
its gravity--yet is it true to say that carnal offenders are regarded by
the Sovereign Judge, both in this world and the next, with less
indignation than are covetous men, traitors, murderers, and wicked men
who have made traffic of holy things. And the reason of this is that the
naughty desires sensualists entertain, being directed towards others
rather than to themselves, do still show some degraded traces of true
love and gentle charity.
But nothing of the kind was to be seen in the adulterous amours of the
Signora Eletta, who in every passion loved herself and herself only. And
herein was she much wider separated from God than so many other women
who gave way to their wanton desires. For in their case these desires
were towards others, whereas the Lady Eletta's had none but herself for
their object. What I say hereanent, I say to make more understandable
the conclusion of the matter, which I must now relate.
At the age of twenty she fell sick and felt herself to be dying. Then
she bewailed her fair body with the most piteous tears. She made her
women dress her out in her richest attire, looked long and steadfastly
at herself in the mirror, fondled with both hands her bosom and hips, to
enjoy for the last time her own exceeding beauty. And, aghast at the
thought of this body she so adored being eaten of the worms in the damp
earth, she said, as she breathed her last, with a great sigh of faith
and hope:
"Satan, best beloved Satan! take thou my soul and my body; Satan, gentle
Satan! hear my prayer: take, take my body along with my soul."
She was borne to San Zenone, as custom ordains, with her face uncovered;
and, within the memory of man, none had ever seen a dead woman look so
lovely. While the priests were chanting the offices for the dead around
her bier, she lay as if swooning with delight in the arms of an
invisible lover. When the ceremony was over, the Signora Eletta's
coffin, carefully closed and sealed, was deposited in holy ground, amid
the tombs that surrounded San Zenone, and of which some are Ancient
Roman monuments. But next morning the earth they had thrown over the
dead woman was found removed, and there lay the coffin open and empty.
THE HUMAN TRAGEDY
TO J.H. ROSNY
THE HUMAN TRAGEDY
[Greek: _Pas d' odyneros bios anthropon,
kouk esti ponon anapausis.
allo ti tou zen philteron, all' ho
skotos ampischon kryptei nephelais._]
(Euripides, _Hippolytus_, 190 sqq.)[1]
[Footnote 1: "All the life of man is full of pain, and there is no
surcease of sorrow. If there be aught better elsewhere than this present
life, it is hid shrouded in the clouds of darkness."]
I
FRA GIOVANNI
In those days the holy man, who, born though he was of human parents,
was veritably a son of God, and who had chosen for his bride a maiden
that folk open the door to as reluctantly as to Death itself, and never
with a smile,--the poor man of Jesus Christ, St. Francis, was gone up to
the Skies. Earth, which he had perfumed with his virtues, kept only his
body and the fruitful seed of his words. His sons in the spirit grew
meantime, and multiplied among the Peoples, for the blessing of Abraham
was upon them.
Kings and Queens girded on the cord of St. Francis, the poor man of
Jesus Christ. Men in multitudes sought in forgetfulness of self and of
the world the secret of true happiness; and flying the joy of life,
found a greater joy.