And the holy man, intoxicated with milk and honey, and made merry with
the light of day, sang songs his mother was used to sing when she
carried him as a babe in her arms. They were songs of shepherds and
shepherdesses, and they spoke of love. And as the girl stood listening
on the threshold of the door, the holy man left his seat and ran
staggering towards her, took her in his arms and showered on her cheeks
kisses full of milk, laughter and joy.
And the Subtle Doctor having paid the reckoning, the two travellers hied
them toward the plain.
As they were walking between the silvery willows that border the water,
the holy man said:
"Let us sit; for now I am weary."
So they sat down beneath a willow, and watched the water-flags curling
their sword-like leaves on the river banks and the bright-coloured flies
flashing over the surface. But Giovanni's laughter was ceased, and his
face was sad.
And the Subtle Doctor asked him:
"Why are you so pensive?"
And Giovanni answered him:
"I have felt through you the sweet caress of living things, and I am
troubled at heart. I have tasted the milk and the honey. I have looked
on the servant-maid standing at the threshold and seen that she was
comely. And disquietude is in my soul and in my flesh.
"What a long road I have travelled since I have known you. Do you
remember the grove of holm-oaks where I saw you the first time? For be
sure, I recognize you.
"You it was visited me in my hermit's cell and stood before me with
woman's eyes sparkling through a transparent veil, while your alluring
mouth instructed me in the entanglements of Right and Wrong. Again it
was you appeared in the meadows clad in a golden cope, like an Ambrose
or an Augustine. Then I knew not the curse of thought; but you set me
thinking. You put pride like a coal of fire on my lips; and I learned to
speculate. But as yet, in the untrained freshness of my wit and raw
youthfulness of mind, I felt no doubt. But again you came to me, and
gave me uncertainty to feed on and doubt to drink like wine. So comes
it, that this day I taste through you the entrancing illusion of things,
and that the soul of woods and streams, of sky and earth, and living
shapes, penetrates my breast.
"And lo! I am a miserable man, because I have followed after you, Prince
of men!"
And Giovanni gazed at his companion, who stood there beautiful as day
and night. And he said to him:
"Through you it is I suffer, and I love you. I love you because you are
my misery and my pride, my joy and my sorrow, the splendour and the
cruelty of things created, because you are desire and speculation, and
because you have made me like unto yourself. For verily your promise in
the Garden, in the dawn of this world's days, was not vain, and I have
tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, O Satan."
Presently Giovanni resumed again.
"I know, I see, I feel, I will, I suffer. And I love you for all the ill
you have done me. I love you, because you have undone me."
And, leaning on the Archangel's shoulder, the man wept bitterly.
THE MYSTIC BLOOD
TO FELIX JEANTET
THE MYSTIC BLOOD
_La Bocca sua non diceva se non Jesu e Caterina, e cosi dicendo
ricevatti el capo nelle mani mie, fermando l'occhio nella Divina
Bonta, e dicendo: lo voglio...._
(_Le lettere di S. Caterina da Siena._--xcvii, Gigli e
Burlamacchi.)[1]
[Footnote 1: "His mouth spake no word but only Jesus and Caterina, and
with these words I received his head in my two hands, as he closed his
eyes in the Divine Goodness, and said: I will...." (_Letters of St.
Catherine of Sienna_--xcvii, ed. Gigli e Burlamacchi.)]
The good town of Sienna was like a sick man that seeks vainly for a
restful place in his bed, and thinks, by turning about and about, to
cheat his pain. Again and again had she changed the government of the
Republic, which passed from the Consuls to the Assemblies of the
Burghers, and, originally entrusted to the Nobles, was subsequently
exercised by the money-changers, drapers, apothecaries, furriers,
silk-mercers and all such citizens as were concerned with the superior
arts and crafts. But these worthies having shown themselves weak and
self-seeking, the People expelled them in their turn and entrusted the
sovereign power to the petty artisans. In the year 1368 of the glorious
Incarnation of the Son of God, the Signory was composed of fourteen
Magistrates chosen from among the hosiers, butchers, locksmiths,
shoemakers, and stonemasons, who together formed a Great Council known
as the _Mount of the Reformers_. They were a plebeian band, rough and
hard as the bronze She-Wolf, emblem of their city, which they loved with
an affection at once filial and formidable. But the People, which had
set them up over the Commonwealth, had suffered another body to continue
in existence, though subordinate to them, the Twelve to wit, who came
from the class of Bankers and wealthy Merchants. These men were in
conspiracy with the Nobles, at the Emperor's instigation, to sell the
City to the Pope of Rome.
The German Kaiser was the life and soul of the plot, promising the aid
of his landsknechts to guarantee success. He was in the utmost haste to
have the affair ended, hoping with the price of the bargain, he might be
able to redeem the Crown of Charlemagne, pledged for sixteen hundred
florins with the Florentine Bankers.
Meantime, they of the _Reformers' Mount_, who formed the Signory, held
firm the rod of government and watched heedfully over the safety of the
Republic. These artisans, officers of a free People, had refused the
Emperor, when he came within their walls, bread, water, salt and fire;
they had driven him forth the city groaning and trembling, and they now
condemned the conspirators to death. Guardians of the town founded by
Remus long ago, they copied the sternness of the first Consuls of Rome.
But their city, which went clad in silk and cloth-of-gold, was ever
ready to slip betwixt their fingers, like a lascivious, false-hearted
wanton; and fear and anxiety made them implacable.
In the year 1370 they discovered that a nobleman of Perugia, Ser Niccola
Tuldo, had been sent by the Pope to stir up the Siennese, in connivance
with the Kaiser, to deliver up the city to the Holy Father. The young
Lord in question was in the prime of manly beauty, and had learned in
the company of fair ladies those arts of flattery and seductive
compliment he now proceeded to practise in the Palace of the Salimbeni
and the shops of the money-changers. And, for all his light heart and
empty head, he gained over to the Pope's side many burghers and some
artisans. Informed of his intrigues, the Magistrates of the _Mount of
the Reformers_ had him brought before their august Council, and after
questioning him underneath the gonfalon of the Republic, which shows a
Lion rampant for device, they declared him guilty of attempted outrage
against the liberties of the City.
He had answered with mere smiling scorn to the questions of these
cobbler fellows and butchers. But when he heard his sentence of death
pronounced, he fell into ecstasy of deep astonishment, and was led away
to prison as if in a trance. No sooner was he locked up in his cell
than, awaking from his stupor, he began to regret the life he was to
lose with all the ardour of his young blood and impetuous character;
visions of all its pleasures, arms, women, horses, crowded before his
eyes, and at the thought he would never enjoy the delights more, he was
carried away by so furious a despair he beat with fists and forehead on
the walls of his dungeon, and gave vent to such wild howls as were
audible over all the neighbourhood, even in the burghers' houses and the
drapers' booths. The gaoler coming in to know the cause of the uproar,
found him covered with blood and foaming at the mouth.
Ser Niccola Tuldo never left off howling with rage for three days and
three nights.
The thing was reported to the _Mount of the Reformers_. The members of
the most august Signory, after despatching their more pressing business,
examined into the case of the unhappy man in the condemned cell.
Leone Rancati, brickmaker by trade, said:
"The man must pay with his head for his crime against the Commonwealth
of Sienna; and none can relieve him of this debt, without encroaching on
the sacred rights of the City our mother. He must needs die; but his
soul is his Maker's, and it is not meet that through our fault he die in
this sinful state of madness and despair. Therefore should we use all
the means within our competence to assure his eternal salvation."
Matteino Renzano, the baker, a man famed for his wisdom, rose in his
turn and said:
"Well spoken, Leone Rancati! The case demands we send to the condemned
man Catherine, the fuller's daughter."
The advice was approved by all the Signory, who resolved to invite
Catherine to visit Niccola Tuldo in his prison.
In those days Catherine, daughter of Giacomo the fuller, filled all the
city of Sienna with the perfume of her virtues. She dwelt in a little
cell in her father's house and wore the habit of the Sisters of
Penitence. She carried girt about her under her gown of white linen an
iron chain, and scourged herself an hour long every day. Then, showing
her arms covered with wounds, she would cry, "Behold my pretty red
roses!" She cultivated in her chamber lilies and violets, wherewith she
wove garlands for the altars of the Virgin and the Saints. And all the
while she would be singing hymns in the vulgar tongue to the praise of
Jesus and Mary His Mother. In those mournful times, when the city of
Sienna was a hostel of sorrow, and a house of joy to boot, Catherine was
ever visiting the unhappy prisoners, and telling the prostitutes: "My
sisters, how fain would I hide you in the loving wounds of the Saviour!"
A maiden so pure, fired with so sweet charity, could nowhere have budded
and blossomed but at Sienna, which under all its defilements and amid
all its crimes, was still the City of the Blessed Virgin.
Apprised by the Magistrates, Catherine betook herself to the public gaol
on the morning of the day Ser Niccola Tuldo was to die. She found him
stretched on the stone floor of the dungeon, bellowing blasphemies.
Raising the white veil the blessed St. Dominic himself had come down
from Paradise to lay upon her brow, she showed the prisoner a
countenance of heavenly beauty. As he gazed at her in wonder, she leant
over him to wipe away the spume that defiled his mouth.
Ser Niccola Tuldo, turning on her eyes that still retained their savage
ferocity, cried out:
"Begone! I hate you, because you are of Sienna, the city that slays me.
Oh! Sienna, she-wolf indeed, that with her vile claws tears out the
throat of a noble gentleman of Perugia! Horrid she-wolf! unclean and
inhuman hell-hound!"
But Catherine made answer:
"Nay! brother, what is a city, what are all the cities of the earth,
beside the City of God and the holy Angels? I am Catherine, and I am
come to call you to the everlasting nuptials."
The sweet voice and beaming face shed a sudden peace and radiance over
the savage soul of Niccola Tuldo. He remembered the days of his
innocence, and cried like a child.
The sun, rising above the Apennines, was just whitening the prison walls
with its earliest rays. Catherine said:
"Look, the dawn! Up, up, my brother, for the eternal nuptials! Up, I
say!"
And raising him from the ground, she drew him into the Chapel, where Fra
Cattaneo confessed him.
Ser Niccola Tuldo then listened devoutly to the holy Mass and received
the body of Our Lord. This done, he turned to Catherine and said:
"Stay with me; do not leave me, and I shall be well, and shall die
content."
The bells began to toll the signal for the execution.
Then Catherine answered:
"Gentle brother, I will wait you at the place of Justice."
At this, Ser Niccola smiled and said, as if ravished with bliss:
"Joy! joy! the Delight of my soul will wait me at the holy place of
Justice!"
Catherine pondered and prayed, finally saying:
"Gracious Lord, Thou hast indeed wrought in him a great enlightenment,
seeing he calls holy the place of Justice."
Ser Niccola went on:
"Yes! I shall hie me thither, strong in heart and rejoicing. I weary, as
though I had a thousand years to wait, to be there, where I shall find
you once more."
"Farewell till the nuptials, the everlasting nuptials!" Catherine cried
again, as she left the prison.
The condemned man was served with a little bread and wine, and supplied
with a black cloak; then he was led forth along the precipitous streets,
to the sound of trumpets, between the city guards, beneath the banner of
the Republic. The ways swarmed with curious onlookers, and women lifted
their little ones in their arms, showing them the man doomed to die.
Meantime Niccola Tuldo was dreaming of Catherine, and his lips, that
had so long been bitter, opened softly as though to kiss the likeness of
the blessed maid.
After climbing for some while the rude brick-paved road, the procession
reached one of the heights dominating the city, and the condemned man
saw suddenly, with his eyes that were soon to see no more, the roofs,
domes, cloisters, and towers of Sienna, and further away the walls that
followed the slope of the hills. The sight reminded him of his native
town, the gay city of Perugia, surrounded with its gardens, where
springs of living water sing amid the fruits and flowers. He saw once
more in fancy the terrace that looks over the vale of Trasimene, whence
the eye drinks in the light of day with delight.
And the yearning for life tore his heart afresh, and he sighed:
"Oh! city of my fathers! Oh! house of my birth!"
But presently the thought of Catherine re-entered his soul, filling it
to the brim with gladness and sweet peace.
Finally they arrive in the Market Square, where each Saturday the
peasant girls of Camiano and Granayola display their citrons,
grapes, figs, and pomegranates, and hail the housewives with merry
appeals to buy, not unmixed with high-spiced jests. It was there the
scaffold was erected; and there Ser Niccola beheld Catherine
kneeling in prayer, her head resting on the block.
He climbed the steps with eager joy. At his coming, Catherine rose and
turned toward him with all the look of a bride once more united to her
spouse; she insisted on baring his neck with her own hands and placing
her dear one on the block as on a marriage bed.
Then she knelt down beside him. Thrice he repeated in fervent tones,
"Jesus, Catherine!"--after which the executioner struck with his sword,
and the maiden caught the severed head within her hands. Hereupon all
the victim's blood seemed to be suffused in her, and to fill her veins
with a flood as soft as warm milk; a fragrant odour set her nostrils
quivering, while before her swooning eyes floated the shadows of angels.
Filled with wonder and joy unspeakable, she fell softly into the depths
of celestial ecstasy.
Two women of the third Order of St. Dominic, who stood at the foot of
the scaffold, seeing her stretched there motionless, hastened to raise
her up and support her in their arms. The holy maid, coming to herself,
told them: "I have seen the heavens opened!"
One of the women made as though to wash away with a sponge the blood
that covered St. Catherine's robe, but she stopped her, crying out
eagerly:
"No, no! leave the blood, leave it; never rob me of my purple and my
perfumes!"
A SOUND SECURITY
TO HENRI LAVEDAN
A SOUND SECURITY
_. . . . . . . . Par cest ymage
Te doing en pleige Jhesu-Crist
Qui tout fist, ainsi est escript:
Il te pleige tout ton avoir;
Ne peuz nulz si bon pleige avoir._
(_Miracles de Notre-Dame par personnages_,
publ. par. G. Paris et U. Robert.)[1]
[Footnote 1: "... By this image I take Jesus Christ in pledge for you,
Him who wrought all men's salvation, as is writ in Scripture: He is
pledge against all your fortune; so good a pledge can no man have."
(_Miracles of Our Lady, as they Fell out to Sundry_--G. Paris and U.
Robert.)]
Of all the merchants of Venice, Fabio Mutinelli was the most exact in
keeping his engagements. In all cases he showed himself free-handed and
sumptuous in his dealings,--above all where ladies and churchmen were
concerned. The elegance and honesty of his character were renowned
throughout the State, and all admired at San Zanipolo an altar of gold
he had offered to St. Catherine for the love of the fair Catherine
Manini, wife of the Senator Alesso Cornaro. Being very wealthy, he had
numerous friends, whom he entertained at feasts and helped at need from
his purse. However, he incurred heavy losses in the war against the
Genoese and in the Naples troubles. It fell out, moreover, that thirty
of his ships were taken by the Uscoque pirates or foundered at sea. The
Pope, to whom he had lent great sums of money, refused to repay a doit.
The result of all was, the magnificent Fabio Mutinelli was stripped bare
in brief space of all his riches. After selling his Palace and plate to
pay what he owed, he found himself left without anything. But clever,
bold, well practised in affairs and in the vigour of his powers, his
only thought was to make head once more against fortune. He made careful
calculation and judged that five hundred ducats were needful for him to
take the sea again and attempt fresh enterprises for which he augured
happy and sure success. He asked the Signor Alesso Bontura, who was the
richest citizen of the Republic, to oblige him by lending him the five
hundred ducats. But the good Bontura, holding that if daring wins great
gains, 'tis prudence only keeps the same, refused to expose so great a
sum to the risks of sea and shipwreck. Fabio next applied to the Signor
Andrea Morosini, whom he had benefited in former days in a thousand
ways.
"My dear Fabio," answered Andrea, "to any one else but you I would
willingly lend this sum. I have no affection for gold, and on this
point act according to the maxims of Horace the Satirist. But your
friendship is dear to me, Fabio Mutinelli, and I should be running the
risk of losing it, if I lent you money. For more often than not, the
commerce of the heart comes to a bad end betwixt debtor and creditor. I
have known but too many instances."
So saying, the Signor Andrea kissed the Merchant with all seeming
tenderness, and shut the door in his face.
Next day, Fabio went to see the Lombard and Florentine bankers. But not
one of them would agree to lend him so much as twenty ducats without
security. All day long he hurried from one counting-house to another,
but was everywhere met by much the same answer:
"Signor Fabio, we all know you well for the most upright merchant of
this city, and it is with regret we must refuse you what you ask. But
the morality of trade requires it."
That evening, as he was making sadly for home, the courtesan Zanetta,
who was bathing in the canal, hung on to his gondola and gazed amorously
into his eyes. In the days of his prosperity he had had her one night
into his Palace and had treated her very kindly, for he was of a gay and
gracious humour.
"Sweet Signor Fabio," she said to him, "I am aware of your misfortunes;
they are the talk of all the town. Hear me; I am not rich, but I have
some jewels at the bottom of a little coffer. An you will accept them of
a poor girl that would serve you, I shall know God and the Virgin love
me."
And it was a true word, that in the prime of her youth and fine flower
of her beauty, the fair Zanetta was poor. Fabio answered her:
"Kind Zanetta, there is more nobility in the hovel where you dwell than
in all the Palaces of Venice."
For three days longer Fabio visited the banks and fondacos without
discovering any one willing to lend him money. Everywhere he received an
unfavourable answer, and listened to speeches that always came to this:
"You did very wrong to sell your plate to pay your debts. Money is lent
to a man in debt, but not to one without furniture and plate."
The fifth day he made his way, in despair, as far as the Corte delle
Galli, which men also call the Ghetto, and which is the quarter the Jews
inhabit.
"Who knows," he kept saying to himself, "if I may not get from one of
the Circumcised what the Christians have denied me?"
He proceeded therefore between the Calle San Geremia and the Calle San
Girolamo along a narrow evil-smelling canal, the entrance of which was
barred with chains every night, by order of the Senate. While hesitating
to know which Usurer he should first apply to, he remembered to have
heard speak of an Israelite named Eliezer, son of Eliezer Maimonides,
who was said to be exceedingly rich and of a wondrous subtle spirit.
Accordingly, inquiring out the house of the Jew Eliezer, he stopped his
gondola before the door. Above the entrance was seen a representation of
the seven-branched candlestick, which the Jew had had carved as a sign
of hope, in expectation of the promised days when the Temple should rise
again from its ashes.
The Merchant now entered a hall lighted by a copper lamp with twelve
wicks that were burning smokily. Eliezer the Jew was there, seated
before his scales. The windows of the house were walled up, because he
was an Unbeliever.
Fabio Mutinelli approached and thus accosted him:
"Eliezer, over and over again have I called you dog and renegade
heathen. There have been times, when I was younger and in the flush of
early manhood, I have cast stones and mud at folks going along the Canal
who wore the round patch of yellow sewn on their shoulder, so that I
may likely have struck one of your friends or perhaps yourself. I tell
you this, not to affront you, but out of fairness, at the same instant I
come to ask you to do me a very great service."
The Jew lifted his arm, which was as dry and gnarled as an ancient
vine-stock:
"Fabio Mutinelli, the Father which is in Heaven shall judge us, one and
the other. What is the service you are come to ask of me?"
"Lend me five hundred ducats for a year."
"Men do not lend without security. Doubtless you have learned this from
your own people. What is the security you offer?"
"You must know, Eliezer, I have not a denier left, not one gold cup, not
one silver goblet. Neither have I a friend left. One and all, they have
refused to do me the service I ask of you. I have nothing in all the
world but my honour as a merchant and my faith as a Christian. I offer
you for security the holy Virgin Mary and her Divine Son."
At this reply, the Jew, bending down his head as a man does to ponder
and consider, stroked his long white beard for a while. Presently he
looked up and said:
"Fabio Mutinelli, take me to see this security you offer. For it is meet
the lender be put in presence of the pledge proposed for his
acceptance."
"You are within your rights," returned the Merchant, "rise therefore and
come."
So saying, he led Eliezer to the Chiesa dell' Orto, near the spot called
the _Field of the Moors_. Arrived there and pointing to the figure of
the Madonna, which stood above the High Altar, the brow wreathed with a
circlet of precious stones and the shoulders covered with a
gold-broidered mantle, holding in her arms the Child Jesus sumptuously
adorned like his mother, the Merchant said to the Jew:
"Yonder is my security."
Eliezer looked with a keen eye and a calculating air first at the
Christian Merchant, then at the Madonna and Child; then presently bowed
his head in assent and said he would accept the pledge offered. He
returned with Fabio to his own house, and there handed him the five
hundred ducats, well and truly weighed:
"The money is yours for a year. If at the end of that time, to the day,
you have not paid me back the sum with interest at the rate fixed by the
law of Venice and the custom of the Lombards, you can picture yourself,
Fabio Mutinelli, what I shall think of the Christian Merchant and his
security."
Fabio, without a moment's loss of time, bought ships and loaded up with
salt and other sorts of merchandise, which he disposed of in the cities
of the Adriatic shore to great advantage. Then, with a fresh cargo
aboard, he set sail for Constantinople, where he bought carpets,
perfumes, peacock feathers, ivory and ebony. These goods his agents
exchanged along the coasts of Dalmatia for building timber, which the
Venetians had contracted for from him in advance. By these means, in six
months' time, he had multiplied tenfold the amount the Jew had lent him.