sun on the Ponte Vecchio. The morning mists were rolling back under the
heat; you began to see the yellow line of houses stretching along the
turbid river on the far side, and frowning down upon it with blank, mud-
stained faces. Above, through streaming air, the sky showed faintly blue,
and a _campanile_ to the right loomed pale and uncertain like a
ghost. The sound of innumerable bells floated over the still city. Hardly
a soul was abroad; here and there a couple of dusty peasants were trudging
in with baskets of eggs and jars of milk and oil; a boat passed down to
the fishing, and the oar knocked sleepily in the rowlock as she cleared
the bridge. And above, on the heights of Mont' Oliveto, the tapering forms
of cypresses were faintly outlined--straight bars of shadow--and the level
ridge of a roof ran lightly back into the soft shroud.
Sandro could mark these things as he stepped resolutely on to the bridge,
crossed it, and went up a narrow street among the sleeping houses. The day
held golden promise; it was the day of his life! Meantime the mist clung
to him and nipped him; what had fate in store? What was to be the issue?
In the Piazza Santo Spirito, grey and hollow-sounding in the chilly
silences, his own footsteps echoed solemnly as he passed by the door of
the great ragged church. Through the heavy darkness within lights
flickered faintly and went; service was not begun. A drab crew of cripples
lounged on the steps yawning and shivering, and two country girls were
strolling to mass with brown arms round each other's waists. When Sandro's
footfall clattered on the stones they stopped by the door looking after
him and laughed to see his dull face and muffled figure. In the street
beyond he heard a bell jingling, hasty, incessant; soon a white-robed
procession swept by him, fluttering vestments, tapers, and the Host under
a canopy, silk and gold. Sandro snatched at his cap and dropped on his
knees in the road, crouching low and muttering under his breath as the
vision went past. He remained kneeling for a moment after it had gone,
then crossed himself--forehead, breast, lip--and hurried forward.... He
stepped under the archway into the Court. There was a youth with a cropped
head and swarthy neck lounging there teasing a spaniel. As the steps
sounded on the flags he looked up; the old green cloak and clumsy shoes of
the visitor did not interest him; he turned his back and went on with his
game. Sandro accosted him--Was the Signorina at the house? The boy went on
with his game. "Eh, Diavolo! I know nothing at all," he said.
Sandro raised his voice till it rang round the courtyard. "You will go at
once and inquire. You will say to the Signorina that Sandro di Mariano
Filipepi the Florentine painter is here by her orders; that he waits her
pleasure below."
The boy had got up; he and Sandro eyed each other for a little space.
Sandro was the taller and had the glance of a hawk. So the porter went....
... Presently with throbbing brows he stood on the threshold of
Simonetta's chamber. It was the turret room of the villa and its four
arched windows looked through a leafy tracery over towards Florence.
Sandro could see down below him in the haze the glitter of the Arno and
the dusky dome of Brunelleschi cleave the sward of the hills like a great
burnished bowl. In the room itself there was tapestry, the Clemency of
Scipio, with courtiers in golden cuirasses and tall plumes, and peacocks
and huge Flemish horses--a rich profusion of crimson and blue drapery and
stout-limbed soldiery. On a bracket, above a green silk curtain, was a
silver statuette of Madonna and the Bambino Gesu, with a red lamp
flickering feebly before. By the windows a low divan heaped with velvet
cushions and skins. But for a coffer and a prayer-desk and a curtained
recess which enshrined Simonetta's bed, the room looked wind-swept and
bare.
When he entered, Simonetta was standing by the window leaning her hand
against the ledge for support. She was draped from top to toe in a rose-
coloured mantle which shrouded her head like a nun's wimple and then fell
in heavy folds to the ground. She flushed as he came in, but saluted him
with a grave inclination. Neither spoke. The silent greeting, the full
consciousness in each of their parts, gave a curious religious solemnity
to the scene--like some familiar but stately Church mystery. Sandro busied
himself mechanically with his preparations-he was a lover and his pulse
chaotic, but he had come to paint--and when these were done, on tip-toe,
as it were, he looked timidly about him round the room, seeking where to
pose her. Then he motioned her with the same reverential, preoccupied air,
silent still, to a place under the silver Madonna....
... There was a momentary quiver of withdrawal. Simonetta blushed vividly
and drooped her eyes down to her little bare foot peeping out below the
lines of the rosy cloak. The cloak's warmth shone on her smooth skin and
rayed over her cheeks. In her flowery loveliness she looked diaphanous,
ethereal; and yet you could see what a child she was, with her bright
audacity, her ardour and her wilfulness flushing and paling about her like
the dawn. There she stood trembling on the brink....
Suddenly all her waywardness shot into her eyes; she lifted her arms and
the cloak fell back like the shard of a young flower; then, delicate and
palpitating as a silver reed, she stood up in the soft light of the
morning, and the sun, slanting in between the golden leaves and tendrils,
kissed her neck and shrinking shoulder.
Sandro stood facing her, moody and troubled, fingering his brushes and
bits of charcoal; his shaggy brows were knit, he seemed to be breathing
hard. He collected himself with an effort and looked up at her as she
stood before him shrinking, awe-struck, panting at the thing she had done.
Their eyes met, and the girl's distress increased; she raised her hand to
cover her bosom; her breath came in short gasps from parted lips, but her
wide eyes still looked fixedly into his, with such blank panic that a
sudden movement might really have killed her. He saw it all; she! there at
his mercy. Tears swam and he trembled. Ah! the gracious lady! what divine
condescension! what ineffable courtesy! But the artist in him was awakened
almost at the same moment; his looks wandered in spite of her piteous
candour and his own nothingness. Sandro the poet would have fallen on his
face with an "Exi a me, nam peccator sum." Sandro the painter was
different--no mercy there. He made a snatch at a carbon and raised his
other hand with a kind of command--"Holy Virgin! what a line! Stay as you
are, I implore you: swerve not one hair's breadth and I have you for
ever!" There was conquest in his voice.
So Simonetta stood very still, hiding her bosom with her hand, but never
took her watch off the enemy. As he ran blindly about doing a hundred
urgent indispensable things--noting the lights, the line she made, how her
arm cut across the folds of the curtain--she dogged him with staring,
fascinated eyes, just as a hare, crouching in her form, watches a terrier
hunting round her and waits for the end.
But the enemy was disarmed. Sandro the passionate, the lover, the brooding
devotee, was gone; so was _la bella Simonetta_ the beloved, the be-
hymned. Instead, here was a fretful painter, dashing lines and broad
smudges of shade on his paper, while before him rose an exquisite,
slender, swaying form, glistening carnation and silver, and, over all, the
maddening glow of red-gold hair. Could he but catch those velvet shadows,
those delicate, glossy, reflected-lights! Body of Bacchus! How could he
put them in! What a picture she was! Look at the sun on her shoulder! and
her hair--Christ! how it burned! It was a curious moment. The girl who had
never understood or cared to understand this humble lover, guessed now
that he was lost in the artist. She felt that she was simply an effect and
she resented it as a crowning insult. Her colour rose again, her red lips
gathered into a pout. If Sandro had but known, she was his at that
instant. He had but to drop the painter, throw down his brushes, set his
heart and hot eyes bare--to open his arms and she would have fled into
them and nestled there; so fierce was her instinct just then to be loved,
she, who had always been loved! But Sandro knew nothing and cared nothing.
He was absorbed in the gracious lines of her body, the lithe long neck,
the drooping shoulder, the tenderness of her youth; and then the grand
open curve of the hip and thigh on which she was poised. He drew them in
with a free hand in great sweeping lines, eagerly, almost angrily; once or
twice he broke his carbon and--body of a dog!--he snatched at another.
This lasted a few minutes only: even Simonetta, with all her maiden
tremors still feverishly acute, hardly noticed the flight of time; she was
so hot with the feeling of her wrongs, the slight upon her victorious
fairness. Did she not _know_ how fair she was? She was getting very
angry; she had been made a fool of. All Florence would come and gape at
the picture and mock her in the streets with bad names and coarse gestures
as she rode by. She looked at Sandro. Santa Maria! how hot he was! His
hair was drooping over his eyes! He tossed it back every second! And his
mouth was open, one could see his tongue working! Why had she not noticed
that great mouth before? 'Twas the biggest in all Florence. O! why had he
come? She was frightened, remorseful, a child again, with a trembling
pathetic mouth and shrinking limbs. And then her heart began to beat under
her slim fingers. She pressed them down into her flesh to stay those great
masterful throbs. A tear gathered in her eye; larger and larger it grew,
and then fell. A shining drop rested on the round of her cheek and rolled
slowly down her chin to her protecting hand, and lay there half hidden,
shining like a rain-drop between two curving petals of a rose.
It was just at that moment the painter looked up from his work and shook
his bush of hair back. Something in his sketch had displeased him; he
looked up frowning, with a brush between his teeth. When he saw the tear-
stained, distressful, beautiful face it had a strange effect upon him. He
dropped nerveless, like a wounded man, to his knees, and covered his eyes
with his hands. "Ah Madonna! for the pity of heaven forgive me! forgive
me! I have sinned, I have done thee fearful wrong; I, who still dare to
love thee." He uncovered his face and looked up radiant: his own words had
inspired him, "Yes," he went on, with a steadfast smile, "I, Sandro, the
painter, the poor devil of a painter, have seen thee and I dare to love!"
His triumph was short-lived. Simonetta had grown deadly white, her eyes
burned, she had forgotten herself. She was tall and slender as a lily, and
she rose, shaking, to her height.
"Thou presumest strangely," she said, in a slow still voice, "Go! Go in
peace!"
She was conqueror. In her calm scorn she was like a young immortal, some
cold victorious Cynthia whose chastity had been flouted. Sandro was pale
too: he said nothing and did not look at her again. She stood quivering
with excitement, watching him with the same intent alertness as he rolled
up his paper and crammed his brushes and pencils into the breast of his
jacket. She watched him still as he backed out of the room and disappeared
through the curtains of the archway. She listened to his footsteps along
the corridor, down the stair. She was alone in the silence of the sunny
room. Her first thought was for her cloak; she snatched it up and veiled
herself shivering as she looked fearfully round the walls. And then she
flung herself on the piled cushions before the window and sobbed
piteously, like an abandoned child.
The sun slanted in between the golden leaves and tendrils and played in
the tangle of her hair....
III
At ten o'clock on the morning of April the twenty-sixth, a great bell
began to toll: two beats heavy and slow, and then silence, while the air
echoed the reverberation, moaning. Sandro, in shirt and breeches, with
bare feet spread broad, was at work in his garret on the old bridge. He
stayed his hand as the strong tone struck, bent his head and said a
prayer: "Miserere ei, Domine; requiem eternam dona, Domine"; the words
came out of due order as if he was very conscious of their import. Then he
went on. And the great bell went on; two beats together, and then silence.
It seemed to gather solemnity and a heavier message as he painted. Through
the open window a keen draught of air blew in with dust and a scrap of
shaving from the Lung' Arno down below; it circled round his workshop,
fluttering the sketches and rags pinned to the walls. He looked out on a
bleak landscape--San Miniato in heavy shade, and the white houses by the
river staring like dead faces. A strong breeze was abroad; it whipped the
brown water and raised little curling billows, ragged and white at the
edges, and tossed about snaps of surf. It was cold. Sandro shivered as he
shut to his casement; and the stiffening gale rattled at it fitfully. Once
again it thrust it open, bringing wild work among the litter in the room.
He made fast with the rain driving In his face. And above the howling of
the squall he heard the sound of the great bell, steady and unmoved as if
too full of its message to be put aside. Yet it was coming to him athwart
the wind.
Sandro stood at his casement and looked at the weather-beating rain and
yeasty water. He counted, rather nervously, the pulses between each pair
of the bell's deep tones. He was impressionable to circumstances, and the
coincidence of storm and passing-bell awed him.... "Either the God of
Nature suffers or the fabric of the world is breaking";--he remembered a
scrap of talk wafted towards him (as he stood in attendance) from some
humanist at Lorenzo's table only yesterday, above the light laughter and
snatches of song. That breakfast party at the Camaldoli yesterday! What a
contrast--the even spring weather with the sun in a cloudless sky, and now
this icy dead morning with its battle of wind and bell, fighting, he
thought,--over the failing breath of some strong man. Man! God, more like.
"The God of Nature suffers," he murmured as he turned to his work....
Simonetta had not been there yesterday. He had not seen her, indeed, since
that nameless day when she had first transported him with the radiance of
her bare beauty and then struck him down with a level gaze from steel-cold
eyes. And he had deserved it, he had--she had said--"presumed strangely."
Three more words only had she uttered and he had slunk out from her
presence like a dog. What a Goddess! Venus Urania! So she, too, might have
ravished a worshipper as he prayed, and, after, slain him for a careless
word. Cruel? No, but a Goddess. Beauty had no laws; she was above them,
Agnolo himself had said it, from Plato.... Holy Michael! What a blast!
Black and desperate weather.... "Either the God of Nature suffers."... God
shield all Christian souls on such a day!....
One came and told him Simonetta Vespucci was dead. Some fever had torn at
her and raced through all her limbs, licking up her life as it passed. No
one had known of it--it was so swift! But there had just been time to
fetch a priest; Fra Matteo, they said, from the Carmine, had shrived her
(it was a bootless task, God knew, for the child had babbled so, her wits
wandered, look you), and then he had performed the last office. One had
fled to tell the Medici. Giuliano was wild with grief; 'twas as if
_he_ had killed her instead of the Spring-ague--but then, people said
he loved her well! And our Lorenzo had bid them swing the great bell of
the Duomo--Sandro had heard it perhaps?--and there was to be a public
procession, and a Requiem sung at Santa Croce before they took her back to
Genoa to lie with her fathers. Eh! Bacchus! She was fair and Giuliano had
loved her well. It was natural enough then. So the gossip ran out to tell
his news to more attentive ears, and Sandro stood in his place, intoning
softly "Te Deum Laudamus."
He understood it all. There had been a dark and awful strife--earth
shuddering as the black shadow of death swept by. Through tears now the
sun beamed broad over the gentle city where she lay lapped in her mossy
hills. "Lux eterna lucet ei," he said with a steady smile; "atque
lucebit," he added after a pause. He had been painting that day an
agonising Christ, red and languid, crowned with thorns. Some of his own
torment seems to have entered it, for, looking at it now, we see, first of
all, wild eyeballs staring with the mad earnestness, the purposeless
intensity of one seized or "possessed." He put the panel away and looked
about for something else, the sketch he had made of Simonetta on that last
day. When he had found it, he rolled it straight and set it on his easel.
It was not the first charcoal study he had made from life, but a brush
drawing on dark paper, done in sepia-wash and the lights in white lead. He
stood looking into it with his hands clasped. About half a braccia high,
faint and shadowy in the pale tint he had used, he saw her there victim
rather than Goddess. Standing timidly and wistfully, shrinking rather,
veiling herself, maiden-like, with her hands and hair, with lips trembling
and dewy eyes, she seemed to him now an immortal who must needs suffer for
some great end; live and suffer and die; live again, and suffer and die.
It was a doom perpetual like Demeter's, to bear, to nurture, to lose and
to find her Persephone. She had stood there immaculate and apprehensive, a
wistful victim. Three days before he had seen her thus; and now she was
dead. He would see her no more.
Ah, yes! Once more he would see her....
* * * * *
They carried dead Simonetta through the streets of Florence with her pale
face uncovered and a crown of myrtle in her hair. People thronging there
held their breath, or wept to see such still loveliness; and her poor
parted lips wore a patient little smile, and her eyelids were pale violet
and lay heavy to her cheek. White, like a bride, with a nosegay of orange-
blossom and syringa at her throat, she lay there on her bed with lightly
folded hands and the strange aloofness and preoccupation all the dead
have. Only her hair burned about her like a molten copper; and the wreath
of myrtle leaves ran forward to her brows and leapt beyond them into a
tongue.
The great procession swept forward; black brothers of Misericordia,
shrouded and awful, bore the bed or stalked before it with torches that
guttered and flared sootily in the dancing light of day. They held the
pick of Florence, those scowling shrouds--Giuliano and Lorenzo, Pazzi,
Tornabuoni, Soderini or Pulci; and behind, old Cattaneo, battered with
storms, walked heavily, swinging his long arms and looking into the day's
face as if he would try another fall with Death yet. Priests and acolytes,
tapers, banners, vestments and a great silver Crucifix, they drifted by,
chanting the dirge for Simonetta; and she, as if for a sacrifice, lifted
up on her silken bed, lay couched like a white flower edged colour of
flame....
... Santa Croce, the great church, stretched forward beyond her into the
distances of grey mist and cold spaces of light. Its bare vastness was
damp like a vault. And she lay in the midst listless, heavy-lidded, apart,
with the half-smile, as it seemed, of some secret mirth. Round her the
great candles smoked and flickered, and mass was sung at the High Altar
for her soul's repose. Sandro stood alone facing the shining altar but
looking fixedly at Simonetta on her couch. He was white and dry--parched
lips and eyes that ached and smarted. Was this the end? Was it possible,
my God! that the transparent, unearthly thing lying there so prone and
pale was dead? Had such loveliness aught to do with life or death? Ah!
sweet lady, dear heart, how tired she was, how deadly tired! From where he
stood he could see with intolerable anguish the sombre rings round her
eyes and the violet shadows on the lids, her folded hands and the
straight, meek line to her feet. And her poor wan face with its wistful,
pitiful little smile was turned half aside on the delicate throat, as if
in a last appeal:--"Leave me now, O Florentines, to my rest, I have given
you all I had: ask no more. I was a young girl, a child; too young for
your eager strivings. You have killed me with your play; let me be now,
let me sleep!" Poor child! Poor child! Sandro was on his knees with his
face pressed against the pulpit and tears running through his fingers as
he prayed....
As he had seen her, so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a cold
world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her a rapt
Presence floating evenly to our earth. A grey, translucent sea laps
silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still dawn the myrtles
and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in half tones that
he gives us, grey and green and steely blue; and just that, and some
homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's
discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you
may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness--
owls and night hawks and heavy moths--flit with fantastic purpose over
the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have
surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; you are let into the secret; you
have caught the spirit of the April woodland as she glides over the
pasture to the copse. And that, indeed, was Sandro's fortune. He caught
her in just such a propitious hour. He saw the sweet wild thing, pure and
undefiled by touch of earth; caught her in that pregnant pause of time ere
she had lighted. Another moment and a buxom nymph of the grove would fold
her in a rosy mantle, coloured as the earliest wood-anemones are. She
would vanish, we know, into the daffodils or a bank of violets. And you
might tell her presence there, or in the rustle of the myrtles, or coo of
doves mating in the pines; you might feel her genius in the scent of the
earth or the kiss of the West wind; but you could only see her in mid-
April, and you should look for her over the sea. She always comes with the
first warmth of the year.
But daily, before he painted, Sandro knelt in a dark chapel in Santa
Croce, while a blue-chinned priest said mass for the repose of Simonetta's
soul.
VIII
THE BURDEN OF NEW TYRE
For a short time in her motley history, an old-clothesman, one Domenico--
he and his "Compagnia del Bruco," his _Company of the Worm_[1]--
reigned over Siena and gave to her people a taste for blood. It was
bloodshed on easy terms they had; for surely no small nation (except that
tiger-cat Perugia) has achieved so much massacre with so little fighting.
Massacre considered as one of the Fine Arts? No indeed; but massacre as a
_viaticum_, as "title clear to mansions in the skies"; for, with more
complacency than discrimination, these sated citizens chose to dedicate
their most fantastic blood-orgies by a _Missa de Spiritu Sancto_ in
the Cathedral Church. The old-clothesman, who by some strange oversight
died in his bed, was floated up on the incense of this devout service to
show his hands, and--marvel!--Saint Catherine, the "amorosa sposa" of
Heaven, reigned in his stead. Certainly, for unction spiced with ferocity,
for a madness which alternately kissed the Crucifix and trampled on it,
for mandragora and _fleurs de lys_, saints and succubi, churches and
lupanars--commend me to Siena the red.
[Footnote 1: This was one of the _Contrade_ into which the City was
divided, and of which each had its totem-sign.]