THE AGE OF GOLD--1496-1497
_'Tornerà l'età dell' oro
Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'_
BELLINCIONI.
[The Age of Gold shall brighten as of yore,
And all exulting sing, 'Long live the Moor!']
I
Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, sat in her boudoir writing a letter
to her sister Isabella, wife of the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, lord of
Mantua:--
'Most excellent madonna and well-beloved Sister, I and _il Signor_
Ludovico, my spouse, desire your good health, and that of _il Signor_
Francesco, your illustrious consort.
'In obedience to your desire I send you the portrait of Massimiliano, my
Son, only I pray you not to conceive of him as of the smallness here
indicated. I would send you the precise measurements of how tall he is,
but that I am afraid, for the nurse tells me such measurement would
impede his growth. He grows _amazingly_. If I see him not for a couple
of days, I find him so greatly enlarged that I jump for joy.
'Here at court we have a great grief: the little Fool Nannino hath died.
You, my sister, knew him and loved him well; you will therefore
comprehend that while I might have replaced any other loss, Nature
herself could not fill the void left by Nannino, since in this Being,
formed expressly for the delight of princes, she had united the
perfection of imbecility with the most entrancing hideousness.
Bellincioni has composed a most elegant Elegy, declaring that if Nannino
is in Heaven then all paradise must laugh, if he is in hell even
Cerberus grinneth. We have buried him, with many tears, in our family
tomb in St. Maria delle Grazie, beside my favourite falcon, and the
memorable bitch Puttina. Death shall not wholly separate me from so
delightful a possession. I have wept for two entire nights, and
Ludovico, my lord, in the hope to console me, has promised me for a
Christmas gift a magnificent silver bedside Seat, ornamented with a
relief of the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ. Its interior
will be of pure gold, very massive, and it hath a Baldachin of velvet,
embroidered with our ducal arms. A similar seat has no other prince,
neither the Pope, nor the Emperor, nor the grand Turk. It will excel in
beauty that one famed by Martial in his epigram. My lord, Ludovico, had
wished Leonardo da Vinci to contrive a musical-organ in its Interior,
but he hath excused himself on some flimsy pretext, such as the
finishing of his Colossus, or his _Cenacolo_. You prayed me, beloved
Sister, to lend you this Painter for a time. With pleasure would I
accede to your request, and verily not lend but give him to you for
ever; but my lord, Ludovico, for what reason I cannot say, is exceeding
well-disposed toward this man, and would not consent to his removal for
all the gold in the world. Be not disappointed overmuch, for verily this
Leonardo is occupied to such a degree with alchemy, mechanics, Magic,
and other such like follies, that he scarce attends to his painting;
secondly, he executes all commissions with a slowness that would lose an
Angel his patience; thirdly, he is an infidel.
'Of late we have had a wolf-hunt. They do not permit me to mount on
horseback, for I am now advanced in my fifth month; but I watched the
hunt from the high platform of a conveyance made expressly for me, in
form like a pulpit. I assure you that in this box I was rather tortured
than diverted. When the Wolf made his escape into the forest I wept with
rage. Had I been upon my horse I swear he should not thus have got away,
though I had broken my collar-bone.
'My little sister, do you recall how we used to leap our horses? And how
Penthesilea fell in the Ditch and almost destroyed herself? And the
boar-hunt at Cusnago? And the tennis? and the angling? What fine times
were those!
'Here we amuse ourselves as best we can. We play at cards, and we skate,
which is a most pleasing diversion, introduced among us by a Flemish
gentleman, for the winter is very severe, and not only the lakes but
likewise the rivers are completely frozen. In the park Leonardo hath
built out of snow a most elegant Leda embraced by the swan. Pity 'tis
that in the spring it will melt!
'And you, delightful sister, how fare you? And has your breed of cats
with long hair succeeded well? If you have a male Kitten with tawny hair
and blue eyes, I pray you to send him with the young Negress you have
promised me; I will give you in exchange my little bitch's next litter.
'Pray you, do not omit to send the model of the Wrapper of azure satin,
with the cross-cut collar and the trimming of sables. I asked for it in
my last letter. Pray you, despatch it at once; 'twere best to-morrow at
day-break, and by a mounted messenger. And send me also a vessel of your
boasted ointment for the king's evil, and some of that foreign wood for
the finger-nails.
'Our astrologer predicts a very hot summer, and War. What saith your
prophet? One's faith jumps always with the astrologer belonging to
somebody else.
'I and Ludovico, my lord, commend ourselves to your gracious
remembrance, beloved sister, and that of your illustrious consort, the
Signor Marchese Francesco.
BEATRICE SFORZA.'
II
Notwithstanding the frank tone of this letter, it was full of finished
policy. Beatrice concealed from her sister her private anxieties and
annoyances, for, as matter of fact, peace was very far from reigning
between husband and wife. The lady hated Leonardo neither for heresy nor
atheism, but because he had painted the portrait of Cecilia Bergamini,
the Duchess's most detested rival. Of late, also, she had suspected an
intrigue with one of her ladies, Madonna Lucrezia Crivelli.
At this time Ludovico was at the zenith of his power. Son of Francesco
Sforza--that daring mercenary from the Romagna, half soldier, half
brigand--he dreamed of making himself lord of an united Italy.
'The Pope,' he boasted, 'shall be my chaplain, the Emperor my captain,
Venice my treasury, and the King of France my courier.'
He signed himself '_Ludovicus Maria Sfortia Anglus Dux Mediolani_,'
deducing his descent from Anglus the Trojan, companion of Æneas. The
Colossus, monument to his father Francesco, with the inscription _Ecce
Deus_, was designed as a testimony to the divine origin of the Sforzas.
For all his external prosperity, however, the Duke was tortured by
anxiety and secret fear. He knew himself unloved by the people, and
reckoned a usurper. Once in the Piazza dell' Arrengo the people, seeing
the widow of Gian Galeazzo with her eldest son, had shouted, 'Long live
Francesco, our rightful Duke!'
The boy was eight years old, and famed for his intelligence and beauty.
Marin Sanuto, the Venetian, wrote of him: 'The people desire him for
their prince, even as they desire God.' Beatrice and her husband had
recognised that the death of Gian Galeazzo had not been sufficient to
make them lords of Milan, since in this child the shade of his father
was rising from the tomb.
There was talk in the city of mysterious portents. At night, above the
castle towers, a strange glow had appeared as that of a conflagration.
In the palace chambers agonising groans had been heard. It was
remembered that when Gian Galeazzo had lain dead it had been impossible
to shut his left eye, omen of the imminent death of one of his near
kinsmen; the eyelids of the Madonna dell' Albore had quivered; outside
the Porta Ticinese an old woman's cow had dropped a double-headed calf.
The Duchess herself had seen an apparition in the Sala della Rocchetta,
had fainted with terror, and refused to discuss it with any one, even
her husband. She had altogether lost that vivacity and grace which had
been so attractive to her spouse, and, filled with the gloomiest
prognostications, was awaiting the approaching birth of her child.
III
On a melancholy December evening, while snowflakes were slowly falling
on the streets of Milan, Il Moro sat in the little detached apartment of
the palace in which he had installed his new love, Madonna Lucrezia
Crivelli. The flames from the fire on the open hearth lighted up the
polished doors with their inlaid views of the ancient buildings in
Rome, the moulded and chequered lacework of the ceiling touched up with
gold, the walls covered with Cordovan leather and gold hangings, the
tall black chairs and settles, the round table, the novel by Boiardo
lying open, the sheets of music, the mother-o'-pearl mandoline, and the
crystal goblet of _Balnea aponitana_, a spa water, at that time greatly
in fashion. On the wall hung the lady's portrait painted by Leonardo.
Caradosso had carved the marble reliefs of the chimney-piece--curled
serpents gnawing a vine, and naked children, half cherubs, half cupids,
playing with the sacred instruments of the Lord's Passion; nails,
sponge, lance, and crown of thorns.
The fierce wind howled in the chimney, but within the dainty _studiolo_
all was comfort and luxury. Madonna Lucrezia, seated on a cushion at the
Duke's feet, was sorrowful, for he had chided her, the ground of his
complaint being that she did not visit Beatrice, his duchess.
'Your Excellency!' cried the girl, with drooping eyelids, 'I beseech
you, constrain me not! I am incapable of lying.'
'Lying?' echoed Il Moro; 'but this is concealment, not lying! Did not
the Thunderer himself hide his pranks from his jealous spouse? And
Theseus? and Phædra? and Medea? All the gods and heroes of antiquity!
We, poor mortals, cannot resist the might of the god of Love. But would
it be well to have the evil flagrant? Then you lead your neighbour into
temptation, which is contrary to all Christian charity. And charity, you
know, covers a multitude of sins.'
He laughed; but Lucrezia shook her head and looked at him with her large
eyes, innocent and pensive as a child's.
'You know, my lord, I am happy in your love; but sometimes I fall into
such a remorse, remembering that I am deceiving Madonna Beatrice, who
loves me as a sister, that I know not how to endure it.'
'Enough, enough, my child!' cried the Duke, and drew her to his knee,
throwing one arm round her waist, and with the other hand caressing her
smooth raven tresses, which were confined by the _ferroniera_, a thread
of gold fastened over the brow by a diamond, which glistened like a
tear. Lowering her eyelashes she permitted his caresses coldly, and
without returning them.
'Ah, if you knew how I loved thee, my gentle one! so sweet, so modest!
Thee only!' he sighed, breathing again that odour of violet and musk.
The door opened, and a frightened maid-servant rushed in.
'Madonna! madonna!' she cried; 'there! down by the great door! O Lord,
have pity on us sinners!'
'Speak!' said the Duke, 'who is at the great door?'
'Beatrice, the Duchess.'
Il Moro turned pale.
'The key! Quick, the key of the little door! I will go through the
courtyard. Give me the key--at once.'
'But the cavaliers of Madonna Beatrice are surrounding the house!' cried
the servant, wringing her hands.
'Then it's a trap,' said the Duke rubbing his brow. But how has she come
by the knowledge? Who can have told her?'
'Surely Monna Sidonia, the accursed witch who creeps in to vex us with
her unguents and her phials. I warned you, Madonna, to beware of her.'
'What's to be done? _Dio mio!_ What's to be done?' muttered the Duke,
ever paler.
From the street came a violent knocking on the great door and the
servant rushed to the staircase.
'Hide me, Lucrezia. Hide me!'
'Most Excellent, if Madonna Beatrice suspects, she will search the
house. Were it not better that you went straight up to her?'
'God forbid! You know not the manner of woman she is. Good Lord, to
think what may come of this! Remember her state--the danger to the
infant! Hide me; hide me at once--no matter where.'
At this moment the Duke more nearly resembled a thief detected than a
descendant of Anglus, the companion of Æneas.
Lucrezia took him to her dressing-chamber and hid him in the wardrobe, a
large press let into the wall, with white doors inlaid with gold; here
he effaced himself in a corner among the dresses.
'What a position!' he said to himself. 'Exactly like the ridiculous
heroes of Boccaccio or Sacchetti.'
Il Moro was, however, in no mood to appreciate the ridiculous side of
the adventure. He drew from his bosom a small case with relics of St.
Christopher; another containing a morsel of Egyptian mummy, a talisman
much in vogue. In the dark he could not distinguish which was which of
these treasures, so he kissed them both, crossing himself and praying.
Hearing the voices of his wife and his mistress entering the closet
together, he turned cold with fear. But they were talking amicably as
though nothing were amiss. Lucrezia was showing the Duchess her new
house, at her own urgent request. Probably Beatrice had no clear proofs
of her case, and therefore was dissembling her suspicion. It was a duel
of feminine cunning.
'What! gowns here, too?' said the Duchess indifferently, as she
approached the press in which her husband had settled himself down half
dead with fear.
'Yes, old gowns. What I wear at home. Would your Excellence like to
look?' said Lucrezia, also indifferently, and she partly opened the
door.
'Hearken, my dear. Where do you keep that robe I was so fond of--don't
you remember?--which you wore at the Pallavicini fête last summer?
Little golden caterpillars sparking like fireflies on a purple ground.'
'I don't remember,' said Lucrezia. 'Oh, yes, though--it must be here,'
and she moved away from her lover's hiding-place, leaving its door ajar,
and drew the Duchess to the other wardrobe.
'And she declared she could not deceive!' thought the duke, pleased
notwithstanding his terror. 'What presence of mind! Oh, women! 'tis from
you princes should learn diplomacy.'
Presently the ladies moved away into the adjoining apartment, and Il
Moro breathed more freely, though he still convulsively clutched at the
relics of St. Christopher and the morsel of mummy.
'Two hundred imperial ducats to the monastery of St. Maria delle Grazie
for oil and candles, if it ends well!' he vowed.
At last the maid came running, opened the press, and with an air both
respectful and sly let the prisoner out, telling him the danger was
passed, and the most excellent Madonna Beatrice had been pleased to
retire, after taking a gracious leave of Madonna Lucrezia.
Having crossed himself, he returned to the _studiolo_, drank a glass of
the _Balnea aponitana_ water, looked at Lucrezia, who sat by the
fireplace as before, her head drooping, and smiled. Then he stepped
cautiously to her side, bent down and took her in his arms. The girl
shuddered.
'Leave me! Leave me, I pray you. I beseech you to go away. How can you
do this after what has happened?'
But the Duke unheeding, covered her face and neck and hair with ardent
kisses. He had found a new charm in her unsuspected talent for
deception, and never had she seemed to him more lovely.
The December storm still howled in the chimney; but the glow of the fire
illuminated the chain of laughing naked children who, among the
vine-branches of Bacchus brandished nail, hammer, spear, and crown of
thorns.
IV
For three months, under the direction of Bramante, Caradosso, and
Leonardo da Vinci, preparation had been making for the great ball,
decreed by the Duke for New Year's Day. No less than two thousand
persons had been invited. On the appointed day, at about five o'clock in
the afternoon, the guests assembled at the palace. A snowstorm had
damaged the roads; the castle towers and battlemented walls with the
loop-holes for the mouths of cannon showed with ghastly whiteness
against the heavy clouds. Fires had been kindled in the wide courtyard,
and round these were assembled noisy groups of equerries,
palanquin-bearers, grooms, couriers, outriders, and their like. Gilded
chariots and coaches, very cumbrous, and drawn by cart-horses, were
setting down fur-wrapped ladies and cavaliers at the entrance of the
palace, or crossing the drawbridge which led to the inner court of the
Rocchetta. The frosted windows glittered in the festal illuminations
within.
Entering the vestibule, the guests passed between two long rows of ducal
guards, Turkish _mamelukes_, Greek _stradiotes_, Scotch bowmen, Swiss
_lanzknechts_, all in armour, and bearing heavy halberts. In front of
them stood the pages, pretty as maidens, in parti-coloured liveries, the
right side pink velvet, the left blue satin, trimmed with swan's-down,
and silver-embroidered with the arms of Sforza and Visconti. Their
garments were so tight as to display every outline of their lithe and
graceful bodies; and in their hands these charming candlebearers held
torches of red and yellow wax, such as were used in the churches. As
each guest entered the great hall, a herald, attended by two trumpeters,
proclaimed his style and titles; then a vista opened before him of vast
dazzlingly-lighted saloons: 'the hall of the white doves on a red
field'; 'the hall of gold,' with the ducal hunting trophies; 'the hall
of purple,' hung with gold-embroidered purple satin, adorned with
buckets and firebrands (the insignia of the Dukes of Milan, who at
pleasure could blow up the fire of war, or quench it with the waters of
peace). Last was the small and exquisite 'black saloon,' designed by
Bramante, and adorned on walls and ceiling with frescoes by Leonardo,
still unfinished.
The richly-dressed crowd buzzed like a swarm of bees. Their attire was
iridescent, gorgeous, not seldom tasteless through over-richness, in
fashions borrowed from many lands, so that a witty writer of the day
said that he read the invasion of foreigners, and the enslavement of
Italy, in the garb of his own countrymen. The robes of the ladies,
hanging in heavy folds, and stiff with gold and jewels, suggested
ecclesiastical vestments. Many were heirlooms handed down from
long-forgotten grandmothers. There was ample display of fair shoulders
and bosoms, and hair was confined in golden nets, and plaited in thick
strands, artificially lengthened by ribbons and false hair. Fashion
proscribed eyebrows; therefore ladies whom nature had disfigured by
those superfluities carefully removed them, hair by hair, with steel
tweezers called '_pelatoio_.' Rouge, and heavy perfumes such as musk,
amber, viverra, and cypress powder, were regarded as mere necessary
decencies.
Here and there in the crowd might be seen girls and women inheritors of
that peculiar charm only seen in Lombardy, that beauty, as it were, of
vaporous shadows, melting like mist into the transparent pallor of the
skin; of oval faces, and delicate chiselling of features such as
Leonardo delighted to paint.
Madonna Violante Borromeo was by universal consent acclaimed queen of
the festival, with her black and brilliant eyes, her tresses dark as
night, her triumphant beauty patent to all. Her dress was embroidered
with moths burning their wings in flames--a warning to all heedless
admirers. Yet it was not Madonna Violante who attracted the eyes of
veritable connoisseurs in female loveliness so much as the graceful
Diana Pallavicino. Her eyes were clear and cold as ice, her fair hair
was almost colourless, her smile calm, her voice slow, melodious, and
thrilling as the strings of a viol. She wore a simple dress of white
damask with long floating lines, trimmed with ribbons of palest green:
amid the noise and splendour of the feast she seemed a being apart,
alien, solitary, like a water-lily slumbering on some silent moonlit
pool.
Suddenly the horns and trumpets sounded, and all the guests moved to the
great Hall of the Tennis Court. Here waxlights burned in fiery clusters
upon huge candelabra, and woke sparkles in the golden stars which
strewed the azure ceiling-vault. The balcony, in which the choir was
concealed, was hung with silken carpets, and with garlands of
evergreens.
Punctual to the moment prescribed by the astrologers (for the Duke never
moved a step nor, as the wits had it, changed his shirt nor kissed his
wife, without first consulting the stars), Il Moro and Beatrice made
their entry, robed in ermine-lined brocaded mantles, followed by pages,
chamberlains, and lords-in-waiting. On the breast of the Duke, set as a
brooch, glowed a ruby of extraordinary brilliance and size, taken from
the treasure of Gian Galeazzo.
As for Beatrice, she had of late greatly declined in beauty; her
unformed still girlish expression and manner had a strange pathos,
contrasted with the state of her health and evident sufferings.
The Duke gave the signal, the seneschal raised his staff, the music
struck up, and the guests took their allotted seats at the splendid
banquet.
V
And now a commotion arose. The ambassador of the Grand Duke of Muscovy,
Danilo Mamiroff, refused to sit below the envoy of the Most Serene
Republic of St. Mark. To all explanations, persuasions and entreaties
the old man was obstinate, and only repeated:--
'I will not sit down. I will not sit down. 'Tis an affront!' Nor recked
he of curious looks and ironical smiles turned on him from every side.
'What's the matter? More trouble with the Muscovites? Good Lord, what
barbarians they show themselves! They always expect the best places, and
won't listen to reason. They are for ever in the way. Mere savages! And
such a language! They might as well be Turks! A nation of wild beasts!'
Messer Boccalino, the interpreter, a Mantuan of great resource, hurried
to the ambassador:--
'But Messer Daniele, Messer Daniele!' he cried in broken Russian, bowing
low, and making gestures of perfect servility, 'Messer Daniele, you
really must sit! 'Tis a mere Milanese custom. Sit down, I beseech you,
or his Highness will be offended.'
Nikita Karachiarov, Mamiroff's young secretary, had come likewise to the
old man.
'Danilo Kusmitch, little father, do not, I pray you, be wroth. No one
can keep his own rule in a strange monastery! What would you have? These
foreigners are ignorant of our usages. Pray you beware lest they take
you by the arms and exclude you from the banquet. Think what a figure we
should cut!'
'Nikita, hold your tongue. 'Tis not for you to teach a man of my years.
I know very well what I am about. I am not going to give in. I will
never sit below that man from Venice. I represent my sovereign; and my
sovereign is the Autocrat of all the Russias....'
'Messer Daniele! Messer Daniele!' stammered Boccalino.
'Leave me alone, you monkey-face. What are you squeaking about? Get
away. I have said I will not sit down, and sit down I will not!'
The old man's small eyes, gleaming like those of a bear under his
frowning brows, flashed fires of pride, fury, and indomitable obstinacy.
His emerald-studded staff trembled in the tight grasp of his nervous
fingers. It was clear that he was not to be subdued by any human force.
The Duke summoned the Venetian envoy, and with that happy courtesy which
was his characteristic, he begged as a personal favour to himself that
the Italian guest would consent to the change in his seat. He added that
no one attached the slightest importance to the childish arrogance of
these utter barbarians. Yet in point of fact Ludovico greatly prized the
favour of the Grand Duke of Muscovy; he reckoned on his countenance to
conclude an advantageous treaty with the Sultan. The Venetian looked at
Mamiroff, contemptuously shrugged his shoulders, remarked that his
Excellency spoke well, and quarrels over precedence were unworthy of
educated persons; then calmly seated himself in the chair allotted.
Danilo Kusmitch had not understood the conversation, nor would it have
altered his sense of his own importance. Unconcerned at the fire of
hostile eyes, complacently stroking his beard and adjusting the sash and
the sable-trimmed satin pelisse upon his corpulent person, Danilo seated
himself heavily and majestically upon the chair he had conquered; while
Nikita and Boccalino retired to the lower table, and sat beside Leonardo
da Vinci.
The boastful Mantuan told tales, half fact, half fiction, of the wonders
he had seen in Muscovy; but Leonardo, desiring more dependable
information about the far-off land which, like all things vast and
mysterious, excited his immediate interest, addressed himself to
Karachiarov, asking questions about its boundless plains, its immense
rivers and forests, the flood-tide in its Hyperborean ocean and its
Hyrcanian sea, the sunlit northern nights; finally about certain of his
friends who had gone thither--Pietro Solari, who was engaged in the
building of the Granite Palace in Moscow, and Fioravanti of Bologna, who
was putting up certain fine edifices in the square of the Kremlin.
'Messere,' said the lovely Madonna Ermellina to the interpreter at her
side, 'I have heard that astonishing country of which you speak called
"Rossia" because of its wondrous abounding in roses. Pray you, is this
to be credited?'
Boccalino laughed, and assured her that in 'Rossia' there was, on the
contrary, sad lack of the queen of flowers, on account of the
intolerable cold; and he told the following tale:--
'Certain Florentine merchants once went to Poland, but were not allowed
further into 'Rossia' because of the state of war between Poland and the
Grand Duke of Muscovy. The Florentines, desirous of buying sables,
invited Russian merchants to the bank of the Borysthenes, which flowed
between the two countries; and bargaining began across the river, each
party shouting their loudest. But so great was the cold that the words
froze in the air and reached not the opposite bank. Certain ingenious
peasants then made a huge fire on the midmost point of the ice-bound
river; and presently, lo! the words which had remained a whole hour in
mid-river air unable to move, began to thaw and to drip, gurgling and
clattering like the droppings in the melting time of spring; and at last
they were distinctly heard on the far shore by the Florentines,
notwithstanding the fact that the Muscovites who had uttered them had
long since left the opposite bank.'
After listening to this anecdote, the ladies looked with great
compassion at Nikita, the inhabitant of so unpleasing a country. Nikita,
however, did not respond to their glances, for his attention had been
arrested by a wondrous dish just served; a naked Andromeda, made of the
breasts of capons, bound to a rock of cream-cheese, and about to be
loosed by a winged Perseus of veal.
The meat courses had all been served on plates of gold, but the fish was
eaten off silver, as more appropriate to the watery element; silvered
bread and silvered lemons were handed round, and then among oysters,
lampreys, and trout appeared Amphitrite herself, made of the white flesh
of eels, riding in a mother-o'-pearl chariot drawn by dolphins over an
ocean of quivering blue jelly.
After this came the sweets, marchpane, pistachios, cedar-cones, almonds,
and burnt sugar, edifices designed by Bramante and Leonardo--Hercules in
the garden of the Hesperides, Hippolytus and Phædra, Bacchus and
Ariadne, Danae and Zeus--a whole Olympus of resuscitated gods.
Nikita stared with childish enjoyment, but Danilo was so much shocked
that he lost his appetite, and growled between his teeth--
'Antichristian abominations! Horrible paganism! Horrible!'
VI
Dancing began; slow and stately measures known as 'Venus and Zephyr,'
'Cruel Destiny,' 'Cupid,' etc.; the dresses of the ladies, being long
and heavy, did not admit of rapid motion. The music was tender and soft,
full of passionate languor like the sonnets of Petrarch, and to it moved
dames and cavaliers, meeting and parting with bows, sighs, and smiles,
all the perfection of dignity and grace.
Messer Galeazzo Sanseverino, the young commandant of Il Moro's guards,
was the cynosure of the ladies' eyes; he was attired in white, with
open-work sleeves upon a pink lining; his white shoes had diamond
buckles, and his face was handsome, but fatigued, dissipated, and
effeminate. An approving murmur ran through the crowd when in the dance,
'_Sorte crudele_' he dropped (of course accidentally), first his shoe,
and then his mantle, but continued gliding and circling with that air of
saddened negligence which was considered the mark of breeding. Danilo
Mamiroff watched him in astonishment, spat contemptuously, and
exclaimed--
'Good Lord, what a fool!'
The Duchess was not dancing; her heart was heavy, and only long practice
enabled her to play her part of amiable hostess, to receive the
New-Year's congratulations, and to respond with suitable banalities to
the fine speeches of the courtiers. At times she felt unable to carry
the business through; she longed to escape into some corner where she
could burst into sobs.
Presently she entered a small and secluded apartment, where by a fire
certain young ladies and courtiers were talking in a close ring. She
asked them of what they spoke.
'Of platonic love, your Excellency,' replied one of the ladies. 'Messer
Antoniotto Fregoso maintains that a lady does no violence to her modesty
by kissing a man on the lips so it be by the way of ideal love.'
'And how does he prove that?' asked the Duchess absently.
Messer Antoniotto answered eagerly himself.
'With your Grace's permission, I maintain that the lips are the gates of
the soul, and when they meet in a platonic salutation the souls of the
lovers rise as to their natural outlet. Plato condemns not a kiss; and
Solomon, in the Song of Songs, typifying the mystical union of the soul
with God, says, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth."'
An old baron, a country knight, with a blunt and honest face, objected
from the point of view of a husband; but the pretty lady, Fiordiligi,
shrugging her graceful bare shoulders, reproved his barbarism.
'_Dio mio!_ we speak of love, not of marriage! Would you profane the
sacred names "Lover" and "Beloved" with those ignoble, rude, shameless
titles, "husband" and "wife"?'
The baron would have answered her, but Messer Antoniotto interrupted
with further descant; the Duchess, however, was tired, and moved away.
In the next saloon, verses were being recited by a noted poet from Rome,
Serafino d'Aquila, surnamed the Unique; a little man very carefully
washed, shaved, curled, and scented, with pink cheeks and a languishing
smile, irregular teeth, and wily eyes.
Seeing Lucrezia in the circle of ladies surrounding this servant of the
Muses, Beatrice paled, but instantly recovering herself, she advanced
and kissed her with her usual graciousness. Before she could speak,
however, an interruption occurred in the entry of a stout and gorgeous
lady, who was suffering from bleeding of the nose.
''Tis an event upon which even Messer Unico himself could scarce make
love-verses,' observed one of the courtiers contemptuously, for the
sufferer was old and ugly.
Messer Unico, feeling his reputation at stake, sprang to his feet,
passed his hand through his hair, threw back his head, and raised his
eyes to heaven.
'Hush! hush!' murmured the ladies. 'Messer Unico composes! If your
Excellency would move a little further she would hear better!'
Madonna Ermellina took a lute and ran her fingers over the strings; thus
softly accompanied, the poet, in a voice guttural and majestic as that
of a ventriloquist, declaimed his lines. They were to the effect that
Love, moved by a lover to shoot at the heart of a fair one, had, owing
to the bandage over his eyes, shot awry, and wounded not the heart but
the nose of the unfortunate lady.
The audience applauded.
'Most beautiful! Stupendous! Unsurpassable! What conceits! What
facility! Not like our Bellincioni who melts away under the exertion of
putting a sonnet together! Truly, when he raised his eyes I felt the
very wind of his inspiration making me wellnigh afraid!'
One lady offered him wine, another cooling tablets of mint; another
placed him in an armchair and fanned him. He drooped and languished and
blinked his eyes like a gorged cat in the afternoon sunshine.
Then he produced another sonnet in praise of the Duchess, which told how
the snow, put to shame by the whiteness of her skin, had in vengeance
turned itself to ice, and caused her to slip and wellnigh to fall upon
the courtyard pavement.
Then he celebrated a lady who had lost a front tooth; 'twas the device
of Love, who, dwelling in her mouth, required a loophole for the
shooting of his arrows.
'But this man is a genius!' cried the ladies; 'his name will go down to
posterity linked with that of Dante!'
'Nay, higher than Dante's. Where in the verses of Dante will you find
these subtleties of our Unique one?'
'Ladies,' said the poet humbly, 'methinks you go too far. Dante has his
special merits. Every one has his own qualities! As for me, I would give
Dante's glory for your applause.'
He began another sonnet; but the Duchess had lost patience, and went
away.
Returning to the main saloon, she commanded her page, Ricciardetto, a
faithful lad, enamoured of her she sometimes fancied, to attend with a
torch at the door of her bedchamber. Then she hurried through the long
line of brilliant and crowded rooms, passed along a distant and deserted
gallery, and ascended the winding stair. The immense vaulted apartment,
now used as the ducal bedchamber, lay in the rectangular northern tower
of the castle; she entered, took a candle, and went to a small oaken
cupboard let into the thickness of the wall, in which the Duke kept
important papers and his private letters. She had stolen the key from
her husband, and now, nervous and agitated, fitted it to the lock.
However, the attempt showed the lock to be broken, and she tore open the
brass fastenings, only to find that the shelves had been emptied of
their contents. Obviously Il Moro, noting the loss of his key, had
transported his letters elsewhere. Beatrice stood motionless.
Snowflakes were fleeting past the window like white phantoms. The wind
whistled, and howled, and moaned, and the lady shuddered as she
listened, for these voices of the storm and of the night recalled to her
mind a something terrible which she was never able to forget for long.
Her eye fell on the round lid of iron which covered the aperture to the
Dionysius ear, the hearing-tube which Leonardo had run from the lower
chambers of the palace to the Duke's bedchamber. She put her ear to it
now and listened. Waves of sound reached her like the rolling of the
sea heard in shells. She listened to the festal cries of the company,
the laughter, the revels, the passionate sighing of the music, but with
it mingled the whistle and roar of the storm.
Suddenly it seemed to her that, close by her side, some one murmured
'Bellincioni! Bellincioni!'
She gave a cry, the colour leaving her cheeks.
'Bellincioni! Of course! Why did I never think of him before? He is the
one who will tell me everything. I must go to him this minute. Only so
that no one shall notice me! Yet, truly, I care not if I am seen. I must
_know_! I can endure this atmosphere of deceit no longer.'
She remembered that Bellincioni, on the pretext of indisposition, had
not come to the ball. At this hour he would be at home, and alone!
So she called Ricciardetto, who was at the door.
'Tell two runners, with a litter, to await me below at the private gate.
Despatch. Only see, if you desire my favour, that the matter is not
known. Hear you? It must be known to none.'
He kissed her hand and set off with the message.
Beatrice threw on a sable pelisse and a mask of black velvet. A few
minutes more and she was in the litter, being carried toward the Porta
Ticinese, where the court poet had his lodging.
VII
Bernardo Bellincioni called his old ruinous house 'the lizard's hole.'
He was the recipient of many munificent gifts, but his life was
irregular; he drank, and gambled away whatever he had, so that 'misery,'
as he was accustomed to say, 'followed him like a wife, unloved and
faithful.'
Lying on a broken couch, of which the fourth leg was replaced by a
billet of wood, and the mattress thin as a girdle-cake, he was sipping
his third glass of sour wine, and composing an epitaph for Madonna
Cecilia's deceased lapdog. Listening to the north wind, and making
gloomy prognostications as to the sort of night he was going to spend,
he watched the dying-out of the remnant of fire, and vainly tried to
warm his thin legs in the moth-eaten squirrel cloak, which he had
thrown over them. He had not presented himself at the court ball (where
his masque, _Paradiso_, was to be performed) for other reasons than
illness; though indeed he had been ill for some while, and was so lean
that, as he said, 'in his body it were possible to study the anatomy of
the bones, muscles, and veins of the human subject.' Had he been dying
he might still have dragged himself to the festival; more potent than
illness was, however, jealousy; he preferred freezing in his kennel to
witnessing the triumph of his rival, that interloping and pretentious
humbug, Messer Unico, who had turned the heads of all the silly women.
The mere thought of Messer Unico overflowed his heart with black bile;
he clenched his fist, gnashed his teeth, and jumped frantically from his
bed. But the room was so cold that he returned to its inadequate
shelter, coughed, shivered, and rolled angrily from side to side.
'The villains!' he grumbled; 'have I not written four sonnets in the
best rhyme praying for firewood, and not a stick has come. I shall
certainly be reduced to burning my banisters: no one comes to visit me
save Jews, and if they break their necks so much the better.'
However, he spared the banisters. His eye fell on the makeshift leg of
his bed, and he considered which were the more dangerous, a fireless
room or an insecure sleeping-place. The storm swept through the room,
blowing in at the chinks and shrieking in the chimney like a witch. With
desperate decision Bernardo tore away the support of his couch, chopped
it up and cast it on the hearth. The fire blazed up anew, and he sat
before it on a stool, putting his blue fingers to the flame, and
apostrophising the last warm friend of a lonely poet.
'A dog's life!' he muttered presently; 'and of a truth I merit these
castigations less than others. Was it not of my forefather, the
Florentine, who lived before the house of Sforza had been heard of, that
the divine poet wrote:--
"Bellincion Berti vid' io andar cinto
Di cuoio e d'osso"?
Good Lord, when I came to Milan this herd of creeping animals did not
know a sonnet from a _strambotto_. Who is it has taught them the
elegancies of the new poetry? Was it not through my facile fingers that
the waters of Hippocrene enriched the Lombard plain, and even
threatened an inundation? And this is my reward! To lie like a dog in a
kennel! To be neglected by all because, forsooth, I am poor! A poet
situated as I am, is unknown as he whose face is hidden by a mask or
deformed by the smallpox.'
And he recited certain lines from his epistle to Ludovico, the Duke:--
'I cry for aid to every one,
But each in turn replies, "Begone!"
Ah, wretched poet! for his pains,
Thou generous lord, what meed remains?
The very cap and bells to him denied,
Among the beasts of burden harness thou his pride!'
And he hung his bald head, smiling bitterly; on his stool by the fire,
crouching, and very thin, with a long red nose, he looked like some
melancholy roosting bird.
Presently a knock was heard at the house-door below; then the sleepy
grumbling of the surly old woman who was the poet's sole attendant; and
then steps upon the brick floor.
'What, the fiend!' wondered Bellincioni; 'can it be that abominable Jew
come again after his money? The infidel hound! Can he not leave me in
peace even at night?'
The staircase creaked, the door opened, and into the wretched room came
a woman in a sable mantle and a black velvet mask. Astounded and
staring, Bernardo sprang to his feet. The lady, without a word, was
about to seat herself on a chair.
'For God's love, be careful, madam!' cried the poet, 'the back is
broken!' Then in the ceremonious tone of a courtier he added: 'To what
good genius am I indebted for the happiness of seeing an illustrious
lady in my poor abode?'
'Surely,' he thought, ''tis a customer come to order a madrigal! Well,
it brings money, and that brings firewood! Yet the hour is strange for a
lonely lady! 'Tis clear my name is not unknown. And if this one, who
knows how many more are my admirers?'
With reviving spirits he threw the rest of the wood on the flame, which
already had begun to languish.
The fair unknown raised her mask.
'It is I, Bernardo.'
In his astonishment he staggered against the doorpost.
'Jesus! Holy Virgin! Angels and martyrs!' he exclaimed. 'What? Your
Excellency! Most shining lady----'
'Bernardo, you can do me a great service,' she looked round uneasily;
'but can any one hear us?'
'Be at ease, madam. No one except the rats and the mice.'
'Listen!' said Beatrice slowly, fixing her piercing eyes on his. 'I am
aware that you have composed verses for Madonna Lucrezia; doubtless you
have kept the letter of commission from the Duke.'
He turned pale, and observed her silently, consternation in his eyes.
'Fear nothing,' she continued; 'no one shall know. I shall study how to
reward you, Bernardo.'
'Your Excellency!' stammered the unlucky poet, whose tongue had lost its
glibness, 'do not believe--nay, 'tis all calumny! No letters--before
God, I swear there are no letters!'
Her eyes flashed, and her brows contracted in an ominous frown. She rose
and drew nearer, still fixing him with her gaze.
'Lie not. I know all. As you value your life, give me the Duke's
letters. Give me them! Hear you? Bernardo, be careful, my servants are
at the door. Think you I have come to jest with you?'
He fell before her on his knees.
'But, most illustrious lady, I have no letters!'
'You say you have no letters?'
'None.'
Fury overcame her. 'Wait then, accursed pander, till I tear the truth
from your lips. Oh, I'll wring confession from you! I'll strangle you
with my own hands, you rubbish, you rogue!' she cried: in good sooth
driving her slender fingers into his throat with such force that the
veins swelled on his forehead. Unresisting, rolling his eyes and hanging
his hands helplessly, he more than ever resembled a sick bird.
'She is strangling me!' thought Bellincioni; 'well, it can't be helped.
Not for so poor a reason will I betray my lord!'
Dissipated rascal, and venal flatterer the poetaster had always been,
but never traitor. In his veins flowed better blood than that of the
Sforzas, and the moment had come for showing it.
The Duchess, however, recovered herself. With a gesture of disgust she
flung him from her, snatched up the little lamp with its broken sides
and charred wick, and made for the adjoining cabinet, which she guessed
to be the poet's working _studiolo_. Bernardo, placing himself against
the door, barred the entrance. But the haughty glance of the Duchess
awed him, and he withdrew. She swept past and entered the poor refuge of
his threadbare muse. A smell of mould came from the books, great patches
of damp showed on the plaster walls. The broken glass of the frosted
windows was repaired with tow. On the sloping ink-splashed board were
quills, gnawed and twisted in the agony of finding rhymes, and papers,
doubtless rough copies of poems.
Heedless of the author, Beatrice stood the lamp on a shelf and began to
rummage among these sheets. She found sonnets addressed to chamberlains,
treasurers, and dispensers, with burlesque complaints and prayers for
firewood, clothes, wine, and bread. In one he asked of Messer
Pallavicini a roast goose for the due celebration of All Saints' Day. In
another, headed '_Del Moro a Cecilia_,' the poet recounted how Jupiter,
returning from his mistress, had been forced to brave the storm lest
_jealous Juno_ should guess his treachery, and tearing the diadem from
her brow scatter its pearls like hailstones and raindrops from the sky.
Presently the search brought the Duchess to a dainty case of black wood;
she opened it, and saw a carefully tied-up packet of letters. Bernardo,
watching her, wrung his hands in dismay. The Duchess looked at him, then
at the letters; read the name of Lucrezia, recognised the handwriting of
her husband, and knew she had found the thing she sought, his
letters--the rough draft of the love-verses he had commanded for
Lucrezia. She thrust the packet into the bosom of her dress, flung a bag
of ducats at the poet, as one might fling a bone to a dog, and departed.
He heard her descend the stair, heard the bang of the door, and stood
motionless in the centre of the room as if thunderstruck, though the
floor seemed shaking under him like the deck of a ship in storm. At
last, exhausted, he flung himself on the three-legged couch, and sank
into a deathlike slumber.
VIII
The Duchess returned to the castle, where the guests had noticed her
absence with surprise, and the Duke himself become alarmed. He met her
in the hall, and she accosted him, her face somewhat blanched, and
explained that having felt fatigued after the banquet she had gone into
an inner room to snatch some repose.
'Bice!' cried the Duke, taking her hand, which was trembling and cold,
'you are ill! Tell me, for pity's sake, what is the matter. Shall we put
off the second part of this entertainment? Dear one, did I not arrange
it solely to give pleasure to thee?'
'There is nothing the matter,' replied Beatrice. 'Why this anxiety,
Vico? I have not felt so well this many a day. I wish to see the
_Paradiso_. I intend to dance.'
Il Moro was partly reassured.
'God be thanked, beloved,' he said, kissing her hand.
The guests now streamed into the _Sala del giuoco alla palla_, which had
been arranged for the representation of the _Paradiso_, by Leonardo da
Vinci, the court mechanician. When every one was seated, and the lights
had been extinguished, it was his voice which cried 'Ready!' Then a
train of powder exploded, and crystalline globes, like planets, were
seen disposed in a circle, filled with water, and illumined by a myriad
of living fires sparkling with rainbow colours.
'See!' said the lively Madonna Ermellina, pointing out Leonardo to her
neighbour; 'see that face! He is a wizard capable of carrying away the
castle bodily, as one reads in the romances.'
'I mislike this playing with fire,' replied the other. 'Heaven grant we
have not a real fire presently!'
Presently, from a black chest concealed behind the fiery globes, a
white-winged angel arose and recited the prologue. At the line--
'The great King makes his spheres revolve'--
he pointed to the Duke, as if indicating that he governed his people
with the same wisdom shown by the monarch of heaven in turning his
celestial spheres. At the same moment the crystal globes began to turn
to the accompaniment of a low strange music, representing the celestial
harmony told of by Pythagoras. Again the planets stood still; upon each
appeared its presiding deity, and each one recited a hymn in praise of
Beatrice.
Mercury said:--
'Thou Nature's miracle! Diviner Sun!
Lightning, by whom the clouds are overrun!
Thou Lamp, by whom the stars are all outshone!
The pride and glory of a future race!
In that angelic figure, half concealed,
The secret of the higher world lies sealed,
And all of heaven's glory is revealed
In that fair face.'
And again Venus, kneeling before the Duchess, exclaimed:--
'O Jove! whose justice never errs,
And at whose voice all nature stirs
And quickens to a goodly heritage,
I bless thee for thy coming unto earth,
Since thus fair Beatrice was given birth,
Whose fruit is nurtured by the Hesperides,
My beauty at her feet in ashes lies,
Despoilèd Venus none shall recognise.'
And Diana prayed that she might be given as a slave to Beatrice the
beauteous, since never had a star like her shone in the heavenly
firmament. Then came the epilogue, in which Jove presented to Beatrice
the three Hellenic graces and the seven Christian virtues; and the whole
Olympus and Paradise, under the shadow of the radiant angelic plumes,
and of a cross gleaming with green lamps, symbols of hope, once more
began to revolve, while gods and goddesses sang hymns in praise of
Beatrice, accompanied by the music of the spheres and by the
acclamations of the spectators.
'And why,' asked the Duchess of Messer Gaspare Visconti who sat at her
side; 'why is there here no jealous Juno to tear the diadem from her
brow, and to rain pearls upon the earth in the form of hailstones and
raindrops?'
On hearing these words Il Moro turned quickly and looked at her. She
laughed a laugh so wild and forced that the Duke felt ice fall round his
heart; but immediately Beatrice composed herself, and turned the
conversation; Only she pressed the incriminating letters more closely
to her bosom, intoxicated by the hope of revenge, strong, calm, almost
gay, in her mood of triumph.
The masque ended, the guests passed into another hall where a new
spectacle awaited them. The triumphant chariots of Numa Pompilius,
Cæsar, Augustus, and Trajan crossed the stage, drawn by negroes,
leopards, griffons, centaurs, dragons, and adorned with allegorical
pictures and inscriptions, which set forth that all these heroes were
but precursors of Ludovico of Milan. Then a chariot came alone, drawn by
unicorns, and bearing an immense globe representing the earth, upon
which was stretched a warrior in a cuirass of rusty iron; a naked and
gilded child, holding a branch of mulberry (_moro_) in his hand, issued
from a cleft in the cuirass, to signify the death of the Age of Iron and
the birth of the Age of Gold under the sage rule of Ludovico. To the
delight of the spectators the Golden Age proved to be a living child; he
was, however, in great discomfort from the plaster of gold which covered
his little body, and tears shone in his frightened eyes. In a tremulous
and miserable voice he whined a _canzonetta_, praising the Duke, with
the monotonous and lugubrious refrain:--
'Tornerà l'età dell' oro,
Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'
(The age of gold shall brighten as of yore,
And all exulting sing, 'Long live the Moor.')
Around the chariot of the Golden Age the dancing was renewed, and though
no one heeded him any longer, the unhappy golden child still sobbed out
his piteous song:--
'Tornerà l'età dell' oro,
Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'
Beatrice was dancing with Gaspare Visconti. At times she laughed and
sobbed hysterically, and her throat convulsively contracted. With
unsupportable agony the blood throbbed at her temples, and a mist rolled
before her eyes; yet her face was calm, and she even smiled.
At the dance's conclusion she again slipped unnoticed from the revelling
crowd, and sought seclusion in her private apartments.
IX
She went to the retired _Torre della Tesoreria_, where no one ever came
save the Duke and herself. Taking the candle from Ricciardetto and
bidding him await her at the entrance, she passed into a lofty hall,
dark and cold as a cellar, sat down, drew forth the packet of letters
and was about to read. But suddenly a strange and eerie gust of wind
swept shrieking round the tower, howled in the chimney, invaded the room
with an icy breath almost extinguishing the candle. There was a great
hush; it seemed to her she could hear the distant music of the ball, the
murmur of voices, the patter of dancing feet, the sound of iron fetters
from the vaults below, where was the prison.
And at the same moment she felt a presence in the room with her: there,
in the dark angle of the wall, with eyes fixed upon hers. An anguish of
terror seized her soul. She felt she must not move, must not look. But
it was unendurable, and she did look. He stood there, as once she had
seen him before, a long, long, black figure, blacker than the investing
darkness, his head bent, and shrouded in the cowl of a monk. She tried
to scream, to call Ricciardetto, but her voice failed. She rose to flee
and her legs refused to support her; she fell on her knees groaning:--
'Thou? Again? And wherefore?'
He raised his head slowly and threw back the cowl, and showed the visage
of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, _the murdered duke_. The face had nothing in it
corpse-like, nothing appalling, and he spoke gently and distinctly:
'Poor thing! Poor woman! Pardon me!'
He made a step towards her, and she felt a freezing and unearthly cold.
She shrieked, and fell unconscious to the earth.
Ricciardetto heard the cry and ran to her succour. When he saw his
beloved mistress stretched senseless, he too shrieked, rushed away along
the dark galleries, where at long intervals sentries stood holding dim
lanterns, then into the crowded guest-chambers seeking the Duke, and
crying wildly:
'Help! Help!'
It was midnight, and the revelry was at its height. The modish dance
called '_Fedeli Amanti_' had just begun. In it lady and cavalier must
pass under an arch upon which stood the Genius of Love blowing a
trumpet; at its foot were judges; and when true lovers approached, the
Genius greeted them with tender strains, and the judges smiled and
applauded and let them pass; but the untrue were hindered, and the
trumpet stunned them with terrible noise, the judges pelted them with
hail of _confetti_, and the luckless couple, loudly bemocked, were
forced to turn and flee.
The Duke, to sweetest strains like the cooing of doves, had just made
his passage of the arch, when, the crowd parting in dismay to admit his
approach, Ricciardetto hurled himself at his master, still shrieking his
wild, 'Help! Help!'
Ludovico laid a hand upon his shoulder.
'What is it? What has happened?'
'The Duchess! She is dying! Help!'
'The Duchess is ill? Where? Speak, in the name of God!' cried the Duke.
'In the _Torre della Tesoreria_.'
The Duke rushed from the hall, his golden chain rattling, his hair
flying.
The Genius of the arch of true lovers went on blowing his trumpet, but
now the dancers left him and he stopped. Some had followed the Duke--in
a moment the whole brilliant throng had scattered like a flock of
frightened sheep. The arch was overthrown and trampled, the trumpeter
nearly fell, was hustled, and sprained his ankle.
Some cried 'Fire!'
'I said it was madness to play with fire,' wailed the lady who had
disapproved Leonardo's rotating planets; and others fainted.
'Calm yourselves, ladies. There is no fire!' said the seneschal.
'Then what is it?'
'The Duchess is indisposed.'
'Nay, she is dying! She has been poisoned!'
'Impossible! Her Grace was here but now. She was dancing!'
'But don't you see? Isabella of Arragon, to avenge her lord, has with
slow poison----'
'_Oh Dio! Dio!_'
But in the next saloon the music continued, for there nothing was known
of the disturbance. The dance 'Venus and Zephyr' was in progress, the
smiling ladies leading their cavaliers by golden chains, and when these
fell on their knees with lamentable sighs, placing their feet upon their
necks. But a chamberlain now entered, waving his hand to the musicians.
'Silence! The Duchess is ill.'
There was an instant hush, save for one viol played by a deaf and
purblind old man, which long continued to pour forth its plaintive
quiverings.
The servants passed through the hall carrying a bed, long and narrow,
with hard stuffing, and bars at sides and ends, kept from time
immemorial in the wardrobes of the palace, and _de rigueur_ for the
birth of the princes of Milan. Strange and ill-omened seemed this
portentous couch in the midst of the festivity, the lights, the crowds
of gorgeous ladies. They looked from one to the others mysteriously.
''Tis from a fall or, mayhap, a fright,' said one of mature age. 'She
should have swallowed at once the white of an egg in which were lengths
of scarlet silk, cut small.'
From the upper room, meantime, (Ricciardetto being stationed in the
adjoining closet) came such a terrible cry, that the page seized the arm
of one of the women who were passing with warming-pans, baskets of
linen, and so forth, and cried in an agony:--
'For God's sake, tell me what is the matter?'
She did not answer, and another, clearly the midwife, ordered him away.
''Tis no place for boys,' she said sternly.
Yet the door was left ajar for a moment, and looking into the disordered
room he saw the suffering face of her whom he loved with his hopeless
boy's love, her lips parted in a continuous groan.
He turned pale, and hid his face in his hands.
Beside him chattered a group of gossips each with her infallible recipe;
snake's skin, a bath in a heated cauldron, decoctions of cochineal and
of stag's antlers, the tying of her husband's _berretto_ round the neck
of the patient, and so forth.
The Duke entered hurriedly and sank upon a chair, clutching his head
with his hands and weeping distractedly.
'Lord God! What torture!' he murmured. 'I cannot support it! I cannot!
Ah Bice! Bice! And 'tis all my doing! mine!' Still echoed in his ears
the furious cry with which she had greeted his approach.
'Go away! Go away! Go to your Lucrezia!'
One of the busybodies brought him a pewter plate piled with meat.
'Your Excellency will be pleased to eat it.'
'Good Lord, what are you giving me?'
'Wolf's flesh. 'Tis of great benefit to the wife in her labour, if the
husband will eat the flesh of wolves.'
The Duke, submissive and self-denying, did his best to swallow the
repulsive black substance, which was so hard as to stick in his throat,
and the old woman gabbled as she bent over him:--
'Our Father which art in Heaven,
Seven wolves and the mate of one,
Blow the wind from us this even,
Praise Thy name, the storm is done!
Holy, Holy, Holy, in the name of the Trinity, one and eternal.
Let the word stand for ever! Amen.'
She was interrupted by Messer Luigi Marliani, the first of the court
physicians, who came from the sick room, followed by his colleagues.
'Well? well?' asked Ludovico.
There was a silence; then Messer Luigi spoke.
'Your Excellency, we have done all that is possible. Now we must put our
hope in the clemency of the Lord.'
'No! No!' cried the Duke seizing his hand, 'there must be some means! It
is unendurable! Try something!'
The physicians exchanged glances like augurs, hoping thus to reassure
him. Then Marliani, knitting his brows, said in Latin to the young
doctor beside him:--
'Three ounces of river snails, with nutmeg and red coral,'
'A bleeding, perhaps?' suggested another, an old man, with a gentle and
diffident face.
'I had thought of it,' said Marliani; 'but Mars is in Cancer and in the
fourth house of the sun. And, further, to-day's date is an uneven
number.'
The old man sighed, shook his head and forbore to urge his point.
Various other loathsome medicaments were proposed, till the Duke could
no longer contain himself. He turned furiously to the doctors.
'To the devil with all your science!' he exclaimed; 'she is dying, do
you hear me? She is dying! and you have nothing better to propose than
three ounces of snails and a plaster of cow's dung! Rascals, charlatans,
fools! I will hang every one of you!'
He paced the room a prey to mortal anguish, listening to the sufferer's
unceasing groans. Suddenly his eye fell on Leonardo and he drew him
aside.
'Listen,' he cried wildly, 'Leonardo, you are master of great secrets.
No, no, deny it not, I _know_. Ah, my God! my God!--that cry! What was I
saying? Yes, yes! Help me, Leonardo! Do something! I would give my soul
to succour her--even for a short space--only to still that cry!'
Leonardo would have replied; but the Duke, forgetting that he had
appealed to him, hurried to meet the chaplain and two monks entering at
that moment--
'At last! God be praised. What have you brought? Ah! a particle of the
remains of St. Ambrose, the belt of St. Margaret--is she not the
patroness of women in childbed?--and a hair of the Blessed Virgin! Ah,
how I thank you! And surely your prayers----'
Following the monks he was entering the sick-chamber when the continual
low groaning suddenly gave place to shrieks so appalling that, stopping
his ears, he turned and fled, passing through the dark galleries like
one possessed. He hurried to the chapel and cast himself on his knees
before the most revered picture.
'Holy Mother of God,' he implored with clasped hands and streaming eyes,
'I have sinned--I have sinned horribly--I have slain an innocent
youth--my lawful sovereign. O thou merciful Mediatress, have mercy upon
me! Take my life--take my soul; but in pity, O Holy Mother, save
Beatrice!'
Shreds of thoughts and senseless fancies crowded in his brain and stole
his attention from his prayers. He remembered a story of a drowning
sailor who had thought to buy salvation by the promise of a candle as
big as the mast of a ship; and when asked how the wax for this colossus
was to be provided, had answered: 'Hold your tongue; our present task is
to get saved, and afterwards we'll get the Virgin to be content with a
smaller candle.'
'Oh God, where are my thoughts!' cried the Duke bethinking himself. 'I
must be going mad! God help me!' And he fell a-praying with renewed
fervour; but now visions of Leonardo's crystal globes tormented him, and
the tiresome chant of the gilded boy--
'Tornerà l'età dell' oro,
Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'
Then all vanished, and he sank in a profound slumber. When he awoke he
fancied but two or three minutes had elapsed. He left the chapel, and
saw through the frosted window-pane the grey light of the winter's dawn.
X
Il Moro returned to the _Sala della Rocchetta_, where reigned a mournful
silence. A woman passing with a basket of swaddling clothes, approached
him and said.
'Her Excellency has been delivered.'
'Does she live?' he stammered, very pale.
'Yes, she lives; but the infant is still-born. She is very weak; and she
desires to speak with your Highness.'
He went to her room; and there on the pillows he saw a small shrunken
face like a child's, pallid and calm, with great eyes surrounded by
livid circles, and turbid as if a spider's web were drawn over them;
familiar and yet strange. He bent over her silently.
'Send for Isabella! Quickly!' she gasped.
He gave the order; and presently the tall, young, graceful woman with
the proud sad look, the widow of Gian Galeazzo, entered the room and
approached the dying Beatrice. All retired except Ludovico and the
confessor.
For a few minutes the two women whispered together. Then Isabella kissed
the other's cold forehead, knelt by the bedside and prayed, covering her
face with her hands.
Beatrice signed to her husband.
'Vico, forgive me! Weep not. Remember my spirit will be always with you.
I know it was I only--I only whom----'
She could not complete the sentence, but he understood her meaning.
'It was I only whom you loved.' Slowly she turned her eyes to him, eyes
already darkening, and murmured:--
'One kiss--on my lips....'
The monk was reciting the last prayers for the dying, and the
attendants, who had re-entered, responded in chorus.
The Duke felt the lips beneath his own turn cold and stiff; in that long
kiss she had breathed her last faint sigh.
'She is dead,' said Marliani.
All knelt, making the sign of the cross. Il Moro raised himself very
slowly, his face rigid, expressive less of grief than of extreme tension
of spirit; he breathed heavily and loud like one toiling up the steep
hillside. Suddenly he stretched out his arms, gave one wild cry:--
'Bice!' and fell senseless upon the corpse.
Of the spectators Leonardo alone had remained calm; his clear searching
eyes were fixed upon the Duke. The look of supreme suffering in a human
face, or its expression in the gestures of the body, was to his eyes a
rare and beautiful manifestation of nature, an exceptional experience.
Not a wrinkle, not the quivering of a muscle escaped his passionless
all-seeing eyes. Presently, over-mastered by the desire to draw, he
slipped from the room to fetch his sketch-book.
In the lower halls, whither the artist bent his steps, the candles were
dying out in black smoke and gutterings of wax. The chariots of Numa and
Augustus, and all the pompous allegorical paraphernalia employed to
glorify Il Moro and his Beatrice, were unspeakably melancholy and
wretched in the morning brilliance. In one room he saw the overthrown
and trampled _Arco dell' Amore_.
Standing by the moribund fire he was beginning his sketch, when in the
chimney-corner he noticed the boy who had personified the Golden Age. He
had fallen asleep, huddled up, his hands clutching his knees, his head
dropped upon them. The faint heat from the dying embers had not sufficed
to warm the poor little naked and gilded body. Leonardo touched him on
the shoulder, but the child did not look up. He moaned piteously and the
artist took him in his arms. Then he opened frightened eyes, blue as
violets, and wailed.
'Let me go home! Let me go home!'
'What is your name?' asked Leonardo.
'Lippi. Let me go home! Let me go home! I am so cold. I feel so sick.'
His eyelids fell heavily, and he babbled deliriously.--
'Tornerà l'età dell' oro,
Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'
Leonardo wrapped the boy in his own cloak, laid him in a chair and
roused the servants in the ante-chamber who were sleeping off the
effects of their cups. He learned from them about the child: that he was
motherless, the son of a tinker in the _Broletto Novo_, who, for twenty
scudi, had sold his child to the mumming, though warned that he might
die of being gilded. Leonardo returned, wrapped the boy snugly in his
furs, and was carrying him out of the palace to the nearest drug shop
that the paint might be removed from his skin. Suddenly, however, he
paused, for he remembered the drawing he had just commenced, and the
interesting look of despair in Ludovico's face.
'Ah, well,' he thought, 'I shall scarce forget it. The chief thing is
the wrinkle over the arched eyebrows, and the strange smile which one
might think full of serenity, even of enthusiasm. The expression of
immense grief is like enough to that of immoderate joy; and truly Plato
has said that the two emotions, rising upon different bases, converge at
their apex.'
Then feeling the tremble of the frozen child, he added to himself
ironically--
'Poor little sick bird--our Age of Gold!'
And he pressed him with such tenderness to his heart that the little lad
fancied his mother had risen from her grave, and was comforting him.
XI
Beatrice Sforza d'Este died on Tuesday, the 2nd of January 1497, at six
in the morning. The Duke remained by her corpse for twenty-four hours,
refusing food and sleep. It was feared his reason would give way. On
Thursday morning he called for writing materials and wrote to Isabella
d'Este, sister of the dead Duchess, a long letter breathing bitterest
grief.
'It had been easier for me to have died myself,' he wrote; 'I pray you
send me no condolence nor messenger.'
After writing he was induced to eat a little, not presenting himself at
table but being served in solitude by Ricciardetto.
He had proposed to leave the disposing of the funeral to Bartolomeo
Calco, his secretary; arranging himself merely the order of the
procession. But his interest became aroused, and presently he was
planning details of the ceremonial with the same zeal he had shown in
ordering the magnificent festival of the Golden Age. He fixed the
precise weight of the funeral tapers; the number of _braccia_ of gold
brocade and of black cramoisie for the altar cloths; the largess of
small coin, pease, and tallow to be distributed among the poor in the
name of the deceased. Choosing the cloth for the mourning of the court
functionaries, he did not omit to feel its weight with his fingers, and
to make sure of its quality by holding it to the light. For himself he
ordered a special mourning garb (_abito solenne di lutto profondo_)
having holes torn in it to simulate the rendings of despairing frenzy.
A few days later Il Moro caused the tomb of the still-born child to be
inscribed with a pompous epitaph composed by himself and translated into
Latin by Merula.
'I, unhappy child, have perished before I have seen the light; more
unhappy in that, dying, I have ravished life from my mother--from my
father his consort. In this adverse fate but one consolation remains to
me; that I was born of parents equal unto gods. In the year 1497, the
third of the Nones of January.'
Il Moro stood a long time contemplating this inscription, cut in gold
letters upon a slab of black marble covering the infant's grave. It was
in the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Beatrice also slept
her last sleep. The Duke shared the naïve enthusiasm of the stone-mason,
who having finished his work drew back and admired it from a distance,
putting his head on one side, closing one eye, clucking his tongue, and
murmuring in an ecstasy of satisfaction:--
'This is no tomb, but a jewel.'
One morning when the snow on the housetops shone white against the rich
blue of the sky, and in the crystal air was that freshness like the
fragrance of lilies which seems to be the perfume of snow, Leonardo da
Vinci passed from the sunlit frost into a dark close chamber hung with
black taffeta, where the shutters were rigorously closed, and funeral
tapers were still alight--the chamber of Ludovico, who for many days had
refused to leave it.
The Duke spoke of the _Cenacolo_ which was to glorify the place where
Beatrice was laid. Then he said:--
'Leonardo, they tell me you have taken under your wing that urchin who
played the Golden Age at our ill-omened feast. What of him?'
'He is dead, Most Illustrious. He died on the day of Her Grace's
funeral.'
'Died!' echoed the Duke. 'Nay, but that is strange!' And he dropped his
head on his hands, sighing heavily. Then he stretched his hand to
Leonardo.
'Yes! yes!' he cried; ''twas destined to fall out thus. Truly our Golden
Age is dead; dead together with my incomparable one, for it could not,
it should not, survive her. Is it not a truth, _amico mio_, that here we
have a strange coincidence--theme for a tremendous allegory?'
XII
The whole year was passed in the deepest mourning. The Duke did not lay
aside his garment of woe, nor did he present himself at table, but ate
off a tray held before him by courtiers.
'Since his lady's death,' wrote the Venetian ambassador, Marin Sanuto,
'Il Moro has become very devout, is present at all church ceremonies,
fasts, and lives continently (so at least they say), and has in his
plans the fear of God constantly before his eyes.'
In the daytime the Duke was able to forget his bereavement in the
affairs of state, though even here he felt the lack of Beatrice; during
the night the intensity of his grief redoubled. Often in dreams he saw
her as she had been when he had married her; sixteen, childish and
wilful, slim, dark; almost like a boy; so untamed that sometimes she hid
herself in cupboards to avoid assisting at state ceremonials, and for
three months after their marriage defended herself with her teeth and
her nails from her husband's caresses. One night, five days before the
first anniversary of her death, he dreamed of her as she had been one
day long ago when there had been a fishing party on the banks of the
lake in her favourite country house of Cusnago. Fish had been plentiful,
and the buckets were filled to the brim. Having turned up her sleeves,
the young Duchess had amused herself throwing the creatures by handfuls
back into the water, laughing and delighting in the joy of the released
captives, in the flash of their scales as they plunged deep into the
clear water. The perch, the roach, the bream wriggled in her bare hands,
then catching the sun they glowed like brilliants; and the smooth olive
cheek of the beautiful girl glowed too. Upon awaking, Ludovico found his
pillow wet with tears. He rose and went to the Convent delle Grazie, and
prayed long at his wife's tomb; then he dined with the prior and
disputed with him upon the burning theological question of the hour, the
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. When it grew dark, Il Moro
left the monastery, and went straight to the dwelling of Madonna
Lucrezia.
His grief for his wife, his fear of God, in no wise militated against
love for his mistresses. On the contrary, he clung to them more closely
than before; the more so that of late the Countess Cecilia and Madonna
Lucrezia had become bosom friends. Cecilia, though a blue-stocking or
_dotta eroina_, as it was then called, and famed as the 'new Sappho,'
was at bottom a simple good-hearted creature, somewhat easily run away
with by enthusiasms. Upon the death of the Duchess she found opportunity
for one of those exploits of love of which she had read in romances; she
would make common cause with Lucrezia, her young rival, that together
they might comfort the duke! At first Lucrezia was jealous and hard to
win, but the magnanimity of the _dotta eroina_ finally disarmed her, and
she opened her heart to this anomaly in female friendship.
In the summer Lucrezia bore a son; the Countess desired to be his
godmother, and though herself the mother of children by the Duke,
lavished on the infant extravagant tendernesses and called herself his
grandam. Thus Il Moro's prophetic dream had been realised, and his
mistresses were friends. To celebrate the auspicious arrangement, he
caused Bellincioni to write a sonnet in which Lucrezia and Cecilia were
figured as the Morning and the Evening glow; while he, disconsolate
widower, stood between them.
This evening, entering the familiar luxurious chamber of the Palazzo
Crivelli, he found the ladies side by side before the fire. Of course,
like the rest of the court, they were dressed in the deepest mourning.
'How is your Excellency in his health?' asked the Evening Glow. She was
quite unlike her rival, but no less attractive, with her white skin,
flame-coloured hair, and hazel eyes clear as the water in a mountain
tarn.
The Duke had complained of ill health lately, and though this evening
he felt rather better than usual, languidly answered, from force of
habit:--
'Ah, madam, you can easily conceive to what condition I am reduced. My
mind is occupied but with one subject, how soonest I may be laid to rest
beside my dove.'
'Nay, nay, your Excellency must not speak so!' said Cecilia with
deprecating hands. 'Think, if Madonna Beatrice could hear you! All
sorrow comes from God, and must be accepted even with thankfulness.'
'You speak well,' replied Il Moro, 'I would not murmur. Nay, then, God
forbid! Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'
And he raised his eyes to heaven, pressing closely the hands of the two
ladies.
'May the Lord reward you, my dear ones, that you have not abandoned the
poor widowed one!'
He wiped his eyes, and then drew two papers from the pocket of his
mourning attire. One was a deed of gift by which he gave the rich lands
of the Villa Sforzesca to the Monastery delle Grazie.
'But,' said the Countess, astonished, 'I had thought your Highness
adored this villa.'
'My love for terrestrial things is dead. And, madam, what need has one
man with lands so large?'
Cecilia laid her rosy fingers on his lips with sympathetic reproach.
Then she asked curiously:--
'And this other paper, what is it?'
At this his face cleared, and the old, gay, somewhat cunning smile
appeared on his lips.
He read the second document aloud, also a deed of gift, with recital of
the lands, woods, hamlets, hunting rights, and other advantages which
he, Ludovico, Duke of Milan, was conferring on Madonna Lucrezia Crivelli
and his natural son Giampaolo. With the rest was included the villa of
Cusnago, Beatrice's favourite country house, renowned for its fisheries.
The last words of the document Ludovico read in trembling tones:--
'In the wondrous and rare bonds of great love, this lady has showed unto
us entire devotion and displayed such loftiness of sentiment that often
in our intercourse with her we have experienced an entrancing and
exceptional delight, added to great lightening of our cares.'
Cecilia clapped her hands and fell on her friend's neck, her eyes wet
with maternal tenderness.
'Did I not tell you, my sweet sister, that he had a heart of gold? Now
my little grandson, Giampaolo, has the richest inheritance in Milan.'
'What date have we?' asked Il Moro.
''Tis the 28th of December,' replied Cecilia.
'The 28th!' he echoed pensively.
It was the day, the hour, when a year ago Beatrice had surprised her
husband with his mistress. The room was unchanged; the same winter wind
howled in the chimney; the bright fire burned on the hearth, and above
it danced the chain of naked cupids or cherubs. On the round table with
the green covering stood the same crystal goblet of _Balnea aponitana_;
the same mandoline, the same sheets of music littered the floor. The
doors opened into the bedroom, and there was the wardrobe in which he
had taken refuge.
What would he not give, so he thought, if he might at this moment hear
the rap of the knocker on the great door, if the frightened maid should
run in with the cry, 'Madonna Beatrice!' Yes, he would gladly once again
tremble in the wardrobe like a caught thief, hearing in the distance the
indignant voice of the lady of his love. Alas! it could not be, that
time had gone by for ever! His head sank and tears filled his eyes.
'Oh, _Santo Iddio_!' said Cecilia, turning to her friend, 'he weeps
anew. Rouse yourself! Coax, comfort him! Console him! How can you be so
cold?'
And gently she pushed her rival into the Duke's arms.
Lucrezia had long felt sickened by this unnatural friendship. She would
have liked to get up and go away; nevertheless she took the Duke's hand.
He smiled at her through his tears and laid it upon his heart.
Cecilia took the mandoline, and, assuming the pose in which twelve years
ago Leonardo had painted her, sang one of Petrarch's lyrics for Laura:--
'Levommi il mio pensiero in parte ov' era
Quella ch'io cerco e non ritrovo in terra.'
The Duke, much moved, wiped his eyes, and stretching out his hands as to
a dissolving vision, he repeated the last line:--
'E compie' mia giornata innanzi sera.'
'Ah, yes, my dove, thou didst indeed finish thy day before the
evening!... Ladies, sometimes it seems to me as if she smiled upon us
three from heaven. Ah, Bice, Bice, _mia adorata!_'
He drew Lucrezia to him, and presently Cecilia rose and left them
together. The 'Evening Glow' was not jealous of the 'Dawn'; from long
experience she knew that soon again her turn would come. Her mandoline
sounded from the next room.
And above the merry firelight, the naked cupids of Caradosso's moulding
prolonged their eternal dance, laughing madly around the nails, the
lance, the crown of thorns.