The setting sun was flinging its red rays upon the towers and over the
houses of Padua, when a young stranger, newly arrived, had his
attention excited by a throng of people who were hurrying and running
along, and was carried by them out of his way. He askt a girl who was
passing quickly by him, what had set the whole town in such an
extraordinary commotion.
"Don't you know then?" answered she: "the beautiful Crescentia, the
young thing, is just going to be buried; everybody wishes to have one
more sight of her; for she has always been counted the sweetest maiden
in the whole city. Her parents are heartbroken." The last words she
called back to him, from some distance beyond him.
The stranger turned round the dark palace into the great street, and
his ears were now met by the funeral hymn, and his eyes by the
flickering light of the pale-red torches. On drawing nearer, pusht
forward by the crowding of the people, he saw a scaffold covered with
black cloth. Around it were raised seats, likewise black, on which the
sorrowing parents and relations were sitting, all in stern gloom, some
faces with the look of despair. Figures now began to move forth from
the door of the house; priests and black forms bore an open coffin,
out of which wreaths of flowers and green garlands were hanging down.
In the midst of the blooming gay plants lay the maidenly form raised
upon cushions, pale, in a white robe, her lovely slender hands folded
and holding a crucifix, her eyes closed, dark black tresses hanging
full and heavy round her head, on which a wreath of roses and cypress
and myrtle was gleaming.
The coffin with its beautiful corpse was placed upon the scaffold; the
priests cast themselves down to pray; the parents gave yet louder vent
to their grief; yet more wailing grew the sound of the hymns; and
everybody around, even the strangers, sobbed and wept. The traveller
thought he had never yet seen so lovely a creature, as this corpse
that thus mournfully reminded him how fleeting life is, how vain and
perishable its charms.
Now sounded the solemn tolling of the bells, and the bearers were on
the point of taking up the coffin, to carry the corpse into the
burial-vault of the great church, when loud riotous shouts of
exultation and pealing laughter and the cries of an unrestrained joy
disturbed and alarmed the parents and kinsfolk, the priests and
mourners. All lookt indignantly round, when out of the next street a
merry troop of young men came boisterously toward them, singing and
huzzaing, and evermore again and again crying a long life! to their
venerable teacher. They were the students of the university, carrying
an aged man of the noblest aspect on a chair raised atop of their
shoulders, where he sat as on a throne, covered with a purple cloak,
his head adorned with a doctor's hat, from beneath which white silver
locks hung forth, while a long white beard flowed down majestically
over his black velvet doublet. Beside him came a fool with bells and
in a motley dress, jumping about, and striving by blows and by jests
to make way for the train through the people and the line of mourners:
but on a sign from the venerable old man the students lowered his
chair; he descended, and approacht the weeping parents, much moved and
with a solemn demeanour.
"Forgive me," said he mournfully and with a tear in his eye, "that
this wild tumult thus breaks in upon your burial rites, which grieve
and shock me to the heart. I am just come back at length from my
journey; my scholars wisht to celebrate my enterance by their joy; I
yielded to their entreaties and preparations; and I now find ... how?
your Crescentia, that fairest emblem of all loveliness and virtue,
here before you in her coffin. And all around there is this dark pomp
and these forms of sorrow, accompanying her with tears and the heart's
woe to her place of rest."
He beckoned to his companions, and spake a few words. All had long
since become quiet and silent, and most of them now withdrew, that
they might not interrupt the funeral.
Then the mother came nearer tottering, and sank down before the form
of the old man, while she embraced his knee in convulsive grief. "Ah!
why were you not here?" she cried despairingly; "your art, your
knowledge would have saved her. O Pietro! Pietro! you, the friend of
our house! how could you thus let your darling, the apple of your eye,
perish? But come! Awaken her even now! Pour into her even now one of
those wonderworking elixirs which you know how to compound; and in
return take all that we possess, so she be but again here, walking
about among us and talking to us."
"Let not despair guide your tongue," answered Pietro: "the Lord had
lent her to you; he has demanded her back from you; let not man
presume to arrest the arm of his wise counsels. Who are we, that we
should murmur against him? Shall the child of the dust, that is
scattered to nought by the wind, puff forth its weak breath in anger
against the eternal decrees? No, my dear friends, as Crescentia's
parents, as having loved her and been loved by her, cherish the
feeling of your grief; let none of it escape you. Grief should be as
familiar an inmate in our hearts as Pleasure and Gladness; for he too
is sent us by our Father, who beholds all our tears, and well
understands and tries our hearts, and knows what frail mortals can
bear. Bear then this great overwhelming woe for his sake, out of love
to him; for it is all love, whatsoever burthen he may cast upon you.
Is not grief, is not the heart in its wringing agony, the soul that
would melt away in sorrow, a holy and godly offering, which amid your
burning tears you lay, as the most precious of your possessions,
before the everlasting Love of the Most High? As such too is it
considered by Him above, who numbers all your sighs and tears. But our
wicked enemy, who is always lurking at our side, grudges us the
holiness of this heavenly sorrow: it is he who would foment and stir
it up in you into despair, into rage against the Father of love and of
grief, that you may not in your anguish become yet more thoroughly the
children of Love, but may plunge and sink into the abyss of Hatred.
He, this Spirit of Lies, is now beguiling you and maliciously
whispering his tales in your ears, as though you had for ever lost
her, who yet was one with you only in spirit and soul and love, and
belonged to you only so far as she was invisible. He would have you
forget that this beauteous covering was only her garment, akin to the
dust, and now going back to the dust. Cast him back from you, this
lying Spirit; shame and confound him with the eternal almighty truth
which you hold up before him, that she is still yours, still near you,
still at your side, yea far more, far entirelier yours, than when
these party walls of mortal flesh kept you asunder, and in the midst
of all your love estranged you from each other. From this day forward
she is all your memory and hope and sorrow and joy; she shines upon
you in every gladdening light; she cheers you in the flowers of
spring; she kisses you in the gentle airs that breathe on your cheeks:
and every delight that henceforth blossoms in your hearts, is her
heart and her love to you; and this delight and this everlasting
deathless love are one with God. Carry her then to her resting-place,
and follow her in silent humble resignation, that her soul in the
abode of everlasting peace may not be disturbed and made uneasy by
you."
All seemed to have become calmer; the father speechlessly held forth
his hand to him with an expression of cordial friendship and of a
comforted heart. They drew up in order; the procession set itself in
motion; the masks, the fraternities that made it their duty to attend
corpses, ranged themselves in their white gowns, with hooded faces, of
which nothing could be seen but the eyes.
Silently the train moved on: they had now nearly reacht the church,
when a rider on a foaming horse gallopt toward them.
"What is the matter?" cried the youth.
He threw a look into the coffin, and with a shriek of despair turned
his horse, darted away, and in his wild speed lost his hat, so that
his long hair waved about behind him in the evening breeze. He was the
bridegroom, come to the wedding.
Darkness gathered round the train of mourners, and their husht rites,
as the beauteous corpse sank down into the vault of her family.
* * * * *
When the crowd had disperst, the young stranger, who had followed the
procession in wonder mixt with sadness, went up to an old priest who
remained alone praying by the grave. He longed to learn who that
majestic old man was, that had seemed to him gifted with god-like
powers and more than earthly wisdom.
When the youth had laid his question modestly before the priest, the
latter stood up and, by the light of a lamp that shone upon them from
a window, lookt sharply into his eye.
The old man had a little spare form; his pale narrow face hightened
the fire of his eyes yet more; and his pincht lips quivered, as with
hoarse voice he answered: "How! you don't know him? our far-famed
Petrus of Apone, or Abano, of whom people talk in Paris, and London,
and in the German Empire, and throughout all Italy? You know not the
greatest of philosophers and physicians, of astronomers and
astrologers, to learn from whom and to see whom the wild youth flock
hither from the far parts of Poland?"
The young Spaniard, Alfonso, had moved back a step in delighted
surprise; for the renown of this great teacher had driven him too from
Barcelona over the sea. "Then it was he, it was himself!" he cried
enthusiastically: "this too was why my heart felt so deeply moved. My
spirit recognized his. O generous, pious man, how I love you for
honouring him no less than do all the noble-minded and good in the
Christian world!"
"You too mean perchance to study under him?" askt the priest with a
bitter tone.
"Certainly," answered the other, "if he will vouchsafe to receive me
among his scholars."
The old man stood still, laid his hand on the youth's shoulder, and
then said mildly: "My dear young friend, there is yet time; listen
even now to my fatherly warning, before it is too late. Do not deceive
yourself, as so many, even without number, have done already; be on
your guard, and watch over your soul. Are you then at your age thus
beforehand aweary of your peace and future blessedness? would you
requite your Saviour's love by becoming a runagate from him, and
denying him, and taking up arms as a rebel against him?"
"I understand you not, old man," replied Alfonso: "did not you
yourself see and hear how piously, how christianly, with what a
heart-stirring majesty, the glorious man spake, and led back the
erring footsteps of sorrowing love by his heavenly comfort into the
right path?"
"What is there that he cannot, that he will not do, the trickster, the
magician!" exclaimed the old priest warmly.
"Magician!" returned Alfonso. "So you too would take part in the folly
of the rabble that is unable to appreciate the knowledge of lofty
spirits, and would rather credit any absurdity than strengthen their
own souls by gazing upon the grandeur of a fellow-creature.
"Only go on in this way," said the priest indignantly, "and you
scarcely need go into his vaunted school. It is clear his magic has
you already in its snares, just as he subdues every heart that but
beats within his reach. Yes forsooth, the heathen, he has spoken and
prophesied today like a priest, and has for once besmeared his lies
with this varnish. In the same manner he is lord and master in the
house of the Podesta. Poor Crescentia could hardly in her last hours
find her way back to holy church: so bound and held fast was her soul
by the false doctrines the wicked hypocrite had flung like poisonous
nets around her young spirit. Now she has escaped him; the Lord has
called her to himself, and has sent this disease to save her soul with
the loss of her body."
The speakers were come into the large square before the church. The
youth was irritated, and, to give his feelings vent, exclaimed: "What
boots all this fierce envy, my ghostly sir? Do you not see, can you
not perceive, how the world only falls away from you more and more,
the more you by your excommunications and anathemas and persecutions
strive to quench and stifle the new spirit? that spirit of eternal
truth which is now awakening all nations from their sleep, and which
in spite of your arts will never sink upon the pillow again to swallow
your legends in submissive faith."
"Bravo!" said the old man in high wrath: "Have we not Averroes now
instead of Christ, and Aristoteles instead of the Almighty, and this
Pietro of yours, this Iscariot, instead of the Holy Ghost? And verily
the spirit of the earth has built up a high and stately body for him,
and has crowned it with a noble brow, and has set an eye of fire in it
and the sweet mouth of persuasion, and has poured grace and majesty
over his motions, that he may juggle and delude: while I, the unworthy
servant of the Lord, walk about here sickly and weak and without all
comeliness of feature, and have only my own confession, only my faith,
to give assurance that I am a christian. I cannot descend like him
into the depths of dazzling knowledge, nor measure the course of the
stars, nor foretell good and evil fortune; I am reviled and scorned by
the overwise; but I bear it humbly, for the love of him who has laid
all this upon me. Wait however until the end, and see whether his
seven spirits whom he holds under his magical spell, can save him
then; whether his Familiar, that spawn of hell, will then assist him."
"Was his Familiar with him?" askt Alfonso eagerly.
"Did not you observe the monster," answered the monk, "that had trickt
itself out like a clown? the abortion with that hump, those twisted
hands and arms, those crooked legs, those squinting eyes, and that
enormous nose jutting out from its unsightly face."
"I took all that for a mask;" said the youth.
"No, this creature," replied the old man, "need not put on a mask.
Such as he is, he is mask enough, and spectre, and imp of hell, this
Beresynth, as they call him.... Will you pass the night in our
convent, young man, until you have found a lodging?"
"No," rejoined he very positively; "I will be indebted for no
hospitality to a man thus unjust and slanderous toward the noble being
whose name I heard with rapture while yet in my own country, and who
shall walk and shine before me here as my guide and model. It is bad
enough that I have been forced to hear such language from you, from a
man whose condition and age forbid my calling him to account for it.
If he alone is to be esteemed godly, who despises science and
knowledge, he alone a christian, who in a waking slumber dozes away
the days of his life and the powers of his soul, I depart out of the
dull communion. But it is not so; nor is it the man, the christian, or
the priest, that has been speaking from your lips, but your guild and
fraternity. Farewell, if with such feelings you can."
They parted, both much out of temper.
* * * * *
The young Florentine who had met the funeral procession in the city,
dasht like a madman through the gate, and then gallopt with reckless
vehemence across field and wood. When he found himself in the open
country, he hurled forth imprecations against the world and fate, tore
his hair, curst his stars and his youth, and then rusht almost
unconsciously onward. He spurred in the face of the wind that arose at
nightfall, as though seeking to cool the fire in his cheeks.
When it grew later, his horse, which had often stumbled already, and
which he had pulled up furiously every time, dropt exhausted to the
ground, and he was forced to pursue his way on foot. He knew not where
he was, still less whither he should go; only there stood before him
with inextinguishable features his own misery, and the vanity of the
world, and the treacherous inconstancy of all happiness.
"Accursed madness of life!" cried he in his despair through the
darkness: "thus, thus cruelly dost thou awaken me out of my slumber! I
cannot choose but hate thee mortally for thy jugglings, thy
presumption, and for all those senseless hopes which smile upon our
youth and go along with us so like friends upon our journey, and, when
they have beguiled us into the wilderness, fly away from us and grin
and make mows at us. Life! what is this web of folly, this silly dream
of a feversick heart? One faint shivering-fit follows another; one
crazy phantom drives another out; our wishes caper around in the bald
waste, and do not even know themselves again. O death! O rest! O
nothingness! come to me, let me embrace thee, and set this stormy
heart free. O that I could but gasp out my last convulsive breath this
very instant! that tomorrow's sun might no more find my place upon
earth, that no thought might rise within me to greet its returning
ray! Am I not the very wretchedest creature that breathes? and so much
the poorer, for that a few hours since I deemed myself the happiest.
Woe be to youth! woe to love! Woe to the feelings of the heart, that
let themselves be so readily, so grossly deceived!"
A shower now drizzled through the cold air, and soon the drops grew
larger and thicker. The youth knew not whither he had strayed; the
wood lay already far behind him; no shelter was near. He began to
gather up his recollections; his grief became gentler; tears flowed
from his eyes. He already hated life less; it seemed to him as though
the night itself wisht to comfort him and to soothe his sorrow.
Uncertain whether to seek for his fallen horse again, or to hide
himself in some hollow from the rain, he lookt once more around, and
at length far below him across a valley and at the back of some trees
discovered a little dancing light, that like a friendly eye winkt to
him through the thick darkness and called him to approach it. He
hastened toward the dubious gleam, which now vanisht, and now again
shone forth. All his powers, all his feelings were bound as in sleep;
his whole being had as it were past away into a dream.
A storm now got up, and heavy low-hanging thunderclouds were rolling
slowly along. He was already approaching some trees, as it appeared to
him; but the darkness made it impossible to distinguish anything
whatever. A flash of lightning here dazzled him and a loud clap of
thunder stunned him, so that he fell into a ditch.
On lifting himself up again, the light which had allured him was close
at hand. He knockt at the little window that peept through some trees,
and begged for admittance and shelter from the rain and storm. A loud
hoarse voice answered from within; but the youth did not catch a word;
for the wind and thunder and rain, and the rustling of the trees, all
now raged so violently at once, that every sound beside them fell
dead.
The door of the little house opened into the garden: he had to hasten
through it; a female hand then took hold of him, led him along a dark
passage, and into a little room, from which the light of a lamp and
the fire on the hearth shone in his eyes. In the corner by the lamp
sat a hideous old woman spinning; the girl who had conducted him in
set to work over the fire; and for a long time he was unable to
examine the figures closelier by the doubtful quivering light; for a
long time no conversation could be carried on, the roaring of the
thunder overpowering every other sound.
"This is a cruel storm!" said the old woman during a pause with a
croaking voice. "Whence do you come hither, young man?"
"I come from Padua since this evening."
"Far indeed," cried the old woman: "it lies six good leagues from
here. And whither are you going? for there is no public road
hereabout."
"I know not, and care not to know. The wretched cannot frame any plan
or think about the future. Indeed how happy should I feel, were there
no future at all for me!"
"You are talking nonsense, young man; and that must not be. Heyday!"
she exclaimed, as she lifted up the lamp and lookt at him more
narrowly, "why he is a Florentine! That doublet and cape is what I
have not seen this many a day. Well now, this must surely bode me some
good. So the ugly weather has made me a present of a dear guest; for
you must know, my young gentleman, I too am from that blessed land. Ay
Florence! Ah, if one might but once more tread on thy ground and see
thy dear hills and gardens again! And your name, my dear young
gentleman?"
"Antonio Cavalcanti," said the youth, who felt more confidence in the
old dame on finding that she was his countrywoman.
"O what an accent!" cried she almost rapturously: "Cavalcanti! such a
one I too knew some years since, one Guido."
"He was my father," said Antonio.
"And is he no longer alive?"
"No," answered the young man; "my mother too was taken from me a long
time ago."
"I know it, I know it, my dear pretty boy. Ay, ay, it must now be full
fifteen years since she died. Alas yes, it was then, in those
troublous times, that she had to give up the ghost. And your dear
worthy father, he is the only person I have to thank for the judges
not having treated me just like a faggot some years after: they had
somehow got it into their pates that I was a witch, and there was no
avail in denying it. But Signor Guido fought my battle, what with
reason and what with ranting, what with entreaties and what with
threats: so they merely banisht me out of the dear land. And now this
thunderstorm brings me the son of my benefactor into my poor little
cottage. Come, give me your hand on the strength of it, youngster."
Antonio gave it to the old woman shuddering; for now at length he was
able to observe her more distinctly. She grinned at him friendly, and
displayed two long black teeth standing out between her bristly lips;
her eyes were small and sharp, her brow furrowed, her chin long; she
stretcht out two gaunt shrivelled arms toward him; and being
compelled, however loth, to embrace her, he felt the hump which made
her ugliness still more disgusting.
"True!" she said with a forced laugh, "I am not remarkably pretty; I
was not so even in my younger days. There is something whimsical about
beauty; one can never tell or describe downrightly in what it
consists; it is always only the want of certain things which, when you
have them at their full size, make up what folks call ugliness. Come
now, tell me, such as I am, what do you think the most hideous thing
about me?"
"My dear old dame," said the youth in confusion....
"No," she cried, "plump out with the truth, and without any flattery.
Everybody, you know, has some odd maggot or other; and as for me, I
pride myself no little on being utterly without all those things which
in the world they christen handsome. Now let me see your taste! speak
out!"
"If I must," stammered Antonio, while in spite of his grief a smile
curled his lips, "those two teeth are ... to my mind...."
"Ha, ha!" cried the old woman laughing aloud, "my two dear good old
black teeth are what pleases you the least about me. I can well
believe it: they stand like two scorcht palisades among the ruins of a
fortress in the wide empty space there. But you should have seen me
ten years back; then matters were much worse still. In those days I
had a whole mouth full of such portentous grinders; and they who loved
me would say it lookt frightful. Well, one by one they fell out, and
these two alone are left behind the last of all their race. When they
are once gone, my jaws will clap together like two doors, the upper
lip will grow just thrice as long, and again one can't tell what sort
of a face will come of it. Time, my dear young friend, is, as somebody
found out many many years ago, a bungling workman; he makes a creature
pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and
squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their
sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he
has turned it into a scarecrow; and then at last he gets ashamed,
smashes the whole wretched concern to pieces, and shovels it over with
earth that all the world may not see his disgrace. Your cheeks too,
smooth and polisht as they are, will not be so like a roseleaf by and
by. Here! let me look! verily you have the rarest pearls of
toothikins! a pity they must be used in chewing bread and roast beef.
Hey, hey! shew them to me ... wider open with the mouth ... but they
stand very oddly ... hem! and that eyetooth! there is meaning in all
that."
Antonio knew not whether to scold or laugh; however he constrained
himself to be calm, and to let the old woman have her chatter; for
owing, as it seemed, to her former acquaintance with his family, she
possest a strange power over him. But how did he start with amazement
when she suddenly cried out: "Crescentia!"
"For Heaven's sake!" he said, almost breathlessly: "do you know her?
can you see her? can you tell me anything about her?"
"What's the matter with you?" howled the old woman: "how can I help
knowing her, seeing she is my own daughter? Only look yourself how the
lazy slut has fallen asleep in her chair there, and lets the fire go
out and the soup get cold."
She took up the lamp and went to the chimney; but what were the
youth's feelings, when again for the second time on that day he beheld
his beloved, almost the same as in the evening? Her pale head lay
dropt back; her eyes were closed; every feature, even the dark
tresses, were those of his bride; just so were her little hands
folded, and just so did she too clasp a crucifix between them. Her
white dress helpt to increase the illusion; the flowers alone were
wanting; but the dusk wove something like wreaths of dark heavy
foliage around her hair.
"She is dead!" sighed Antonio gazing fixedly upon her.
"Sluggish is she, the lazy jade," said the old woman, and shook the
fair slumberer awake: "she can do nothing but pray and sleep, the
useless baggage."
Crescentia roused herself, and her confusion still hightened her
beauty. Antonio felt on the brink of madness at thus again seeing
before him one whom he had yet lost for ever.
"Old witch!" he cried out vehemently: "where am I? and what forms art
thou bringing before my wandering senses? Speak, who is this lovely
being? Crescentia, art thou alive again? Dost thou still acknowledge
me as thine own! How camest thou hither?"
"Holla! my young prince," screamed the old woman; "you are gabbling
away there, as though you had quite lost your little bit of an
understanding. Is the storm beating about inside of your pate? has the
lightning perchance singed your brains? She is my daughter, and always
has been so."
"I do not know you," said the pale Crescentia, blushing sweetly: "I
was never in the city."
"Sit down," the old woman interposed; "and eat and drink what I have
to give you."
The soup was placed on the table, along with some fruit; and the old
woman going to a small cupboard took out a flask of excellent
Florentine wine.
Antonio could eat but little; his eye was spellbound upon Crescentia;
and his disturbed and shattered imagination was evermore persuading
him anew that this was his lost bride. Then again he often fancied he
was lying enchained by a heavy dream, or had been seized by a trance
of madness which was transforming every object around him, so that he
was perhaps still in Padua, or at his own home, and saw nothing but
phantasmal forms, and could not recognize or understand any of the
friends who might be round about consoling him or mourning over him.
The storm had raved itself out, and the stars were shining in the
pacified dark sky. The old woman ate greedily, and drank still more
plenteously of the sweet wine.
"Now at length, young Antonio," she began after some time, "tell us,
prithee, what brought you to Padua, and what has driven you hither?"
Antonio started as from sleep. "You may well," he replied, "demand
some account of your guest, since, beside that reason, you knew my
father, and it may be my mother too."
"To be sure I knew her," said the old woman sniggering; "nobody so
well as I. Yes, yes, she died just six months before your father
celebrated his second marriage with the Marchesa Manfredi."
"So you know that too?"
"Why, it seems to me," she continued, "as though I could see the
dainty trim doll at this very moment before me. Well, is your
beautiful stepmother still living? When they drove me out of the
country she was just in her prime full bloom."
"I cannot again go through," said Antonio with a sigh, "what I
suffered from that alien mother. She held my father as under
enchantment; and he was readier to wrong all his old friends, readier
to wrong his own son, than in anywise to offend her. At last however
their behaviour to each other altered; but my heart almost broke at
the sight of their hatred, while before it had only bled at the
insults I had to endure."
"So there was plenty of bitter malice," askt the old hag with a
nauseous grin, "throughout the whole family?"
Antonio eyed her with a sharp look, and said confusedly: "I know not
how I have come to be talking here about my own and my parents
misery."
The old woman swallowed a bumper of red wine, which stood like blood
in the glass. Then with a loud laugh she said: "Faith, I know no such
glorious pleasure, nothing, I mean, so like what one may call perfect
rapture and bliss, as when such a wedded couple, who in earlier days
were once a pair of fond lovers, fall out in this way, and snarl and
snap at each other, like cat and dog, or two tiger-beasts, and scold
and curse each other, and would each give up heart and soul to Satan,
only to hurt and pain or to get rid of the other. This, my young lad,
is the true glory of mortal life: but more especially, if the two
yoke-fellows have of yore gone stark mad with love, if they have done
everything, even what is a little bit out of the way, for each other,
if they have waded through much of what certain good pious folks would
call crimes and sins, merely for the sake of getting at one another,
merely for the sake of at last tying the knot, which they now so
cordially abhor. Trust me, this is a grand feast for Satan and all his
comrades, and it makes those below keep jubilee and sing psalms. And
here now even ... but I'll hold my tongue; I might easily say too
much."
Crescentia lookt mournfully at the astonisht youth. "Forgive her," she
whispered: "you see she has drunk too much; pity her."
But in Antonio's soul there now rose up with fresh power the image of
former times and all their dark scenes. The sorrowful day came back
upon him, when he saw his stepmother on her deathbed, when his father
was in despair and curst himself and the hour of his birth, and called
upon the spirit of his first wife and prayed for forgiveness.
"Have you nothing else to tell?" askt the old woman, and thereby
awakened him from his dreamy amaze.
"What shall I tell?" said Antonio, with the deepest anguish: "do not
you seem to know everything, or else to have learnt it by soothsay?
Need I tell you that an old servant, Roberto, poisoned her, having
been persecuted by her hatred and thus spurred on to revenge himself?
that this accursed villain attempted to throw the crime upon my
father? He escapes from prison, scales the garden-wall, and in the
grotto thrusts his dagger into my father's breast."
"What old Roberto! Roberto!" cried the old woman almost with a shout
of triumph: "hey, only see how strangely some people will turn out!
Ay, ay, the sneak in his younger days was such a straitlaced
hypocrite, such a holy-seeming dog; afterward however he grew a fine
spirited fellow, as they tell me. It was in the grotto then? How
cunningly things fit together, and shell off till one gets at the
kernel! In that grotto your father in earlier days sat time after time
with his first wife; there at their betrothal he first swore eternal
love to her. In those times Roberto doubtless already wore that
dagger; but he knew not what an odd use he was to make of it some
twenty years after. In that grotto too the second spouse would often
slumber beside the cool fountain; and again the husband would lie
there at her feet. Well, Antonio, child, is not life a right merry,
right silly, right absurd, and right horrible hodgepodge? No man can
say: 'that's a thing I never will do'. The pangs and the feelings, the
stings and the ravings, which the black crew forge in hell's smithy,
all these keep coming on and coming on, slowly, wonderously, nearer
and ever nearer: on a sudden Horrour is in the house, and the frantic
victim sits with it in the corner, and gnaws at it as a dog gnaws a
bone. Drink, drink, my darling; this grape-juice sets all things to
rights when its spirits once get into the soul.... Now, and you? do
tell me a little more."
"I swore to revenge my father," said Antonio.
"That's just right;" returned the old woman: "look you, my child, when
such a firebrand has been once hurled into a house, it must never
never go out again. From generation to generation down to grandchild
and cousin the poison is entailed; the children rave already; the
wound is always bleeding afresh; a new vein must be opened to save the
disaster and set it upon its legs again, when but for that it might be
in danger of breathing its last. O revenge, revenge is a goodly word!"
"But Roberto," said Antonio, "had escaped, and was nowhere to be
found."
"A pity, a pity!" exclaimed the old woman. "Now of course thy revenge
drives thee over the world?"
"Yes in truth; I wandered through Italy, searcht in every town, but
could find no trace of the murderer. At last the fame of Pietro of
Abano fixt me at Padua. I wisht to learn wisdom from him; but when I
came into the house of the Podesta...."
"Well! speak out, child!"
"What shall I say? I know not whether I am raving or dreaming. There I
saw his daughter, the sweet, the lovely Crescentia. And I here see her
again before me ... yes it is herself ... that funeral procession was
a wicked, unseemly jest ... and this disguise, this flight hither into
the desert, is again a most unseemly piece of mummery. Acknowledge
thyself to me at length, at length, beloved, beautiful Crescentia.
Thou knowest it well, my heart only lives within thy bosom. To what
end these agonizing trials? Are thy parents perchance in the next room
there, and listening to all we are saying? Let them come in now at
last, at last; let us have done with this cruel probation, which will
soon drive me mad."
The pale Crescentia lookt at him with such an unutterable expression,
such a weight of sadness over her face, that the tears gusht from his
eyes.
"Faith, he is drunk already!" howled the old woman. "Speak, tell me,
is the Podesta's daughter dead then? Dead is she? and when?"
"This evening," said the weeper, "I met her corpse."
"So she too!" continued the old woman merrily, as she filled her glass
again. "Well, now will the family of Marconi in Venice be right glad."
"Why so?"
"Because they are now the only heirs to their rich kinsman. This is
what the long-sighted knaves have always wisht, but could never hope
for."
"Woman!" exclaimed Antonio with new horrour; "why thou knowest
everything!"
"Not everything," replied she, "but some little. And then a good deal
more may perhaps be guessed at. And I will not deny it, a little
witchcraft now and then helps on the game. Only don't be too much
frightened at it. Nor in truth was it altogether for nothing that
their Florentine worships would have built me a throne of faggots:
some petty trifling bits of reasons for this wish they might fairly
enough have brought forward.... Look me in the face, boy! stroak away
the curls from thy forehead: good! now give me thy left hand: the
right: heyday! strange and marvellous! That's it; some near misfortune
is hanging over thee; but if thou outlivest it, thou wilt see thy
beloved again."
"In the next world!" sighed Antonio.
"The next world? what is the next world?" cried the old hag in her
drunkenness: "no, in this world, here, on what we call earth. What
words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly
ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he
is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their
simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds,
and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of
their fabling, he is free on the strength of this, and can do what his
heart lusteth after."
Antonio eyed her wrathfully, and was about to make an indignant reply;
but the pale Crescentia interposed such a humble beseeching look for
her mother that his anger was disarmed.
The old woman yawned and rubbed her eyes, and it was not long before,
stupefied as she was by the repeated draughts of strong wine, she fell
fast asleep.
The fire on the hearth was gone out, and the lamp now only cast a
faint glimmer. Antonio sank into a deep study, and Crescentia sat by
the window on a low stool.
"Can I sleep anywhere?" the weary youth at length askt.
"There is another room above," said Crescentia sobbing; and he now
first observed that she had been crying bitterly all the time. She
trimmed the lamp, to make it burn brighter, and walkt silently before
him. He followed her up a narrow staircase, and after they were above
in the low dark loft, the damsel set the light on a little table and
was on the point of retiring. But when already at the door she turned
back again, stared at the young man as with a look of death, stood
tottering before him, and then fell sobbing aloud and with violent
unintelligible lamentations as in a convulsion down at his feet.
"What is the matter with thee, my sweet girl?" he exclaimed, and tried
to lift her up: "hush thee; tell me thy sorrow."
"No, let me lie here!" cried the weeper. "O that I might die here at
your feet, might die this very instant. No, it is too horrible. And
that I can do nothing, can hinder nothing, that I must behold the
crime in silence and helplessly! But you must hear it."
"Compose thyself then," said Antonio comforting her, "that thou mayst
recover thy voice and thy words."
"I look," she continued passionately and interrupted by her tears, "so
like your lost love, and it is I who am to lead you by the hand into
the house of murder. My mother may easily foretell that a near
misfortune is hanging over you: she well knows the gang that assemble
here nightly. No one has ever yet escaped alive from this hell. Every
moment is bringing him nearer and nearer, the fierce Ildefonso, or the
detestable Andrea, with their followers and comrades. Alas! and I can
only be the herald of your death, can offer you no help, no safety."
Antonio was horrour-struck. Pale and trembling he graspt after his
sword, tried his dagger, and summoned courage and resolution again.
Much as he had but now wisht for death, it was yet too frightful to be
thus forced to end his life in a robber's den.
"And thou," he began, "thou with this face, with this form, canst
bring thyself to be a companion, a helpmate to the accursed?"
"I cannot run away," she sighed despondingly: "how joyfully would I
fly from this house! Alas! and this night, tomorrow, I am to be taken
from hence, and dragged over the sea; I am to be made the wife of
Andrea or Ildefonso. Is it not better to die now?"
"Come," cried Antonio, "the door is open; escape with me; the night,
the forest will lend us their shelter."
"Only look around you," said the girl; "only see how both here and in
the room below all the windows are secured with strong iron bars; the
door of the house is fastened with a large key which my mother never
parts with. Did you not perceive, sir, how she threw the door into the
lock when you entered?"
"Then let the old hag fall first," cried Antonio: "we'll tear the keys
from her...."
"What, kill my mother!" shriekt the pale maiden, and clambered
forcibly round him, to hold him fast.
Antonio quieted her. He proposed to her that, as the old woman was
drunk and sleeping soundly, they should take the large house-key
gently from her side, then open the door, and escape. From this plan
Crescentia seemed to catch some hope: they both went silently down
into the room below, and found the old woman still fast asleep.
Crescentia crept trembling up to her, sought for the key, found it,
and succeeded after a time in loosening it from the string at her
girdle. She beckoned to the youth; they stept on tiptoe to the door;
they cautiously fixt the iron key in the lock; Antonio was now
straining his hand to draw back the bolt without noise; when he felt
that some one else was working at the lock on the outside in the same
noiseless manner. The door opened softly and in came face to face to
Antonio a large wild-looking man.
"Ildefonso!" screamed the damsel, and the youth at the first glance
recognized the murderer Roberto.
"What is this?" said he with a hollow voice. "Where got you that key?
whither are you going?"
"Roberto!" cried Antonio, and furiously seized the gigantic man by the
throat. They wrestled violently; but the nimbler strength of the youth
got the better and threw the villain upon the floor; he then knelt
upon his breast and plunged his dagger into his heart.
The old woman meanwhile had awaked with loud screams, had started up
on seeing the battle, and howling and cursing had torn her daughter
away; she dragged her up to the room overhead, and bolted the door
from within.
Antonio was now mounting to break into the loft, when several dark
forms stalkt in, and were no little astounded at finding their leader
dead on the ground.
"I am your captain now!" cried a broad bearded figure, fiercely
drawing his sword.
"Provided Crescentia is mine!" answered a younger robber in a tone of
defiance.
Each persisting in having his own way, they began a murderous combat.
The lamp was thrown over, and amid yells and imprecations the battle
rolled in the darkness from corner to corner.
"Have you lost your senses?" shouted another voice athwart them: "you
are letting the stranger get off; knock him down first, and then fight
your quarrel out."
But blind with fury they heard him not. Already the first grey
uncertain gleam of early morning was dawning. Antonio now felt a
murderer's fist at his breast; but quickly and strongly he struck the
assailer down.
"I am slain!" cried he, falling upon the floor: "Madmen, blockade the
doors; don't let him run away."
Meanwhile Antonio had found the way out; he sprang through the little
garden and over the fence; the robbers, who by this time had come to
their senses, hurried after him. He was only a few paces before them,
and they tried to cut him off. One of them threw stones after him; but
they missed their mark. Amid hollowing and threatening they had reacht
the wood.
Here the path split into sundry directions, and Antonio was at a loss
which to choose. He lookt back, and saw the robbers separated; he
attackt the nearest, and wounded him so that he let his sword drop.
But at the same moment he heard shouts, and saw new forms along a
by-path hastening thither; his road would soon be blockt up.
In this extremity of need he met with his horse again on a little plot
of grass in the wood. It seemed to have recovered from yesterday's
over-fatigue. He leapt upon it, after rapidly seizing and righting the
bridle; and with its utmost speed, as if the animal had felt his
danger, it bore him along a foot-track out of the forest.
By degrees the cries of his pursuers sounded more and more distant;
the wood grew lighter; and when he had reason to trust that there was
nothing more to be afraid of, he saw the city lying before him in the
glory of the rising sun.
People met him; countrymen were going the same road toward the city;
travellers joined company with him; and in this way he came back to
Padua, making little answer to the manifold questions and inquiries,
why his dress was in such disorder, and why he had no hat. The
citizens stared in wonder at him as he dismounted before the great
house of the Podesta.
* * * * *
In the city on that same night strange things had been going on, which
as yet were a secret to everybody. Scarcely had the darkness spread
thickly abroad, when Pietro, whom people commonly called by the name
of his birthplace, Apone or Abano, retiring into his secret study at
the back of his house, set all his apparatus, all the instruments of
his art, in due order, for some mysterious and extraordinary
undertaking. He himself was clad in a long robe charactered with
strange hieroglyphs; he had described the magical circles in the hall,
and he arranged everything with his utmost skill, to be certain of the
result. He had searcht diligently into the configuration of the stars,
and was now awaiting the auspicious moment.
His companion, the hideous Beresynth, was also drest in magical
garments. He fetcht everything at his master's bidding, and set it
down just as Pietro thought needful. Painted hangings were unrolled
over the walls; the floor of the room was covered over; the great
magical mirror was placed upright; and nearer and nearer came the
moment which the magician deemed the most fortunate.
"Hast thou put the crystals within the circles?" demanded Pietro.
"Yes;" returned his busy mate, whose ugliness kept bustling to and fro
merrily and unweariably amid the vials, mirrors, human skeletons, and
all the other strange implements. The incense was now brought; a flame
blazed upon the altar; and the magician cautiously, almost with
trembling, took the great volume out of his most secret cabinet.
"Do we start now?" cried Beresynth.
"Silence!" answered the old man solemnly: "interrupt not these holy
proceedings by any profane or any useless words."
He read, at first in a low voice, then louder and more earnestly as he
paced with measured steps to and fro, and then again round in a
circle. After a while he paused and said: "Look out, how the heavens
are shaping themselves."
"Thick darkness," replied the servant on his return, "has enwrapt the
sky; the clouds are driving along; rain is beginning to drip."
"They favour me!" exclaimed the old man: "it must succeed."
He now knelt down, and murmuring his incantations often toucht the
ground with his forehead. His face was heated; his eyes sparkled. He
was heard to pronounce the holy names which it is forbidden to utter;
and after a long time he sent his servant out again to look at the
firmament. Meanwhile the onrush of the storm was heard; lightning and
thunder chased each other; and the house seemed to tremble to its
lowest foundations.
"Hearken to the tempest!" shouted Beresynth coming back hastily: "Hell
has risen up from below, and is raging with fire and fierce cracking
crashes of thunder; a whirlwind is raving through the midst of it; and
the earth is quaking with fear. Hold with your conjuring, lest the
spokes of the world splinter, and the rim that holds it together
burst."
"Fool! simpleton!" cried the magician: "have done with thy useless
prating! Tear back all the doors; throw the house door wide open."
The dwarf withdrew to perform his master's orders. Meanwhile Pietro
lighted the consecrated tapers; with a shudder he walkt up to the
great torch that stood upon the high candlestick; this too at last was
burning; then he threw himself on the ground and conjured louder and
louder. His eyes flasht; all his limbs shook and shrunk as in
convulsions; and a cold sweat of agony trickled from his brow.
With wild gestures, as if scared out of his senses, the dwarf rusht in
again, and leapt for safety within the circles. "The world is at the
last gasp," he shriekt, pale and with chattering teeth: "the storms
are rolling onward; but all beneath the voiceless night is dismay and
horrour; every living thing has fled into its closet, or crept beneath
the pillows of its bed to skulk away from its fears."
The old man lifted up a face of ghastly paleness from the floor, and
with wrencht and indistinguishable features screamed in sounds not his
own: "Be silent, wretch, and disturb not the work. Give heed, and keep
a fast hold on thy senses. The greatest things are still behind."
With a voice as if he would split his breast, he read and conjured
again: his breath seemed often to fail him; it was as though the
gigantic effort must kill him.
Hereupon a medley of voices were suddenly heard as in a quarrel, then
again as in talk: they whispered; they shouted and laught; songs
darted from among them, together with the jumbled notes of strange
instruments. All the vessels grew alive, and strode forward, and went
back again; and out of the walls in every room gusht creatures of
every kind, vermin and monsters and hideous abortions in the richest
confusion.
"Master!" screamed Beresynth: "the house is growing too tight. What
shall we do with all these ghosts? they must eat one another. O woe! O
woe! they are all with cub, and are come here to whelp: new brutes
keep sprouting out of the old ones, and the child is always wilder and
frightfuller than its dam. My wits are leaving me in the lurch. And
then this music into the bargain, this ringing and piping, and
laughter athwart it, and funeral hymns enough to make one cry! Look
master! look! the walls, the rooms are stretching themselves, and
spreading out into vast halls; the ceilings are running away out of
sight; and the creatures are still shooting forth, and thicken as fast
as the space grows. Have you no counsel? have you no help?"
In complete exhaustion Pietro now raised himself; his whole form was
changed, and he seemed to be dying. "Look out once more," he said
faintly: "turn thine eyes toward the dome, and bring me tidings of
what thou seest."
"I am treading the rabble here on the head," roared Beresynth, totally
bewildered; "they are disporting themselves in twining about me like
serpents, and are laughing me to scorn. Are they ghosts? are they
demons, or empty phantoms? Get away! Well, if you won't move out of my
path, I'll stamp downright upon your green and blue snouts. Everybody
must take care of number one, even if a devil is to be the sufferer."
He stumbled out muttering.
Things now grew tranquil, and Pietro stood up. He waved his arm, and
all those strange forms which had been crawling about the floor and
twisting around each other in the air, vanisht. He wiped off the sweat
and tears, and drew his breath more freely.
His servant came back and said: "Master, all is quiet and well; but
sundry light forms flitted by me and lost themselves in the dark sky.
Thereupon, while I kept staring immovably toward the dome, a mighty
crash sounded, as if all the strings of a harp were breaking at once,
and a clap came that made the streets and the houses all tremble. The
great door of the church burst open; flutes warbled sweetly and
lovelily; and a soft light brightness streamed forth from the heart of
the church. Immediately after the form of a woman stept into the
radiance, pale, but glancing, bedeckt with crowns of flowers; she
glided through the door, and gleams of light strewed a path for her to
tread along. Her head upright, her hands folded, she is floating
hither toward our dwelling. Is this she for whom you have been
waiting?"
"Take the golden key," answered Pietro, "and unlock the innermost
richest chamber of my house. See that the purple tapestries are spread
out, that the perfumes are scattering their sweetness. Then away, and
get thee to bed. Make no further inquiry into what happens. Be
obedient and silent, as thou valuest thy life."
"I know you too well," returned the dwarf, and walkt off with the key,
casting back another look of something like mischievous delight.
Meanwhile a lovely murmur approacht. Pietro went into the
entrance-hall, and in glided the pale body of Crescentia, in her robe
of death, still holding the crucifix in her folded hands. He stood
still before her; she drew up the lids from her large eyes, and shrank
back from him with such a quick start that the wreaths of flowers
dropt down from her shaking head.
Without speaking a word he wrested her fast-claspt hands asunder; but
in the left she kept the crucifix tightly clencht. By the right hand
he led her through room after room, and she moved by his side stiffly
and with indifference, never looking around.
They reacht the furthest chamber. Purple and gold, silk and velvet,
were its costly garniture. The light only glimmered in faintly by day
through the heavy curtains. He pointed to the couch; and the
unconscious holder of a charmed life stoopt and bent down like a lily
that the wind shakes; she sank upon the red coverlet and breathed
painfully.
From a golden vial the old man poured a precious essence into a little
crystal cup, and set it before her mouth. Her pale lips sipt the
wonderous draught; she again unfolded her eyes, fixt them on her
former friend, turned away from him with an expression of loathing,
and fell into a deep sleep.
The old man carefully closed the chamber again. Everything in the
house was quiet. He betook himself to his own room, there in the midst
of his books and magical instruments to await the rising of the sun
and the business of the day.
* * * * *
When the unhappy youth, Antonio, had rested, the Podesta rode forth on
the following day with him and with a large train of armed followers,
to seek for the hut with the hideous old woman and the robbers, and to
take them prisoners. On hearing Antonio's story, the disconsolate
father became very eager to see the damsel who was said to be so like
his lost daughter. "Can it be," said the old man on their way, "that a
dream to which I have only too often abandoned myself, is about to
become true?"
The father was in such haste that he gave the youth no further
explanation. They came to the neighbouring wood; and here Antonio
thought he recollected himself and had found his track again. But that
night had so bewildered him, and excited such a turmoil throughout his
whole frame, that he could not make out the way further on, which he
had taken during the storm, half stunned by the roaring of the thunder,
on foot, wandering over ploughed land and meadow.
They crost the large plain in every quarter; wherever trees or bushes
were to be seen, thither Antonio spurred his horse, in the hope of
meeting with that den of robbers and the marvellous apparition within
it; or at least, should the inhabitants have absconded, as he might
well expect, of gaining some sort of tidings about them.
At length the Podesta, after they had been roaming about thus for a
great part of the day, began to fancy that the youth's heated
imagination had merely beheld these phantoms in the wild ravings of
his grief. "Such happiness," he exclaimed, "would be too great; and I
am born only for misfortune."
On reaching a village they were forced to let their horses and
servants bait. The inhabitants said they knew nothing of any such
suspicious neighbours, nor had the bodies of the slain been found
anywhere round about. After a short pause Antonio again set off, but
the Podesta now followed him more mistrustingly. Inquiries were made
of every peasant they fell in with; but none could give them any
certain information.
Toward evening they got to a building that appeared to have been
destroyed; ashes and rubbish lay around; some charred beams peered out
from among the stones; the trees that stood near were scorcht.
Here the youth seemed to recognize what he saw. This, he affirmed
confidently, had been the abode of the murderers and of that wonderous
Crescentia. They made halt. Far and wide through the waste country
there was no house to be seen, no human being to call to.
A servant rode to the next hamlet, and returned an hour after,
bringing an old man on horseback. This old man said he knew that a
good year since a hut had been burnt down there, having been set fire
to by some soldiers; that the owner of the estate had already been ten
years at Rome waiting for an office promist him in the church; and
that his bailiff had taken a journey to Ravenna for the sake of
getting in an old debt.
Vext and wearied the travellers rode back to the city. The Podesta
Ambrosio determined to give up his office, to withdraw from public
life, and to leave Padua, where everything reminded him only of his
misfortunes.
Antonio resolved to learn in the school of the renowned Apone how to
bear his wretchedness, and perchance to forget it. He removed into the
house of that great man, who had long treated him with much kindness.
* * * * *
"So you too," said the little priest some time after to the melancholy
Antonio, "have given yourself up to this ill-starred school, to this
pernicious man who will ensnare your soul to its destruction."
"Why are you angry," answered Antonio courteously, "my pious friend?
May not religion and knowledge shake hands in amity, as they do in
this admirable teacher? in him whom the whole world admires, whom
princes esteem and cherish, whom our holy father himself means to
raise to a spiritual dignity. Why are you incenst against him who
comes forward to meet you and all mankind with his love? Did you know
how his doctrine comforts me, how he lifts up my soul and guides it
heavenward, how in his mouth piety and religion find the words and
images of inspiration, which bear his scholars as with the wings of
the spirit into the regions above the earth, you would not think and
speak thus harshly of him. Learn to know him more nearly; seek his
intercourse; and you will soon be moved by penitence and love to
abjure your dislike and your over-hasty judgement against him."
"Love him!" cried the priest: "no, never! Keep yourself safe, young
man, from his clutches and those of his servant with hell's stamp upon
him, who cannot gull any one with the same fair seeming as his
master."
"True," rejoined Antonio, "little Beresynth is a queer figure, and a
hideous one too. I wonder myself that our noble Pietro can endure to
have him perpetually at his side, wherever he is and whatever he is
doing. But ought a hump or any other such ugly mark to render us cruel
toward a poor wretch whom nature has neglected?"
"Fine words! grand phrases!" exclaimed the priest impatiently: "such
are the very sentiments to make conjurors and quacks thrive apace.
See, there comes the abomination! I cannot even bear to look upon him,
much less to have any dealings with him. A creature whom the Lord has
markt in this wise, is knowable enough; and let everybody in whom all
human feeling is not yet quencht, get out of his way."
Beresynth, who had caught the last words, came up to them with divers
ungainly jumps.
"My very reverend sir," he exclaimed, "do you then yourself happen to
be of such mightily exquisite beauty, that you have a right to judge
thus intolerantly? My master from his youth up has been a majestic and
stately man; and yet he thinks far otherwise of me and my fellows.
What! you little stinted, stunted, stumpy, bile-faced animal, whose
nose is for ever running crimson with spite! You with the crooked
corners of your seesaw mouth, with the broken ridges and ditches in
your shrivelled half-inch forehead, you would make an outcry about my
ugliness! Why the bit of a dwarf can hardly peer out of its pulpit
when it is hubbubbing there, and is so gossamer-shankt it durst not
walk across the great square if the wind chance to be blowing strong;
the congregation are hard put to find him out when he is grimacing and
gesticulating before the altar, and need all their christian faith and
hope to believe him actually corporeally present; and such a
hop-o'-my-thumb, such a ghostly ne'er-to-be-seen, would take the tone
of a Goliah here. With thy leave, thou most invisible man of
godliness, one might cut out of my nose alone as stout a pillar of the
faith as thou art; and I won't reckon in the brace of humps which my
backbone and breastbone have built up in rivalry of each other."
The priest Theodore had already left them in anger before the end of
this speech; and the melancholy Antonio chid the little dwarf for his
wantonness. But the latter cried; "Now pray don't you also begin to
preach. Once for all I will bear that from no one else than my master;
for he came into the world on special purpose to teach morality and
philosophy and their kin. But this weathercock of a priest here, that
is driven round with such a creaking merely by his envy and malice,
because he fancies that my noble master is lowering both his authority
and his purse, he shall not unkennel his tongue from his toothless
jaws, where I can but thrust in my unwasht mouth. And from a young
student too I will brook no contradiction; for I used to have my beard
shaved, while your father was still carried about in his
chrisom-cloth; I was earning stripes at school and getting the fool's
cap hung round my ears, when they put your worshipful grandfather into
his first pair of breeches: so shew respect where it is due, and never
forget whom you have before you."
"Don't be angry, little man," said Antonio: "I meant it well with
thee."
"Mean it just as you please," returned the other. "My master is to be
a prelate, do you know that yet? and lord rector of the university.
And he has received a new gold chain as a token of royal favour from
Paris. And you must come to him; for he is going away from Padua, and
wants to speak to you once more before he sets off. And don't crawl
about so among the parsons, if you mean to be a philosopher."
Hopping and jumping to and fro from side to side he ran down the
street again; and Antonio said to Alfonso, who now came up to him, and
who for some time past had been forming a friendship with him: "I
never know, when talking to that little abortion, whether it means its
words in earnest or only in jest. He seems always to be scoffing at
himself and at everything else in the world."
"This," answered Alfonso, "is a kind of necessary amends to him, a way
of comforting himself for his deformity: by his sneers he to his own
fancy makes all other creatures just like himself. But have you heard
of the new honours that have been bestowed on our illustrious teacher
and master?"
"The world," replied Antonio, "acknowledges his high worth; and now
that even our holy father, the pope, is making him a prelate, this
will at length silence the envious priests and monks who are for ever
trying to charge the virtuous and pious man with heresy."
They parted; and Antonio hurried home, to take leave of his teacher
for some days. The little dwarf Beresynth was awaiting him in the
doorway with a friendly grin.
* * * * *
It was already growing dark within the house; and as Beresynth left
the youth to himself, he walkt, on not finding his teacher in the hall
or even in the library, through a number of rooms, and thus advanced
even to the innermost, which he had never yet entered. Here beside a
dim lamp Pietro was sitting, and was no little surprised to see the
Florentine come in; who on his part was astonisht at the skeletons,
the strange instruments, and extraordinary machinery around the old
man. Not without confusion the latter came up to him.
"I did not expect you here," said he, "but thought to find you
without, or to look for you up in your own room. I must set off to
meet the legate of our holy father, the pope, that with due humility
and gratitude I may receive the letter and the new dignity which his
grace and paternal kindness have vouchsafed to confer upon me."
Antonio was embarrast, and seemed to be examining the instruments,
having never seen any thing like them.
"You are wondering," said the old man after a while, "at all these
things, which are necessary for my studies. When you have attended
a course of my lectures on natural philosophy, I shall be able
hereafter to explain everything which now perhaps you may deem
incomprehensible."
But at this moment something happened that drew away Antonio's
attention from all these objects. A door that seemed shut was only
ajar; it opened, and he saw into a room filled with a red purplish
light; and at the door in the midst of this roseate glow was standing
a pale ghost that winkt and smiled.
With the speed of lightning the old man turned round, dasht the door
thunderingly to, and fastened it with a gold key. Trembling and pale
as a corpse he then threw himself into a chair, while large drops of
sweat ran down from his forehead.
When he was somewhat recovered, he beckoned to Antonio, still
trembling and said with a faltering voice: "This mystery also, my
young friend, will hereafter become clear to you; think, my dearest
son, the best of me. Thee above all, thou child of many sorrows and of
my love, will I lead into the lowest depths of my knowledge; thou
shalt be my true scholar, my heir. But leave me at present; go up to
thy lonely chamber, and call in fervent prayer upon heaven and its
holy powers to support thee."
Antonio could make no answer, so amazed and horrourstruck was he by
the apparition, so perplext by his honoured teacher's speech; for it
seemed to him as though Pietro was struggling to check a burst of
anger, as if represt rage were flashing from his firy eyes, which
after their sudden dimness rapidly shot forth fiercer glances.
He went away; and in the antechamber he found Beresynth, who with
grinning mouth was catching flies and then tossing them to a monkey.
Both seemed engaged in a match which could make the most portentous
faces. His master now called aloud for the servant, and the monster
hopt in. Antonio heard a loud squabble, and Pietro appeared to be
violently angry. Whining and yelling Beresynth came out of the room; a
stream of blood was rushing down from his enormous nose.
"Can't he keep his doors shut himself," howled the abortion,
"allsapient and allpotent as he is? When the master is a blockhead,
the servant must bear the blame. Betake you yourself, most honorablest
sir, up to your most attic study, and leave me with my good friend, my
dear Pavian here, in peace. He has still a human heart, the dear
faithful creature. Merry comrade as he is, in his tender moments he is
the most exquisite fellow. Come march! Pylades would feast on some
more flies, which his Orestes must catch for him."
Antonio left the room almost stupefied.
* * * * *
The Florentine youth had taken up his abode in his teacher's house,
for the sake of giving himself up without any interruption to his
sorrows and his studies. He had chosen the most retired and highest
room in the whole building, to be quite alone and unvisited by
anybody. When he lookt from hence over the beautiful and fruitful
fields about the city, and followed the course of the river with his
eyes, he thought the more intensely of his, lost love. He had got her
picture from her parents, as well as some toys she had played with in
her childhood; above all he delighted in a nightingale, that in its
moving plaints seemed to him to be only pouring forth the woes of his
own heart. This bird had been fostered by Crescentia with the utmost
care and fondness; and Antonio preserved it like something holy, as
the last relic of his earthly happiness.
With other young men of his own age he never mingled, excepting the
Spaniard Alfonso, to whom he was united by their equally enthusiastic
admiration of Pietro Abano. The Podesta Ambrosio had resigned his
office and left the city: he meant to spend the rest of his life at
Rome, for the sake of getting beyond the reach of his relations at
Venice. He had given up the thought of ever again finding the twin
daughter who had been stolen from him in her infancy; and his grief
had been embittered by Antonio's calling back this hope with such a
shock into his soul. He was convinced the young man had misled him and
himself been deceived by the fevered dreams of that night.
In the morning Pietro set off with his trusty servant. Antonio was
left alone in the large house, the rooms of which were all lockt up.
The night had past over him in sleeplessness. That terrific figure was
evermore standing before his eyes, which, greatly as it had appalled
him, had yet reawakened all his most delightful feelings. It was as
though all power of thinking had died away within him; visions which
he could not hold fast kept moving in ever-rolling circles before his
imagination. It was a frightful feeling to him, that he knew not what
to think of his venerated teacher, that he had a boding of lawless
mysteries, and of a horrour which since that look into the chamber
seemed to be awaiting him, to strip him of all optimism, and to
deliver him up to madness and despair.