The cannon, to be hereinafter described, is not the sole surviving
relic of the Good Duke's rule. Turn where you please on this island
domain, memories of that charming and incisive personality will meet
your eye and ear; memories in stone-schools, convents, decayed castles
and bathing chalets; memories in the spoken word--proverbs attributed to
him, legends and traditions of his sagacity that still linger among the
populace. IN THE DAYS OF THE DUKE: so runs a local saying, much as we
speak of the "good old times." His amiable laughter-loving ghost
pervades the capital to this hour. His pleasantries still resound among
those crumbling theatres and galleries. That gleeful deviltry of his,
compounded of blood and sunshine, is the epitome of Nepenthe. He is the
scarlet thread running through its annals. An incarnation of all that
was best in the age he identified, for wellnigh half a century, his
interests with those of his faithful subjects.
He meditated no conquests. It sufficed him to gain and to retain the
affection of men in whose eyes he was not so much a prince, a feudal
lord, as an indulgent and doting father. He was the ideal despot, a man
of wide culture and simple tastes. "A smile," he used to say, "will
sway the Universe." Simplicity he declared to be the keynote of his
nature, the guiding motive of his governance. In exemplification
whereof he would point to his method of collecting taxes--a marvel of
simplicity. Each citizen paid what he liked. If the sum proved
insufficient he was apprised of the fact next morning by having his
left hand amputated; a second error of judgment--it happened rather
seldom--was rectified by the mutilation of the remaining member. "Never
argue with inferiors," was one of His Highness's most original and
pregnant remarks, and it was observed that, whether he condescended to
argue or not, he generally gained his point without undue loss of time.
"It's so simple," he would say to those perplexed potentates who
flocked to him from the mainland for advice on administrative
questions. "So simple! One knock to each nair. And keep smiling."
It was the Good Duke Alfred who, with a shrewd eye to the future
prosperity of his dominions, made the first practical experiments with
those hot mineral springs--those healing waters whose virtues, up till
then, had been unaccountable neglected. Realizing their curative
possibilities, he selected fifty of the oldest and wisest of his Privy
Councillors to undergo a variety of hydro-thermal tests on their
bodies, internal and external. Seven of these gentlemen had the good
luck to survive the treatment. They received the Order of the Golden
Vine, a coveted distinction. The remaining forty-three, what was left
of them, were cremated at night-time and posthumously ennobled.
He was the author of some mighty fine dissertations on falconry,
dancing and architecture. He wrote furthermore, in the flamboyant style
of his period, two dozen pastoral plays, as well as a goodly number of
verses addressed, for the most part, to ladies of his Court--a Court
which was thronged with poets, wits, philosophers and noble women. The
island was a gay place in those days! There was always something doing.
His Highness had a trick of casting favourites into dungeons, and
concubines into the sea, that endeared him to his various legitimate
spouses; and the rapidity with which these self-same spouses were
beheaded one after the other, to make room for what he mirthfully
called "fresh blood," struck his faithful subjects as an ever-recurring
miracle of statecraft. "Nothing," he used to say to his intimates,
"nothing ages a man like living always with the same woman." Well
aware, on the other hand, of the inequality of social conditions and
keenly desirous of raising the moral tone of his people, he framed iron
laws to restrain those irregularities of married life which had been a
disreputable feature of local society prior to his accession.
Not in vain had he pondered in youth the political maxims of the great
Florentine. He cultivated assiduously the friendship of Church and Mob;
he knew that no throne, however seemingly well-established, can weather
the blasts of fortune save by resting on those twin pillars of
security. So it came about that, while all Europe was convulsed in
savage warfare, his relations with other rulers were marked by rare
cordiality and simplicity of intercourse. He never failed to conciliate
his more powerful neighbours by timely gifts of local delicacies--gifts
of dark-eyed virgins to grace their palaces, and frequent hampers of
those succulent LANGOUSTES for which the coastal waters of the island
are renowned, both items of the finest quality obtainable. A born
statesman, he extended this ingratiating demeanour even to those minor
sovereigns from whom, to all appearance, she had nothing to fear,
supplying them likewise with periodical consignments of pretty maidens
and well-flavoured crayfish, only of somewhat inferior quality--the
crustaceans often too young, the damsels occasionally over-ripe.
His high aspirations made him the precursor of many modern ideas. In
educational and military matters, more especially, he ranks as a
pioneer. He was a pedagogue by natural instinct. He took a sincere
delight in the school-children, limited their weekly half-holidays to
five, designed becoming dresses for boys and girls, decreed that lute
playing and deportment should become obligatory subjects in the
curriculum, and otherwise reformed the scholastic calendar which,
before his day, had drifted into sad confusion and laxity. Sometimes he
honoured the ceremony of prize-giving with his presence. On the other
hand it must be admitted that, judged by modern standards, certain of
his methods for punishing disobedience smacks of downright pedantry.
Thrice a year, on receiving form the Ministry of Education a list
containing the names of unsatisfactory scholars of either sex, it was
his custom to hoist a flag on a certain hill-top; this was a signal for
the Barbary pirates, who then infested the neighbouring ocean, to set
sail for the island and buy up these perverse children, at purely
nominal rates, for the slave-markets of Stamboul and Argier. They were
sold ignominiously--by weight and not by the piece--to mark his
unqualified disapproval of talking and scribbling on blotting-pads
during school hours.
It is recorded of the Good Duke that on one occasion he returned from
this scene looking haggard and careworn, as though the sacrifice of so
many young lives weighed on his fatherly spirit. Presently, envisaging
his duties towards the State, he restrained these natural but unworthy
emotions, smiled his well-known smile, and gave utterance to an
apophthegm which had since found its way into a good many copy-books:
"In the purity of childhood," he said, "lie the seeds of national
prosperity." And if it be enquired by what arts of Machiavellian
astuteness he alone, of all Christian princes, contrived to maintain
friendly relations with these formidable Oriental sea-rovers, the
answer lies at hand. His device was one of extreme simplicity. He
appealed to their better natures by sending them, at convenient
intervals, shiploads of local delicacies, girls and lobsters--of
indifferent quality, it is true, but sufficiently appetizing to attest
his honourable intentions.
His predecessors, intent only upon their pleasures, had given no
thought to the possibility of a hostile invasion of their fair domain.
But the Good Duke, despite his popularity, was frequently heard to
quote with approval that wise old adage which runs "In peace, prepare
for war." Convinced of the instability of all mundane affairs and
being, moreover, a man of original notions as well as something of an
artist in costumery, he was led to create that picturesque body of men,
the local Militia, which survives to this day and would alone entitle
him to the grateful notice of posterity. These elegant warriors, he
calculated, would serve both for the purpose of infusing terror into
the minds of potential enemies, and of acting as a decorative
body-guard to enhance his own public appearances on gala days. He threw
his whole soul into the enterprise. After the corps had been duly
established, he amused himself by drilling them on Sunday afternoons
and modelling new buttons for their uniforms; to give them the
requisite military stamina he over-fed and starved them by turns,
wrapped them in sheepskin overcoats for long route-marches in July,
exercised them in sham fights with live grapeshot and unblunted
stilettos and otherwise thinned their ranks of undesirables, and
hardened their physique, by forcing them to escalade horrible
precipices at midnight on horseback. He was a martinet; he knew it; he
gloried on the distinction. "All the world loves a disciplinarian," he
was wont to say.
Nevertheless, like many great princes, he realized that political
reasons might counsel at times an abatement of rigour. He could relent
and show mercy. He could interpose his authority in favour of the
condemned.
He relented on one celebrated occasion which more than any other helped
to gain for him the epithet of "The Good"--when an entire squadron of
the Militia was condemned to death for some supposed mistake in giving
the salute. The record, unfortunately, is somewhat involved in
obscurity and hard to disentangle; so much is clear, however, that the
sentence was duly promulgated and carried into effect within half an
hour. Then comes the moot question of the officer in command who was
obviously destined for execution with the rest of his men and who now
profited, as events proved, by the clemency of the Good Duke. It
appears that this individual, noted for a childlike horror of bloodshed
(especially when practiced on his own person), had unaccountably
absented himself from the ceremony at the last moment--slipping out of
the ranks in order, as he said, to bid a last farewell to his two aged
and widowed parents. He was discovered in a wine-shop and brought
before a hastily summoned Court-martial. There his old military courage
seems to have returned to him. He demonstrated by a reference to the
instructions laid down in the Militiaman's Year-book that no mistake in
saluting had been made, that his men had therefore been wrongfully
convicted and illegally executed and that he A FORTIORI, was innocent
of any felonious intent. The Court, while approving his arguments,
condemned him none the less to the indignity of a double decapitation
for the offence of leaving his post without a signed permit from His
Highness.
It was at this point that the Good Duke interposed on his behalf. He
rescinded the decree; in other words, he relented. "Enough of bloodshed
for one day," he was heard to remark, quite simply.
This speech was one of his happiest inspirations. Instantly it echoed
from mouth to mouth; from end to end of his dominions. Enough of
bloodshed for one day! That showed his true heart, the people declared.
Enough of bloodshed! Their enthusiasm grew wilder when, in an access of
princely graciousness, he repaired the lamentable excess of zeal by
pinning the Order of the Golden Vine to the offending officer's breast;
it rose to a veritable frenzy as soon as they learned that, by Letters
Patent, the entire defunct squadron had been posthumously ennobled. And
this is only one of many occasions on which this ruler, by his intimate
knowledge of human nature and the arts of government, was enabled to
wrest good from evil, and thereby consolidate his throne....
It is passing strange, on the face of it, that this vivid personality,
one of the most arresting figures in the history of the country, should
be so briefly dealt with in the pages of Monsignor Perrelli. Doubly
strange, and a serious disappointment to the reader, in view of the
fact that the two men were contemporaries, and that the learned writer
must have enjoyed exceptional facilities for obtaining first-hand
knowledge of his subject. Almost inexplicable indeed, when one
remembers those maxims which he himself, in the Introduction to his
ANTIQUITIES, lays down for the writing of history; when one calls to
mind his own gleams of exotic scholarship, those luminous asides and
fruitful digressions, those statesmanlike comments on things in general
which make his work not so much a compendium of local lore as a mirror
of the polite learning of his age. It is no exaggeration to say that,
compared with the ample treatment meted out to inconspicuous rulers
like Alfonso the Seventeenth or Florizel the Fat, his account of the
Good Duke Alfred is the baldest, the most perfunctory and conventional
of chronicles. Neither good nor evil is related of him. There is
nothing but a monotonous enumeration of events.
It was the bibliographer who, poring over the pages of the rival monk
Father Capocchio, that audacious and salacious friar already
mentioned--it was the bibliographer who hit upon a passage which
suggested a solution of the mystery and proved that, though Monsignor
Perrelli lived during the reign of the Good Duke, it would be
stretching unduly the sense of a plain word to say that he "flourished"
under his rule. Other persons may have flourished; not so the kindly
prelate.
"Nothing whatever," says this implacable enemy of Nepenthe, "is to be
recorded to the credit of the sanguinary brigand--so he terms the Good
Duke--nothing whatsoever: save and except only this, that he cut off the
ears of a certain prattler, intriguer, and snuff-taking sensualist
called Perrelli who, under the pretence of collecting data for an
alleged historical treatise, profited by his priestly garb to play fast
and loose with what little remained of decent family life on that
God-abandoned island. Honour to whom honor is due! The ostensible
reason for this unique act of justice was that the said Perrelli had
appeared at some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes,
instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as the
tyrant added to his other vices and absurdities the pose of being an
extravagant stickler for etiquette. We happen to know, nevertheless,
that the name of a young dancer, a prime favourite at Court, cropped up
persistently at the time in connection with this malodorous but
otherwise insignificant episode."
It were idle, at this hour of the day, to pursue the enquiry; the
mutilation of Monsignor Perrelli's person, however, would explain
better than anything else his equivocal attitude as historian. Nor is
the incident altogether inconsistent with what we know of the Duke's
cheerful propensities. "Nose after ears!" was one of his blithest
watchwords. Faced with so dispiriting a prospect and aware that His
Highness was as good as his princely word, the sympathetic scholar,
while too resentful to praise his achievements, may well have been too
prudent to disparage them. Hence his reticence, his circumspection.
Hence that monotonous enumeration of events.
This microscopic blot on the Duke's escutcheon, as well as other more
commendable details of his life, were duly noted down by the zealous
Mr. Eames who, in addition, had the good fortune to receive as a gift
from his kindly but unassuming friend Count Caloveglia a quaint
portrait of the prince, hitherto unknown--an engraving which he purposed
to reproduce, together with other fresh iconographical material, in his
enlarged and fully annotated edition of the ANTIQUITIES. The print
depicts His Highness full face, seated on a throne in the accoutrements
of Mars, with a gallant wig flowing in mazy ringlets from under the
helmet upon his plated shoulders; overhead, upon a canopy of cloud,
reclines a breezy assemblage of allegorical females--Truth, Mercy, Fame
with her trumpet, and so forth. His nervous clean-shaven features do
not wear the traditional smile; they are thoughtful, almost grim. On
his left is portrayed a huge CANNON astride of which can be seen a
chubby angel; the Duke's hand reposes, in a paternal caress on the
cherub's head--symbolical doubtless of his love of children. His right
elbow rests upon a table, and the slender bejewelled fingers are
listlessly pressing open a lettered scroll of parchment on which can be
deciphered the words "A CHI T'HA FIGLIATO" (to her who bare thee)--a
legend which the bibliographer, whose acquaintance with the vernacular
was not on a level with his classical attainments, conjectured to be
some fashionable courtly toast of the period.
The mention of artillery recalls the fact that His Highness was an
amateur of ordnance. He established a gun-foundry on the island, and
what he did not know about the art of casting pieces, as practised in
his day, was plainly not worth knowing. Had it not been for his
passionate love of testing new processes and new combinations of metal,
he might have attained to a European reputation in that department. But
he was always experimenting, and the consequence was that his cannons
were always splitting. One, however, a monster of its kind, remained
intact, to outward appearances. It was fired on every conceivable
occasion--to summon the Militia, for example, from remote corners of the
island at any hour of the day or night, a considerable hardship to
those who lived at a distance of two or three miles, seeing that
according to the instructions set forth in the Militiaman's Year-book,
the sternest penalties were imposed upon all who failed to appear in
their ranks at the Palace gates within five minutes after the signal
had been sounded.
It was a perilous gun to handle. Owing to some undiscoverable flaw of
construction or imperfection in the alloy, the monster soon developed a
disconcerting knack of back-firing, hazardous to life and limb. It
stands to reason that the Good Duke attached no undue importance to any
trifling disaster accruing therefrom. On the contrary, in order to be
sure of a thunderous detonation, he often deigned to superintend in
person the loading of this particular piece.
"More powder," he would then command. "More powder! Ram it in! Never
mind her little caprices! A good salute is worth a good soldier! More
powder! Fill her up to the brim! She's only playful, like her master."
Those who lost fingers or hands or arms received the Order of the
Golden Vine. Whenever a major portion of the anatomy, a head or so
forth, went astray, the victim was posthumously ennobled.
Since his day, thanks to the science of a Paduan engineer, this defect
has been almost completely overcome, and the gun can still be heard on
great occasions, such as the Duke's birthday, the Festival of the
Patron Saint, or the visit to the island of some foreign sovereign; it
is also discharged, as of yore, to summon the Militia for the purpose
of quelling any popular disturbance. But even now it occasionally
relapses into its old humours--with this difference, that instead of
being decorated with a coveted distinction, the disabled man is sent to
the hospital and told not to make a fool of himself next time.
This was the gun whose sound attracted the strained attention of Mr.
Keith and his companions, far away, on the sea, under the cliffs.