I
The citizens of Mantua were weary of revolutions. They had acknowledged
the suzerainty of the Emperor Frederick and shaken it off. They had had
a Podestà of their own and had shaken him off. They had expelled a
Papal Legate, incurring excommunication thereby. They had tried
dictators, consuls, prætors, councils of ten, and other numbers odd and
even, and ere the middle of the thirteenth century were luxuriating in
the enjoyment of perfect anarchy.
An assembly met daily in quest of a remedy, but its members were
forbidden to propose anything old, and were unable to invent anything
new.
“Why not consult Manto, the alchemist’s daughter, our prophetess, our
Sibyl?” the young Benedetto asked at last.
“Why not?” repeated Eustachio, an elderly man.
“Why not, indeed?” interrogated Leonardo, a man of mature years.
All the speakers were noble. Benedetto was Manto’s lover; Eustachio her
father’s friend; Leonardo his creditor. Their advice prevailed, and the
three were chosen as a deputation to wait on the prophetess. Before
proceeding formally on their embassy the three envoys managed to obtain
private interviews, the two elder with Manto’s father, the youth with
Manto herself. The creditor promised that if he became Duke by the
alchemist’s influence with his daughter he would forgive the debt; the
friend went further, and vowed that he would pay it. The old man
promised his good word to both, but when he went to confer with his
daughter he found her closeted with Benedetto, and returned without
disburdening himself of his errand. The youth had just risen from his
knees, pleading with her, and drawing glowing pictures of their
felicity when he should be Duke and she Duchess.
She answered, “Benedetto, in all Mantua there is not one man fit to
rule another. To name any living person would be to set a tyrant over
my native city. I will repair to the shades and seek a ruler among the
dead.”
“And why should not Mantua have a tyrant?” demanded Benedetto. “The
freedom of the mechanic is the bondage of the noble, who values no
liberty save that of making the base-born do his bidding. ’Tis hell to
a man of spirit to be contradicted by his tailor. If I could see my
heart’s desire on the knaves, little would I reck submitting to the
sway of the Emperor.”
“I know that well, Benedetto,” said Manto, “and hence will take good
heed not to counsel Mantua to choose thee. No, the Duke I will give her
shall be one without passions to gratify or injuries to avenge, and
shall already be crowned with a crown to make the ducal cap as nothing
in his eyes, if eyes he had.”
Benedetto departed in hot displeasure, and the alchemist came forward
to announce that the commissioners waited.
“My projection,” he whispered, “only wants one more piece of gold to
insure success, and Eustachio proffers thirty. Oh, give him Mantua in
exchange for boundless riches!”
“And they call thee a philosopher and me a visionary!” said Manto,
patting his cheek.
The envoys’ commission having been unfolded, she took not a moment to
reply, “Be your Duke Virgil.”
The deputation respectfully represented that although Virgil was no
doubt Mantua’s greatest citizen, he laboured under the disqualification
of having been dead more than twelve hundred years. Nothing further,
however, could be extorted from the prophetess, and the ambassadors
were obliged to withdraw.
The interpretation of Manto’s oracle naturally provoked much diversity
of opinion in the council.
“Obviously,” said a poet, “the prophetess would have us confer the
ducal dignity upon the contemporary bard who doth most nearly accede to
the vestiges of the divine Maro; and he, as I judge, is even now in the
midst of you.”
“Virgil the poet,” said a priest, who had long laboured under the
suspicion of occult practices, “was a fool to Virgil the enchanter. The
wise woman evidently demands one competent to put the devil into a
hole—an operation which I have striven to perform all my life.”
“Canst thou balance our city upon an egg?” inquired Eustachio.
“Better upon an egg than upon a quack!” retorted the priest.
But such was not the opinion of Eustachio himself, who privately
conferred with Leonardo. Eustachio had a character, but no parts;
Leonardo had parts, but no character.
“I see not why these fools should deride the oracle of the prophetess,”
he said. “She would doubtless impress upon us that a dead master is in
divers respects preferable to a living one.”
“Surely,” said Eustachio, “provided always that the servant is a man of
exemplary character, and that he presumes not upon his lord’s
withdrawal to another sphere, trusting thereby to commit malpractices
with impunity, but doth, on the contrary, deport himself as ever in his
great taskmaster’s eye.”
“Eustachio,” said Leonardo, with admiration, “it is the misery of
Mantua that she hath no citizen who can act half as well as thou canst
talk. I would fain have further discourse with thee.”
The two statesmen laid their heads together, and ere long the mob were
crying, “A Virgil! a Virgil!”
The councillors reassembled and passed resolutions.
“But who shall be Regent?” inquired some one when Virgil had been
elected unanimously.
“Who but we?” asked Eustachio and Leonardo. “Are we not the heads of
the Virgilian party?”
Thus had the enthusiastic Manto, purest of idealists, installed in
authority the two most unprincipled politicians in the republic; and
she had lost her lover besides, for Benedetto fled the city, vowing
vengeance.
Anyhow, the dead poet was enthroned Duke of Mantua; Eustachio and
Leonardo became Regents, with the style of Consuls, and it was provided
that in doubtful cases reference should be made to the Sortes
Virgilianae. And truly, if we may believe the chronicles, the
arrangement worked for a time surprisingly well. The Mantuans, in an
irrational way, had done what it behoves all communities to do
rationally if they can. They had sought for a good and worthy citizen
to rule them; it was their misfortune that such an one could only be
found among the dead. They felt prouder of themselves for being
governed by a great man—one in comparison with whom kings and pontiffs
were the creatures of a day. They would not, if they could help it,
disgrace themselves by disgracing their hero; they would not have it
said that Mantua, which had not been too weak to bear him, had been too
weak to endure his government. The very hucksters and usurers among
them felt dimly that there was such a thing as an Ideal. A glimmering
perception dawned upon mailed, steel-fisted barons that there was such
a thing as an Idea, and they felt uneasily apprehensive, like beasts of
prey who have for the first time sniffed gunpowder. The railleries and
mockeries of Mantua’s neighbours, moreover, stimulated Mantua’s
citizens to persevere in their course, and deterred them from doing
aught to approve themselves fools. Were not Verona, Cremona, Lodi,
Pavia, Crema, cities that could never enthrone the Virgil they had
never produced, watching with undissembled expectation to see them
trip? The hollow-hearted Eustachio and the rapacious Leonardo, their
virtual rulers, might indeed be little sensible to this enthusiasm, but
they could not disregard the general drift of public opinion, which
said clearly: “Mantua is trying a great experiment. Woe to you if you
bring it to nought by your selfish quarrels!”
The best proof that there was something in Manto’s idea was that after
a while the Emperor Frederick took alarm, and signified to the Mantuans
that they must cease their mumming and fooling and acknowledge him as
their sovereign, failing which he would besiege their city.