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PART ONE.
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PROEM.
More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid springâtime
of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled
with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules,
and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine
ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the
same outline of firm land and unstable seaâsaw the same great
mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen toâdayâsaw
olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with
young corn or rainâfreshened grassâsaw the domes and spires of
cities rising by the riverâsides or mingled with the sedgeâlike
masts on the manyâcurved seaâcoast, in the same spots where they
rise toâday. And as the faint light of his course pierced into the
dwellings of men, it fell, as now, on the rosy warmth of nestling
children; on the haggard waking of sorrow and sickness; on the
hasty uprising of the hardâhanded labourer; and on the late sleep
of the nightâstudent, who had been questioning the stars or the
sages, or his own soul, for that hidden knowledge which would break
through the barrier of man's brief life, and show its dark path,
that seemed to bend no whither, to be an arc in an immeasurable
circle of light and glory. The great riverâcourses which have
shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other
streams, the lifeâcurrents that ebb and flow in human hearts,
pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors.
As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are
impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never
alters in the main headings of its historyâhunger and labour,
seedâtime and harvest, love and death.
Even if, instead of following the dim daybreak, our imagination
pauses on a certain historical spot and awaits the fuller morning,
we may see a worldâfamous city, which has hardly changed its
outline since the days of Columbus, seeming to stand as an almost
unviolated symbol, amidst the flux of human things, to remind us
that we still resemble the men of the past more than we differ from
them, as the great mechanical principles on which those domes and
towers were raised must make a likeness in human building that will
be broader and deeper than all possible change. And doubtless, if
the spirit of a Florentine citizen, whose eyes were closed for the
last time while Columbus was still waiting and arguing for the
three poor vessels with which he was to set sail from the port of
Palos, could return from the shades and pause where our thought is
pausing, he would believe that there must still be fellowship and
understanding for him among the inheritors of his birthplace.
Let us suppose that such a Shade has been permitted to revisit
the glimpses of the golden morning, and is standing once more on
the famous hill of San Miniato, which overlooks Florence from the
south.
The Spirit is clothed in his habit as he lived: the folds of his
wellâlined black silk garment or lucco hang in grave
unbroken lines from neck to ankle; his plain cloth cap, with its
becchetto, or long hanging strip of drapery, to serve as a
scarf in case of need, surmounts a penetrating face, not, perhaps,
very handsome, but with a firm, wellâcut mouth, kept distinctly
human by a closeâshaven lip and chin. It is a face charged with
memories of a keen and various life passed below there on the banks
of the gleaming river; and as he looks at the scene before him, the
sense of familiarity is so much stronger than the perception of
change, that he thinks it might be possible to descend once more
amongst the streets, and take up that busy life where he left it.
For it is not only the mountains and the westwardâbending river
that he recognises; not only the dark sides of Mount Morello
opposite to him, and the long valley of the Arno that seems to
stretch its grey lowâtufted luxuriance to the farâoff ridges of
Carrara; and the steep height of Fiesole, with its crown of
monastic walls and cypresses; and all the green and grey slopes
sprinkled with villas which he can name as he looks at them. He
sees other familiar objects much closer to his daily walks. For
though he misses the seventy or more towers that once surmounted
the walls, and encircled the city as with a regal diadem, his eyes
will not dwell on that blank; they are drawn irresistibly to the
unique tower springing, like a tall flowerâstem drawn towards the
sun, from the square turreted mass of the Old Palace in the very
heart of the cityâthe tower that looks none the worse for the four
centuries that have passed since he used to walk under it. The
great dome, too, greatest in the world, which, in his early
boyhood, had been only a daring thought in the mind of a small,
quickâeyed manâthere it raises its large curves still, eclipsing
the hills. And the wellâknown bellâtowersâGiotto's, with its
distant hint of rich colour, and the gracefulâspired Badia, and the
restâhe looked at them all from the shoulder of his nurse.
"Surely," he thinks, "Florence can still ring her bells with the
solemn hammerâsound that used to beat on the hearts of her citizens
and strike out the fire there. And here, on the right, stands the
long dark mass of Santa Croce, where we buried our famous dead,
laying the laurel on their cold brows and fanning them with the
breath of praise and of banners. But Santa Croce had no spire then:
we Florentines were too full of great building projects to carry
them all out in stone and marble; we had our frescoes and our
shrines to pay for, not to speak of rapacious condottieri, bribed
royalty, and purchased territories, and our facades and spires must
needs wait. But what architect can the Frati Minori [the
Franciscans] have employed to build that spire for them? If it had
been built in my day, Filippo Brunelleschi or Michelozzo would have
devised something of another fashion than thatâ something worthy to
crown the church of Arnolfo."
At this the Spirit, with a sigh, lets his eyes travel on to the
city walls, and now he dwells on the change there with wonder at
these modern times. Why have five out of the eleven convenient
gates been closed? And why, above all, should the towers have been
levelled that were once a glory and defence? Is the world become so
peaceful, then, and do Florentines dwell in such harmony, that
there are no longer conspiracies to bring ambitious exiles home
again with armed bands at their back? These are difficult
questions: it is easier and pleasanter to recognise the old than to
account for the new. And there flows Arno, with its bridges just
where they used to beâthe Ponte Vecchio, least like other bridges
in the world, laden with the same quaint shops where our Spirit
remembers lingering a little on his way perhaps to look at the
progress of that great palace which Messer Luca Pitti had set
aâbuilding with huge stones got from the Hill of Bogoli [now
Boboli] close behind, or perhaps to transact a little business with
the clothâdressers in Oltrarno. The exorbitant line of the Pitti
roof is hidden from San Miniato; but the yearning of the old
Florentine is not to see Messer Luca's too ambitious palace which
he built unto himself; it is to be down among those narrow streets
and busy humming Piazze where he inherited the eager life of his
fathers. Is not the anxious voting with black and white beans still
going on down there? Who are the Priori in these months, eating
soberlyâregulated official dinners in the Palazzo Vecchio, with
removes of tripe and boiled partridges, seasoned by practical jokes
against the illâfated butt among those potent signors? Are not the
significant banners still hung from the windowsâstill distributed
with decent pomp under Orcagna's Loggia every two months?
Life had its zest for the old Florentine when he, too, trod the
marble steps and shared in those dignities. His politics had an
area as wide as his trade, which stretched from Syria to Britain,
but they had also the passionate intensity, and the detailed
practical interest, which could belong only to a narrow scene of
corporate action; only to the members of a community shut in close
by the hills and by walls of six miles' circuit, where men knew
each other as they passed in the street, set their eyes every day
on the memorials of their commonwealth, and were conscious of
having not simply the right to vote, but the chance of being voted
for. He loved his honours and his gains, the business of his
countingâhouse, of his guild, of the public councilâchamber; he
loved his enmities too, and fingered the white bean which was to
keep a hated name out of the borsa with more complacency
than if it had been a golden florin. He loved to strengthen his
family by a good alliance, and went home with a triumphant light in
his eyes after concluding a satisfactory marriage for his son or
daughter under his favourite loggia in the evening cool; he loved
his game at chess under that same loggia, and his biting jest, and
even his coarse joke, as not beneath the dignity of a man eligible
for the highest magistracy. He had gained an insight into all sorts
of affairs at home and abroad: he had been of the "Ten" who managed
the war department, of the "Eight" who attended to home discipline,
of the Priori or Signori who were the heads of the executive
government; he had even risen to the supreme office of
Gonfaloniere; he had made one in embassies to the Pope and to the
Venetians; and he had been commissary to the hired army of the
Republic, directing the inglorious bloodless battles in which no
man died of brave breast woundsâvirtuosi colpiâbut only of
casual falls and tramplings. And in this way he had learned to
distrust men without bitterness; looking on life mainly as a game
of skill, but not dead to traditions of heroism and cleanâhanded
honour. For the human soul is hospitable, and will entertain
conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much
impartiality. It was his pride besides, that he was duly tinctured
with the learning of his age, and judged not altogether with the
vulgar, but in harmony with the ancients: he, too, in his prime,
had been eager for the most correct manuscripts, and had paid many
florins for antique vases and for disinterred busts of the ancient
immortalsâsome, perhaps, truncis naribus, wanting as to
the nose, but not the less authentic; and in his old age he had
made haste to look at the first sheets of that fine Homer which was
among the early glories of the Florentine press. But he had not,
for all that, neglected to hang up a waxen image or double of
himself under the protection of the Madonna Annunziata, or to do
penance for his sins in large gifts to the shrines of saints whose
lives had not been modelled on the study of the classics; he had
not even neglected making liberal bequests towards buildings for
the Frati, against whom he had levelled many a jest.
For the Unseen Powers were mighty. Who knewâwho was sureâthat
there was any name given to them behind which there was no
angry force to be appeased, no intercessory pity to be won? Were
not gems medicinal, though they only pressed the finger? Were not
all things charged with occult virtues? Lucretius might be rightâhe
was an ancient, and a great poet; Luigi Pulci, too, who was
suspected of not believing anything from the roof upward (dal
tetto in su), had very much the air of being right over the
supperâtable, when the wine and jests were circulating fast, though
he was only a poet in the vulgar tongue. There were even learned
personages who maintained that Aristotle, wisest of men (unless,
indeed, Plato were wiser?) was a thoroughly irreligious
philosopher; and a liberal scholar must entertain all speculations.
But the negatives might, after all, prove false; nay, seemed
manifestly false, as the circling hours swept past him, and turned
round with graver faces. For had not the world become Christian?
Had he not been baptised in San Giovanni, where the dome is awful
with me symbols of coming judgment, and where the altar bears a
crucified Image disturbing to perfect complacency in one's self and
the world? Our resuscitated Spirit was not a pagan philosopher, nor
a philosophising pagan poet, but a man of the fifteenth century,
inheriting its strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean
levity and fetichistic dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered
by rote, and crude passions acted out with childish impulsiveness;
of inclination towards a selfâindulgent paganism, and inevitable
subjection to that human conscience which, in the unrest of a new
growth, was rilling the air with strange prophecies and
presentiments.
He had smiled, perhaps, and shaken his head dubiously, as he
heard simple folk talk of a Pope Angelico, who was to come
byâandâby and bring in a new order of things, to purify the Church
from simony, and the lives of the clergy from scandalâa state of
affairs too different from what existed under Innocent the Eighth
for a shrewd merchant and politician to regard the prospect as
worthy of entering into his calculations. But he felt the evils of
the time, nevertheless; for he was a man of public spirit, and
public spirit can never be wholly immoral, since its essence is
care for a common good. That very Quaresima or Lent of 1492 in
which he died, still in his erect old age, he had listened in San
Lorenzo, not without a mixture of satisfaction, to the preaching of
a Dominican Friar, named Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced with a
rare boldness the worldliness and vicious habits of the clergy, and
insisted on the duty of Christian men not to live for their own
ease when wrong was triumphing in high places, and not to spend
their wealth in outward pomp even in the churches, when their
fellowâcitizens were suffering from want and sickness. The Frate
carried his doctrine rather too far for elderly ears; yet it was a
memorable thing to see a preacher move his audience to such a pitch
that the women even took off their ornaments, and delivered them up
to be sold for the benefit of the needy.
"He was a noteworthy man, that Prior of San Marco," thinks our
Spirit; "somewhat arrogant and extreme, perhaps, especially in his
denunciations of speedy vengeance. Ah, Iddio non paga il
Sabatol [`God does not pay on a Saturday']âthe wages of men's
sins often linger in their payment, and I myself saw much
established wickedness of longâstanding prosperity. But a Frate
Predicatore who wanted to move the peopleâhow could he be moderate?
He might have been a little less defiant and curt, though, to
Lorenzo de' Medici, whose family had been the very makers of San
Marco: was that quarrel ever made up? And our Lorenzo himself, with
the dim outward eyes and the subtle inward vision, did he get over
that illness at Careggi? It was but a sad, uneasyâlooking face that
he would carry out of the world which had given him so much, and
there were strong suspicions that his handsome son would play the
part of Rehoboam. How has it all turned out? Which party is likely
to be banished and have its houses sacked just now? Is there any
successor of the incomparable Lorenzo, to whom the great Turk is so
gracious as to send over presents of rare animals, rare relics,
rare manuscripts, or fugitive enemies, suited to the tastes of a
Christian Magnifico who is at once lettered and devoutâand also
slightly vindictive? And what famous scholar is dictating the Latin
letters of the Republicâwhat fiery philosopher is lecturing on
Dante in the Duomo, and going home to write bitter invectives
against the father and mother of the bad critic who may have found
fault with his classical spelling? Are our wiser heads leaning
towards alliance with the Pope and the Regno [The name given to
Naples by way of distinction among the Italian States], or are they
rather inclining their ears to the orators of France and of
Milan?"
"There is knowledge of these things to be had in the streets
below, on the beloved marmi in front of the churches, and
under the sheltering Loggie, where surely our citizens have still
their gossip and debates, their bitter and merry jests as of old.
For are not the wellâremembered buildings all there? The changes
have not been so great in those uncounted years. I will go down and
hearâI will tread the familiar pavement, and hear once again the
speech of Florentines."
Go not down, good Spirit! for the changes are great and the
speech of Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if
you go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or
elsewhere; ask no questions about trade in the Calimara; confuse
yourself with no inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic.
Only look at the sunlight and shadows on the grand walls that were
built solidly, and have endured in their grandeur; look at the
faces of the little children, making another sunlight amid the
shadows of age; look, if you will, into the churches, and hear the
same chants, see the same images as of oldâthe images of willing
anguish for a great end, of beneficent love and ascending glory;
see upturned living faces, and lips moving to the old prayers for
help. These things have not changed. The sunlight and shadows bring
their old beauty and waken the old heartâstrains at morning, noon,
and eventide; the little children are still the symbol of the
eternal marriage between love and duty; and men still yearn for the
reign of peace and righteousnessâstill own that life to be
the highest which is a conscious voluntary sacrifice. For the Pope
Angelico is not come yet.
CHAPTER ONE.
THE SHIPWRECKED STRANGER.
The Loggia de' Cerchi stood in the heart of old Florence, within a labyrinth of narrow streets behind the Badia, now rarely threaded by the stranger, unless in a dubious search for a certain severely simple doorplace, bearing this inscription:
Qui Nacque Il Divino Poeta.
To the ear of Dante, the same streets rang with the shout and clash of fierce battle between rival families; but in the fifteenth century, they were only noisy with the unhistorical quarrels and broad jests of woolcarders in the clothâproducing quarters of San Martino and Garbo.
Under this loggia, in the early morning of the 9th of April 1492, two men had their eyes fixed on each other: one was stooping slightly, and looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity; the other, lying on the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a suddenlyâawakened dreamer.
The standing figure was the first to speak. He was a greyâhaired, broadâshouldered man, of the type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded with the fist and polished with the pickaxe; but the selfâimportant gravity which had written itself out in the deep lines about his brow and mouth seemed intended to correct any contemptuous inferences from the hasty workmanship which Nature had bestowed on his exterior. He had deposited a large wellâfilled bag, made of skins, on the pavement, and before him hung a pedlar's basket, garnished partly with small woman'sâware, such as thread and pins, and partly with fragments of glass, which had probably been taken in exchange for those commodities.
"Young man," he said, pointing to a ring on the finger of the reclining figure, "when your chin has got a stiffer crop on it, you'll know better than to take your nap in streetâcorners with a ring like that on your forefinger. By the holy 'vangels! if it had been anybody but me standing over you two minutes agoâbut Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man to steal. The cat couldn't eat her mouse if she didn't catch it alive, and Bratti couldn't relish gain if it had no taste of a bargain. Why, young man, one San Giovanni, three years ago, the Saint sent a dead body in my wayâa blind beggar, with his cap wellâlined with piecesâbut, if you'll believe me, my stomach turned against the money I'd never bargained for, till it came into my head that San Giovanni owed me the pieces for what I spend yearly at the Festa; besides, I buried the body and paid for a massâand so I saw it was a fair bargain. But how comes a young man like you, with the face of Messer San Michele, to be sleeping on a stone bed with the wind for a curtain?"
The deep guttural sounds of the speaker were scarcely intelligible to the newlyâwaked, bewildered listener, but he understood the action of pointing to his ring: he looked down at it, and, with a halfâautomatic obedience to the warning, took it off and thrust it within his doublet, rising at the same time and stretching himself.
"Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel, young man," said Bratti, deliberately. "Anybody might say the saints had sent you a dead body; but if you took the jewels, I hope you buried himâand you can afford a mass or two for him into the bargain."
Something like a painful thrill appeared to dart through the frame of the listener, and arrest the careless stretching of his arms and chest. For an instant he turned on Bratti with a sharp frown; but he immediately recovered an air of indifference, took off the red Levantine cap which hung like a great purse over his left ear, pushed back his long darkâbrown curls, and glancing at his dress, said, smilinglyâ
"You speak truth, friend: my garments are as weatherâstained as an old sail, and they are not old either, only, like an old sail, they have had a sprinkling of the sea as well as the rain. The fact is, I'm a stranger in Florence, and when I came in footsore last night I preferred flinging myself in a corner of this hospitable porch to hunting any longer for a chance hostelry, which might turn out to be a nest of bloodâsuckers of more sorts than one."
"A stranger, in good sooth," said Bratti, "for the words come all melting out of your throat, so that a Christian and a Florentine can't tell a hook from a hanger. But you're not from Genoa? More likely from Venice, by the cut of your clothes?"
"At this present moment," said the stranger, smiling, "it is of less importance where I come from than where I can go to for a mouthful of breakfast. This city of yours turns a grim look on me just here: can you show me the way to a more lively quarter, where I can get a meal and a lodging?"
"That I can," said Bratti, "and it is your good fortune, young man, that I have happened to be walking in from Rovezzano this morning, and turned out of my way to Mercato Vecchio to say an Ave at the Badia. That, I say, is your good fortune. But it remains to be seen what is my profit in the matter. Nothing...