A Jay of Italy/Chapter 8

castle at the Porta Giovia had its glooms as well as its pleasances. Indeed, it may be questioned if the latter were not rather in proportion to the former as a tiger's gay hide is to the strength and ferocity it clothes. Built originally for a great keep, or, as it were, breakwater, to stem the rush of barbarian seas which were wont to come storming down from the north-west, its constructors had aimed at nothing less than its everlastingness. So thick were its bastioned walls, so thick the curtains which divided its inner and outer wards, a whole warren of human 'runs' could honeycomb without appreciably weakening them. Hidden within its screens and massy towers, like the gnawings of a foul and intricate cancer, ran dark passages which discharged themselves here and there into dreadful dungeons, or secret-places not guessed at in the common tally of its rooms. These oubliettes were hideous with blotched and spotted memories; rotten with the dew of suffering; eloquent in their terror and corruption and darkness, of that same self-sick, self-blinded tyranny which, in place of Love and Justice, the trusty bodyguards, must turn always to cruelty and thick walls for its security. The hiss and purr of subterranean fire, the grinding of low-down grated jaws, the flop and echo of stagnant water, oozed from a stagnant moat into vermin-swarming, human-haunted cellars,—these were sounds that spoke even less of grief to others than of the hellish ferment in the soul of him who had raised them for his soul's pacifying. Himself is for ever the last and maddest victim of a despot's oppression.

There had been stories to tell, could the coulter of Time once have cut into those far-down vaults, and his share laid open. Now this was so far from promising, that their history and mystery were in process of being still further overlaid and stifled under accumulations of superstructure. Francesco, the great Condottiere, the present Duke's father, had been the first to realise dimly how a tyrant, by converting his self-prison into a shrine for his æstheticism, might enjoy a certain amelioration of his condition. It was he who, yielding an older palace and its grounds to the builders of the cathedral, had transferred the ducal quarters to the great fortress, which henceforth was to be the main seat of the Sforzas. Here the first additions and rebuildings had been his, the first decorations and beautifyings—tentative at the best, for he was always more a soldier than a connoisseur. The real movement was inaugurated by his successor, and continued, as cultivation was impressed on him, on a scale of magnificence which was presently to make the splendour of Milan a proverb. Galeazzo, an indifferent warrior, to whose rule but a tithe of the territory once gathered to the Visconti owned allegiance, contented his ambitions by rallying an army of painters and sculptors and decorators to the glorification of his houses at Milan, Cremona, and his ancestral petted Pavia,—after all a worthier rôle than the conqueror's for a good man; but then, this man was so bad that he blighted everything he touched. It is true that the disuse of secret torture would have been considered, and by men more enlightened than he, so little expedient a part of any ethical or æsthetical 'improvement' of an existing house, as that a premium would be put thereby on assassination. Yet Galeazzo's death-pits were never so much a politic necessity as a resource for cruelty in idleness. He would descend into them with as much relish as he would reclimb from, to his halls above, swelling and bourgeoning with growth of loveliness. The scream of torture was as grateful to his ears as was the love-throb of a viol; the scum bubbling from his living graves as poignant to his nostrils as was the scent of floating lilies. He continued to make his house beautiful, yet never once dreamt, as a first principle of its reclamation to sweetness, of cutting out of its foundations those old cesspools of disease and death.

One night he sat in his closet of the Rocca, a little four-square room dug out of the armourer's tower, and having a small oratory adjoining. This eyrie was so high up as to give a comfortable sense of security against surprise. There was but one window to it—just a deep wedge in the wall, piercing to the sheer flank of the tower. Sweet rushes carpeted the floor; the arras was pictured with dim, sacred subjects—Ambrosius in his cradle, with the swarm of bees settling on his honeyed lips; Ambrosius elected Bishop of Milan by the people; Ambrosius imposing penance on Theodosius for his massacre of the Thessalonicans—and the drowsy odours of a pastile, burning in the little purple shrine-lamp, robbed the air of its last freshness.

Another lamp shone on a table, at which the Duke was seated somewhat preoccupied with a lute, and his tablets propped before him; while, motionless in the shadows opposite, stood the figure of the provost marshal, its fixed, unregarding eyes glinting in the flame.

Intermittently Galeazzo strummed and murmured, self-communing, or addressing himself, between playfulness and abstraction, to the ear of Messer Jacopo:—

'The lowliest of all Franciscans was St. Francis, meek mate of beasts and birds, boasting himself no peer of belted stars.... Ha! a good line, Jacopo, a full significant line; I dare say it, our Parablist despite. Listen.' (He chaunted the words in a harsh, uncertain voice, to an accompaniment as sorry.) 'Hear'st? Belted stars—those moon-ringed spheres the aristocracy of the night. Could Messer Bembo himself have better improvised? What think'st? Be frank.'

'I think of improvising by book,' said Jacopo, short and gruff.

Galeazzo said 'Ha!' again, like a snarl, and his brow contracted.

'Why, thou unconscionable old surly dog!' he said—'why?'

Jacopo pointed to the tablets.

'Your saint asks no notes to his piping. A' sings like the birds.'

'Now,' answered his master, in a deep, offended tone, 'I'm in a mind to make thee sing on a grill,—ay, and dance too. What, dolt! are not first thoughts first thoughts, however they may be pricked down? Look at this, I say; flatten thy bull nose on it. Is it not clean, untouched, unrevised? Spotless as when issued from Helicon? Beast! thou shalt call me, too, an improvisatore.'

The statue was silent. Galeazzo sat glaring and gnawing his fingers.

'Answer!' he screeched suddenly.

'I will call thee one,' said Jacopo obstinately, 'but not the best.'

The Duke fell back in his chair, then presently was muttering and strumming with his disengaged fingers on the table.

'No—not the best, not the best—not to rival heaven! Yet, perhaps, it should be the Duke's privilege.'

The executioner laughed a little.

'The Duke should know how to take it.'

Galeazzo stopped short, quite vacant, staring at him.

'I've heard tell,' said Jacopo, 'how one Nero, a fiddling emperor, came to be acknowledged first fiddle of all.'

He paused, then answered, it seemed, an unspoken invitation: 'He just silenced the better ones.'

Galeazzo got hurriedly to his feet.

'Blasphemer! thou shalt die for the word. What! this Lord's anointed! A natural songster! no art, no culture in his voice—sweet and wild, above human understanding. I said nothing. Be damned, and damned alone! Go hang thyself like Judas!'

'Well, name my successor first,' said Jacopo.

The Duke leapt, and with one furious blow shattered his lute to splinters on the other's steel headpiece, then stamped upon the fragments, his arms flapping like wing stumps, his teeth sputtering a foam of inarticulate words. Jacopo, erect under the avalanche, stood perfectly silent and impassive. Then, as suddenly as it had burst, the storm ended. Galeazzo sank back on his seat, panting and nerveless.

'Well, I am no poet—curse thy block head, and mine for trusting to it—the Muses shall decide—Apollo or Marsyas—the Christian Muses and a Christian penance—flaying only for heretics. I am no poet nor musician, say'st? Calf! what know'st thou about such things?' He roared again: 'What brings thee here, with thy damned butcher's face, scaring my pretty lambs of song?'

'Thine order.'

'Mine?'

'This astrologer monk, this Fra Capello was it not? I neither know nor care.'

'Dost thou not? A faithful dog!'

'Faithful enough.'

'O! art thou? By what token?'

'By the token of the quarry run to earth.'

'To earth? Thou hast him? Good Jacopo!'

'This three days past. Had I not told thee so already? Let thine improvising damn thyself, not me.'

'The villain! to call himself a Franciscan, a lowly Franciscan, and pretend to read the stars! How about his prophecy now?'

'Why, he holds to it.'

'What! that I have but eleven years in all to reign—less than one to live?'

'Just that—no more.'

'Now, is it not a wicked schism from the plain humility of his founder? A curse on their spirituals and conventuals! This fellow to claim kinship with the stars—profess to be in their confidence, to share heaven's secrets? Dear Jacopo, sweet Jacopo! is it not well to cleanse this earth of such lying prophets, that truth may have standing-room?'

'Ask truth, not me.'

'Nay, not to grieve truth's heart—the onus shall be ours. This same Franciscan—this soothsaying monk—where hast lodged him?'

'In the "Hermit's Cell."'

'Ah, old jester! He shall prove his asceticism thereby. Let practised abstinence save him in such pass. He shall eat his words—an everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer, by the token, as I hear.'

'He went in, fat.'

'Wretch! wouldst thou starve him? Remember the worms, thy cousins. Hath he foretold his end?'

'Ay, by starvation.'

'He lies, then. Thou shalt take him in extremis, and, with thy knife in his throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What sort of night is it?'

'Why, it rains and thunders.'

'Hush! Why should we fear rain and thunder? God put His bow in the sky. Jacopo, it is a sweet and fearful thing to be chosen minister of one of His purifications—Noah, and Lot, and now thy prince.'

'Purification?' said the executioner: 'by what?'

'By love, thou fool!' whispered Galeazzo, half ecstatic, half furious, with a nervous glance about him. 'There were the purifications by water one, one by fire, and a third by blood, to the last of which His servants yet testify in the spirit of their Redeemer. Blood, Jacopo, thou little monster—blood flowing, streams of it, the visible token of the sacrifice. That was our task till yesterday. Now in the end comes Love, and calleth for a cleansed and fruitful soil. Let us hasten with the last tares—to cut them down, and let their blood consummate the fertilising. Quick: we have no time to lose.'

He flung himself from the statue, and tiptoed, in a sort of gloating rapture, to the door.

'Show me this tare, I say.'

He went down the tower a few paces, with assured steps, then, bethinking himself, beckoned the other to lead. The flight conducted them to a private postern, well secured and guarded inside and out. As they issued from this, the howl of blown rain met and staggered them. Looking up at the blackened sky from the depths of that well of masonry, it seemed to crack and split in a rush of fusing stars. The mad soul of the tyrant leapt to speed the chase. He was one with this mighty demonstration—as like a chosen instrument of the divine retribution. His brain danced and flickered with exquisite visions of power. He was an angel, a destroying angel, commissioned to purge the world of lies. 'Bring me to this monk!' he screamed through the thunder.

Deep in the foundations of the north-eastern tower the miserable creature was embedded, in a stone chamber as utterly void and empty as despair. The walls, the floor, the roof, were all chiselled as smooth as glass. There was not anywhere foothold for a cat—nor door, nor trap, nor egress, nor window of any kind, save where, just under the ceiling, the grated opening by which he had been lowered let in by day a haggard ghost of light. And even that wretched solace was withdrawn as night fell—became a phantom, a diluted whisp of memory, sank like water into the blackness, and left the fancy suddenly naked in self-consciousness of hell. Then Capello screamed, and threw himself towards the last flitting of that spectre. He fell and bruised his limbs horribly: the very pain was a saving occupation. He struck his skull, and revelled in the agonised dance of lights the blow procured him. But one by one they blew out; and in a moment dead negation had him by the throat again, rolling him over and over, choking him under enormous slabs of darkness. Now, gasping, he cursed his improvidence in not having glued his vision to the place of the light's going. It would have been something gained from madness to hold and gloat upon it, to watch hour by hour for its feeble re-dawn. Among all the spawning monstrosities of that pit, with only the assured prospect of a lingering death before him, the prodigy of eternal darkness quite overcrowed that other of thirst and famine.

Yet the dawn broke, it would seem, before its due. Had he annihilated time, and was this death? He rose rapturously to his feet, and stood staring at the grating, the tears gushing down his fallen cheeks. The bars were withdrawn; and in their place was a lamp intruded, and a face looked down.

'Capello, dost thou hunger and thirst?'

The voice awoke him to life, and to the knowledge of who out of all the world could be thus addressing him. He answered, quaveringly: 'I hunger and thirst, Galeazzo.'

'It is a beatitude, monk,' said the voice. 'Thou shalt have thy fill of justice.'

'Alas!' cried the prisoner: 'justice is with thee, I fear, an empty phrase.'

'Comfort thyself,' said the other: 'I shall make a full measure of it. It shall bubble and sparkle to the brim like a great goblet of Malmsey. Dost know the wine Malmsey, monk?—a cool, heady, fragrant liquid, that gurgles down the arid throat, making one o' hot days think of gushing weirs, and the green of grass under naked feet.'

The monk fell on his knees, stretching out his arms.

'I ask no mercy of thee, but to end me without torture.'

'Torture, quotha!' cried the fiend above—'what torture in the vision of a wine-cup crushed, or, for the matter of that, a feast on white tables under trees. Picture it, Capello: the quails in cold jelly; the melting pasties; the salmon-trout tucked under blankets of whipped cream; the luscious peaches, and apricots like maiden's cheeks. Why, art not a Conventual, man, and rich in such experiences of the belly? And to call 'em torture—fie!'

'Mercy!' gasped the monk. His swollen throat could hardly shape the word. Galeazzo laughed, and bent over.

'Answer, then: how long am I to live?'

'By justice, for ever.'

'What! live for ever on an empty phrase? Then art thou, too, provisioned for eternity.'

He held out his hand:—

'Art humbled at last, monk, or monkey? How much for a nut?'

Leaping at the mad thought of some relenting in the voice and question, the prisoner ran under the outstretched hand, and held up his own, abjectly, fulsomely.

'Master, give it me—one—one only, to dull this living agony!'

'A sop to thee, then,' cried Galeazzo, and dropped a chestnut. The monk caught it, and, cracking it between his teeth, roared out and fell spitting and sputtering. He had crunched upon nothing more savoury than a shell filled up with river slime. The Duke screamed and hopped with laughter.

'Is not that richer than quail, more refreshing than Malmsey?'

The monk fell on his knees:—

'Now hear me, God!' he gabbled awry: 'Let not this man ever again know surcease from torment, in bed, at board, in his body, or in his mind. Let his lust consummate in frostbite; let the worm burrow in his entrails, and the maggot in his brain. May his drink be salt, and his meat bitter as aloes. May his short lease of wicked life be cancelled, and death seize him, and damnation wither in the moment of his supreme impenitence. Darken his vision, so that for evermore it shall see despair and the mockery of fruitless hope. Let him walk a self-conscious leper in the sunshine, and strive vainly to propitiate the loathing in eyes in which he sees himself reflected an abhorred and filthy ape. May the curse of Assisi'

Galeazzo screamed him down:—

'Quote him not—beast—vile apostate from his teaching!'

For a moment the two battled in a war of screeching blasphemy: the next, the grate was flung into place, the light whisked and vanished, a door slammed, and the blackness of the cell closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst.

Quaking and ashen, babbling oaths and prayers, Galeazzo flung back to his closet.

'Bring wine!' he shook out between his teeth to Jacopo.

When it came, he tasted, and flung it from him.

'Salt!' he shrieked. His fancy quite overcrowed his reason. 'O God, I am poisoned!'

He rose, staggering, and entered his oratory, and cast himself on his knees before the little shrine.

'Not from this man,' he protested, whimpering and writhing; 'Lord, not from this man—I know him better than Thou—a recusant, a sorcerer! Be not deceived because of his calling. To curse Thine anointed! kill him, Lord—kill the blasphemer—I hold him ready to Thy hand! Good sweet St. Francis, I but weed thy pastures—a wicked false brother, tainting the fold. How shall love prevail, this poison at its root?—Poison! O my God, to be stricken for evermore! life's fruit to change to choking ashes in my mouth! It cannot be—I, Galeazzo the Duke—yet I taunted him with visions: what if I have caught the infection of mine own imagination—too fearful, spare me this once. Lord God, consider—as I put it to Thee—now—like this—listen. To starve with him should be but a fast enlarged. What then? Some, honest ascetics, no Conventuals, so push abstinence to ecstasy as that they may cross the lines of death in a dream, and wake without a pang to heaven gained. If he does not, should he suffer, he is properly condemned for a gross pampered brother, false to his vows, unworthy Thine advocacy. Now, call the test a fair one. Chain back this dog that ravens to tear me. How, so stricken, made corrupt, could I work Thy will but through corruption? Hush! Thou mean'st it not—only as a jest? Give me some sign, then. Ah! Thou laugh'st—very quietly, but I hear Thee. Canst not deceive Galeazzo—ha-ha! between me and You, Lord, between me and You! Silence, thou dog monk! What dost thou here? Escaped! by God, get back—the first word was mine—thou art too late. What! damnation seize thee! Lord! he scorns Thy judgment—catch him, hold him—he is there by the door!'

He sprang to his feet, glaring and gesticulating.

'Galeazzo!' exclaimed Bembo. The boy had mounted to the closet unheard. It was his privilege to come unannounced. He stood a moment regarding the madman in amazement and pity, then hurried softly to his side.

'What is it? The face again?'

His tone, his entreaty, dispelled the other's delirium. The tyrant gazed at him a minute, slow recognition dawning in his eyes; then, of a sudden, broke into a thick fast flurry of sobs, and cast himself upon his shoulder.

'My saint,' he wept adoringly—'my Conscience, my little angel! and I had thought thee—nay, but the sign for which I prayed art thou given.'

His emotion gushed inwardly, filling all his channels to gasping. Presently he looked up, with a passionate murmur and caress.

'Love, with thy red lips like a girl's! Would that my own were worthy to marry with them.'

Bembo withdrew a little:—

'What wild words are these? Yet, peradventure, the giddy babble of a conqueror. O Galeazzo! hast triumphed o'er thyself indeed—casting that old familiar? chasing him hereout? Why, then, I whom thou hast appointed to be thy conscience, interpreting thy rule through truth and love, am the more emboldened to beseech the favour for which I came.'

'Ask it only, sweet.' His chest still heaved spasmodically to the catching of his breath.

'It is,' said the boy steadily, 'that thou wouldst give me, thy conscience's delegate, a last justification by the sacraments.'

The Duke smiled faintly, and nodded, and murmured: 'I will confess ere midnight, and, fasting, receive the Holy Communion before I go to-morrow. Does it please thee? Come, then.'

He re-entered his cabinet, reeling a little, and sat himself down, as if exhausted, by the table.

'Bernardo,' he said weakly, half apologetically, 'I am overwrought: there is wine in that jug: I prithee give it me to drink.'

The boy, unhesitating, handed him the flagon.

'It is the symbol of joy redeemed,' he said. 'Put thy lips to the chalice, Galeazzo, and take what thy soul needest—no more.'

The Duke lifted the cup shakily, stumbled at its brim, steadied himself, and sipped. His eyes dilated and grew wolfish—'I am vindicated,' he stuttered: 'O sweet little saint!'—and he drank greedily, ecstatically, and, smacking his lips, put down the vessel.

He was himself again from that draught.

'Bernardo,' he said, in a reassured, half-maudlin confidence, 'canst thou read the stars?'

'Nay,' said the other gravely, 'they are the Sibyls' books.'

'True. Yet some essay.'

'Ay: then flies a comet, cancelling all their sums.'

'An impious vanity, is it not?'

'Truly, I think so.'

'And deserving of the last chastisement.'

'Poor fools, they make their own.'

'What?'

'Why, taking colds instead of rest—cramps, chills, and agues—immense pains, and all for nothing; the dead moon for the living sun; nursing all day that they may starve by night. God gave us level eyes. The star's best resting place for them is on a hill. We need no more knowledge than to read beauty through the wise lens Nature hath proportioned us. Not God Himself can foretell a future.'

'Not God?'

'No, for there is no Future, nor ever will be. The Past but eternally prolongs itself to the Present. Heaven or hell is the road we tread, and must retrace when we come to the brink of the abyss where Time drops sheer into nothingness. Joy or woe, then, to him the returning wanderer, according as he hath provisioned his way. So shall he starve, or travel in content, or meet with weary retributions. O, in providence, hold thy hand, thinking on this, whenever thy hand is tempted!'

Galeazzo was amazed, discomfited. This unorthodoxy was the last to accommodate itself to his principles of conduct. The Future to him was always an unmortgaged reversion, sufficient to pay off all debts to conscience and leave a handsome residue for income. He could only exclaim, again, like one aghast: No Future?

'Nay,' said Bembo, smiling, 'what is the heresy to reason or religion? To foresee the issues of to-day were, for Omniscience, to suppress all strains but the angels'. What irony to accept worship from the foredoomed! What insensate folly wantonly to multiply the devil's recruits! O Galeazzo, there is no Future for God or Men? Hope shudders at the inexorable word: Evil presumes on it: it is the lodestone to all dogmatism; the bogey, the weapon of the unversed Churchman; the very bait to acquisition and self-greed. Be what, returning, ye would find yourselves—no lovelier ambition. See, we walk with Christ, the human God and comrade, I have but this hour left him bathing his tired feet in the brook. He will follow anon; and all the pretty birds and insects and wildflowers he watched while resting will have suggested to him a thousand tales and reflections gathered of an ancient lore. He can be full of wonder too, but wiser by many moons than we. There is no Future. God possesses the Past.'

The Duke sprang to his feet, and went up and down once or twice. This view of a self-retaliatory entity—of a returning body condemned by natural laws to retraverse every point of its upward flight—disturbed him horribly. He desired no responsibility in things done and gone. Eternity, timely propitiated, was his golden chance. He stopped and looked at Bembo, at once inexpressibly cringing and crafty.

'Bernardino,' murmured he: 'I can never get it out of my head that whenever thou sayest God thou meanest gods. The gods possess the past?—why, one would fancy somehow it ran glibber than the other.'

Bembo sighed.

'Well, why not? Nature, and Love, and the Holy Ghost—Tria juncta in Uno—why not gods?'

The Duke pressed his hand to his forehead; then ran and clasped the boy about the shoulders.

'Adorable little wisdom,' he cried: 'take my conscience, and record on it what thou wilt!'

'To-morrow,' said Bembo, with a happy smile: 'when its tablets are sponged and clean.'

Galeazzo fawned, showing his teeth. There was something in him infinitely suggestive of the cat that, in alternate spasms of animalism, licks and bites the hand that caresses it. This strange new heresy of a limited omniscience oddly affected him. Could it be possible, after all, that the soul's responsibility was to itself alone? In any case so pure a spirit as this could represent him only to his advantage. Still, at the same time, if God were no more than relatively wiser and stronger than himself—why, it was not his theory—let the Parablist answer for it—on Messer Bembo's saintly head fall the onus, if any, of leaving Capello where he was. For his own part, he told himself, the God of Moses remaining in his old place in the heavens, he, Galeazzo, would have been inclined to consider the virtuous policy of releasing the Monk.

And so he prepared himself to confess and communicate.