Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 34

_Eugenius._ Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this tender young thing devoted! Poor soul!

_Filippo._ I sigh for her myself when I think of her.

_Eugenius._ Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the thought recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power to examine her myself on her condition. What thinkest thou? Speak.

_Filippo._ Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.

_Eugenius._ So lost!

_Filippo._ She declared to me she thought she should have died, from the instant she was captured until she was comforted by Abdul: but that she was quite sure she should if she were ransomed.

_Eugenius._ Has the wretch then shaken her faith?

_Filippo._ The very last thing he would think of doing. Never did I see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in the laughing, light-hearted Almeida.

_Eugenius._ Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world and in the next.

_Filippo._ What could she do? how could she help herself?

_Eugenius._ She might have torn his eyes out, and have died a martyr.

_Filippo._ Or have been bastinadoed, whipped, and given up to the cooks and scullions for it.

_Eugenius._ Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the indignities it endures.

_Filippo._ Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in our Tuscany who would jump at the crown over those sloughs and briers, rather than perish without them: she never sighs after the like.

_Eugenius._ Nevertheless, what must she witness! what abominations!

what superst.i.tions!

_Filippo._ Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superst.i.tion than ablutions.

_Eugenius._ Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture to affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the unbeliever. For the washing of the feet indeed we have the authority of the earlier Christians; and it may be done; but solemnly and sparingly. Thy residence among the Mahomedans, I am afraid, hath rendered thee more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, and thy mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.

_Filippo._ While I continued in that country, although I was well treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends in Florence, of music, of painting, of our villeggiatura at the vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino, with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together ambiguously; or amid the grey quarries, or under the majestic walls of modern Fiesole; or down in the woods of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a girth that, when a youth stands against one of them, and a maiden stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands at the time do little more than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which heaven smiles eternally, how often has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this country can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and serener stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the blessing of climate; and although I do not desire to be there again, I feel sometimes a kind of regret at leaving it. A bell warbles the more mellifluously in the air when the sound of the stroke is over, and when another swims out from underneath it, and pants upon the element that gave it birth.

In like manner the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing than the actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the s.p.a.ce between.

There is in Abdul a n.o.bility of soul on which I often have reflected with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man, excepting a fondness for low company, and an apt.i.tude to shy and start at every spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or before them. Abdul was solitary, but affable: he was proud, but patient and complacent. I ventured once to ask him how the master of so rich a house in the city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such cornfields, of such pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains, should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open sea, the high-road of nations. Instead of answering my question, he asked me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On my reply in the affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions in Spain much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were threatened with ruin and expulsion. 'I do not fight,' said he, 'whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the caprice of two silly, quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in perfectly good humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just when I begin to get into a pa.s.sion. No; I fight on my own account; not as a hired a.s.sa.s.sin, or still baser journeyman.'

_Eugenius._ It appears then really that the Infidels have some semblances of magnanimity and generosity?

_Filippo._ I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.

_Eugenius._ Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things, I would fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo, that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia, daughter of Frances...o...b..ti, a citizen of Prato.

_Filippo._ I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.

_Eugenius._ Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.

_Filippo._ Alas! 'tis undeniable.

_Eugenius._ I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by _motu proprio_ and rescript to consistory and chancery....

_Filippo._ Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope for salvation, I have but forty left, and thirty-nine would not serve them.

_Eugenius._ Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.

_Filippo._ Man and wife!

_Eugenius._ Moderate thy transport.

_Filippo._ O Holy Father! may I speak?

_Eugenius._ Surely she is not the wife of another?

_Filippo._ No, indeed.

_Eugenius._ Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?

_Filippo._ No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory and chancery are nothing to this fulmination.

_Eugenius._ How so?

_Filippo._ It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and the decimal is the unit.

_Eugenius._ What, then, can I do for thee?

_Filippo._ I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me. I can make her at any time what she is not; I could never make her again what she is.

_Eugenius._ The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must hear it first.

_Filippo._ In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and looking over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward to Pistoja, there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited by the sisters to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.

_Eugenius._ Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.

_Filippo._ But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? 'Twere a pity! There was enough for me; there is never enough for the Madonna.

Resolving on a sudden that the object of my love should be the object of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across the maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.

_Eugenius._ In the chapel?

_Filippo._ I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.

_Eugenius._ If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a brush against a Madonna's mouth is worse than a beard against her votary's.

_Filippo._ I thought so too, Holy Father!

_Eugenius._ Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try in due season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray G.o.d my son Filippo, to have thee alway in His holy keeping.

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