The Cloister and the Hearth Part 97

"Wilt read me of them some day?"

"And willingly, signor. But what would they say who employ me, were I to break off work?"

"Oh never heed that; know you not who I am? I am Jacques Bonaventura, nephew to his holiness the Pope, and captain of his guards. And I came here to look after my fellows. I trow they have turned them out of their room for you." Signor Bonaventura then hurried away. This lively companion however having acquired a habit of running into that little room, and finding Gerard good company, often looked in on him, and chatted ephemeralities while Gerard wrote the immortal lives.

One day he came a changed, and moody man, and threw himself into a chair, crying "Ah, traitress! traitress!" Gerard inquired what was his ill? "Traitress! traitress!" was the reply. Whereupon Gerard wrote Plutarch. Then says Bonaventura "I am melancholy; and for our Lady's sake read me a story out of Ser Plutarcho, to sooth my bile: in all that Greek is there nought about lovers betrayed?"

Gerard read him the life of Alexander. He got excited, marched about the room, and embracing the reader, vowed to shun "soft delights," that bed of nettles, and follow glory.

Who so happy now as Gerard? His art was honoured, and fabulous prices paid for it; in a year or two he should return by sea to Holland, with good store of money, and set up with his beloved Margaret in Bruges, or Antwerp, or dear Augsburg, and end their days in peace, and love, and healthy, happy labour. His heart never strayed an instant from her.

In his prosperity he did not forget poor Pietro. He took the Fra Colonna to see his picture. The friar inspected it severely and closely, fell on the artist's neck, and carried the picture to one of the Colonnas, who gave a n.o.ble price for it.

Pietro descended to the first floor; and lived like a gentleman.

But Gerard remained in his garret. To increase his expenses would have been to postpone his return to Margaret. Luxury had no charms for the single-hearted one, when opposed to love.

Jacques Bonaventura made him acquainted with other gay young fellows.

They loved him, and sought to entice him into vice, and other expenses.

But he begged humbly to be excused. So he escaped that temptation. But a greater was behind.

CHAPTER LXII

FRA COLONNA had the run of the Pope's library, and sometimes left off work at the same hour and walked the city with Gerard; on which occasions the happy artist saw all things en beau, and was wrapped up in the grandeur of Rome and its churches, palaces, and ruins.

The friar granted the ruins, but threw cold water on the rest.

"This place Rome? It is but the tomb of mighty Rome." He showed Gerard that twenty or thirty feet of the old triumphal arches were underground, and that the modern streets ran over ancient palaces; and over the tops of columns; and coupling this with the comparatively narrow limits of the modern city, and the gigantic vestiges of antiquity that peeped above ground here and there, he uttered a somewhat remarkable simile.

"I tell thee this village they call Rome is but as one of those swallows' nests ye shall see built on the eaves of a decayed abbey."

"Old Rome must indeed have been fair then," said Gerard.

"Judge for yourself, my son; you see the great sewer, the work of the Romans in their very childhood, and shall outlast Vesuvius. You see the fragments of the Temple of Peace. How would you look could you see also the Capitol with its five-and-twenty temples? Do but note this Monte Savello: what is it, an it please you, but the ruins of the ancient theatre of Marcellus? and as for Testacio, one of the highest hills in modern Rome, it is but an ancient dust heap; the women of old Rome flung their broken pots and pans there, and lo; a mountain.

'Ex pede Herculem; ex ungue leonem.'"

Gerard listened respectfully, but when the holy friar proceeded by a.n.a.logy to imply that the moral superiority of the heathen Romans was proportionally grand, he resisted stoutly. "Has then the world lost by Christ his coming?" said he; but blushed, for he felt himself reproaching his benefactor.

"Saints forbid!" said the friar. "'Twere heresy to say so." And, having made this direct concession, he proceeded gradually to evade it by subtle circ.u.mlocution, and reached the forbidden door by the spiral back staircase. In the midst of all which they came to a church with a knot of persons in the porch. A demon was being exorcised within. Now Fra Colonna had a way of uttering a curious sort of little moan, when things Zeno or Epicurus would not have swallowed were presented to him as facts. This moan conveyed to such, as had often heard it, not only strong dissent, but pity for human credulity, ignorance, and error, especially of course when it blinded men to the merits of Pagandom.

The friar moaned, and said, "Then come away."

"Nay, father, prithee! prithee! I ne'er saw a divell cast out."

The friar accompanied Gerard into the church, but had a good shrug first. There they found the demoniac forced down on his knees before the altar with a scarf tied round his neck, by which the officiating priest held him like a dog in a chain.

Not many persons were present, for fame had put forth that the last demon cast out in that church went no farther than into one of the company: "as a cony ferreted out of one burrow runs to the next."

When Gerard and the friar came up the priest seemed to think there were now spectators enough; and began.

He faced the demoniac, breviary in hand, and first set himself to learn the individual's name with whom he had to deal.

"Come out, Ashtaroth. Oho! it is not you then. Come out, Belial. Come out, Tatzi. Come out, Eza. No: he trembles not. Come out, Azymoth. Come out, Feriander. Come out, Foletho. Come out, Astyma. Come out, Nebul.

Aha! what, have I found ye? 'tis thou, thou reptile; at thine old tricks. Let us pray!--

"Oh Lord, we pray thee to drive the foul fiend Nebul out of this thy creature: out of his hair, and his eyes, out of his nose, out of his mouth, out of his ears, out of his gums, out of his teeth, out of his shoulders, out of his arms, legs, loins, stomach, bowels, thighs, knees, calves, feet, ankles, fingernails, toe-nails, and soul. Amen."

The priest then rose from his knees, and turning to the company said, with quiet geniality, "Gentles, we have here as obstinate a divell as you may see in a summer day." Then, facing the patient, he spoke to him with great rigour, sometimes addressing the man, and sometimes the fiend, and they answered him in turn through the same mouth, now saying that they hated those holy names the priest kept uttering, and now complaining they did feel so bad in their inside.

It was the priest who first confounded the victim and the culprit in idea, by pitching into the former, cuffing him soundly, kicking him, and spitting repeatedly in his face. Then he took a candle and lighted it, and turned it down, and burned it till it burned his fingers; when he dropped it double quick. Then took the custodial; and showed the patient the Corpus Domini within. Then burned another candle as before, but more cautiously: then spoke civilly to the demoniac in his human character, dismissed him, and received the compliments of the company.

"Good father," said Gerard, "how you have their names by heart. Our northern priests have no such exquisite knowledge of the h.e.l.lish squadrons."

"Ay, young man, here we know all their names, and eke their ways, the reptiles. This Nebul is a bitter hard one to hunt out."

He then told the company in the most affable way several of his experiences; concluding with his feat of yesterday, when he drove a great hulking fiend out of a woman by her mouth, leaving behind him certain nails, and pins, and a tuft of his own hair, and cried out in a voice of anguish, "Tis not thou that conquers me. See that stone on the window sill. Know that the angel Gabriel coming down to earth once lighted on that stone: 'tis that has done my business.'"

The friar moaned. "And you believed him?"

"Certes! who, but an infidel had discredited a revelation so precise?"

"What, believe the father of lies? That is pushing credulity beyond the age."

"Oh, a liar does not always lie."

"Ay doth he whenever he tells an improbable story to begin, and shows you a holy relic; arms you against the satanic host. Fiends (if any) be not so simple. Shouldst have answered him out of antiquity--

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

Some blackguard chopped his wife's head off on that stone, young man; you take my word for it." And the friar hurried Gerard away.

"Alack, father, I fear you abashed the good priest."

"Ay, by Pollux," said the friar, with a chuckle; "I blistered him with a single touch of 'Socratic interrogation.' What modern can parry the weapons of antiquity?"

One afternoon, when Gerard had finished his day's work, a fine lacquey came and demanded his attendance at the palace Cesarini. He went and was ushered into a n.o.ble apartment; there was a girl seated in it, working on a tapestry. She rose and left the room, and said she would let her mistress know.

A good hour did Gerard cool his heels in that great room, and at last he began to fret. "These n.o.bles think nothing of a poor fellow's time."

However, just as he was making up his mind to slip out, and go about his business, the door opened, and a superb beauty entered the room followed by two maids. It was the young princess of the house of Cesarini. She came in talking rather loudly and haughtily to her dependents, but at sight of Gerard lowered her voice to a very feminine tone, and said, "Are you the writer, messer?"

"I am, signora."

"'Tis well." She then seated herself; Gerard and her maids remained standing.