Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 30

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A few weeks pa.s.sed with no excitement except Cynthia's withdrawal from the Amen Corner. Madame was very indignant when Mr. Mudge reported Cynthia's part in inviting the boys to attend our Catacomb party, and a.s.sisting them in entering and disguising themselves. It was rumoured that Cynthia was to be publicly expelled as a terrible example to all would-be offenders. She remained closeted in her room, whence the sound of weeping and wailing could be heard behind her locked door, but she steadily refused all overtures of sympathy on our part. We waited upon Madame in a body, and begged her to pardon Cynthia. Madame replied that she would consider the matter, and we hurried back and shouted the hopeful news through Cynthia's keyhole. There was no reply.

"Do you think she has killed herself?" Milly asked in an awestruck whisper.

I applied my ear closely and heard stealthy steps. "She merely wishes to be let alone," I said; "perhaps we are a little too exuberant in our expressions of sympathy."

Miss Noakes entered presently and announced that Madame wished to see Cynthia; and that young lady went, with a very red nose, turned up at a very haughty angle. She returned shortly, and addressing herself to Adelaide, as she always did, even when she had something which she wished to communicate to the rest of us, said scornfully:

"Miss Armstrong, will you kindly say to the other young ladies [we were all present], that Madame has just told me that I am indebted to you for permission to remain and graduate with the cla.s.s."

A murmur of satisfaction ran around the room.

Cynthia's eyes flashed fire. "Do not imagine for one moment," she exclaimed, "that I would accept your hypocritical condescension, if I believed that it had been offered."

"Don't you believe that we interceded with Madame?" Winnie asked.

"I believe," Cynthia replied, "that you have done the best you can, by tale-bearing, to induce Madame to expel me, and have not succeeded; and as I do not wish to a.s.sociate with you any longer, I have written my parents asking them to withdraw me from the school."

"I am sure no one will regret your departure," Adelaide replied, with indignation. But Cynthia did not leave the school. Either her parents were too sensible to take her away just before her graduation, or her remark had been merely an idle threat. Madame gave her a room in another part of the building, and her place in the Amen Corner remained vacant for the rest of the term.

Winnie had finished her essay, and one evening we gathered in the little study parlor to hear her read it. The time for our parting was now very near, and we were all more or less sentimentally inclined. The old Amen Corner was very dear to us. Every piece of furniture had its a.s.sociations, but none of them were quite so tragical as those which cl.u.s.tered around the old oak cabinet, and it seemed only fitting that Winnie should celebrate it in her parting essay. She apologized for the length of her paper. "Don't think, girls," she explained, "that I intend to read all this at commencement. I am going to ask Madame to make selections from it. The task that Professor Waite set me was to give a picture of Florentine life in the early part of the sixteenth century, and to bring in the characters who lived then as naturally as I could--Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Fra Bartolommeo, the Medici, Macchiavelli, Bibbiena and his niece, and others. While I was writing, my imagination carried me away, and I gave it free rein.

You are the only ones who will have the full dose."

We were very willing to hear it all. Winnie sat in the great comfortable wicker armchair with the lamplight gloating o'er her mischievous face.

Adelaide had ensconced herself on the window seat, her cla.s.sical profile clear cut against the night. Milly nestled on a cushion at her feet, and I had stretched myself luxuriously on the old lounge, and watched the others from the shadowy side of the room. Milly occasionally patted the cabinet at her side as Winnie referred to it.

The flickering light almost seemed to make the carved faces with which it was decorated grin sardonically, or knit their brows with threatening scowls, as Winnie read:

"I am the ghost of the cabinet, Giovanni de' Medici they called me, in 1475, when the drops from the font fell on my forehead in the Baptistry in Florence, and Leo X, when in 1513 I was made Pope of Rome. I was the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Christianly christened as a babe and created Abbot of Fontedolce at the age of seven and Cardinal at seventeen, for my father was convinced, since the eldest son must carry down the family glory in succession, for me promotion lay only in the way of the Church.

"Nevertheless, I held, as it were, to that plough but with one hand, continually looking back, and ready to drop it altogether, so that, while I enjoyed the rank and revenue of a prince of the Church, I was not made a priest with vows of celibacy until the papacy was as good as in my hand, and until I had been determined thereunto by the closing to me of a fair pathway which led in quite another direction. For of my father's choice for me I might have said:

"For that my fancy rather took The way that led to town, He did betray me to a lingering book, And wrap me in a gown.

"None but the readers of this confession know of my lost love or fancy that I was capable of any pa.s.sion save the ambition to reinstate my family in its ancient position of glory in Florence. Cardinal though I was, I yet played the spy and the thief to get at the opinions of Florentines of note and influence, and one of my confederates in my schemes was a certain carved oak cabinet, which stood in the library of the palazzo of my nephew by marriage, Filippo Strozzi. This Strozzi was a man so well regarded in Florence, that although he espoused Maddalena de' Medici, the daughter of my banished brother Piero, yet was he never suspected of any plots to advance our family, and lived even with great freedom and popularity, keeping open house to all the literati of the city.

"My niece, who shared not altogether the republican sentiments of her husband, and in whom family affection was most deeply rooted, did sometimes entertain me after my banishment when my presence in Florence was not known by the Florentines in general or even to her most worshipful spouse. At such times I had for my bedchamber a little room part.i.tioned only from the library of which I have spoken by heavy hangings of tapestry. Against this tapestry, on the library side, was set the oak cabinet, which was also a desk for writing, and here my nephew, Filippo Strozzi, was accustomed to write his letters. Hearing the scratch of his pen when he little suspected my neighbourhood, filled me with such an itching desire to know what he wrote, that one night after he had finished his writing, and had left the room, I slipped into the library, and found that, having completed his epistle, he had laid it inside the cabinet, and that this was without doubt the usual rendezvous for the letters of the family while awaiting the time for the departure of the post, for other letters, sealed and directed and ready for the sending, lay on the same shelf. On further examination of the cabinet I found that its back was a sliding panel, and that by cutting through the tapestry with my penknife I could open the cabinet from my own room, and abstract any letters which might have been placed within it under surety of lock and key. This seemed to me a most providential circ.u.mstance, for not only did my nephew write his letters here, but other guests of the house had the same custom, and it was most convenient for me thus to become acquainted with their secret opinions.

"I had another motive for lingering in Florence besides my political schemes, for as I have said I had not at this time so irrevocably fastened upon myself the vows of the church that they could not be shaken off, and I was greatly enamoured of the niece of the merry Cardinal Bibbiena, the incomparable Maria, whom I had met before my brother's banishment at his court in Florence, she being a maid in waiting to his wife and greatly attached to her.

"Maria Bibbiena came frequently to visit my niece Maddalena Strozzi; and my niece, knowing my pa.s.sion, gave me opportunity of meeting her, and I thought that I sped well in my wooing until the cabinet told me otherwise. My cabinet told me no lies, for Count Baltazar Castiglione, a most polished man of the world, and guarded in his spoken opinions of others, opened his mind most frankly in a letter to his friend and confidante, the gentle and witty Vittoria Colonna, which he wrote in that room and left in my power, and which was expressed with a freedom which he would never have allowed himself had he fancied that it would ever have fallen under my eye.

"I had one friend in Florence in whom I trusted, Niccolo Macchiavelli. I admired his statecraft and his policy, and I deemed him devoted to our family, but a letter from his own hand, obtained in like manner with the others, showed him to be two-faced and treacherous to all who trusted him--to the Medicis and to Strozzi, whose hospitality he scrupled not to abuse. It would seem at first sight that my thefts of letters were of service to me; but I was never able to really profit by them, and the knowledge which the letters gave me of the perfidy or dislike of their writers caused me only fruitless indignation and lasting pain, while the habit into which I had fallen of suspecting, prying, and stealing grew upon me day by day, till even death itself was powerless to correct it.

When will mankind learn that habit can be so deeply fixed as to follow us beyond the portals of death.

"The old cabinet and I have been so long partners in guilt that my erring ghost visits it as of old, abstracting from it whatever is left to its treacherous keeping. I give back herewith the letters, and when this confession shall have been publicly read, I will render the moneys which I have more lately filched, and then my troubled spirit will be laid at rest. For I was not a great villain.

"Witch Winnie lied when she said I stole from this cabinet the freedom of the city of Florence, which my father writ out and placed here after the last visit of the unmannerly monk, Savonarola. I pardoned the enemies of our family in the day of my triumph, and I pardoned Raphael, yea, and befriended him and loved him, since he wronged me unwittingly; and none grieved more than I when we buried him beside his Maria, whom I fain would have called my own. And so, having forgiven those who have trespa.s.sed against me, and now making rest.i.tution, may I also be pardoned for filching these few letters, whereof the first was from:

"_Count Baltazar Castiglione to the Excellent Lady Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, at Naples._

"FLORENCE, 15th October, 1504.

"MOST WORSHIPFUL MADONNA AND ADMIRED FRIEND:

"I feel myself highly flattered in that you express yourself satisfied with my Cortigiano (which I caused to be writ out at your request), and which endeavoured, in some slight way, to reproduce the facetious pleasantry joined to the strictest morals which subsist at the Court of Urbino. And I deem your request for a like picture of Florentine society as a most pleasing proof that I have not been hitherto wearisome to you.

"In Florence, since the pa.s.sing of the rule of the Medici, there has been a pa.s.sing away also of all standards of aristocracy, so that many of the old families hang their heads in political disgrace, and there be many upstart ones who flaunt and wanton in gorgeousness of apparel. Neither is it possible to say what will be the outcome of this state of social incert.i.tude. I have adopted what seemed to me a safe rule, and have paid my court neither to birth nor to fortune, but to genius. For it is not to be gainsayed that there is gathered in Florence at this time a remarkable circle of learned and clever men, who form, as it were, an order of aristocracy by themselves.

"I paid my respects first to Maestro Pietro Perugino, my sometime friend at Urbino, and whom we there regarded as the very cream and quintessence of painting. He has a home here, living in a goodly and comfortable state, but has grown somewhat crabbed and soured, as happens to men who feel themselves out of fashion and forgotten of the world. He has a rival here, one Michael Angelo, and Perugino having criticised a cartoon which this fellow had set up, representing I know not what absurdity, of bathing soldiers, Angelo replied that he considered Perugino to be a man ignorant in art matters. Which saying so cut to the quick my friend that he somewhat inconsiderately went to law upon the matter, where he gained scant salve for his bruises, being dismissed with the decree that the defendant had only said what was not to be denied.

"This discourteous fellow Angelo formeth the greatest contrast to Leonardo da Vinci, now the leading artist of Florence, in whom the word gentleman hath as full a showing as in any n.o.ble living. His fortune is sufficient to his tastes (which are of no n.i.g.g.ard order), and his audience chamber is frequented by the n.o.bles, the wits, the fashion, the learning, and beauty of the day.

"But truly, I must not further speak of this paragon, this florescence of his day and generation, or I shall have no s.p.a.ce in which to make mention of lesser luminaries, and especially of my young friend, Raphael Santi of Urbino, who is also visiting at this time in Florence. Raphael, while he accords to da Vinci a full meed of praise, and goes daily to sketch from his masterpiece in the Palazzo Vecchio, and while he is as free from envy as an egg from vitriol, yet surprised me by this wondrously a.s.suming a.s.sertion, greatly at variance with his usual modesty. 'My dear Baltazar,' said he, 'keep the sketches and miniature I have made for thee. They will one day be as valuable as though signed by da Vinci!' Truly, presumption dwelleth in the heart of youth, but experience with the world will drive it far from him.

"I am writing this at the Palazzo Strozzi, where I am for the time a grateful guest. Mine host and friend Filippo gave recently an artistic supper, the guests being either artists or lovers of that guild, whether patricians, such as Giocondo, Nasi, Soderini, and others; or scriveners, as Vasari, Macchiavelli, and Guicciardini, and churchmen, as Bibbiena, and Bembo; for all Florence will have its finger in this art pie, and they who have not the wit to paint or the money to purchase, affect superior knowledge, and wag their tongues in dispraise. Finding myself part.i.tioned off between two of these worthies, I should have died of weariness had I not closed my ear on the one side to the borings of Macchiavelli (who had it upon his mind that Giovanni de' Medici was in Florence, and would have fain tortured from me his hiding place), and on the other from the sleep-producing maunderings of Vasari, who delivered himself of condemnatory criticisms on Raphael. I would not for the world have awakened him to questions by a hint that I already knew more of Raphael than he was like to know in his whole life, but I suffered him to wander on, straining my ears the while to catch some shreds of a merry story with which the Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico (Bibbiena) was setting his end of the table in a roar. Supper being ended, I marked that the Cardinal drew Raphael's arm within his own, and leading him to the garden, there left him with his niece Maria, a most sweet and loving damsel, and one exceptionally endowed by nature; for neither in Florence nor in the various outlandish cities which it hath been my hap to visit in the character of diplomatist, have I found in any five ladies, saving in yourself, worshipful madame, such gentleness, sprightliness, and wit as is bound up in one bundle in the person of Maria Bibbiena.

"Madonna Maddalena Strozzi has confided to me that her uncle Giovanni de' Medici was in time past so greatly enamoured of this same Maria that he would fain have given up the Church. This were madness indeed on his part, since the wisest policy for any of that family is to keep himself from political ambition, than which there would seem to be no more convincing evidence to the vulgar than devotion to a life of celibacy and monkish austerity; a renouncing of the world, its pomps and vanities, and especially of family alliances and succession plots, friendships, betrothals, marriages, and the like; which, if they be not fooleries of youthful pa.s.sion, savour of worldly ambition.

"All of this I imparted as my opinion to my hostess, but she sighed so deeply as to show that her sympathies are with her love-lorn uncle. After this we were bidden by her husband to an upper room, where was displayed a picture of Raphael's.

"But to report the critiques which followed would be greatly wearisome to your ladyship, and so I kiss your hands, beseeching our Lord to make you as happy as you are pious.

"Your sincere friend and servitor, "BALTAZAR CASTIGLIONE.

"_Maria Bibbiena to the Lady Alfonsina Orsini Medici, wife of Piero de' Medici, in Exile at Urbino._

"FLORENCE, October 12, 1504.

"MOST MAGNIFICENT, n.o.bLE, AND UNFORTUNATE LADY:

"For whom my tears cease not to fall, and my heart to long after with true devotion.

"Truly, madame, whatever may have been your heavy and sore trials in separation from your beloved Florence, you cannot have experienced more poignant smart than that which wrings the heart of your little friend, who in lonesomeness and delaying of hope counts the days of your absence. My uncle's friend, Messer Macchiavelli, who pa.s.ses for a man of deep designs, raised my hopes at one time by whispering that there was a plot to bring you back. But nothing came of it, and instead we were given up to the dreadful Piagnoni, so that my uncle, than whom there never was a more jocund man, so long as he was chancellor to your most worshipful husband, was forced to abandon politics and even for a time to hang his head in sadness. But having returned from Rome with a cardinal's hat, since the death of Savonarola, I discern some faint return to his old cheerfulness.

"I was minded of you anew but recently. You will doubtless remember Madonna Lisa Giocondo. She is now having her portrait painted by Maestro da Vinci. It is his manner to invite light and diverting society to his studio to converse with and cheer the lady during her sitting, and to strive to bring to her lips a certain marvelous smile about which he is mightily concerned. Now it chanced that Maestro da Vinci heard that I played upon the lute at your court, in former days, and so he persuaded my uncle to bring me to his studio to play for the diversion of Mona Lisa.

Presently there came in with Count Castiglione a young man of a most beautiful countenance, a divine tenderness suffusing his eyes; and a smile of such heavenly sweetness upon his lips, that methought that of Mona Lisa but an affected simper in comparison.

After greeting us he remained a long time in a muse, his eyes fastened upon the canvas. Mona Lisa, perceiving that his entranced gaze was not so much in admiration of her beauty as in delight at the skill of the painter, took her departure, in some pique, while Maestro da Vinci waited upon her to the door. Raphael Santi, for so is this young man called, turned to me and spoke of the genius of da Vinci. After that the Maestro brought forward a portfolio of sketches and we overlooked them together. I mind me there was one drawing of the Madonna seated in the lap of Sta. Anna, caressing the infant Christ, who, in his turn, was toying with a lamb. And the younger artist said that what pleased him most in da Vinci's paintings was the lovingness which he displayed, as here Sta.

Anna was beaming proudly and graciously upon her daughter, who playfully and tenderly yearned over her son, who as charmingly petted his little lamb. And many more things he said, so sweetly, and with such courteous and gentle behaviour, that I wondered not that he was called Saint Raphael, for indeed he seemed unto me as one of the company of the blessed.

"But with all this I have not told you why it was that this should remind me of you. It was because I was told that he was from Urbino, and because he was able to give me comfortable tidings concerning you, which did not a little solace and unburden my heart.

"After this I met him several times in the outer cloisters of San Marco, whither I went first by chance with my uncle, who had some business with the prior of the convent, and who left me to wait for him in this place, which is a.s.signed to the laity.