by George Eliot
CHAPTER EIGHT.
A FACE IN THE CROWD.
It is easy to northern people to rise early on Midsummer morning, to seethe dew on the grassy edge of the dusty pathway, to notice the freshshoots among the darker green of the oak and fir in the coppice, and tolook over the gate at the shorn meadow, without recollecting that it isthe Nativity of Saint John the Baptist.
Not so to the Florentine--still less to the Florentine of the fifteenthcentury: to him on that particular morning the brightness of the easternsun on the Arno had something special in it; the ringing of the bellswas articulate, and declared it to be the great summer festival ofFlorence, the day of San Giovanni.
San Giovanni had been the patron saint of Florence for at least eighthundred years--ever since the time when the Lombard Queen Theodolindahad commanded her subjects to do him peculiar honour; nay, says oldVillani, to the best of his knowledge, ever since the days ofConstantino the Great and Pope Sylvester, when the Florentines deposedtheir idol Mars, whom they were nevertheless careful not to treat withcontumely; for while they consecrated their beautiful and noble templeto the honour of God and of the "Beato Messere Santo Giovanni," theyplaced old Mars respectfully on a high tower near the River Arno,finding in certain ancient memorials that he had been elected as theirtutelar deity under such astral influences that if he were broken, orotherwise treated with indignity, the city would suffer great damage andmutation. But in the fifteenth century that discreet regard to thefeelings of the Man-destroyer had long vanished: the god of the spearand shield had ceased to frown by the side of the Arno, and the defencesof the Republic were held to lie in its craft and its coffers. Forspear and shield could be hired by gold florins, and on the gold florinsthere had always been the image of San Giovanni.
Much good had come to Florence since the dim time of struggle betweenthe old patron and the new: some quarrelling and bloodshed, doubtless,between Guelf and Ghibelline, between Black and White, between orthodoxsons of the Church and heretic Paterini; some floods, famine, andpestilence; but still much wealth and glory. Florence had achievedconquests over walled cities once mightier than itself, and especiallyover hated Pisa, whose marble buildings were too high and beautiful,whose masts were too much honoured on Greek and Italian coasts. Thename of Florence had been growing prouder and prouder in all the courtsof Europe, nay, in Africa itself, on the strength of purest goldcoinage, finest dyes and textures, pre-eminent scholarship and poeticgenius, and wits of the most serviceable sort for statesmanship andbanking: it was a name so omnipresent that a Pope with a turn forepigram had called Florentines "the fifth element." And for this highdestiny, though it might partly depend on the stars and Madonna dell'Impruneta, and certainly depended on other higher Powers less oftennamed, the praise was greatly due to San Giovanni, whose image was onthe fair gold florins.
Therefore it was fitting that the day of San Giovanni--that ancientChurch festival already venerable in the days of Saint Augustine--shouldbe a day of peculiar rejoicing to Florence, and should be ushered in bya vigil duly kept in strict old Florentine fashion, with much dancing,with much street jesting, and perhaps with not a little stone-throwingand window-breaking, but emphatically with certain street sights such ascould only be provided by a city which held in its service a cleverCecca, engineer and architect, valuable alike in sieges and in shows.By the help of Cecca, the very saints, surrounded with theiralmond-shaped glory, and floating on clouds with their joyouscompanionship of winged cherubs, even as they may be seen to this day inthe pictures of Perugino, seemed, on the eve of San Giovanni, to havebrought their piece of the heavens down into the narrow streets, and topass slowly through them; and, more wonderful still, saints of giganticsize, with attendant angels, might be seen, not seated, but moving in aslow mysterious manner along the streets, like a procession of colossalfigures come down from the high domes and tribunes of the churches. Theclouds were made of good woven stuff, the saints and cherubs wereunglorified mortals supported by firm bars, and those mysterious giantswere really men of very steady brain, balancing themselves on stilts,and enlarged, like Greek tragedians, by huge masks and stuffedshoulders; but he was a miserably unimaginative Florentine who thoughtonly of that--nay, somewhat impious, for in the images of sacred thingswas there not some of the virtue of sacred things themselves? And if,after that, there came a company of merry black demons well armed withclaws and thongs, and other implements of sport, ready to performimpromptu farces of bastinadoing and clothes-tearing, why, that was thedemons' way of keeping a vigil, and they, too, might have descended fromthe domes and the tribunes. The Tuscan mind slipped from the devout tothe burlesque, as readily as water round an angle; and the saints hadalready had their turn, had gone their way, and made their due pausebefore the gates of San Giovanni, to do him honour on the eve of his_festa_. And on the morrow, the great day thus ushered in, it wasfitting that the tributary symbols paid to Florence by all its dependentcities, districts, and villages, whether conquered, protected, or ofimmemorial possession, should be offered at the shrine of San Giovanniin the old octagonal church, once the cathedral and now the baptistery,where every Florentine had had the sign of the Cross made with theanointing chrism on his brow; that all the city, from the white-hairedman to the stripling, and from the matron to the lisping child, shouldbe clothed in its best to do honour to the great day, and see the greatsight; and that again, when the sun was sloping and the streets werecool, there should be the glorious race or Corso, when the unsaddledhorses, clothed in rich trappings, should ran right across the city,from the Porta al Prato on the north-west, through the Mercato Vecchio,to the Porta Santa Croce on the south-east, where the richest of_Palii_, or velvet and brocade banners with silk linings and fringe ofgold, such as became a city that half-clothed the well-dressed world,were mounted on a triumphal car awaiting the winner or winner's owner.
And thereafter followed more dancing; nay, through the whole day, saysan old chronicler at the beginning of that century, there were weddingsand the grandest gatherings, with so much piping, music and song, withballs and feasts and gladness and ornament, that this earth might havebeen mistaken for Paradise!
In this year of 1492, it was, perhaps, a little less easy to make thatmistake. Lorenzo the magnificent and subtle was dead, and an arrogant,incautious Piero was come in his room, an evil change for Florence,unless, indeed, the wise horse prefers the bad rider, as more easilythrown from the saddle, and already the regrets for Lorenzo were gettingless predominant over the murmured desire for government on a broaderbasis, in which corruption might be arrested, and there might be thatfree play for everybody's jealousy and ambition, which made the idealliberty of the good old quarrelsome, struggling times, when Florenceraised her great buildings, reared her own soldiers, drove out would-betyrants at the sword's point, and was proud to keep faith at her ownloss. Lorenzo was dead, Pope Innocent was dying, and a troublesomeNeapolitan succession, with an intriguing, ambitious Milan, might setItaly by the ears before long: the times were likely to be difficult.Still, there was all the more reason that the Republic should keep itsreligious festivals.
And Midsummer morning, in this year 1492, was not less bright thanusual. It was betimes in the morning that the symbolic offerings to becarried in grand procession were all assembled at their starting-pointin the Piazza della Signoria--that famous piazza, where stood then, andstand now, the massive turreted Palace of the People, called the PalazzoVecchio, and the spacious Loggia, built by Orcagna--the scene of allgrand State ceremonial. The sky made the fairest blue tent, and underit the bells swung so vigorously that every evil spirit with senseenough to be formidable, must long since have taken his flight; windowsand terraced roofs were alive with human faces; sombre stone houses werebright with hanging draperies; the boldly soaring palace tower, the yetolder square tower of the Bargello, and the spire of the neighbouringBadia, seemed to keep watch above; and below, on the broad polygonalflags of the piazza, was the glorious show of banners, and horses withrich trappings, a
nd gigantic _ceri_, or tapers, that were fitly calledtowers--strangely aggrandised descendants of those torches by whosefaint light the Church worshipped in the Catacombs. Betimes in themorning all processions had need to move under the Midsummer sky ofFlorence, where the shelter of the narrow streets must every now andthen be exchanged for the glare of wide spaces; and the sun would behigh up in the heavens before the long pomp had ended its pilgrimage inthe Piazza di San Giovanni.
But here, where the procession was to pause, the magnificent city, withits ingenious Cecca, had provided another tent than the sky; for thewhole of the Piazza del Duomo, from the octagonal baptistery in thecentre to the facade of the cathedral and the walls of the houses on theother sides of the quadrangle, was covered, at the height of forty feetor more, with blue drapery, adorned with well-stitched yellow lilies andthe familiar coats of arms, while sheaves of many-coloured bannersdrooped at fit angles under this superincumbent blue--a gorgeousrainbow-lit shelter to the waiting spectators who leaned from thewindows, and made a narrow border on the pavement, and wished for thecoming of the show.
One of these spectators was Tito Melema. Bright, in the midst ofbrightness, he sat at the window of the room above Nello's shop, hisright elbow resting on the red drapery hanging from the window-sill, andhis head supported in a backward position by the right-hand, whichpressed the curls against his ear. His face wore that bland liveliness,as far removed from excitability as from heaviness or gloom, which marksthe companion popular alike amongst men and women--the companion who isnever obtrusive or noisy from uneasy vanity or excessive animal spirits,and whose brow is never contracted by resentment or indignation. Heshowed no other change from the two months and more that had passedsince his first appearance in the weather-stained tunic and hose, thanthat added radiance of good fortune, which is like the just perceptibleperfecting of a flower after it has drunk a morning's sunbeams. Closebehind him, ensconced in the narrow angle between his chair and thewindow-frame, stood the slim figure of Nello in holiday suit, and at hisleft the younger Cennini--Pietro, the erudite corrector of proof-sheets,not Domenico the practical. Tito was looking alternately down on thescene below, and upward at the varied knot of gazers and talkersimmediately around him, some of whom had come in after witnessing thecommencement of the procession in the Piazza della Signoria. Piero diCosimo was raising a laugh among them by his grimaces and anathemas atthe noise of the bells, against which no kind of ear-stuffing was asufficient barricade, since the more he stuffed his ears the more hefelt the vibration of his skull; and declaring that he would buryhimself in the most solitary spot of the Valdarno on a _festa_, if hewere not condemned, as a painter, to lie in wait for the secrets ofcolour that were sometimes to be caught from the floating of banners andthe chance grouping of the multitude.
Tito had just turned his laughing face away from the whimsical painterto look down at the small drama going on among the checkered border ofspectators, when at the angle of the marble steps in front of the Duomo,nearly opposite Nello's shop, he saw a man's face upturned towards him,and fixing on him a gaze that seemed to have more meaning in it than theordinary passing observation of a stranger. It was a face with tonsuredhead, that rose above the black mantle and white tunic of a Dominicanfriar--a very common sight in Florence; but the glance had somethingpeculiar in it for Tito. There was a faint suggestion in it, certainlynot of an unpleasant kind. Yet what pleasant association had he everhad with monks? None. The glance and the suggestion hardly took longerthan a flash of lightning.
"Nello!" said Tito, hastily, but immediately added, in a tone ofdisappointment, "Ah, he has turned round. It was that tall, thin friarwho is going up the steps. I wanted you to tell me if you knew aught ofhim?"
"One of the Frati Predicatori," said Nello, carelessly; "you don'texpect me to know the private history of the crows."
"I seem to remember something about his face," said Tito. "It is anuncommon face."
"What? you thought it might be our Fra Girolamo? Too tall; and he nevershows himself in that chance way."
"Besides, that loud-barking `hound of the Lord' [Note 1] is not inFlorence just now," said Francesco Cei, the popular poet; "he has takenPiero de' Medici's hint, to carry his railing prophecies on a journeyfor a while."
"The Frate neither rails nor prophesies against any man," said amiddle-aged personage seated at the other corner of the window; "he onlyprophesies against vice. If you think that an attack on your poems,Francesco, it is not the Frate's fault."
"Ah, he's gone into the Duomo now," said Tito, who had watched thefigure eagerly. "No, I was not under that mistake, Nello. Your FraGirolamo has a high nose and a large under-lip. I saw him once--he isnot handsome; but this man..."
"Truce to your descriptions!" said Cennini. "Hark! see! Here come thehorsemen and the banners. That standard," he continued, laying his handfamiliarly on Tito's shoulder,--"that carried on the horse with whitetrappings--that with the red eagle holding the green dragon between histalons, and the red lily over the eagle--is the Gonfalon of the Guelfparty, and those cavaliers close round it are the chief officers of theGuelf party. That is one of our proudest banners, grumble as we may; itmeans the triumph of the Guelfs, which means the triumph of Florentinewill, which means triumph of the popolani."
"Nay, go on, Cennini," said the middle-aged man, seated at the window,"which means triumph of the fat popolani over the lean, which againmeans triumph of the fattest popolano over those who are less fat."
"Cronaca, you are becoming sententious," said the printer; "FraGirolamo's preaching will spoil you, and make you take life by the wronghandle. Trust me, your cornices will lose half their beauty if youbegin to mingle bitterness with them; that is the _maniera Tedesca_which you used to declaim against when you came from Rome. The nextpalace you build we shall see you trying to put the Frate's doctrineinto stone."
"That is a goodly show of cavaliers," said Tito, who had learned by thistime the best way to please Florentines; "but are there not strangersamong them? I see foreign costumes."
"Assuredly," said Cennini; "you see there the Orators from France,Milan, and Venice, and behind them are English and German nobles; for itis customary that all foreign visitors of distinction pay their tributeto San Giovanni in the train of that gonfalon. For my part, I think ourFlorentine cavaliers sit their horses as well as any of thosecut-and-thrust northerners, whose wits lie in their heels and saddles;and for yon Venetian, I fancy he would feel himself more at ease on theback of a dolphin. We ought to know something of horsemanship, for weexcel all Italy in the sports of the Giostra, and the money we spend onthem. But you will see a finer show of our chief men by-and-by, Melema;my brother himself will be among the officers of the Zecca."
"The banners are the better sight," said Piero di Cosimo, forgetting thenoise in his delight at the winding stream of colour as the tributarystandards advanced round the piazza. "The Florentine men are so-so;they make but a sorry show at this distance with their patch of sallowflesh-tint above the black garments; but those banners with theirvelvet, and satin, and minever, and brocade, and their endless play ofdelicate light and shadow!--_Va_! your human talk and doings are a tamejest; the only passionate life is in form and colour."
"Ay, Piero, if Satanasso could paint, thou wouldst sell thy soul tolearn his secrets," said Nello. "But there is little likelihood of it,seeing the blessed angels themselves are such poor hands at chiaroscuro,if one may judge from their _capo-d'opera_, the Madonna Nunziata."
"There go the banners of Pisa and Arezzo," said Cennini. "Ay, MesserPisano, it is no use for you to look sullen; you may as well carry yourbanner to our San Giovanni with a good grace. `Pisans false,Florentines blind'--the second half of that proverb will hold no longer.There come the ensigns of our subject towns and signories, Melema; theywill all be suspended in San Giovanni until this day next year, whenthey will give place to new ones."
"They are a fair sight," said Tito; "and San Giovanni will surely be aswell satisfie
d with that produce of Italian looms as Minerva with herpeplos, especially as he contents himself with so little drapery. Butmy eyes are less delighted with those whirling towers, which would soonmake me fall from the window in sympathetic vertigo."
The "towers" of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemedvery glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly akind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called_ceri_. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real andliteral fashion, these gigantic _ceri_, some of them so large as to beof necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had theirsurface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded,carved, and painted, as real sacred tapers often are, with successivecircles of figures--warriors on horseback, foot-soldiers with lance andshield, dancing maidens, animals, trees and fruits, and in fine, saysthe old chronicler, "all things that could delight the eye and theheart;" the hollowness having the further advantage that men could standinside these hyperbolic tapers and whirl them continually, so as toproduce a phantasmagoric effect, which, considering the towers werenumerous, must have been calculated to produce dizziness on a trulymagnificent scale.
"_Pestilenza_!" said Piero di Cosimo, moving from the window, "thosewhirling circles one above the other are worse than the jangling of allthe bells. Let me know when the last taper has passed."
"Nay, you will surely like to be called when the contadini come carryingtheir torches," said Nello; "you would not miss the country-folk of theMugello and the Casentino, of whom your favourite Leonardo would make ahundred grotesque sketches."
"No," said Piero, resolutely, "I will see nothing till the car of theZecca comes. I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both withand without cowls, to last me for my life."
"Here it comes, then, Piero--the car of the Zecca," called out Nello,after an interval during which towers and tapers in a descending scaleof size had been making their slow transit.
"_Fediddio_!" exclaimed Francesco Cei, "that is a well-tanned SanGiovanni! some sturdy Romagnole beggar-man, I'll warrant. Our Signoriaplays the host to all the Jewish and Christian scum that every othercity shuts its gates against, and lets them fatten on us like SaintAnthony's swine."
The car of the Zecca or Mint, which had just rolled into sight, wasoriginally an immense wooden tower or _cero_ adorned after the samefashion as the other tributary _ceri_, mounted on a splendid car, anddrawn by two mouse-coloured oxen, whose mild heads looked out from richtrappings bearing the arms of the Zecca. But the latter half of thecentury was getting rather ashamed of the towers with their circular orspiral paintings, which had delighted the eyes and the hearts of theother half, so that they had become a contemptuous proverb, and anyill-painted figure looking, as will sometimes happen to figures in thebest ages of art, as if it had been boned for a pie, was called a_fantoccio da cero_, a tower-puppet; consequently improved taste, withCecca to help it, had devised for the magnificent Zecca a triumphal carlike a pyramidal catafalque, with ingenious wheels warranted to turn allcorners easily. Round the base were living figures of saints and angelsarrayed in sculpturesque fashion; and on the summit, at the height ofthirty feet, well bound to an iron rod and holding an iron cross alsofirmly infixed, stood a living representative of Saint John the Baptist,with arms and legs bare, a garment of tiger-skins about his body, and agolden nimbus fastened on his head--as the Precursor was wont to appearin the cloisters and churches, not having yet revealed himself topainters as the brown and sturdy boy who made one of the Holy Family.For where could the image of the patron saint be more fitly placed thanon the symbol of the Zecca? Was not the royal prerogative of coiningmoney the surest token that a city had won its independence? and by theblessing of San Giovanni this "beautiful sheepfold" of his had shownthat token earliest among the Italian cities. Nevertheless, the annualfunction of representing the patron saint was not among the high prizesof public life; it was paid for with something like ten shillings, acake weighing fourteen pounds, two bottles of wine, and a handsomesupply of light eatables; the money being furnished by the magnificentZecca, and the payment in kind being by peculiar "privilege" presentedin a basket suspended on a pole from an upper window of a private house,whereupon the eidolon of the austere saint at once invigorated himselfwith a reasonable share of the sweets and wine, threw the remnants tothe crowd, and embraced the mighty cake securely with his right armthrough the remainder of his passage. This was the attitude in whichthe mimic San Giovanni presented himself as the tall car jerked andvibrated on its slow way round the piazza to the northern gate of theBaptistery.
"There go the Masters of the Zecca, and there is my brother--you seehim, Melema?" cried Cennini, with an agreeable stirring of pride atshowing a stranger what was too familiar to be remarkable tofellow-citizens. "Behind come the members of the Corporation ofCalimara, [Note 2] the dealers in foreign cloth, to which we have givenour Florentine finish; men of ripe years, you see, who were matriculatedbefore you were born; and then comes the famous Art of Money-changers."
"Many of them matriculated also to the noble art of usury before youwere born," interrupted Francesco Cei, "as you may discern by a certainfitful glare of the eye and sharp curve of the nose which manifest theirdescent from the ancient Harpies, whose portraits you saw supporting thearms of the Zecca. Shaking off old prejudices now, such a procession asthat of some four hundred passably ugly men carrying their tapers inopen daylight, Diogenes-fashion, as if they were looking for a lostquattrino, would make a merry spectacle for the Feast of Fools."
"Blaspheme not against the usages of our city," said Pietro Cennini,much offended. "There are new wits who think they see things more trulybecause they stand on their heads to look at them, like tumblers andmountebanks, instead of keeping the attitude of rational men. Doubtlessit makes little difference to Maestro Vaiano's monkeys whether they seeour Donatello's statue of Judith with their heads or their tailsuppermost."
"Your solemnity will allow some quarter to playful fancy, I hope," saidCei, with a shrug, "else what becomes of the ancients, whose example youscholars are bound to revere, Messer Pietro? Life was never anythingbut a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest."
"Keep your jest then till your end of the pole is uppermost," saidCennini, still angry, "and that is not when the great bond of ourRepublic is expressing itself in ancient symbols, without which thevulgar would be conscious of nothing beyond their own petty wants ofback and stomach, and never rise to the sense of community in religionand law. There has been no great people without processions, and theman who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to anything butcontempt, is like the puddle that was proud of standing alone while theriver rushed by."
No one said anything after this indignant burst of Cennini's till hehimself spoke again.
"Hark! the trumpets of the Signoria: now comes the last stage of theshow, Melema. That is our Gonfaloniere in the middle, in the starredmantle, with the sword carried before him. Twenty years ago we used tosee our foreign Podesta, who was our judge in civil causes, walking onhis right-hand; but our Republic has been over-doctored by clever_Medici_. That is the Proposto [Spokesman or Moderator] of the Priorion the left; then come the other seven Priori; then all the othermagistracies and officials of our Republic. You see your patron theSegretario?"
"There is Messer Bernardo del Nero also," said Tito; "his visage is afine and venerable one, though it has worn rather a petrifying looktowards me."
"Ah," said Nello, "he is the dragon that guards the remnant of oldBardo's gold, which, I fancy, is chiefly that virgin gold that fallsabout the fair Romola's head and shoulders; eh, my Apollino?" he added,patting Tito's head.
Tito had the youthful grace of blushing, but he had also the adroit andready speech that prevents a blush from looking like embarrassment. Hereplied at once--
"And a very Pactolus it is--a stream with golden ripples. If I were analchemist--"
He was saved from the need for further speech by th
e sudden fortissimoof drums and trumpets and fifes, bursting into the breadth of the piazzain a grand storm of sound--a roar, a blast, and a whistling, wellbefitting a city famous for its musical instruments, and reducing themembers of the closest group to a state of deaf isolation.
During this interval Nello observed Tito's fingers moving in recognitionof some one in the crowd below, but not seeing the direction of hisglance he failed to detect the object of this greeting--the sweet roundblue-eyed face under a white hood--immediately lost in the narrow borderof heads, where there was a continual eclipse of round contadina cheeksby the harsh-lined features or bent shoulders of an old spadesman, andwhere profiles turned as sharply from north to south as weathercocksunder a shifting wind.
But when it was felt that the show was ended--when the twelve prisonersreleased in honour of the day, and the very _barberi_ or race-horses,with the arms of their owners embroidered on their cloths, had followedup the Signoria, and been duly consecrated to San Giovanni, and everyone was moving from the window--Nello, whose Florentine curiosity was ofthat lively canine sort which thinks no trifle too despicable forinvestigation, put his hand on Tito's shoulder and said--
"What acquaintance was that you were making signals to, eh, _giovanemio_?"
"Some little contadina who probably mistook me for an acquaintance, forshe had honoured me with a greeting."
"Or who wished to begin an acquaintance," said Nello. "But you arebound for the Via de' Bardi and the feast of the Muses: there is nocounting on you for a frolic, else we might have gone in search ofadventures together in the crowd, and had some pleasant fooling inhonour of San Giovanni. But your high fortune has come on you too soon:I don't mean the professor's mantle--_that_ is roomy enough to hide afew stolen chickens, but--Messer Endymion minded his manners after thatsingular good fortune of his; and what says our Luigi Pulci?
"`Da quel giorno in qua ch'amor m'accese Per lei son fatto e gentile e cortese.'"
"Nello, _amico mio_, thou hast an intolerable trick of making life staleby forestalling it with thy talk," said Tito, shrugging his shoulders,with a look of patient resignation, which was his nearest approach toanger: "not to mention that such ill-founded babbling would be held agreat offence by that same goddess whose humble worshipper you arealways professing yourself."
"I will be mute," said Nello, laying his finger on his lips, with aresponding shrug. "But it is only under our four eyes that I talk anyfolly about her."
"Pardon! you were on the verge of it just now in the hearing of others.If you want to ruin me in the minds of Bardo and his daughter--"
"Enough, enough!" said Nello. "I am an absurd old barber. It all comesfrom that abstinence of mine, in not making bad verses in my youth: forwant of letting my folly run out that way when I was eighteen, it runsout at my tongue's end now I am at the unseemly age of fifty. But Nellohas not got his head muffled for all that; he can see a buffalo in thesnow. _Addio, giovane mio_."
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Note 1. A play on the name of the Dominicans (_Domini Canes_) which wasaccepted by themselves, and which is pictorially represented in a frescopainted for them by Simone Memmi.
Note 2. "Arte di Calimara", "arte" being, in this use of it, equivalentto corporation.