Then and Now

by W. Somerset Maugham

  The Florentines had long been engaged on the siege of Pisa, but things had gone badly and the army of the Republic suffered a severe defeat which the Signory ascribed to the incompetence of their Captain-General; so they engaged two condottieri then in the service of King Louis, Paolo and Vitellozzo Vitelli, and gave the chief command to Paolo, a captain of renown. A battle was fought, a breach was effected in the walls and the army was on the point of storming the city when suddenly Paolo Vitelli gave the order to retreat. Though he said he had done this to save further loss of life since he was sure of the city's surrender on conditions, the Signory was convinced that he was playing them false, and sent two commissioners ostensibly to furnish funds but in fact to seize the persons of the two generals. Paolo Vitelli was quartered about a mile beyond Cascina, and the commissioners requested him to meet them there so that they might discuss with him the conduct of the war. They gave him dinner and then, leading him into a secret chamber, arrested him. He was taken to Florence and beheaded, though under torture he would not admit his guilt.

  'Paolo Vitelli was a traitor,' said Machiavelli.' 'He had a fair trial and was found guilty. He suffered the just punishment of his crime.'

  'Whether he was innocent or guilty is no matter. To execute him was a blunder.'

  'It was necessary for our honour to act with energy against enemies of the Republic. It was necessary to show that Florence has the courage to provide for her safety.'

  'Why then did you leave his brother alive?'

  Machiavelli irritably shrugged his shoulders. It was a sore point.

  'Men were sent to fetch Vitellozzo and bring him to Cascina. He suspected a trap. He was ill in bed. He asked for time to dress and somehow managed to escape. The affair was bungled. How can you provide always against the stupidity of the people you have to act through?'

  The Duke's laugh was light and gay. His eyes sparkled with good humour.

  'It is an error to keep to a plan when circumstances have arisen that make its execution inadvisable. When Vitellozzo slipped through your fingers you should have taken Paolo to Florence, and instead of throwing him into a dungeon housed him in the best apartment of the Palazzo Vecchio. You should have tried him and whatever the evidence declared him innocent. Then you should have restored his command to him, increased his pay, and bestowed on him the highest honours at the disposal of the Republic. You should have convinced him that you had entire confidence in him.'

  'With the result that he would have betrayed us to our enemies.'

  'That might have been his intention, but for a while he would have had so to act as to prove that the trust you placed in him was justified. These mercenary captains are avaricious and will do anything for money. You might have made offers to Vitellozzo so handsome that he could not have brought himself to refuse; he would have rejoined his brother, and when you had lulled them into security, with a little ingenuity you could have found a suitable occasion to kill them both swiftly and without trial.'

  Machiavelli went red in the face.

  'Such treachery would have an eternal blot on the fair name of Florence,' he cried.

  'Traitors must be dealt with treacherously. A state is not governed by the exercise of Christian virtues, it is governed by prudence, boldness, determination and ruthlessness.'

  At this moment an officer came into the room and in a whisper spoke to Agapito da Amalia. Il Valentino, frowning at the interruption, with impatient fingers drummed on the table at which he sat.

  'His Excellency is occupied,' said Agapito. 'They must wait.'

  'What is it?' asked the Duke sharply.

  'Two Gascon soldiers have been caught looting, Excellency. They have been brought here under guard with the objects they seized.'

  'It would be a pity to make the subjects of the King of France wait,' said the Duke, smiling faintly. 'Let them be brought in.'

  The officer went out and the Duke amiably addressed himself to Machiavelli.

  'You will excuse me if I attend to a little matter of business.'

  'My time is at your Excellency's disposal.'

  'I trust you had no adventures on the road, Secretary.'

  Machiavelli took his cue from the Duke's tone.

  'None. I was fortunate to find an inn at Scarperia where I was given a tolerable meal.'

  'It is my desire that men should travel in my dominions as safely as it is said they travelled in the Roman Empire of the Antonines. While you are here you will have opportunity to see for yourself that now that I have dispossessed those petty tyrants who were the curse of Italy I have by wise administration done much to render the lives of my people secure and prosperous.'

  There was a noise without of shuffling feet, voices were raised, and then, the great doors of the spacious chamber being flung open, a crowd surged in. First came the officer who had come in before, and he was followed by two men who from their respectable dress Machia-velli guessed must be dignitaries of the city. On their heels came two women, one old, the other middle-aged, and with them an elderly man of decent appearance. Then came a soldier carrying a pair of silver candlesticks, and another with an ornamental goblet of silver gilt and two silver platters. They wore the red and yellow uniform of the Duke's own troops. Then, half pushed, half dragged by soldiers entered two men with their hands tied behind their backs. They were shabby in nondescript garments and, standing among the Duke's uniformed men, looked a ruffianly pair. One was a scowling fellow of forty, of powerful physique, with a thick black beard and a livid scar on his forehead, and the other a smooth-faced boy with a sallow skin and shifty, frightened eyes.

  'Stand forward,' said the Duke.

  The two men were given a shove.

  'What is the charge?'

  It appeared that the house of the two women had been broken into when they were at mass and the silverware stolen.

  'How can you prove these articles were your property?'

  'Monna Brigida is my cousin, Excellency,' said one of the two respectable men. 'I know the articles well. They were part of her dowry.'

  The other confirmed this. The Duke turned to the elderly man who seemed to be with the two women.

  'Who are you?'

  'Giacomo Fabronio, Excellency, silversmith. These two men sold me the pieces. They said they had got them at the sack of Forlì.'

  'You have no doubt that these are the men?'

  'None, Excellency.'

  'We took Giacomo to the Gascon camp,' said the officer, 'and he picked them out without hesitation.'

  The Duke fixed the silversmith with harsh eyes.

  'Well?'

  'When I heard that Monna Brigida's house had been broken into and her candlesticks and platters stolen, I became suspicious,' the fellow answered, his face pale and his voice tremulous. 'I went at once to Messer Bernardo and told him that two Gascon soldiers had sold me some silverware.'

  'Was it from fear or sense of duty?'

  The silversmith for a moment could not find his voice. He was shaking with terror.

  'Messer Bernardo is a magistrate, I have done much work for him. If the goods were stolen I didn't want them to be in my possession.'

  'What he says is true, Your Excellency,' said the magistrate. 'I went to see the articles and immediately recognized them.'

  'They are mine, Excellency,' vehemently cried the younger of the two women. 'Everyone will tell you they are mine.'

  'Be quiet.' The Duke turned his gaze on the two Gascons. 'Do you confess that you stole these things?'

  'No, no, no,' screamed the boy. 'It is a mistake. I swear on the soul of my mother than I didn't. The silversmith is mistaken. I have never seen him before.

  'Take him away. A few turns on the rack will bring out the truth.'

  The boy gave a piercing shriek.

  'No, not that. I couldn't bear that.'

  'Take him.'

  'I confess,' gasped the boy.

  The Duke gave a short laugh and turned to the other.

  'And you?' />
  The older man threw back his head defiantly,

  'I didn't steal them. I took them. It was our right; we had captured the city.'

  'A lie. You did not capture the city. It capitulated.'

  By the rules of Italian warfare at the time, if a city was taken by storm the soldiers were allowed to loot and keep everything they could lay hands on, but if it had capitulated, though the citizens were called upon to pay a large sum to defray the expense to which the condittieri had been put to gain possession of their city, they saved their lives and their property. The rule was useful, for it made the citizens willing enough to surrender; it was not often that devotion to their prince induced them to fight to the death.

  The Duke pronounced sentence.

  'My orders were that the troops were to remain without the walls and that any harm done to the persons or property of the citizens should be punished by death.' He turned to the officer. 'Hang them in the square at dawn. Let it be published in the camp what their crime and its punishment were. Have two soldiers stand guard over the bodies till noon and let the town crier inform the population at proper intervals that they can rely on the justice of their prince.'

  'What does he say?' asked the terrified boy of his companion, for the Duke had spoken to the two Gascons in French and to the officer in Italian.

  The man did not answer, but looked at the Duke with sullen hatred. The Duke, having heard, repeated the sentence in French.

  'You will be hanged at dawn as a warning to others.'

  The boy gave a great cry of anguish and fell to his knees.

  'Mercy, mercy,' he screamed. 'I'm too young to die. I don't want to die. I'm afraid.'

  'Take them away,' said the Duke.

  The boy was dragged to his feet, screaming incoherently, tears running from his eyes; but the other, his face distorted with rage, gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat in his face. The pair were hustled from the room. The Duke turned to Agapito da Amalia.

  'See that they are provided with the consolations of religion. It would weigh on my conscience if they faced their Maker without having had the opportunity to repent of their sins.'

  A faint smile on his lips, the secretary slid out of the room. The Duke, apparently in high good humour, addressed himself to the Cardinal his cousin and together to Machiavelli.

  'They were fools as well as knaves. It was an unpardonable stupidity to sell the articles they had stolen in the very town they had been stolen in. They should have hidden them till they came to a much larger city, Bologna or Florence for instance, where they could have disposed of them in safety.'

  But he noticed that the silversmith was lingering by the door and seemed to wish to say something.

  'What are you doing there?'

  'Who is to going to give me back my money, Excellency? I am a poor man.'

  'Did you pay a fair price for the articles?' Il Valentino asked suavely.

  'I paid what they were worth, The sum the scoundrels asked was ridiculous. I had to make my profit.'

  'Let it be a lesson to you. Another time don't buy anything unless you are sure it has been honestly come by.'

  'I can't afford to lose so much money, Excellency.'

  'Go,' cried the Duke in a tone so savage that the man with a cry scuttled out of the room like a frightened rabbit.

  Il Valentino threw himself back in his chair and roared with laughter. Then he turned courteously to Machia-velli.

  'I must ask you to pardon the interruption; I think it important that justice should be administered promptly, and I wish the people of the territories under my rule to know that they can come to me if they have been ill-used and be sure to find in me an impartial judge.'

  'It is the wisest policy for a prince who wishes to assure his hold on dominions that he has recently acquired,' said the Cardinal.

  'Men will always forgive the loss of their political liberty if their private liberty is left undisturbed,' said the Duke casually. 'So long as their women are not molested and their property is safe, they will be reasonably contented with their lot.'

  Machiavelli had watched the incident with calm, even with amusement, which he took care not to show, for he was convinced that the whole affair was a piece of play acting. He knew very well that Il Valentino would never dare to hang two subjects of the King of France. In all probability they had already been released, with a gift of money for the trouble they had been put to, and on the following day would be found again in the ranks of the Gascon contingent. Machiavelli guessed that the scene had been arranged so that he could tell the Signory how efficiently the Duke was ruling his new conquests, but more particularly for his reference at the end to Florence and Bologna. The suggestion that the troops might find themselves there was a threat too plain to be missed by anyone with so shrewd a brain as Machiavelli.

  Silence fell. The Duke, gently stroking his neat beard, stared at Machiavelli reflectively. Machiavelli had the feeling that he was making up his mind what sort of a man this was that the Signory had sent to negotiate with him, and not wishing to meet the searching eyes fixed on him he looked down at his hands, as though wondering if the nails wanted cutting. He was perplexed, and being perplexed was uneasy. For it was he that had conducted the business that led to the execution of Paolo Vitelli. Assured of his guilt, he had exercised all his powers of persuasion to convince his nervous and temporizing superiors that action must be taken without delay. It was he that had given the commissioners orders to proceed with energy. It was he that had urged the death sentence notwithstanding the fact that Vitellozzo had escaped. But his activities had been behind the scenes and he could not imagine how Il Valentino was aware of them. The thought crossed his mind that the Duke had dwelt upon the unsatisfactory outcome of the affair only to show that he knew what part Machiavelli had played in it and was maliciously pleased to be able to point out to him that he had handled it incompetently. But that man did nothing without a reason. It was unlikely that he wished to let the Florentine envoy know that he was well-informed of what happened in the Chancery of the Republic: it was more probable that his object was to shake Machia-velli's confidence in himself and so render him more amenable. The idea caused the suspicion of a smile to appear on his lips, and he glanced at the Duke. It looked as though the Duke had been waiting to meet his eyes before speaking.

  'Secretary, I desire to confide to you a secret I have told to no living man.'

  'Do you wish me to leave you, Cousin?' asked the Cardinal.

  'No, I trust in your discretion as much as I trust in the Secretary's.'

  Machiavelli, his jaw set, his gaze fixed on the handsome Duke, waited.

  'The Orsini have begged me almost on their bended knees to attack Florence. I bear your city no ill will and I have refused. But if the gentlemen of your government want to come to terms with me they must do it before I patch things up with the Orsini. We're both friends of the King of France; surely it's advisable that we should be friends of one another. With our territories adjoining each of us can make things easy for the other; each of us can make things difficult. You depend upon mercenary troops under unreliable captains; I have my own army, well-trained, well-armed, and my captains are the best in Europe.'

  'But no more reliable than ours, Your Excellency,' said Machiavelli dryly.

  'I have others who are reliable. Who are they, the fools who are conspiring against me? Pagolo Orsini, a fool, Bentivoglio who thinks I have designs on Bologna, the Baglioni who fears for Perugia, Oliverotto da Fermo, and Vitellozzo, who is laid aside by the French sickness.

  'They are powerful, and in revolt.'

  'All their movements are known to me and when things are ripe I shall act. Believe me, the ground is burning under their feet and it needs more water to put out the fire than such men as they can throw. Be sensible, Secretary. With Urbino in my hands I command Central Italy. Guidobaldo di Montefeltro was my friend, and the Pope intended to give his niece Angela Borgia in marriage to Guidobaldo's nephew and h
eir. I would never have attacked him unless I had seen the strategic importance of his state. I had to have it in order to carry out my plans, and I could not allow sentiment to interfere with policy. I can offer you security from your enemies. If we were to act together, I with my armies, you with your rich lands and your wealth, and with the spiritual authority of the Pope to support us, we should be the strongest power in Italy. Instead of having to pay hard cash for the favours of the French, they would have to treat with us as equals. The moment has come for you to conclude an alliance with me.'

  Machiavelli was startled, but he answered with easy amiability.

  'I see the force of your Excellency's arguments. No one could have put them more clearly or more convincingly. It is rare to find a man of action, and a great general such as Your Excellency has shown himself, who possesses so logical a mind and such a gift of expression.'

  The Duke with a slight smile made a modest gesture of protest. Machiavelli, his heart in his mouth, for he knew that what he had to say was not what the Duke wanted, went on blandly.

  'I will write to the Signory and tell the gentlemen what you have said.'

  'What do you mean?' cried Il Valentino. 'The matter is urgent and must be settled at once.'

  'I have no power to make an agreement.'

  The Duke sprang to his feet.

  'Then what have you come here for?'

  At that instant the door was opened; it was only Agap-ito da Amalia coming in after attending to the Duke's order, but it had a startling effect. Machiavelli was not a nervous man, but it shook him strangely.

  'I have come because Your Excellency requested my government to send an envoy to treat with him.'

  'But an envoy with full powers to treat.'

  Until now the Duke had treated Machiavelli with tolerable courtesy, but now, his eyes blazing, he strode up to him. Machiavelli rose and the two men faced one another.

  'The Signory is fooling me. They sent you precisely because you have no power to decide anything. Their eternal shilly-shallying exasperates me beyond endurance. How long do they think they can continue to try my patience?'