"Cleophanes, the unworthy son of the excellent Themisto- cles did not receive his mother's milk and, for the same reason, Xantippos, the son of Pericles; Caligula, son of Germanicus; Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius; Domitian, son of Vespasian; and Absalom, son of David, whom I ought to have mentioned first, all degenerated. Is it a wonder if Aegisthus was an adulterer? He was suckled by a goat! A wolf gave suck to Romulus, whence came the cruel instinct to inveigh against his brother Remus and to ravish the Sabine women as though they were just so many ewes."
I understood at once. I knew my Cloridia's child-rearing repertoire by heart. Her passion, in the hours that followed every successful confinement, was to wax eloquent concerning the extreme importance of feeding the newborn infant at its mother's breast.
"You will agree with me, Princess, that the bond of filial love arises from having been engendered, but is increased by nursing the child with one's own milk," she explained in gentle, persuasive tones.
La Strozzi uttered not a word.
"Examples of this include Graccus, the valorous Roman," continued Cloridia, "whom they arranged to be met first at the gates of Rome on his return from the wars in Asia, by his mother and his nurse at the same time. Thereupon, he brought forth two gifts which he had taken care to procure during the campaign: a silver ring for his mother and a golden girdle for his nurse. To the mother, who was pained to find herself placed behind the nurse, Graccus replied: "You, mother, made me after bearing me nine months in your womb. But, once born, you banished me from your bosom and from your bed. This nurse received me, fondled me and served me, not for nine months but for three full years."
The Princess remained silent.
"This discourse by a pagan should make us blush," insisted Cloridia, "for being born Christians, we make the most perfect profession of faith, founded upon our belief and acts of charity; and if we are taught to love even our enemies, how much more does our faith teach us to love our children?"
"My dear," responded a tired but determined voice, which I imagined to be that of the Princess, "I have already suffered enough for this little one, and for his three brothers, without exhausting myself even further by giving him my milk."
"Oh, listen to me, I beg of you," insisted my indomitable consort, "if only you were to consider the pleasure of which you are depriving your child in banishing him from his mother's bosom, I do not believe for one moment that you would do this. For little ones, there is no pastime as sweet in the whole wide world; no comedy comparable to those tears of impatience and those sudden movements upon touching the breast, and at last, that joyful laugh when the infant opens its mouth and sinks its nose and its whole face into its mother's warm bosom."
The tender images evoked by my beautiful midwife of a spouse did not, however, seem to move the noblewoman.
"Why should I make such a sacrifice," she replied with a hint of impatience in her voice, "only to receive kicks as soon as he's able to make his first footsteps and later ingratitude and presumption when he has grown to manhood?"
"But this is precisely why children nowadays have so little love for their parents," Cloridia dared hotly to venture. "God so decrees that the lack of love at their beginnings reaps scant love once they have grown up."
"My husband has already hired a wet-nurse a long time ago. He has sent for her and she will soon be here. Now, leave me, I wish to rest," said the Princess, brusquely dismissing her.
When Cloridia emerged, red in the face and with clenched fists, she almost failed to notice me. She went rapidly down the back stairs; I followed her. Once we reached the kitchen, she exploded.
"Ah, the politics of modern childbearing!" she thundered, causing several scullery-maids to turn sharply towards us.
"Cloridia, what has happened?" they asked curiously.
"Oh, nothing! It is just that the ineradicably fertile fashion has sprung up," she moved, accompanying her words with great gestures and grimaces, "that mothers who are not of the common herd squeamishly disdain to give their breast to their own offspring, who've so long annoyed them by weighing down their wombs."
Once they had grasped the argument, the scullery-maids began to laugh heartily. One of them, whom I knew to have a two-year-old daughter, drew one breast out from her blouse and squeezed the milk from it, which sprayed forth, showing that she was still nursing her little one at the breast.
"Does that seem vulgar to you?" she exclaimed, laughing broadly.
"Adieu, little ones, adieu!" raged on Cloridia, seeming almost a prophetess and waving her arms as she paced the kitchen, striving to release her suppressed fury at the Princess of Forano. "Those who bore you can no longer bear you, for you made yourselves too odious with that all-too-tiresome pregnancy; too painful did you prove in that pressing child-bearing. The European infant is thus constrained to begin his life's journey on an unknown poop, when 'tis not a bestial one, and to wander on his peregrinations under a degenerate star, depending upon an alien nutriment. Maternal nature, thus disappointed, not to say abjured, is cast aside and milk flees the paps for fear of some deformity or the tedium of discomfort. Here we find the origin of the discrepancies between offspring and parents. The nobility of filial sentiments degenerates even from the cradle when the feeding's wrong. The spirit's genius is weakened when the body's abandoned to bovine rusticity. With milk, we drink down inclinations, and these will be sordid when their origin is a cowshed!"
It was not the first time that I had witnessed such a scene. The tale was forever repeating itself: whenever Cloridia assisted at the confinement of a noblewoman, the joy of the birth always gave way to her anxiety to use every means to convince the new mother to give the infant her own milk, without having recourse to wet-nurses, or worse, to goats or cows. All to no avail: what for a woman of the people was the most natural thing in the world (among other things, for economic reasons) became an unthinkable and outrageous chore in the eyes of a countess. And my Cloridia, who had herself given suck to our two daughters for the first three years of their lives, suffered from seeing this more than she could say and was ill-resigned to it.
After at last relinquishing her indignation with a sigh of resignation, she turned to me and, with a beautiful smile, embraced me.
"Where had you got to? Hardly had the Princess lost her waters than I sent for the little ones, but I urgently needed help and that poor lad, that Buvat, almost died of fear on seeing blood."
"I know, forgive me, but I have an excellent piece of news," said I, wishing to inform her of the agreement I had reached with Atto concerning the dowry for our little girls.
"Forget it, you will tell me later. Now let us put on our costumes, I would not miss seeing the bride for anything in the world."
We retainers and servants of the Villa Spada had indeed been permitted by the Major-Domo, Don Paschatio Melchiorri, to attend the wedding, but attired in peasants' fine festive costumes specially made up for us. Thus, we would provide a rustic setting for the celebration of the nuptials, in perfect harmony with our rural setting.
I arrived first. Cloridia stayed behind to wait for our two little lasses whom she had allowed to join us for the occasion so that they too would get a brief glimpse of the spouses.
When I arrived at the little chapel, the wedding ceremony had already been underway for quite some time. Don Tibaldu- tio was about to launch into the homily. They were all gathered together in the sacristy, where the wedding proper traditionally took place, the men behind the bridegroom, the women behind the bride. Don Tibaldutio began:
"We are gathered here, most illustrious and excellent signories, to celebrate a union. And union is the greatest treasure of human life. That, I shall shortly demonstrate to you. Four are the things which preserve the states of the world above all else. The first of these is religion. And, as we can readily observe, where there is no religion, there is no fear of God, and no justice. And where there is no justice, there is no peace. And where there's no peace, there is no union. And where there is n
o union, there can be no true state. Surely from this we can see how important is religion and a proper fear of Almighty God, upon whom all our actions depend. For such is His divine goodness that He gives us being and well-being in this world and, in the next, eternal rest. The second thing in order of importance is justice, whereby the wicked and villainous are punished and the good rewarded. And, by means of justice, the peace is preserved: something most necessary for the preservation of states. The third thing is peace itself, without which states could not endure: for where there is no peace, there is no union. The fourth and last thing, and the most important of all, is therefore union itself, without which religion would be weak, justice perturbed and peace unenforceable. Wherefore, if there's no union in the state, religion will be little practised, justice will sleep and the peace will fall apart."
While the sermon continued, I observed the spouses. From where I stood, I could, however, see very little of the bride's wedding gown and headdress. From time to time, I would cast a glance in the direction of the maidservants among whom I was expecting to see my Cloridia; and very soon she did indeed appear, bringing our two little ones with her. My spouse was lovelier than ever in her hymeneal white, red and gold peasant's costume. Nor were my daughters less lovely: they were both perfectly attired in costumes specially sewn for them by their mother: the elder in a reversible yellow gown with sleeves of pink damask embroidered with false gold thread, and the little one with a flesh-coloured mocaiale garnished with dark blue trimmings. In their hands they held little twigs covered in white flowers which were to be joyfully waved at the end of the ceremony by them and the other female servants of the Villa Spada in the retinue of the bride.
"Where there is no union," declared the chaplain, fervently, "there reigns enmity, the cause of all ruination in the world, as I shall now prove with the authority of ancient history. The first enmity that ever was took place in heaven between the Greatest Good and Lucifer; the second, between Adam and the serpent; the third, between Cain and Abel; the fourth, between Joseph and his brothers; the fifth, between Pompey and Caesar; the sixth between Alexander and Darius; the seventh, between Mark Antony and Caesar Augustus: all of which examples of enmity were the cause of the most dreadful ruin. Union is therefore the greatest fortress and treasure of human life, and preserves all the world's states. But, how is this union to be attained? The philosopher opined that husband and wife must correspond to one another in body, in other words that they must experience a mutual physical attraction; and that produces infinite and most beautiful effects. It is also, however, true that there must be correspondence between souls, whereupon the most excellent fruits will be produced."
I noticed of a sudden that Cloridia and her friends were chattering most intensely among themselves and, with their hands before their mouths, struggling hard to restrain their laughter. I was able to understand the cause of this a little later, when the bride turned briefly in my direction and I was able momentarily to catch sight of her features: Maria Pulcheria Rocci was, despite her name, hardly a model of pulchritude; to be more precise, she was indeed rather ugly.
"It was not by chance that the ancients were accustomed to light five lamps when celebrating nuptials," continued the chaplain, "as they held it for certain that the figure three, an uneven number, symbolised the spiritual form, and even numbers, like two, the material. Matrimony must, in short, involve a congruous connubial blending of form and matter, in which man, a being spiritual and active, and woman, who is passive and material, can be recognised. Indeed, the ancients, when conducting ceremonies matrimonial, would traditionally make the man touch fire and the woman, water, signifying that fire illumines and water receives the light; but also that fire by its nature purges and water cleanses, so that from this custom we may also infer something more, namely that matrimony must be clear, pure, chaste and celebrated between similar beings."
Olive pockmarked skin, lips so fine as to seem non-existent, cheeks swollen and pallid, a low forehead, small lustreless eyes: all these things gave Maria Pulcheria Rocci the profile and colouring of a turbot.
Don Tibaldutio's reference to mutual physical attraction could hardly have been less opportune, I thought with some mirth; but the laughter died in my throat when an inner voice reminded me that I, with my stature, could hardly be accounted an Adonis. . .
My vague gaze wandered towards Cloridia. For a long time I dwelt on her lovely image: skin with the sweetness of violets; sacred, gently smiling spouse and mother. Yet, she had chosen me, and had chosen freely. The same could hardly be said of the bridegroom, Clemente Spada: the reasons which had led him at last to wed the unlovely Rocci maiden must have been founded upon considerations far more prosaic than those which had first so adventurously and tenderly united Cloridia and myself.
"Matrimony must be approached with love," Don Tibaldutio warned at last, becoming aware of some yawning among the illustrious congregation, "nor must the laws and customs ordered by our Holy Mother the Catholic Christian Church in anyway be contravened. Marriage must be held indissoluble and conserved with faith, as a sacrament. Above all, the use of matrimony must be to procreate and to avoid the sin of incontinence. Whosoever has any other view thereof does not deserve to be accounted a Christian."
After the long sermon with which the chaplain greeted the spouses, the nuptial rite was at last celebrated.
"The ring on the finger, the necklace on the bosom, the crown on the head," Don Tibaldutio recited solemnly, while some maids of honour placed the three objects on the spouses' bench for the blessing. "The ring denotes the purity of the act, just as giving one's hand bears witness to the limpidity of the spouse's faith. The necklace manifests sincerity of heart; and the crown, clarity of mind, for in the head dwells the perspicacity of the intellect."
It was then, during Don Tibaldutio's blessing that I saw him: resplendent and coruscating among the two-headed eagles of the imperial banners, attired rigorously in the Spanish style as a mark of his fidelity to the House of Habsburg, the Count von Lamberg, Imperial Ambassador to the pontifical court, was following the ceremony with severe faith and the profile of a sphinx. I sought Atto with my eyes and at once I found him: his forehead showing pearls of perspiration, a face covered with an over-generous coating of ceruse and cheeks shining with carmine red, beribboned ad absurdum with tassels and fringes of yellow and red (his favourite colours). Abbot Melani's tense, inquisitive gaze did not leave von Lamberg for one moment. The Ambassador, meanwhile, far more severely adorned in lead-coloured brocade with rigid silver lace trimmings, showed no sign of being aware of the spasmodic attention focused upon his person and stared indifferently in the direction of the chaplain. My mind moved to those mysterious deaths at the Spanish court and the suspicion of poisoning that hung over his party and to Maria Mancini's fears for Atto's life. The Abbot had written of his intention to confront the Ambassador face to face. Would von Lamberg grant him an audience?
Dismissed with the swarm of other retainers at the end of the nuptial ceremony, I saw my consort coming towards me with our two little girls skipping around her, like Diana surrounded by her nymphs. With their flowering branches they had been part of the festive procession that accompanied the bride towards her new married life and they were still overexcited by the honour bestowed upon them. The orchestra accompanied the exodus of guests with a sublime melodic paean by Maestro Corelli, a most sweet counterpart to Don Tibaldutio's homily.
Cloridia, who had to go and take a look at the Princess of Forano's infant, left me the task of feeding our two little ones in the villa's kitchens, after which I was to accompany them home and put them to bed. I snatched a few moments of her time to show her Melani's written promise. Her eyes opened wide.
"If I did not see it here, in black and white, I could never believe it," she exclaimed, whereupon she jumped for joy, embracing and kissing me.
But time was short. Before rushing off, Cloridia passed me a snippet of information, overheard during the celebratio
ns by her usual faithful informers among the maidservants.
"This evening, Cardinal Albani too will be coming to dinner, if that interests you," said she with a wink as she ran on her way.
Albani. Atto and I had searched for him in vain at the Vessel; and now he was coming to us.
"'Tis said that Cardinal Bonvisi is not in the best of health," chimed in old Cardinal Colloredo who, in his capacity as Grand Penitentiary, or Confessor to the Cardinals, was always well informed about everything.
The nuptial banquet was already at its height when, after evening's shadows had fallen, I was called by Don Paschatio, the Major-Domo, once more to hold one of the torches lighting the table, in the place of one of the lackeys who was feeling unwell. After donning my janissary's costume, I arrived at the sumptuous dinner grasping the torch. The spouses with their respective families and Cardinal Spada, the tutelary deity of the festivities, were prudently seated at a separate table. For the master of the house, this measure, which was, moreover, traditional, fulfilled two purposes: to honour the bride's family and to avoid becoming embroiled in political conversations that might give rise to dissension; although unavoidable at a gathering which brought together no fewer than eighteen cardinals, such talk would have been out of place coming from the mouth of the Pontifical Secretary of State.
Secretum Page 34