The Strolling Saint

by Rafael Sabatini

  The distance from Mondolfo to Piacenza is a good eight leagues, and though we had set out very early, it was past noon before we caught our first glimpse of the city by the Po, lying low as it does in the vast Æmilian plain, and Arcolano set himself to name to me this church and that whose spires stood out against the cobalt background of the sky.

  An hour or so after our first glimpse of the city, our weary beasts brought us up to the Gate of San Lazzaro. But we did not enter, as I had hoped. Messer Arcolano had had enough of me and my questions at Mondolfo, and he was not minded to expose himself to worse behaviour on my part in the more interesting thoroughfares of this great city.

  So we passed it by, and rode under the very walls by way of an avenue of flowering chestnuts, round to the northern side, until we emerged suddenly upon the sands of Po, and I had my first view at close quarters of that mighty river flowing gently about the islands, all thick with willows, that seemed to float upon its gleaming waters.

  Fishermen were at work in a boat out in mid-stream, heaving their nets to the sound of the oddest cantilena, and I was all for pausing there to watch their operations. But Arcolano urged me onward with that impatience of his which took no account of my very natural curiosity. Presently I drew rein again with exclamations of delight and surprise to see the wonderful bridge of boats that spanned the river a little higher up.

  But we had reached our destination. Arcolano called a halt at the gates of a villa that stood a little way back from the road on slightly rising ground near the Fodesta Gate. He bade one of the grooms get down and open, and presently we ambled up a short avenue between tall banks of laurel, to the steps of the villa itself.

  It was a house of fair proportions, though to me at the time, accustomed to the vast spaces of Mondolfo, it seemed the merest hut. It was painted white, and it had green Venetian shutters which gave it a cool and pleasant air; and through one of the open windows floated a sound of merry voices, in which a woman's laugh was predominant.

  The double doors stood open and through these there emerged a moment after our halting a tall, thin man whose restless eyes surveyed us swiftly, whose thin-lipped mouth smiled a greeting to Messer Arcolano in the pause he made before hurrying down the steps with a slip-slop of ill-fitting shoes.

  This was Messer Astorre Fifanti, the pedant under whom I was to study, and with whom I was to take up my residence for some months to come.

  Seeing in him one who was to be set in authority over me, I surveyed him with the profoundest interest, and from that instant I disliked him.

  He was, as I have said, a tall, thin man; and he had long hands that were very big and bony in the knuckles. Indeed they looked like monstrous skeleton hands with a glove of skin stretched over them. He was quite bald, save for a curly grizzled fringe that surrounded the back of his head, on a level with his enormous ears, and his forehead ran up to the summit of his egg-shaped head. His nose was pendulous and his eyes were closely set, with too crafty a look for honesty. He wore no beard, and his leathery cheeks were blue from the razor. His age may have been fifty; his air was mean and sycophantic. Finally he was dressed in a black gaberdine that descended to his knees, and he ended in a pair of the leanest shanks and largest feet conceivable.

  To greet us he fawned and washed his bony hands in the air.

  "You have made a safe journey, then," he purred. "Benedicamus Dominum!"

  "Deo gratias!" rumbled the fat priest, as he heaved his rotundity from the saddle with the assistance of one of the grooms.

  They shook hands, and Fifanti turned to survey me for the second time.

  "And this is my noble charge!" said he. "Salve! Be welcome to my house, Messer Agostino."

  I got to earth, accepted his proffered hand, and thanked him.

  Meanwhile the grooms were unpacking my baggage, and from the house came hurrying an elderly servant to receive it and convey it within doors.

  I stood there a little awkwardly, shifting from leg to leg, what time Doctor Fifanti pressed Arcolano to come within and rest; he spoke, too, of some Vesuvian wine that had been sent him from the South and upon which he desired the priest's rare judgment.

  Arcolano hesitated, and his gluttonous mouth quivered and twitched. But he excused himself in the end. He must on. He had business to discharge in the town, and he must return at once and render an account of our safe journey to the Countess at Mondolfo. If he tarried now it would grow late ere he reached Mondolfo, and late travelling pleased him not at all. As it was his bones would be weary and his flesh tender from so much riding; but he would offer it up to Heaven for his sins.

  And when the too-amiable Fifanti had protested how little there could be the need in the case of one so saintly as Messer Arcolano, the priest made his farewells. He gave me his blessing and enjoined upon me obedience to one who stood to me in loco parentis, heaved himself back on to his mule, and departed with the grooms at his heels.

  Then Doctor Fifanti set a bony hand upon my shoulder, and opined that after my journey I must be in need of refreshment; and with that he led me within doors, assuring me that in his house the needs of the body were as closely cared for as the needs of the mind.

  "For an empty belly," he ended with his odious, sycophantic geniality, "makes an empty heart and an empty head."

  We passed through a hall that was prettily paved in mosaics, into a chamber of good proportions, which seemed gay to me after the gloom by which I had been surrounded.

  The ceiling was painted blue and flecked with golden stars, whilst the walls were hung with deep blue tapestries on which was figured in grey and brownish red a scene which, I was subsequently to learn, represented the metamorphosis of Actæon. At the moment I did not look too closely. The figures of Diana in her bath with her plump attendant nymphs caused me quickly to withdraw my bashful eyes.

  A good-sized table stood in the middle of the floor, bearing, upon a broad strip of embroidered white napery, sparkling crystal and silver, vessels of wine and platters of early fruits. About it sat a very noble company of some half-dozen men and two very resplendent women. One of these was slight and little, very dark and vivacious, with eyes full of a malicious humour. The other, of very noble proportions, of a fine, willowy height, with coiled ropes of hair of a colour such as I had never dreamed could be found upon human being. It was ruddy and glowed like metal. Her face and neck—and of the latter there was a very considerable display—were of the warm pale tint of old ivory. She had large, low-lidded eyes, which lent her face a languid air. Her brow was low and broad, and her lips of a most startling red against the pallor of the rest.

  She rose instantly upon my entrance, and came towards me with a slow smile, holding out her hand, and murmuring words of most courteous welcome.

  "This, Ser Agostino," said Fifanti, "is my wife."

  Had he announced her to be his daughter it would have been more credible on the score of their respective years, though equally incredible on the score of their respective personalities.

  I gaped foolishly in my amazement, a little dazzled, too, by the effulgence of her eyes, which were now raised to the level of my own. I lowered my glance abashed, and answered her as courteously as I could. Then she led me to the table, and presented me to the company, naming each to me.

  The first was a slim and very dainty young gentleman in a scarlet walking-suit, over which he wore a long scarlet mantle. A gold cross was suspended from his neck by a massive chain of gold. He was delicately featured, with a little pointed beard, tiny mustachios, and long, fair hair that fell in waves about his effeminate face. He had the whitest of hands, very delicately veined in blue, and it was—as I soon observed—his habit to carry them raised, so that the blood might not flow into them to coarsen their beauty. Attached to his left wrist by a fine chain was a gold pomander-ball of the size of a small apple, very beautifully chiselled. Upon one of his fingers he wore the enormous sapphire ring of his rank.

  That he was a prince of the Church I saw for myself; b
ut I was far from being prepared for the revelation of his true eminence—never dreaming that a man of the humble position of Doctor Fifanti would entertain a guest so exalted.

  He was no less a person than the Lord Egidio Oberto Gambara, Cardinal of Brescia, Governor of Piacenza and Papal Legate to Cisalpine Gaul.

  The revelation of the identity of this elegant, effeminate, perfumed personage was a shock to me; for it was not thus by much that I had pictured the representative of our Holy Father the Pope.

  He smiled upon me amiably and something wearily, the satiate smile of the man of the world, and he languidly held out to me the hand bearing his ring. I knelt to kiss it, overawed by his ecclesiastical rank, however little awed by the man within it.

  As I rose again he looked up at me considering my inches.

  "Why," said he, "here is a fine soldier lost to glory." And as he spoke, he half turned to a young man who sat beside him, a man at whom I was eager to take a fuller look, for his face was most strangely familiar to me.

  He was tall and graceful, very beautifully dressed in purple and gold, and his blue-black hair was held in a net or coif of finest gold thread. His garments clung as tightly and smoothly as if he had been kneaded into them—as, indeed, he had. But it was his face that held my eyes. It was a suntanned, shaven hawk-face with black level brows, black eyes, and a strong jaw, handsome, save for something displeasing in the lines of the mouth, something sardonic, proud, and contemptuous.

  The Cardinal addressed him. "You breed fine fellows in your family, Cosimo," were the words with which he startled me, and then I knew where I had seen that face before. In my mirror.

  He was as like me—save that he was blacker and not so tall—as if he had been own brother to me instead of merely cousin as I knew at once he was. For he must be that guelphic Anguissola renegade who served the Pope and was high in favour with Farnese, and Captain of Justice in Piacenza. In age he may have been some seven or eight years older than myself.

  I stared at him now with interest, and I found attractions in him, the chief of which was his likeness to my father. So must my father have looked when he was this fellow's age. He returned my glance with a smile that did not improve his countenance, so contemptuously languid was it, so very supercilious.

  "You may stare, cousin," said he, "for I think I do you the honour to be something like you."

  "You will find him," lisped the Cardinal to me, "the most self-complacent dog in Italy. When he sees in you a likeness to himself he flatters himself grossly, which, as you know him better, you will discover to be his inveterate habit. He is his own most assiduous courtier." And my Lord Gambara sank back into his chair, languishing, the pomander to his nostrils.

  All laughed, and Messer Cosimo with them, still considering me.

  But Messer Fifanti's wife had yet to make me known to three others who sat there, beside the little sloe-eyed lady. This last was a cousin of her own—Donna Leocadia degli Allogati, whom I saw now for the first and last time.

  The three remaining men of the company are of little interest save one, whose name was to be well known—nay, was well known already, though not to one who had lived in such seclusion as mine.

  This was that fine poet Annibale Caro, whom I have heard judged to be all but the equal of the great Petrarca himself. A man who had less the air of a poet it would not be easy to conceive. He was of middle height and of a habit of body inclining to portliness, and his age may have been forty. His face was bearded, ruddy, and small-featured, and there was about him an air of smug prosperity; he was dressed with care, but he had none of the splendour of the Cardinal or my cousin. Let me add that he was secretary to the Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, and that he was here in Piacenza on a mission to the Governor in which his master's interests were concerned.

  The other two who completed that company are of no account, and indeed their names escape me, though I seem to remember that one was named Pacini and that he was said to be a philosopher of considerable parts.

  Bidden to table by Messer Fifanti, I took the chair he offered me beside his lady, and presently came the old servant whom already I had seen, bearing meat for me. I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what time a pleasant ripple of talk ran round the board. Facing me sat my cousin, and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with what an insistence he regarded me. At last, however, our eyes met across the board. He smiled that crooked, somewhat unpleasant smile of his.

  "And so, Ser Agostino, they are to make a priest of you?" said he.

  "God pleasing," I answered soberly, and perhaps shortly.

  "And if his brains at all resemble his body," lisped the Cardinal-legate, "you may live to see an Anguissola Pope, my Cosimo."

  My stare must have betrayed my amazement at such words. "Not so, magnificent," I made answer. "I am destined for the life monastic."

  "Monastic!" quoth he, in a sort of horror, and looking as if a bad smell had suddenly been thrust under his nose. He shrugged and pouted and had fresh recourse to his pomander. "O, well! Friars have become popes before today."

  "I am to enter the hermit order of St. Augustine," I again corrected.

  "Ah!" said Caro, in his big, full voice. "He aspires not to Rome but to Heaven, my lord."

  "Then what the devil does he in your house, Fifanti?" quoth the Cardinal. "Are you to teach him sanctity?"

  And the table shook with laughter at a jest I did not understand any more than I understood my Lord Cardinal.

  Messer Fifanti, sitting at the table-head, shot me a glance of anxious inquiry; he smiled foolishly, and washed his hands in the air again, his mind fumbling for an answer that should turn aside that barbed jest. But he was forestalled by my cousin Cosimo.

  "The teaching might come more aptly from Monna Giuliana," said he, and smiled very boldly across at Fifanti's lady who sat beside me, whilst a frown grew upon the prodigious brow of the pedant.

  "Indeed, indeed," the Cardinal murmured, considering her through half-closed eyes, "there is no man but may enter Paradise at her bidding." And he sighed furiously, whilst she chid him for his boldness; and for all that much of what they said was in a language that might have been unknown to me, yet was I lost in amazement to see a prelate made so free with. She turned to me, and the glory of her eyes fell about my soul like an effulgence.

  "Do not heed them, Ser Agostino. They are profane and wicked men," she said, "and if you aspire to holiness, the less you see of them the better will it be for you."

  I did not doubt it, yet I dared not make so bold as to confess it, and I wondered why they should laugh to hear her earnest censure of them.

  "It is a thorny path, this path of holiness," said the Cardinal, sighing.

  "Your excellency has been told so, we assume," quoth Caro, who had a very bitter tongue for one who looked so well-nourished and contented.

  "I might have found it so for myself but that my lot has been cast among sinners," answered the Cardinal, comprehending the company in his glance and gesture. "As it is, I do what I can to mend their lot."

  "Now here is gallantry of a different sort!" cried the little Leocadia with a giggle.

  "O, as to that," quoth Cosimo, showing his fine teeth in a smile, "there is a proverb as to the gallantry of priests. It is like the love of women, which again is like water in a basket—as soon in as out." And his eyes hung upon Giuliana.

  "When you are the basket, sir captain, shall anyone blame the women?" she countered with her lazy insolence.

  "Body of God!" cried the Cardinal, and laughed wholeheartedly, whilst my cousin scowled. "There you have the truth, Cosimo, and the truth is better than proverbs."

  "It is unlucky to speak of the dead at table," put in Caro.

  "And who spoke of the dead, Messer Annibale?" quoth Leocadia.

  "Did not my Lord Cardinal mention Truth?" answered the brutal poet.

  "You are a derider—a gross sinner," said the Cardinal languidly. "Stick to your verses, man, and leave Truth alon
e."

  "Agreed—if your excellency will stick to Truth and quit writing verses. I offer the compact in the interest of humanity, which will be the gainer."

  The company shook with laughter at this direct and offensive hit. But my Lord Gambara seemed nowise incensed. Indeed, I was beginning to conclude that the man had a sweetness and tolerance of nature that bordered on the saintly.

  He sipped his wine thoughtfully, and held it up to the light so that the deep ruby of it sparkled in the Venetian crystal.

  "You remind me that I have written a new song," said he.

  "Then have I sinned indeed," groaned Caro.

  But Gambara, disregarding the interruption, his glass still raised, his mild eyes upon the wine, began to recite:

  "Bacchus saepe visitans

  Mulierum genus

  Facit eas subditas

  Tibi, O tu Venus!"

  Without completely understanding it, yet scandalized beyond measure at as much as I understood, to hear such sentiments upon his priestly lips, I stared at him in candid horror.

  But he got no farther. Caro smote the table with his fist.

  "When wrote you that, my lord?" he cried.

  "When?" quoth the Cardinal, frowning at the interruption. "Why, yestereve."

  "Ha!" It was something between a bark and a laugh from Messer Caro. "In that case, my lord, memory usurped the place of invention. That song was sung at Pavia when I was a student—which is more years ago than I care to think of."

  The Cardinal smiled upon him, unabashed. "And what then, pray? Can we avoid these things? Why, the very Virgil whom you plagiarize so freely was himself a plagiarist."

  Now this, as you may well conceive, provoked a discussion about the board, in which all joined, not excepting Fifanti's lady and Donna Leocadia.