Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 31

_Dante._ Ah, yes! the truest, the purest, the least perishable, but not the sweetest. Here are the rue and hyssop; but where the rose?

_Beatrice._ Wicked must be whatever torments you: and will you let love do it? Love is the gentlest and kindest breath of G.o.d. Are you willing that the tempter should intercept it, and respire it polluted into your ear? Do not make me hesitate to pray to the Virgin for you, nor tremble lest she look down on you with a reproachful pity. To her alone, O Dante, dare I confide all my thoughts! Lessen not my confidence in my only refuge.

_Dante._ G.o.d annihilate a power so criminal! Oh, could my love flow into your breast with hers! It should flow with equal purity.

_Beatrice._ You have stored my little mind with many thoughts; dear because they are yours, and because they are virtuous. May I not, O my Dante! bring some of them back again to your bosom; as the _contadina_ lets down the string from the cottage-beam in winter, and culls a few bunches of the soundest for the master of the vineyard? You have not given me glory that the world should shudder at its eclipse. To prove that I am worthy of the smallest part of it, I must obey G.o.d; and, under G.o.d, my father. Surely the voice of Heaven comes to us audibly from a parent's lips. You will be great, and, what is above, all greatness, good.

_Dante._ Rightly and wisely, my sweet Beatrice, have you spoken in this estimate. Greatness is to goodness what gravel is to porphyry: the one is a movable acc.u.mulation, swept along the surface of the earth; the other stands fixed and solid and alone, above the violence of war and of the tempest; above all that is residuous of a wasted world. Little men build up great ones; but the snow colossus soon melts: the good stand under the eye of G.o.d; and therefore stand.

_Beatrice._ Now you are calm and reasonable, listen to me, Bice. You must marry.

_Dante._ Marry?

_Beatrice._ Unless you do, how can we meet again unreservedly? Worse, worse than ever! I cannot bear to see those large heavy tears following one another, heavy and slow as nuns at the funeral of a sister. Come, I will kiss off one, if you will promise me faithfully to shed no more. Be tranquil, be tranquil; only hear reason. There are many who know you; and all who know you must love you. Don't you hear me? Why turn aside? and why go farther off? I will have that hand. It twists about as if it hated its confinement. Perverse and peevish creature! you have no more reason to be sorry than I have; and you have many to the contrary which I have not. Being a man, you are at liberty to admire a variety, and to make a choice. Is that no comfort to you?

_Dante._

Bid this bosom cease to grieve?

Bid these eyes fresh objects see?

Where's the comfort to believe None might once have rivall'd me?

What! my freedom to receive?

Broken hearts, are they the free?

For another can I live When I may not live for thee?

_Beatrice._ I will never be fond of you again if you are so violent.

We have been together too long, and we may be noticed.

_Dante._ Is this our last meeting? If it is ... and that it is, my heart has told me ... you will not, surely you will not refuse....

_Beatrice._ Dante! Dante! they make the heart sad after: do not wish it. But prayers ... oh, how much better are they, how much quieter and lighter they render it! They carry it up to heaven with them; and those we love are left behind no longer.

FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH

_Eugenius._ Filippo! I am informed by my son Cosimo de' Medici of many things relating to thy life and actions, and among the rest, of thy throwing off the habit of a friar. Speak to me as to a friend. Was that well done?

_Filippo._ Holy Father! it was done most unadvisedly.

_Eugenius._ Continue to treat me with the same confidence and ingenuousness; and, beside the remuneration I intend to bestow on thee for the paintings wherewith thou hast adorned my palace, I will remove with my own hand the heavy acc.u.mulation of thy sins, and ward off the peril of fresh ones, placing within thy reach every worldly solace and contentment.

_Filippo._ Infinite thanks, Holy Father! from the innermost heart of your unworthy servant, whose duty and wishes bind him alike and equally to a strict compliance with your paternal commands.

_Eugenius._ Was it a love of the world and its vanities that induced thee to throw aside the frock?

_Filippo._ It was indeed, Holy Father! I never had the courage to mention it in confession among my manifold offences.

_Eugenius._ Bad! bad! Repentance is of little use to the sinner, unless he pour it from a full and overflowing heart into the capacious ear of the confessor. Ye must not go straightforward and bluntly up to your Maker, startling Him with the horrors of your guilty conscience.

Order, decency, time, place, opportunity, must be observed.

_Filippo._ I have observed the greater part of them: time, place, and opportunity.

_Eugenius._ That is much. In consideration of it, I hereby absolve thee.

_Filippo._ I feel quite easy, quite new-born.

_Eugenius._ I am desirous of hearing what sort of feelings thou experiencest, when thou givest loose to thy intractable and unruly wishes. Now, this love of the world, what can it mean? A love of music, of dancing, of riding? What in short is it in thee?

_Filippo._ Holy Father! I was ever of a hot and amorous const.i.tution.

_Eugenius._ Well, well! I can guess, within a trifle, what that leads unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be. And then? and then? Prithee go on: I am inflamed with a miraculous zeal to cleanse thee.

_Filippo._ I have committed many follies, and some sins.

_Eugenius._ Let me hear the sins; I do not trouble my head about the follies; the Church has no business with them. The State is founded on follies, the Church on sins. Come then, unsack them.

_Filippo._ Concupiscence is both a folly and a sin. I felt more and more of it when I ceased to be a monk, not having (for a time) so ready means of allaying it.

_Eugenius._ No doubt. Thou shouldst have thought again and again before thou strippedst off the cowl.

_Filippo._ Ah! Holy Father! I am sore at heart. I thought indeed how often it had held two heads together under it, and that stripping it off was double decapitation. But compensation and contentment came, and we were warm enough without it.

_Eugenius._ I am minded to reprove thee gravely. No wonder it pleased the Virgin, and the saints about her, to permit that the enemy of our faith should lead thee captive into Barbary.

_Filippo._ The pleasure was all on their side.

_Eugenius._ I have heard a great many stories both of males and females who were taken by Tunisians and Algerines: and although there is a sameness in certain parts of them, my especial benevolence toward thee, worthy Filippo, would induce me to lend a vacant ear to thy report. And now, good Filippo, I could sip a small gla.s.s of Muscatel or Orvieto, and turn over a few bleached almonds, or essay a smart dried apricot at intervals, and listen while thou relatest to me the manners and customs of that country, and particularly as touching thy own adversities. First, how wast thou taken?

_Filippo._ I was visiting at Pesaro my wors.h.i.+pful friend the canonico Andrea Paccone, who delighted in the guitar, played it skilfully, and was always fond of hearing it well accompanied by the voice. My own instrument I had brought with me, together with many gay Florentine songs, some of which were of such a turn and tendency, that the canonico thought they would sound better on water, and rather far from sh.o.r.e, than within the walls of the canonicate. He proposed then, one evening when there was little wind stirring, to exercise three young abbates[9] on their several parts, a little way out of hearing from the water's edge.

_Eugenius._ I disapprove of exercising young abbates in that manner.

_Filippo._ Inadvertently, O Holy Father! I have made the affair seem worse than it really was. In fact, there were only two genuine abbates; the third was Donna Lisetta, the good canonico's pretty niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness when you bend your knees before her at bedtime.

_Eugenius._ How? Where?

_Filippo._ She is the angel on the right-hand side of the Holy Family, with a tip of amethyst-coloured wing over a basket of figs and pomegranates. I painted her from memory: she was then only fifteen, and worthy to be the niece of an archbishop. Alas! she never will be: she plays and sings among the infidels, and perhaps would eat a landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly as she would a roach.

_Eugenius._ Poor soul! So this is the angel with the amethyst-coloured wing? I thought she looked wanton: we must pray for her release ...

from the bondage of sin. What followed in your excursion?

_Filippo._ Singing, playing, fresh air, and plas.h.i.+ng water, stimulated our appet.i.tes. We had brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin _marzopane_, of which the sugar and rose-water were inadequate to ward off hunger; and the sight of a fis.h.i.+ng-vessel between us and Ancona, raised our host immoderately. 'Yonder smack,' said he, 'is sailing at this moment just over the best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she continues her course and we run toward her, we may be supplied, I trust in G.o.d, with the finest fish in Christendom. Methinks I see already the bellies of those magnificent sole bestar the deck, and emulate the glories of the orient sky.' He gave his orders with such a majestic air, that he looked rather like an admiral than a priest.

_Eugenius._ How now, rogue! Why should not the churchman look majestically and courageously? I myself have found occasion for it, and exerted it.

_Filippo._ The world knows the prowess of your Holiness.