Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 54

Impossible! impossible! [_To Zaida._] We are rich....

_Zaida._ I am glad to hear it. Nothing anywhere goes on well without riches.

_Countess._ We can provide for you amply....

_Zaida._ Our husband....

_Countess._ _Our!... husband!..._

_Zaida._ Yes, yes; I know he is yours too; and you, being the elder and having children, are lady above all. He can tell you how little I want: a bath, a slave, a dish of pilau, one jonquil every morning, as usual; nothing more. But he must swear that he has kissed it first.

No, he need not swear it; I may always see him do it, now.

_Countess._ [_Aside._] She agonizes me. [_To Zaida._] Will you never be induced to return to your own country? Could not Ludolph persuade you?

_Zaida._ He who could once persuade me anything, may now command me everything: when he says I must go, I go. But he knows what awaits me.

_Countess._ No, child! he never shall say it.

_Zaida._ Thanks, lady! eternal thanks! The breaking of his word would break my heart; and better _that_ break first. Let the command come from you, and not from him.

_Countess._ [_Calling aloud._] Ludolph! Ludolph! hither! Kiss the hand I present to you, and never forget it is the hand of a preserver.

THE PENTAMERON;

OR,

INTERVIEWS OF MESSER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO AND MESSER FRANCESCO PETRARCA

WHEN

SAID MESSER GIOVANNI LAY INFIRM AT HIS VILLETTA HARD BY CERTALDO;

AFTER WHICH THEY SAW NOT EACH OTHER ON OUR SIDE OF PARADISE.

FIRST DAY'S INTERVIEW

_Boccaccio._ Who is he that entered, and now steps so silently and softly, yet with a foot so heavy it shakes my curtains?

Frate Biagio! can it possibly be you?

No more physic for me, nor ma.s.ses neither, at present.

a.s.sunta! a.s.suntina! who is it?

_a.s.sunta._ I cannot say, Signor Padrone! he puts his finger in the dimple of his chin, and smiles to make me hold my tongue.

_Boccaccio._ Fra Biagio! are you come from Samminiato for this? You need not put your finger there. We want no secrets. The girl knows her duty and does her business. I have slept well, and wake better.

[_Raising himself up a little._]

Why? who are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I must not have the window-shutters opened, they tell me.

_Petrarca._ Dear Giovanni! have you then been very unwell?

_Boccaccio._ O that sweet voice! and this fat friendly hand of thine, Francesco!

Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers, and all the wholesomest herbs of spring, into my breast already.

What showers we have had this April, ay! How could you come along such roads? If the devil were my labourer, I would make him work upon these of Certaldo. He would have little time and little itch for mischief ere he had finished them, but would gladly fan himself with an Agnus-castus, and go to sleep all through the carnival.

_Petrarca._ Let us cease to talk both of the labour and the labourer.

You have then been dangerously ill?

_Boccaccio._ I do not know: they told me I was: and truly a man might be unwell enough, who has twenty ma.s.ses said for him, and fain sigh when he thinks what he has paid for them. As I hope to be saved, they cost me a lira each. a.s.sunta is a good market-girl in eggs, and mutton, and cow-heel; but I would not allow her to argue and haggle about the ma.s.ses. Indeed she knows best whether they were not fairly worth all that was asked for them, although I could have bought a winter cloak for less money. However, we do not want both at the same time. I did not want the cloak: I wanted _them_, it seems. And yet I begin to think G.o.d would have had mercy on me, if I had begged it of him myself in my own house. What think you?

_Petrarca._ I think he might.

_Boccaccio._ Particularly if I offered him the sacrifice on which I wrote to you.

_Petrarca._ That letter has brought me hither.

_Boccaccio._ You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise, the moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.

_Petrarca._ Promise! none was made. You only told me that, if it pleased G.o.d to restore you to your health again, you are ready to acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your _Decameron_. What proof have you that G.o.d would exact it? If you could destroy the _Inferno_ of Dante, would you?

_Boccaccio._ Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn a copy of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.

_Petrarca._ You are the only author who would not rather demolish another's work than his own; especially if he thought it better: a thought which seldom goes beyond suspicion.

_Boccaccio._ I am not jealous of any one: I think admiration pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I did not come forward at the same time, nor take the same walks. His flames are too fierce for you and me: we had trouble enough with milder. I never felt any high gratification in hearing of people being d.a.m.ned; and much less would I toss them into the fire myself. I might indeed have put a nettle under the nose of the learned judge in Florence, when he banished you and your family; but I hardly think I could have voted for more than a scourging to the foulest and fiercest of the party.

_Petrarca._ Be as compa.s.sionate, be as amiably irresolute, toward your own _Novelle_, which have injured no friend of yours, and deserve more affection.

_Boccaccio._ Francesco! no character I ever knew, ever heard of, or ever feigned, deserves the same affection as you do; the tenderest lover, the truest friend, the firmest patriot, and, rarest of glories!

the poet who cherishes another's fame as dearly as his own.

_Petrarca._ If aught of this is true, let it be recorded of me that my exhortations and entreaties have been successful, in preserving the works of the most imaginative and creative genius that our Italy, or indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.

_Boccaccio._ I would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or think I told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in general keep only one of G.o.d's commandments, keep it rigidly in regard to Dante--

Love them who curse you.

He called them all scoundrels, with somewhat less courtesy than cordiality, and less afraid of censure for veracity than adulation: he sent their fathers to h.e.l.l, with no inclination to separate the child and parent: and now they are hugging him for it in his shroud! Would you ever have suspected them of being such lovers of justice?