Part 13 (1/2)

Having thus a very decent pretence, I instantly despatched some thousands of men to Urbino, who, by my commands, took possession of that city and of the whole duchy. The duke, unfortunately, escaped; but I revenged myself for his flight upon the powerful and dangerous family of Montefeltro, and annihilated their whole race. Vitelozzo was fool enough to join me, with all his troops, near Camerino. I deceived Caesar di Varono by promising him honourable conditions if he would evacuate Camerino, and I attacked the city at the very moment he was engaged in signing the articles of capitulation. I had hoped to have exterminated the whole family at once; but the father found means to elude me. However, I strangled his wife, and cut the throats of his two sons; and I flatter myself that despair and grief will soon send the old fellow after them. I left Camerino, and despatched Paul Orsino, Vitelozzo, and Oliverotto, to Sinegaglia, with orders to take the town by storm, so that they might prepare their future grave with their own hands. When I saw them all in the net, I sent forward my trusty Michelotto and his a.s.sociates, with directions to seize the fools when I should give the signal. I then put myself upon the march, and Orsino, Vitelozzo, and Oliverotto came to meet me, and pay me their respects. They had left all the troops behind them, according to my expectations. I received them with caresses, and went with them into the city; and at the very moment my people fell upon their straggling soldiers, Michelotto and his comrades each seized his man. Thus I made myself master of the domains and fortresses of those whom we deceived by pretending to a.s.sist them in subduing their enemies. The following night I caused them to be slaughtered in their dungeons. Michelotto, to whom I intrusted this business, told me, with much laughter, that all the mercy Vitelozzo prayed for was, _that he might not be murdered until he had received_, _from your holiness_, _absolution for his sins_.

Who now will tell me that it requires much art to make oneself master of the minds of men? As soon as your holiness shall have put out of the way the Orsinis and the rest, I will send the Pagolas, the Duke of Gravina, and my other prisoners, to bear them company. If Carraccioli, General of the Venetians, whose lovely wife I seized upon her journey, and who now sweetens my labour, should come to Rome with his _complaint_, send him Michelotto's brother to be his physician. I hear that he is a turbulent, hot-headed fellow, and therefore it will be as well to get rid of him. The tumult of arms has not made me forget my sister's widowhood: the envoy of the eldest son of the Duke of Este is already on the way to marry her, in his name. We have now ma.s.sacred the most dangerous of our foes; if we can win over or exterminate (which is almost the same thing) the houses of Este and Medici, who will then have the audacity to oppose the Borgias in Italy? I kiss the feet of your holiness.

”CAESAR BORGIA, Gonfalonier.”

Faustus, after reading this letter, looked angrily upward; but the Devil, without giving him time to moralise, led him to the Vatican, where they found the Pope overjoyed at the success which had attended his weapons.

He had already ordered the remaining Orsinis, Alvianis, Santa Croces, and the other cardinals and archbishops, to be arrested, and awaited the event with impatience. All Rome hastened to congratulate him. Those who were marked out for destruction were seized in the Vatican, conducted into different prisons, and privately executed; whilst the myrmidons of the Pope plundered their palaces. The Cardinal Orsini alone was sent to the Castle of Saint Angelo, and was permitted, for a few days, to be supplied with food from his mother's kitchen; but the Pope, having heard that he possessed a pearl, very precious on account of its extraordinary size, retracted this favour. The mother of the once mighty and flouris.h.i.+ng Orsinis went to the Vatican, and offered the Pope the pearl and two thousand crowns if he would liberate her son; when he seized the pearl and the money with one hand, and with the other gave the sign for the cardinal's execution.

When Caesar Borgia learnt that the Pope had accomplished his design, he instantly commanded all his own prisoners to be a.s.sa.s.sinated; and, entering Rome in triumph, shared, with his holiness and the other illegitimates, the booty he had brought with him; and, in return, received his dividend of the confiscated property of the slaughtered cardinals and ecclesiastics.

The marriage of Lucretia was soon afterwards celebrated with more than Asiatic pomp, and the Romans contributed to render it as brilliant as possible. The bells pealed from the churches; the artillery thundered from Saint Angelo; there were bull-fights; the most immoral and indecent comedies were performed; and the delighted populace shouted before the Vatican, ”Long live Pope Alexander! long live Lucretia, d.u.c.h.ess of Este!”

Faustus huzzaed with the best of them, and said to the Devil: ”If these acclamations ascend to heaven with the groans of the a.s.sa.s.sinated, which will the Eternal believe?” The fiend bowed himself to the earth, and was silent.

In order to crown the festivities of the marriage, Alexander and his daughter commanded a spectacle which must for ever stand unparalleled in the annals of human infamy. The Pope sat, with his daughter, upon a couch, in a vast illuminated hall. Faustus, the Devil, and others who had been invited to this scene, stood around them. Suddenly the doors opened, and in rushed fifty nude courtesans,--more beautiful than the houris in Mahomet's paradise,--and performed, to the voluptuous sound of flutes and other instruments, a dance which decency forbids us to describe, although it was a Pope who designed the figure. When the dance was ended, his Holiness gave the signal for a combat which we are still less permitted to depict,--he himself holding the prize of victory. They proclaimed Faustus to be the conqueror. Lucretia overwhelmed him with kisses, and crowned him with laurels; while the Pope delivered to him the prize,--a golden goblet, on which Lucretia had caused to be engraven the School of Pleasure. Faustus gave it the very next day to a Venetian monk, in whose possession Aretino saw it a long time afterwards, and ill.u.s.trated some of its incidents in his sonnets.

The Pope, on the day of his daughter's marriage, had made an election of cardinals, choosing only the richest prelates for that dignity. Caesar Borgia, being in want of large sums of money for the next campaign, determined to send some of the newly-elected into the other world, at a festival which his father intended to give at one of his villas. [The details of these marriage-festivities are omitted; inasmuch as the grossness of the spectacle renders it unfit for the general reader. The conduct of Lucretia Borgia has been the subject of much obloquy, which her defenders maintain rests chiefly on inferences from her living in a flagitious court, where she witnessed the most profligate scenes. It is a.s.serted that some of the accusations have no better foundation than the epigrams of Pontano, and other Neapolitan poets, the natural enemies of her family.--_Transl_.] The Pope went in a coach, with his daughter, the Devil, Faustus, Borgia, and the wife of the Venetian general. Here, after witnessing a gross spectacle, Lucretia retired with Faustus; and Borgia went with the Venetian; and the Pope remained alone with the Devil. His holiness now made to the fiend certain proposals, which so exasperated the Devil that he appeared under a form which no mortal eye had ever yet been able to sustain. The Pope, who knew him immediately, uttered a cry of joy.

”Ah, ben venuto Signor Diavolo! You could not have come to me at a more seasonable time than the present; I have long wished to see you, for I know perfectly well what a deal of use might be made of so powerful a spirit as yourself. Ha, ha, ha! you please me now much better than you did before, you rogue, you! Come, be my friend; a.s.sume your former figure, and I will make you a cardinal; for you only can raise me at once to the height which I wish to attain. I entreat you to destroy my foes, procure me money, and drive the French out of Italy, since I have no further occasion for them. This to you will merely be the work of a moment; and you may then ask me for any reward you please. But by all means do not discover yourself to my son Caesar: he is so great a wretch, that I verily believe he would poison me, his father, in order to become, by thy help, King of Italy and Pope at the same time.”

The Devil, who had at first been a little mortified that his frightful exterior had produced no greater effect, was now unable to refrain from laughing; for what he saw and heard surpa.s.sed every thing which had as yet come to the knowledge of h.e.l.l. But recovering himself, he said, with a serious air, ”Pope Alexander, Satan once showed to the Son of the Eternal all the kingdoms of the world, and offered him them, if he would fall down and wors.h.i.+p him.”

_Pope_. I understand you. He was a G.o.d, and wanted nothing; had he been a man, and a pope, he would have done what I will now do.

He fell upon his knees, and kissed the fiend's feet.

The Devil stamped upon the floor, so that the whole villa trembled.

Faustus and Lucretia, Caesar and the Venetian, saw through the door, which had been burst open by the shock, the Pope kneeling with clasped hands before the frightful figure of the Devil, who seized the trembling miscreant, strangled him, and gave his soul to an attendant spirit to be conveyed to h.e.l.l. Borgia fell to the ground in an agony of terror; and the horrible spectacle brought upon him an illness, which soon sent him after his father. The body of the Pope, frightfully disfigured, was buried with much pomp; and his historians, who are not well acquainted with his tragic end, invented the story, which is partly founded on truth, that he and his son having drunk, by the cupbearer's mistake, some poisoned wine which had been intended for the cardinals, were thus caught in their own net.

CHAPTER V.

The horrible death of the Pope, and the frightful figure of the Devil, whom Faustus had hitherto only seen majestic and comely, made so strong an impression upon him, that he hastened from the villa to Rome; and, having packed up his things, instantly departed, with perturbed mind and beating heart. His spirit had become so weak from all that he had seen and heard, that he who once dared to defy the Eternal in thought scarcely ventured now to look Satan in the face, though he still had absolute dominion over him. Hatred and contempt for men, cruel doubt, indifference to every thing which occurred around him, murmurings at the insufficiency of his moral and physical powers, were the rewards of his experience and the fruits of his life; yet he consoled himself with the idea that what he had witnessed authorised in him these gloomy sentiments, and confirmed him in the opinion, that there either existed on earth no connexion between man and his Creator, or that, if any did exist, such connexion ran so confusedly and equivocally through the labyrinth of life, that it was impossible for the eye of man to follow it. He yet flattered himself with the delusion, that his crimes, when added to the vast ma.s.s of earthly wickedness, would be like a drop of water falling into the ocean. The Devil willingly permitted him to repose in this dream, in order that the blow he intended for him might fall with greater violence. Faustus resembled those men of the world who abandon themselves to their pleasures without thinking of the consequences; and at length, worn out and dejected, look morosely on the world, and judge of the human race according to their own sad experience, without reflecting that they have only trodden the worst paths of life, and seen the worst part of the creation. In a word, he was on the point of becoming a philosopher of the species of Voltaire, who, whenever he found the _bad_, always held it forth to public view; and, with unexampled industry, always endeavoured to keep the _good_ in the background.

Faustus was lying in a sweet morning slumber on the frontiers of Italy, when a portentous dream depicted itself to his soul in the liveliest colours; and this dream was followed by a frightful apparition. He saw the Genius of Man, whom he had once before seen. He saw him upon a vast and blooming island, surrounded by a stormy sea, wandering up and down, and looking very anxiously upon the raging billows. The ocean was covered with innumerable barks, in which men, aged and young, children, women, and maidens, of all the nations of the world, were struggling against the tempest, in order to reach the island. When they arrived there, their first care was to bring to land different building materials, which they flung together confusedly. After an immense number had gained the sh.o.r.e, the Genius marked out, upon the most elevated part of the island, the plan of a vast edifice; and each of the crowd, young and old, weak or strong, took, according to his or her strength, a piece from the ma.s.s of materials, and, directed by those whom the Genius had chosen, carried it, and deposited it at the proper place. All worked with pleasure, with courage, and without relaxation; and the fabric had already risen high above the ground, when they were suddenly attacked by numerous foes, who advanced out of a dark ambush in three columns. At the head of each of these columns stood a general. The first bore a glittering crown upon his head; on his brazen s.h.i.+eld was written the word _Power_; and in his right hand he held a sceptre, which, like the rod of Mercury, had a snake and a scourge twisted round it. Before him went a fierce hyena, holding in its jaws a book, on the back of which was written _My Word_. His troops were armed with swords, spears, and other implements of destruction. The second column was commanded by a majestic matron, whose n.o.ble figure was clothed in a sacerdotal robe. On her right stood _Superst.i.tion_, a gloomy-eyed spectre, bearing in his hand a bow formed from the bones of the dead, and on his back a quiver filled with poisoned arrows. On her left hovered a wild, fantastically clothed figure, called _Fanaticism_, bearing a blazing torch. These two phantoms, with menacing gestures and frightful grimaces, led the n.o.ble matron in chains, like a prisoner. Before them went _Ambition_, whose head was adorned with a triple crown; in his hand was an episcopal staff, and on his mailed breast shone the word _Religion_. Fanaticism and Superst.i.tion waited, with the utmost impatience, until Religion should give them the signal to vent their fury, which they could scarcely restrain. The army was a confused and howling rabble, and each soldier carried a dagger and a flaming torch. The chief of the third column advanced with bold and haughty steps; he was clothed in the simple dress of the sages, and was called _Philosophy_. He bore in his hand, as did all his followers, a golden cup, filled with foaming and intoxicating liquor. These two last armies howled and screamed so frightfully, that even the bellowing of the waters and the roar of the tempest were no longer audible.

When the three columns arrived near the labourers, they united, by the directions of their generals, and attacked them furiously with their murderous weapons. The most courageous of the workmen flung away their implements of labour, and drew their swords, which hung at their belts, in order to drive their foes back. The others, in the mean time, endeavoured, with redoubled zeal, to complete the fabric they had begun.

The Genius protected his brave warriors and his industrious labourers with a huge glittering s.h.i.+eld, which was handed to him from the sky; but he could not cover the whole of the countless mult.i.tude. He saw with deep sorrow thousands of his people sink to the earth beneath the swords and poisoned darts of their adversaries. Many allowed themselves to be ensnared by the invitations and allurements of those who offered them the enchanted cup to refresh themselves with; and, in their intoxication, they soon destroyed the laborious work of their hands.

Those who bore torches made their way with their daggers, and hurled the torches into the unfinished edifice, when the flames, rearing up, threatened to reduce it to ashes. The Genius looked mournfully upon the slain, and on those who had been intoxicated by the deceitful beverage; but he encouraged the rest, and inspired them, by his firmness and his dignity, with strength and patience. They extinguished the flames; replaced what the others had overturned; and laboured, amid death and destruction, with so much zeal, that, in spite of the fury and malignity of their foes, they raised at length a vast and sublime temple. The Genius then healed the wounded, comforted the weary, praised the bold warriors, and conducted them all, amid songs of triumph, into the temple.

The foes stood confounded at the enormous work; and, after they had in vain attempted to shatter its solidity, they retreated, with rage in their hearts. Faustus now found himself upon the island. The field around the majestic building was covered with dead bodies of all ages and of both s.e.xes; and those who had tasted of the enchanted cup walked coolly among the corpses, disputed with each other, and laughed at and criticised the structure of the temple. Faustus went past them, and as he approached the edifice he read over the entrance the following words: ”Mortal, if thou hast bravely struggled, and hast remained faithful, enter, and learn to know thy n.o.ble destiny.”

At these words he felt his heart leap with joy, and he hoped to be now able to penetrate the obscurity which had so long tormented him. With bold and daring pace he ran up the lofty steps, and caught a glimpse of the interior of the edifice, which seemed filled with the roseate colours of morning. He heard the soft voice of the Genius, and was about to enter; but the gate of bra.s.s closed before him with a harsh sound, and he recoiled in terror. His desire to penetrate into the secrets of the temple was increased by the impossibility. All of a sudden he felt wings, and rising high into the air, he precipitated himself furiously against the brazen gate, was hurled back, and started out of his sleep just as he was on the point of touching the ground. He opened his eyes in dismay. A ghastly figure, wrapped in a winding-sheet, drew back the curtains of his bed. He recognised the features of his old father, who, gazing upon him for a moment, said, in a lamentable voice:

”Faustus! Faustus! never yet did father beget a more unfortunate son; and in this feeling I have just died. For ever--ah! for ever!--must the gulf of d.a.m.nation lie between thee and me.”

The portentous dream and this horrible apparition filled the soul of Faustus with affright. He sprang from his bed, and opened the window to inhale the fresh air. Before him lay the enormous Alps, whose tops were just gilded by the rising sun. He surveyed them for some time, and at last fell into a profound reverie. He trembled as he thought of his nocturnal vision, and was endeavouring to explain to himself its most prominent pa.s.sages, when, falling anew into his cruel doubts, he exclaimed:

”Whence came those monsters who attacked the industrious labourers? By whom were they authorised to disturb and destroy them while engaged in their n.o.ble occupation? Who permitted it? Was he who permitted it unable, or did he not wish, to hinder it? And why did the Supreme Genius protect and save only a part of them who were a.s.sailed by those cannibals? Were some predestined to perish, in order that the others might triumph and taste repose? Who, then, will dare to tell me that I am not one of those who are born with destruction for their lot? What evil had those unfortunates committed, and why should those be esteemed criminal who, pressed by a burning thirst, endeavoured to quench it by tasting the enchanted cup?”

Faustus wandered for a long time in a maze of doubt; but, remembering the apparition of his father, it brought back to his mind his long-forgotten family. He instantly determined to return to them; to become again a member of society; to resume his business; and to get rid of his infernal companion. He pursued his journey towards home like many others, who, mistaking the ardour of insensate youth for genius, enter upon the career of the world with high pretensions, and, having quickly exhausted the little fire which their souls possess, soon find themselves a burden to their kindred and their friends, at the very place from whence they started. Faustus brooded over all this, while he rode silently and moodily by the side of the Devil.