Part 6 (1/2)

Dovizio, nearly fainting with excitement, counted his treasures, and compared them with the list. All were there, excepting the Apollo intaglio, which Ciacco, driven by hunger, had that evening restored to Raphael.

As it came so pat with the matter of his reading, it is no wonder that he imagined it had fallen from the skies, and this view of the case even the placated Dovizio took upon reflection.

”It were a pity to rob him of his illusions if they are an inspiration to him,” he mused. ”Let him think himself favoured by Apollo; and as for my niece, since our business here is now accomplished and we shall leave Siena on the morrow, he will probably never see her again, and it is as well that he should not connect her with his visions.”

Thus ended our adventures at the villa of Cetinale for Raphael also presently left us for Urbino and Florence and all things seemed as they had been before our meeting together. But I knew that the day would surely come when he would claim his beloved, and that in the spinning of their fates so slight a thing as the pranking of a fool had twisted itself into the very fibre of their lives, never to be unravelled until the shears of Atropos should cut the cords asunder.

III

APOLLO FULFILS HIS PROMISE

_Federigo de Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, gives his views of Raphael_

Then why too will he try so many things, Instead of sticking to one single art; He must be studying music, tw.a.n.ging strings, And writing sonnets with their ”heart and dart,”

Lately he's setting up for architect, And planning palaces, and, as I learn, Has made a statue--every art in turn.

W. W. STORY.

Raphael, as I have said, betook himself to Florence, that centre of the arts, and for a matter of four years I saw him not, nor can I, my Giulio, give you any record of his Florentine experiences, vital as they were to the flowering of his character and genius. I saw only the change; he left me a youth, nave, ignorant, but filled with a divine enthusiasm, inspired as it were by the very spirit of G.o.d. In those four years he became instructed, absorbing all that was best from ancient and modern art, but still a mystic, a young archangel in knowledge and power.

He studied first with Fra Bartolommeo in the cloister of San Marco, and the painter-monk yearned over him, as the child of his soul. But he divined also from the mere beholding of Da Vinci's pictures what I had been able to learn only by painful study, the secret of the master's charm.

At the same time the strong undercurrent of the Greek spirit rife in Florence was bearing him irresistibly on to his mission as leader of all that is beautiful, joyous, and n.o.ble in cla.s.sical art. Fra Bartolommeo could not fail to be distressed by these tendencies in his disciple.

Raphael came to him one day saying, ”Beloved Master, his holiness the Pope has called me to Rome; and I go with joy, for it has been revealed to me that there I shall find Apollo.”

”Ah! my son,” the pious painter replied in anguished warning, ”beware, for whoso findeth Apollo loseth Christ.”

And now I come to our Roman life and especially to that familiar intercourse at the Villa Chigi where Raphael and I were nearer of one spirit, for all your opportunities, than were you and he, my Giulio. In Rome, as in Siena, I preceded him, and had the better chance for fortune's favours, which I wilfully threw away. For early in his pontificate, Pope Julius II. made Agostino Chigi his banker and farmer of the alum mines whose yearly revenue was estimated at $100,000. Nor did Chigi with this elevation forget old friends, for in the spring of 1507 he came to Siena to fetch me as a personal favour to Rome, but on our arrival he introduced me to the Pope, and obtained from him my commission to decorate the Stanza della Segnatura. But, fool that I was, I fancied my luck could not desert me, and painted only when it pleased me, ran my horses at all the races in Italy, and played the dandy, the spendthrift, and the roistering spark, until his Holiness in disgust turned me from the Vatican, and called Raphael to take my place, bidding him erase the little work I had done upon the ceiling.

This, however, Raphael refused to do. On the contrary he did me the honour to paint my portrait beside his own, where you may see both of them to-day in that glorious fresco of the _School of Athens_, the serious inspired face of the young maestro cheek by cheek with the coa.r.s.er features of his laughing, devil-may-care friend; and I prize more highly that testimony of his esteem than all the other honours of my life.

I lingered on aimlessly at Rome, watching him at his work, fascinated by the superb conceptions with which he glorified the walls of the Vatican, and admiring the daring which enthroned Apollo and his attendant muses there in the very sanctuary of Christendom.

It was his homage to the old wors.h.i.+p, his endeavour to bring back Apollo, and that he thought then of Maria Dovizio's promise that he should find her when this was accomplished I had one day convincing proof; for, turning over his sketches, I found scribbled upon the back of a study for the _Disputa_ this sonnet:

”LOVE'S BONDAGE”

”Love, thou hast bound me with a cruel force, The light of her two tender starry eyes, A face like snow flushed rose 'neath sunset skies, With gentle bearing and with chaste discourse.

But I would make no plaint, so great my bliss.

The more I love, I long to love again.

How light the yoke, how sweet the circling chain Of her arms round my neck! And 'neath her kiss Leaps forth the embodied soul in ecstacy.

Unloosed those bonds I suffer ceaseless pain, For great joy kills whom it doth wholly move.

Though throbbing still with tender thought of thee, My heart is heavy and I speak in vain, But be my silence eloquent of love.”[3]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_