Part 17 (1/2)
Unfortunately the coquettish girl praised the beautiful eyes of Giulio d'Este, the Cardinal's younger brother, whereupon this prince of the Church hired a.s.sa.s.sins who waylaid his brother and tore out his offending eyes.
The Duke banished Ippolito temporarily, but Giulio brooded over the injury and conspired to depose Alphonso and place another brother, Don Ferrante, on the throne. For this act both Ferrante and Giulio were condemned to be imprisoned for life. Ferrante died in confinement but Giulio, after fifty-three years spent in a dungeon of the castle, was finally released.
It might have been expected that the blending of d'Este brutality with the unscrupulous Borgia craft would have given as a result only a more refined cruelty; but if this was the case Cardinal Ippolito II.
completely deceived his contemporaries and has left the reputation (through the pen of his panegyrist Mureto) of the utmost affable condescension and magnificent patronage of men of genius. He was himself a dilettante; and it was his ambition to pose as the most cultured and brilliant of the great cardinals of his day. Ippolito I. had been a boon companion of Leo X. in his hunting parties at the Villa La Magliana, but it was not as a ”_cacciator signorile_” or ”sporting gentleman” that Ippolito II. wished to eclipse the then ill.u.s.trious representative of the house of Medici, Cardinal Ferdinando, who was attempting to rival him in his magnificent villa on the Pincian hill.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Villa d'Este in 1740
From an etching by Piranesi]
It does not seem to have occurred to Mureto that both of these men were looking forward to the papacy, and desired to emulate in their own pontificates that of Leo X. Each piece of sculpture acquired for their villas, every literary man attached to their service was a step toward that end. Ippolito II. was as keen a hunter of genius as his uncle had been of deer or boar; and having once bagged his game, as capable of availing himself without scruple of his trophies as Ippolito I. of tearing the antlers from a dying stag.
The princely Cardinal entertained on one occasion a house party of two hundred and fifty guests in his palatial villa, and established here a veritable court. The grandiose frescoes of Zuccari, Tempesta, Muziano, and Vasari still celebrate the glories of his family under the guise of the heroes of mythology garlanded by troops and bevies of cupids, ”_una copiosa quant.i.ta di Amorini_.” But the G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds banquet all alone on the ceiling of the great hall where they once looked down upon the revels of the Cardinal's convives--n.o.ble or distinguished men all of them in their day, although the one name that comes to us of all who shared Ippolito's lavish hospitality and that sheds most glory upon his proud house is that of a poet, by turns patronised as a dependent, ungratefully neglected, and cruelly wronged.
The visitor is shown with pride the room so whimsically decorated with singing birds, where Ta.s.so wrote his _Amyntas_, and the Fountain of Nature in the lower garden where the pastoral was presented with musical accompaniment before a distinguished audience.
That Leonora d'Este was among those who listened, and indeed had been her uncle's guest and Ta.s.so's good and evil fate during the months which he spent at Villa d'Este, is the only conclusion possible for the thoughtful reader of the poem; and the idyl composed under such circ.u.mstances leads inevitably to the tragedy (enacted at that other villa) of Belriguardo, of which Goethe has given us so truthful and so masterly a transcription.
Cardinal Ippolito, as his portraits make him known to us, has none of the sensuality which stamped the face of his grandfather Pope Alexander Borgia, or the heaviness of jaw expressing the stubborness and brutality of the earlier D'Estes; on the contrary, every line of the slight figure is expressive of refinement, the delicate red-stockinged feet are as shapely as a woman's, the expressive, almost transparent hands might be those of an artist as they finger caressingly his collection of intaglios and luxuriate in the smoothness of jades and ivory carvings. His excessive pallor and thinness would give an expression of asceticism, almost of spirituality to the intellectual face were it not in a measure contradicted by the craft in the close-set, slanting eyes, which with the pointed, fulvous beard suggest a possibility of foxy cunning, and inspire in the beholder an uncomfortable, haunting feeling of distrust even when the Cardinal's manner is most condescending and cajoling.
So, robed in filmy lace over rosy velvet, we may see him in imagination tripping daintily down his monumental staircase, his train islanding his figure as in some ensanguined pool and slipping after him adown the steps like the drip of some trail of blood which strangely leaves no stain upon the white marble.
But his face is wreathed with smiles, for he genuinely loves his two beautiful nieces, Lucrezia, d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, and the gentle Leonora, who are his guests, and he loves his villa, whose beauties he is pointing out to them.
”You do not see the garden at its best,” he cavils. ”Wait till the roses garland the bal.u.s.trades. It is too early yet to enjoy Tivoli; the frost may have left the ground but it lingers still in the pavements of this great palace. The halls are damp as vaults; we would have done well, my nieces, to have remained another month in Rome. Not till the middle of May will society desert the city for its _villeggiatura_. What do you say, Leonora, shall we confess that we have made a mistake and return?”
”Dear uncle, as you say, it is only the palace which, in spite of its braziers, retains the winter chill. Here in the garden the air is balmy, and the Judas trees are all a crimson mist. See how the green is creeping, like an inundation through the russets of last year's gra.s.ses.
In another fortnight all this magical change will have been wrought, and those who come later will have missed the fairy spectacle.”
”Spectacle! ah! that reminds me,” replied the Cardinal; ”while Nature is s.h.i.+fting the scenes we must prepare the _scenario_. Confess that I have provided a worthy theatre, one which should suggest to a poet a worthy theme. There, alas! is my great lack--I have no poet. How wastefully on those who need them not are the most precious gifts bestowed! My uncle and G.o.dfather, Cardinal Ippolito--the saints rest his soul!--was a dull-brained barbarian and yet he had attached to his service that pearl of poets Ariosto, whom he had neither the intelligence to appreciate nor the justice to reward. What think you was Ariosto's meed for dedicating to his patron the _Orlando Furioso_? He was made governor of that nest of bandits, the mountain district of Garf.a.gnana, and it in open insurrection against the Duke of Ferrara. A pretty post for a scholar and a poet! But to it he went, and conquered the brigands, proving himself as expert in the use of the sword as in that of the pen.
”We produce no such men now. Bernardo Ta.s.so, to whom I gave employment when he was exiled from Naples, and who wandered freely in this garden, felt not its charm, for he was but a third-rate poet, and even he is dead. Who in our day can interpret the poetry which I feel here but cannot express? And with but so little more of endowment I might have done it, for after all is not the inner ear, the second sight, the major part of genius?
”Listen, and tell me what you hear. Only the musical plash of the fountains and the sonorous undertone of the organ, like the distant roar of surf upon the beach? Ah, me! ah, me! how materialistic you are, my children. Your old uncle hears in these myriad-voiced fountains the musical instruments which Boccaccio gave to the Satyrs; 'cymbals, pipes, and whistling reeds,' and the song of the nymphs. Did you note that startled cry? It is the Oread Arethusa flying from the river-G.o.d Alpheus. He is imprisoned in the organ, where he is mightily bellowing, and whence he will presently burst forth. But Arethusa will slip away (coquette that she is), under ground and under sea to her Sicilian home; for fable and stream sing eternally the same story, _Mulier hominis confusio est_.
”Tell me, my niece, have we in all Italy a poet who can voice such a theme?”
”Yes, uncle,” the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino interposed, ”Bernardo Ta.s.so's little son heard and understood the song of the fountains when he played here in his childhood. He told me that he believed a _folletto_ or tricksy spirit talked with him here and promised him that if he came again he would find here both love and fame. He can interpret your songs for you, for he has grown a man, and is a greater poet than his father.”
”And meantime,” added Leonora, ”he has absorbed all that the universities of Bologna and Padua can give him, and has written a romantic poem, the _Rinaldo_, on the exploits of one of our ancestors, that mythical old peer of Charlemagne, which he has dedicated to our house. It is in recognition of this tribute that our brother Luigi has made him his secretary.”
”And Luigi is at the French Court intriguing with the Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici. Torquato is doubtless with him,” replied the Cardinal. ”I ask you of what good to tantalise me with impossible suggestions? He had the eyes of a poet, that lad, and he might have served my turn.”
”He may still serve you, Uncle Ippolito, for he has quarrelled with Luigi, and is in Rome.”
”And wherefore in Rome? To curry favour with Cardinal de' Medici?”
”Possibly, for Ta.s.so is writing a great epic on the taking of Jerusalem by G.o.dfrey of Bouillon and his crusaders.”