Part 97 (1/2)

”Wilt read me of them some day?”

”And willingly, signor. But what would they say who employ me, were I to break off work?”

”Oh never heed that; know you not who I am? I am Jacques Bonaventura, nephew to his holiness the Pope, and captain of his guards. And I came here to look after my fellows. I trow they have turned them out of their room for you.” Signor Bonaventura then hurried away. This lively companion however having acquired a habit of running into that little room, and finding Gerard good company, often looked in on him, and chatted ephemeralities while Gerard wrote the immortal lives.

One day he came a changed, and moody man, and threw himself into a chair, crying ”Ah, traitress! traitress!” Gerard inquired what was his ill? ”Traitress! traitress!” was the reply. Whereupon Gerard wrote Plutarch. Then says Bonaventura ”I am melancholy; and for our Lady's sake read me a story out of Ser Plutarcho, to sooth my bile: in all that Greek is there nought about lovers betrayed?”

Gerard read him the life of Alexander. He got excited, marched about the room, and embracing the reader, vowed to shun ”soft delights,” that bed of nettles, and follow glory.

Who so happy now as Gerard? His art was honoured, and fabulous prices paid for it; in a year or two he should return by sea to Holland, with good store of money, and set up with his beloved Margaret in Bruges, or Antwerp, or dear Augsburg, and end their days in peace, and love, and healthy, happy labour. His heart never strayed an instant from her.

In his prosperity he did not forget poor Pietro. He took the Fra Colonna to see his picture. The friar inspected it severely and closely, fell on the artist's neck, and carried the picture to one of the Colonnas, who gave a n.o.ble price for it.

Pietro descended to the first floor; and lived like a gentleman.

But Gerard remained in his garret. To increase his expenses would have been to postpone his return to Margaret. Luxury had no charms for the single-hearted one, when opposed to love.

Jacques Bonaventura made him acquainted with other gay young fellows.

They loved him, and sought to entice him into vice, and other expenses.

But he begged humbly to be excused. So he escaped that temptation. But a greater was behind.

CHAPTER LXII

FRA COLONNA had the run of the Pope's library, and sometimes left off work at the same hour and walked the city with Gerard; on which occasions the happy artist saw all things en beau, and was wrapped up in the grandeur of Rome and its churches, palaces, and ruins.

The friar granted the ruins, but threw cold water on the rest.

”This place Rome? It is but the tomb of mighty Rome.” He showed Gerard that twenty or thirty feet of the old triumphal arches were underground, and that the modern streets ran over ancient palaces; and over the tops of columns; and coupling this with the comparatively narrow limits of the modern city, and the gigantic vestiges of antiquity that peeped above ground here and there, he uttered a somewhat remarkable simile.

”I tell thee this village they call Rome is but as one of those swallows' nests ye shall see built on the eaves of a decayed abbey.”

”Old Rome must indeed have been fair then,” said Gerard.

”Judge for yourself, my son; you see the great sewer, the work of the Romans in their very childhood, and shall outlast Vesuvius. You see the fragments of the Temple of Peace. How would you look could you see also the Capitol with its five-and-twenty temples? Do but note this Monte Savello: what is it, an it please you, but the ruins of the ancient theatre of Marcellus? and as for Testacio, one of the highest hills in modern Rome, it is but an ancient dust heap; the women of old Rome flung their broken pots and pans there, and lo; a mountain.

'Ex pede Herculem; ex ungue leonem.'”

Gerard listened respectfully, but when the holy friar proceeded by a.n.a.logy to imply that the moral superiority of the heathen Romans was proportionally grand, he resisted stoutly. ”Has then the world lost by Christ his coming?” said he; but blushed, for he felt himself reproaching his benefactor.

”Saints forbid!” said the friar. ”'Twere heresy to say so.” And, having made this direct concession, he proceeded gradually to evade it by subtle circ.u.mlocution, and reached the forbidden door by the spiral back staircase. In the midst of all which they came to a church with a knot of persons in the porch. A demon was being exorcised within. Now Fra Colonna had a way of uttering a curious sort of little moan, when things Zeno or Epicurus would not have swallowed were presented to him as facts. This moan conveyed to such, as had often heard it, not only strong dissent, but pity for human credulity, ignorance, and error, especially of course when it blinded men to the merits of Pagandom.

The friar moaned, and said, ”Then come away.”

”Nay, father, prithee! prithee! I ne'er saw a divell cast out.”

The friar accompanied Gerard into the church, but had a good shrug first. There they found the demoniac forced down on his knees before the altar with a scarf tied round his neck, by which the officiating priest held him like a dog in a chain.

Not many persons were present, for fame had put forth that the last demon cast out in that church went no farther than into one of the company: ”as a cony ferreted out of one burrow runs to the next.”