Earthwork Out Of Tuscany

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"O Dio de' Dei!
La piu bellina mi parete voi;
O quanto sete cara agli occhi miei!"

[Footnote 1: Historically he could have done none of these things, except,
perhaps, fight at Altopascio.]

And so the days passed in your square corner palace, until the plague came
down with the North wind, and you bowed your proud neck before it like a
mountain pine. Young to die, young to die and leave the pleasant ways of
Lucca, the green ramparts, the grassy walks in the pastures where the
hawks fly and the shadows fleet over the green and gold of early May.
Young enough, Ilaria. Scorner of love, now Death is at hand, with the
bats' wings and wet scythe they give him in the Piazza, when your lord
comes triumphing or God's Body takes the air: what of him, Madonna? Let
him come, says Ilaria, with raised eyebrows and a wintry smile. Yet she
fought: her thin hands held off the scythe at arms' length; she set her
teeth and battled with the winged beast. Whenas she knew it must be,
suddenly she relaxed her hold, and Death had his way with her.

Then her women came about her and robed her in a long robe, colour of
olive leaves, and soft to the touch. And they covered soberly her feet and
placed them on a crouching dog, which was Lucca. But her fine hands they
folded peace-wise below her bosom, to rest quietly there like the clasps
of a girdle. Her gentle hair (bright brown it was, like a yearling
chestnut) they crowned also, and closed down her ringed eyes. So they let
her lie till judgment come. And when I saw her the close robe still folded
her about and ran up her throat lovingly to her chin, till her head seemed
to thrust from it as a flower from its calyx. It would seem, too, as if
her bosom rose and fell, that her nostrils quivered when the wind blew in
and touched them; and the hem of her garment being near me, I was fain to
kiss it and say a prayer to the divinity haunting that place. So I left
the presence well disposed in my heart to glorify God for so fair a sight.

Whereafter I took the way to Florence among the vineyards and tangled
hill-sides; and, anon, in the broad plain I stayed at Prato to honour the
lady of the town. Madonna della Cintola she is called now, and one Luca, a
worker in clay, knew her mind most intimately and did all her will. Quiet
days she had lived at Prato, being wife to a decent metal-worker there and
keeper of his house and stuff. Mariota she was then called for all her
name, but as to her parentage none knew it, save that Marco's Vanna had
been both frail and fair, and when she had been in flower the great Lord
Ottoboni had flowered likewise--and often in her company. Giovanna I had
never known; she died before her lord married the lady Adhelidis of Verona
and the seven days' tilting were held in her honour in a field below the
city wall. But when Luca first knew Mariota and saw how her mother's pride
beaconed from her smooth brow, the girl was standing in the Piazza in a
tattered green kirtle and bodice that gaped at the hooks, played upon by
sun, and fallow wind, and longing looks driven at her eyes in vain. The
wench carried her head and light fardel of years like a Princess; would
laugh to show her fine teeth if your jest pleased her; and then she would
look straightly upon you and be glad of you. If you pleased her not, she
would look through you to the mountains or the church-tower. She had as
squarely a modelled chin as ever I saw, and her lips firmly set and redder
than strawberries in a wet May. None taught her anything; none, that Luca
could learn, gave her sup or bed. He was a boy then and would have given
her both. I think she knew he favoured her--what girl does not? Everybody
favoured Mariota, stayed as she passed, and followed her stealthily with
troubled eyes. But he was a moody boy then, at the mercy of dreams, and
stammered when he was near her, blushing. When he came back she was
seventeen years old, and the metal-worker's wife. It was then Luca saw
her, in the street called of the Eye, where climbing plants top the
convent wall and from the garden comes the scent of wall-flowers and sweet
marjoram.

At her man's door she was standing, barefooted, fray-kirtled as of old;
but riper, of more assured and triumphant beauty. In her arms a boy-child,
lusty and half-naked, struggled to be fed, seeking with both fat hands to
forage for himself. Turning her grey eyes, where pride slumbered and shame
had never been, she knew Luca again, made him welcome at the door, with,
superb assurance set wine and olives and bread before him; and so stood at
the table while he ate, gravely recovering one by one the features of his
face, smiling, preoccupied with her pleasure and unconscious of the cooing
child. For with matronly composure she had eased my gentleman as soon as
she had provided for her guest.

In comes the metal-worker, Sor Matteo, burly but watchful in a greasy
apron, eyes the lad up and down with much burdensome pondering of hand to
scrubby chin, as to say to Mariota "I'm no fool." With never a blush, nor
a quailing of the eyes' level beam, Mariota begs cousin Luca to become
conscious of her master.

There were the makings of a piece of right Boccacesque in all this, and
the _padrone_ showed manifest disinclination for his accustomed part:
but Luca's candid face disclaimed all dark-entry work. Mariota hurried to
her task. A modeller in clay, a statuary, _via_, an admirer of the
choicer contrivings of Mother Nature! What and if he should find his
cousin, his scarce-remembered gossip Mariota, worth an artist's half-
closed eye! And the _bambinaccio_ (with a side-look and face averted
as she spoke)--_ecco_!--many a Gesulino showed a leaner thigh and
cheeks less peachy than he. Had Papa seen the new dimple in Beppino's
chin? And more soft piping to the same tune. Master Matteo was appeased;
but Luca was far adrift with other matters. Love, for him, lay not in
flesh and blood alone; rather, in what flesh and blood signified in
another clay, not Messer Domeneddio's, but his own chosen task-stuff. He
had come hither to Prato on the commission of the Opera, to work a
_Madonna col Bambino_ for the great door of the Duomo. Well! he had
his Madonna to hand, it would seem:--Mariota at the door of the smith's
house, confident, lissom and fresh, and the lusty child groping for his
breakfast. The light had been upon her, gleamed upon her skin, her
brimming eyes, her glossy brown hair. What a bravery was hers! What a
glorified presentment of young life, new-budded, was here! The town gaped,
the husband admired; but Mariota, with her square chin and high carriage,
looked as straightly before her, when in pale blue and silver-white,
Madonna with the Babe and the holy deacons Stephen and Laurence stood,
four months afterwards, within the shadow of the great church, and shone
out to the day.

I pay silent respect to strapping Mariota and her baby-boy In the country
of Boccace. Then, when I am in Florence again, under the spell of the city
life, I lounge in the Borg' Ognissanti, or across Arno in the
_quartiere_ San Niccolo, or out by San Frediano where Botticelli in
his green old age pruned his vines, or in the pent streets between the Via
della Pergola and Santa Croce, and watch the townsfolk lead their lives of
patchwork and easy laughter, I fear I have a taste for such company. I am
fond of verdure; I like trees as well as men: every oak for me has its
hamadryad informing it, I like flowers better than men; and the most
beautiful flower I know is a girl, I have a sweetheart in the Bargello, as
you shall hear. I believe she is one of Donatello's sowing; but the
critics are divided, I cannot trace Verocchio's bluntened lineaments in
her, nor Mino's peaksomeness, nor anything of Desiderio. She's not very
pretty, but she's like a summer flower, say, a campanula; and that is why
I love to watch her and talk to her in this grandfatherly fashion.
Bettina, I say to her, are you, I wonder, twelve years old yet? You cannot
be much more I think, for you have let your bodice-strap slip off one of
your shoulders and betray you to the sun. You are but a round rose-bud now
and no one thinks any harm; but some day the sun will look at you in an
odd way, and then, suddenly, you will be ashamed, and draw your frock
right up to your neck.

And your hair strays where it likes at present. I know you have a golden
fillet of box-leaves round your brow: that is because you are only a
little girl still, not more than twelve. And you have tied the ends up in
a sort of knot. But you romp so much and laugh so--I know you have two
bright rows of little teeth--that you can never expect to keep tidy. Why,
even now, while I am scolding you, you are itching to laugh and run away.
I see a wavy lock trailing down your neck, _ragazza_, and those heavy
tresses on your temples, instead of being drawn meekly back, droop down
over your temples, and cover up your little ears. Don't you know that
Florentine, ladies are proud of their foreheads, and when they have pretty
ears, always show them? Some day, my dear, you will go out into the world;
and your hair will be twisted up into coils with gold braid; perhaps you
will have on it a flowery garland of Messer Domenico's making, and a
string of Venice beads round your throat. And when that time comes, you
won't let the sun play with your neck any more; he won't know his romp
when he sees her in stiff velvet of Genoa and a high collar edged with
seed-pearls.

And you won't look me in the eyes as you are doing now, saucy girl, with
your chin pushed forward and your mouth all in a pucker--who's to know
whether you are going to pout or giggle?--and your pert green eyes wide
open, as if to say "Who's this old thickhead staring at me so hard?" No,
Bettina, you will drop them instead; you will blush all over your neck and
cheeks, and hang your round head. You have chestnuts in your two fists
now, I know; there's some of the flour sticking to the corners of your
mouth, little slut. But then you will have a fan perhaps, or a spyglass,
or at least a mass-book in the mornings; and when I am looking at you,
your ringers will tie themselves in knots and be very interesting. In two
years' time, Bettina!

But though I shan't love you half as much as I do now, I shall always come
to see you, I think; and, as I shall be a very old man by that time,
perhaps you will still sit on a stool at my knee and give me a kiss now
and then--oh, a mere bird's peck, just for kindness.... The Via de' Bardi
is grey, and you are there in yellow. You are like a young daffodil
dancing in the winter grass. But soon you will have strained to your full
flower-time, and I see you in your summering, lithe and rather languid,
with heavy-lidded eyes, and a slow smile.

Then you will not dance; but, instead, you will stoop gravely like a tall
garden lily, and give your white hand to the lover kneeling below.

And all in two years, my little Bettina!

X

CATS

There was once a man in Italy--so the story runs--who said that animals
were sacred because God had made them. People didn't believe him for a
long time; they came, you see, of a race which had found it amusing to
kill such things, and killed a great many of them too, until it struck
them one fine day that killing men was better sport still, and watching
men kill each other the best sport of all because it was the least
trouble. Animals! said they, why, how can they be sacred; things that you
call beef and mutton when they have left off being oxen and sheep, and
sell for so much a pound? They scoffed at this mad neighbour, looked at
each other waggishly, and shrugged their shoulders as he passed along the
street. Well! then, all of a sudden, as you may say, one morning he walked
into the town--Gubbio it was--with a wolf pacing at his heels--a certain
wolf which had been the terror of the country-side and eaten I don't know
how many children and goats. He walked up the main street till he got to
the open Piazza in front of the great church. And the long grey wolf
padded beside him with a limp tongue lolling out between the ragged
palings which stood him for teeth. In the middle of the Piazza was a
fountain, and above the fountain a tall stone crucifix. Our friend mounted
the steps of the cross in the alert way he had (like a little bird, the
story says), and the wolf, after lapping apologetically in the basin,
followed him up three steps at a time. Then with one arm round the shaft
to steady himself, he made a fine sermon to the neighbours crowding in the
Square, and the wolf stood with his forepaws on the edge of the fountain
and helped him. The sermon was all about wolves (naturally) and the best
way of treating them. I fancy the people came to agree with it in time;
anyhow when the man died they made a saint of him and built three
churches, one over another, to contain his body. And I believe it is
entirely his fault that there are a hundred-and-three cats in the convent-
garden of San Lorenzo in Florence. For what are you to do? Animals are
sacred, says Saint Francis. Animals are sacred, but cats have kittens; and
so it comes about that the people who agree with Saint Francis have to
suffer for the people who don't.

The Canons of San Lorenzo agree with Saint Francis, and it seems to me
that they must suffer a good deal. The convent is large; it has a great
mildewed cloister with a covered-in walk all round it built on arches. In
the middle is a green garth with cypresses and yews dotted about; and when
you look up you see the blue sky cut square, and the hot tiles of a huge
dome staring up into it. Round the cloister walk are discreet brown doors,
and by the side of each door a brass plate tells you the name and titles
of the Canon who lives behind it. It is on the principle of Dean's Yard at
Westminster; only here there are more Canons--and more cats.

The Canons live under the cloister; the cats live on the green garth, and
sometimes die there, I did not see much of the Canons; but the cats seemed
to me very sad-depressed, nostalgic even, I might describe them, if there
had not been something more languid, something faded and spiritless about
their habit. It was not that they quarrelled. I heard none of those long-
drawn wails, gloomy yet mellow soliloquies, with which our cats usher in
the crescent moon or hymn her when she swims at the full: there lacked
even that comely resignation we may see on any sunny window-ledge at
home;--the rounded back and neatly ordered tail, the immaculate fore-paws
peering sedately below the snowy chest, the squeezed-up eyes which so
resolutely shut off a bleak and (so to say) unenlightened world. That is
pensiveness, sedate chastened melancholy; but it is soothing, it speaks a
philosophy, and a certain balancing of pleasures and pains. In San Lorenzo
cloister, when I looked in one hot noon seeking a refuge from the glare
and white dust of the city, I was conscious of a something sinister that
forbade such an even existence for the smoothest tempered cat. There were
too many of them for companionship, and perhaps too few for the humour of
the thing to strike them: in and out the chilly shades they stalked
gloomily, hither and thither like lank and unquiet ghosts of starved cats.
They were of all colours--gay orange-tawny, tortoiseshell with the
becoming white patch over one eye, delicate tints of grey and fawn and
lavender, brindle, glossy sable; and yet the gloom and dampness of the
place seemed to mildew them all so that their brightness was glaring and
their softest gradations took on a shade as of rusty mourning. No cat
could be expected to do herself justice.

To and fro they paced, balancing sometimes with hysterical precision on
the ledge of the parapet, passing each other at whisker's length, but
_cutting each other dead_! Not a cat had a look or a sniff for his
fellow; not a cat so much as guessed at another's existence. Among those
hundred-and-three restless spirits there was not a cat but did not affect
to believe that a hundred-and-two were away! It was horrible, the
_inhumanity_ of it. Here were these shreds and waifs, these
"unnecessary litters" of Florentine households, herded together in the
only asylum (short of the Arno) open to them, driven in like dead leaves
in November, flitting dismally round and round for a span, and watching
each other die without a mew or a lick! Saint Francis was not the wise man
I had thought him.

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. I had watched these beasts at
their feverish exercises for nearly an hour before I perceived that they
were gradually hemming me in. They seemed to be forming up, in ranks, on
the garth. Only a ditch separated us--I was in the cloister-walk, a
hundred-and-three gaunt, expectant, desperate cats facing me. Their
famished pale eyes pierced me through and through; and two-hundred-and-two
hungry eyes (four cats supported life in one apiece) is more than I can
stand, though I am a married man with a family. These brutes thought I was
going to feed them! I was preparing weakly for flight when I heard steps
in the gateway; a woman came in with a black bag. She must be going to
deposit a cat on Jean-Jacques' ingenious plan of avoiding domestic
trouble; it was surely impossible she wanted to borrow one! Neither: she
came confidently in, beaming on our mad fellowship with a pleasant smile
of preparation. The cats knew her better than I did. Their suspense was
really shocking to witness. While she was rolling her sleeves up and tying
on her apron--she was poor, evidently, but very neat and wholesome in her
black dress and the decent cap which crowned her grey hair--while she
unpacked the contents of the bag--two newspaper parcels full of rather
distressing viands, scissors, and a pair of gloves which had done duty
more than once--while all these preparations were soberly fulfilling, the
agitation of the hundred-and-three was desperate indeed. The air grew
thick, it quivered with the lashing of tails; hoarse mews echoed along the
stone walls, paws were raised and let fall with the rhythmical patter of
raindrops. A furtive beast played the thief: he was one of the one-eyed
fraternity, red with mange. Somehow he slipped in between us; we
discovered him crouched by the newspaper raking over the contents. This
was no time for ceremony; he got a prompt cuff over the head and slunk
away shivering and shaking his ears. And then the distribution began. Now,
your cat, at the best of times, is squeamish about his food; he stands no
tricks. He is a slow eater, though he can secure his dinner with the best
of us. A vicious snatch, like a snake, and he has it. Then he spreads
himself out to dispose of the prey-feet tucked well in, head low, tail
laid close along, eyes shut fast. That is how a cat of breeding loves to
dine, Alas! many a day of intolerable prowling, many a black vigil, had
taken the polish off the hundred-and-three. As a matter of fact they
behaved abominably: they leaped at the scraps, they clawed at them in the
air, they bolted them whole with starting eyes and portentous gulpings,
they growled all the while with the smothered ferocity of thunder in the
hills. No waiting of turns, no licking of lips and moustaches to get the
lingering flavours, no dalliance. They were as restless and suspicious
here as everywhere; their feast was the horrid hasty orgy of ghouls in a
churchyard.

But an even distribution was made: I don't think any one got more than his
share. Of course there were underhand attempts in plenty, and, at least
once, open violence--a sudden rush from opposite sides, a growling and
spitting like sparks from a smithy; and then, with ears laid flat, two
ill-favoured beasts clawed blindly at each other, and a sly and tigerish
brindle made away with the morsel. My woman took the thing very coolly I
thought, served them all alike, and didn't resent (as I should have done)
the unfortunate want of delicacy there was about these vagrants. A cat
that takes your food and growls at you for the favour, a cat that would
eat _you_ if he dared, is a pretty revelation. _Ca donne
furieusement a penser_. It gives you a suspicion of just how far the
polish we most of us smirk over will go. My cats at San Lorenzo knew some
few moments of peace between two and three in the afternoon. That would
have been the time to get up a testimonial to the kind soul who fed them.
Try them at five and they would ignore you. But try them next morning!

My knowledge of the Italian tongue, in those days, was severely limited to
the necessaries of existence; to take me on a fancy subject, like cats,
was to strike me dumb. But at this stage of our intercourse (hitherto
confined to smiles and eye-service) it became so evident my companion had
something to say that I must perforce take my hat off and stand attentive.
She pointed to the middle of the garth, and there, under the boughs of a
shrub, I saw the hundred-and-fourth cat, sorriest of them all. It was a
new-comer, she told me, and shy. Shy it certainly was, poor wretch; it
glowered upon me from under the branches like a bad conscience. Shyness
could not hide hunger--I never saw hungrier eyes than hers--but it could
hold it in check: the silkiest speech could not tempt her out, and when we
threw pieces she only winced! What was to be done next was my work. Plain
duty called me to scale the ditch with some of those dripping, slippery,
nameless cates in my fingers and to approach the stranger where she lurked
bodeful under her tree. My passage towards her lay over the rank
vegetation of the garth, in whose coarse herbage here and there I stumbled
upon a limp white form stretched out--a waif the less in the world! I
don't say it was a happy passage for me: it was made to the visible
consternation of her I wish to befriend. Her piteous yellow eyes searched
mine for sympathy; she wanted to tell me something and wouldn't
understand! As I neared her she shivered and mewed twice. Then she limped
painfully off--poor soul, she had but three feet!--to another tree,
leaving behind her, unwillingly enough, a much-licked dead kitten. That
was what she wanted to tell me then. As I was there, I deposited the
garbage by the side of the little corpse, knowing she would resume her
watch, and retired. My friend who had put up her parcels was prepared to
go. She thanked me with a smile as she went out, looking carefully round
lest she had missed out some other night-birds. One of the Canons had come
out of his door and was leaning against the lintel, thoughtfully rubbing
his chin. He was a spare dry man who seemed to have measured life and
found it a childish business. He jerked his head towards the gateway as he
glanced at me. "That is a good woman," he said in French, "she lendeth
unto the Lord.... Yes," he went on, nodding his head slowly backwards and
forwards, "lends Him something every day." The cats were sitting in the
shady cloister-garth licking their whiskers: one was actually cleaning his
paw. I went out into the sun thinking of Saint Francis and his wolf.

XI

THE SOUL OF A CITY

He hated Marco first of all because one day he undersold him in the Campo,
put him to shame in open market. Figs were going cheap that October in
spite of the waning year; but there was no earthly reason why he should
give the English ladies more than four for two _soldi_. What were
_soldi_ to English people? The scratch of a flea! He would have given
them a handful, taken as they came, for their piece of _cinquanta_,
and reaped a tidy little profit for himself. Who would have been the
worse? God knew he needed it. Mariola crumpled with the ague like a dried
leaf, and that long girl of his growing up so fast, and still running wild
with goat-herds and marble quarrymen. How could he send her to the nuns
for a place unless he bought her some shoes and a rosary? And then that
pig Marco--thieving old miser--peered forward with his mock candour and
silver-rimmed goggles and offered _ten_ for two _soldi_--ten!
with the market price, _Dio mio_, at twelve! And _fichi totati_
too! Do you wonder that the ladies in striped blankets gave the cheek to
Maso Cecci and turned to Marco Zoppa?

That wasn't all, but it was an accentuation of a long series of spiteful
injuries wrought him by the wrinkled old villain. Maso endured, hating the
old man daily more and more; tried little tricks, little revenges, upon
him, upset his baskets, hid his pipe; but they generally failed or
recoiled with a nasty swiftness upon himself. He only got deeper and
deeper into the bad odour of the neighbours who traded in the Piazza with
fruit and indifferent photographs. Nothing went very well--thanks to that
unspeakable old Marco! His girl grew longer and lazier and handsomer, with
a shapelier bust and a pair of arms like that snaky Bacchante in the
_Opera_. Maso had to quail more than he liked to admit before the
proud stare of her eyes; and when she dropped the heavy lids upon them and
sauntered away, arms akimbo under her shawl, he could only swear. And he
always cursed Marco Zoppa who gave her chestnuts and sage counsel for
nothing. God only knew what devilry he might be whispering to her in the
shady corner where the sun never came and the grass sprouted between the
flags--she leaning against the wall, looking down at her toes, and he
peering keen-eyed into her face and muttering in his beard, sometimes
laying an old brown hand on her shoulder--Lord! he _did_ hate the
man.

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