Chapter III

While all this tumult was raging round the house, and within the heart of Giacomo, the student's lamp was burning, how calm, how still, in the remote and secluded chamber of his friend Petrarch! To him, out of a kind and considerate regard, and from no distrust in his zeal or attachment, the ardent lover had concealed his perilous enterprise. Remote from the whole scene, and remote from all the passions of it, sat the youthful sage; not remote, however, from deep excitements of his own. Far from it. Reflection has her emotions thrilling as those of passion. He who has not closed his door upon the world, and sat down with books and his own thoughts in a solitude like this--may have lived, we care not in how gay a world, or how passionate an existence,--he has yet an excitement to experience, which, if not so violent, is far more prolonged, deeper, and more sustained than any he has known,--than any which the most brilliant scenes, or the most clamorous triumphs of life, can furnish. What is all the sparkling exhilaration of society, the wittiest and the fairest,--what all the throbbings and perturbations of love itself, compared with the intense feeling of the _youthful thinker_, who has man, and God, and eternity for his fresh contemplations,--who, for the first time, perceives in his solitude all the grand enigmas of human existence lying unsolved about him? His brow is not corrugated, his eye is not inflamed: he sits calm and serene--a child would look into his face and be drawn near to him--but it seems to him that on his beating heart the very hand of God is lying.

The poet had closed his door, and unrolled before his solitary lamp his favourite manuscript, "The Tusculan Disputations of Cicero." How well that solitary lamp burning on so vivid and so noiseless--the only thing there in motion, but whose very motion makes the stillness more evident, the calm more felt; how well that lamp--the very soul, as it seems, of the little chamber it illumines--harmonises with the student's mood! How it makes bright the solitude around him! How it brings sense of companionship and of life where nothing but it--and thought--are stirring!

But though the young student had seated himself to his intellectual feast, it was evident that he was not quite at his ease; there was something which occasioned him a slight disquietude. In truth he was destined, by his father, to be "learned in the law;" was enjoying a stolen fruit; and whatever the well-known proverb may say, we have never found, ourselves, that any enjoyment is heightened by a sense of insecurity in its possession, or a thought of the possible penalty which may be the consequence of its indulgence. Petrarch might have been observed to listen attentively to every footstep on the great staircase that served the whole wing of the building to which his little turret belonged; and till the step was lost, or he was sure that it had stopped at some lower stage in the house, he suspended the perusal of his manuscript, and sat prepared to drop the precious treasure into a chest that stood open at his feet, and to replace it by an enormous volume of jurisprudence which lay ready at hand for this piece of hypocritical service. This peculiarly nervous condition was the result of a paternal visit which had been paid him, most unexpectedly, a few evenings before. His father, suspecting that he was more devoted to the classics than to the study of the law, started suddenly from Avignon, stole upon his son unforewarned, ruthlessly snatched from him the prized manuscripts in which he found him absorbed, and committed them to the flames. Petrarch, of gentle temper, and full of filial respect, ventured upon no resistance; but when he saw his Virgil and his Cicero put upon his funeral pyre, he burst into a flood of uncontrollable tears. His father, who was not himself without a love of classic literature, but who was anxious for his son's advancement in the world, and his study of a profession on which that advancement appeared entirely to depend, was smit with compassion and some remorse. These last two manuscripts he rescued himself from the flames, and restored to his disconsolate son, with the repeated admonition, however, to indulge less in their perusal, nor to allow them to take the place due to the science of jurisprudence.

"Science!" said the young enthusiast, who had recovered something of his self-possession: "Can conclusions wrested often with perverted ingenuity from artificial principles and arbitrary axioms, be honoured with the name of science? And the law, to obtain this fictitious resemblance to a science, leaves justice behind and unthought of. I will study it, my father, as I would practise any mechanical art, if you should prescribe it as a means of being serviceable to my family; but you--who are a scholar--ah! place not a tissue of technicalities, however skilfully interwoven, on a level with truth, which has its basis in the nature of things. I would help my fellow-men to justice; but must I spend my life, and dry up and impoverish my very soul, in regulating his disputes according to rules that are something very different from justice?--often mere logical deductions from certain legal abstractions, in which all moral right and wrong,--all substantial justice between man and man, is utterly forgotten?"

"My son," said the father, "you are young, and therefore rash. You think it, perhaps, an easy thing to do justice between man and man. _We cannot do justice between man and man._ No combination of honesty and intelligence can effect it; the whole compass of society affords no means for its accomplishment. To administer moral justice, each case must be decided on its own peculiar merits, and those merits are to be found in the motives of the human heart. We cannot promise men justice. But we must terminate their disputes. Therefore it is we have a system of law--our only substitute for justice--by which men are contented to be governed because it _is_ a system, and applicable to all alike. Believe me, that wise and able men of all countries are well occupied in rendering more symmetrical, more imposing, and as little immoral and unjust as possible, their several systems of jurisprudence."

Petrarch was silent; it was neither his wish nor his policy to prolong the discussion. Besides, his heart was too full. Had he dared, he would have pleaded for his own liberty; for choice of poverty and intellectual freedom--for poverty and greatness! But what he felt within him of the promptings of ambition, the assurance of fame, the consciousness of genius, he had too much modesty to express. He could not do justice to himself, without appearance of overweening pride. It was better to be silent than to say but half.

It was the remembrance of this visit which, on the present occasion, made him listen with a painful curiosity to every step upon the stairs. And now a step _was_ heard. It came nearer and nearer, higher and higher--a rapid step which never paused an instant till it reached his own door. A loud knocking followed. But this time it was no spy upon his literary hours. On opening the door, a fellow-student, breathless with haste, rushed into the room, and related the tragical event which had taken place at the house of their common friend Giacomo.

Petrarch immediately descended and ran to meet his friend. He found him already a prisoner! The Podesta, willing, however, to treat the unhappy student with as much lenity as possible, had converted his own apartments into his prison. He well knew, also, the honourable character of his prisoner; the granting this indulgence enabled him to exact his word of honour not to escape, and he probably judged, considering the extreme popularity of Giacomo in the university, that this was a greater security for his safe custody than any walls, or any guard, which he had at his command in Bologna.

Petrarch was horror-struck when he came fully to apprehend the extreme peril to which his friend had exposed himself. Whatever were his motives, he had committed, in fact, a capital offence, and one to be classed amongst the most heinous; it was the crime of abduction he had perpetrated, and for which he stood exposed to the penalty of death. The poet fell weeping into the arms of his friend.

"Alas!" said Giacomo, "she would not hear me!" The inflexibility of Constantia was still the only grief that dwelt upon his mind. "She stood there--on that spot--I could kiss the traces of her footstep could I see them--cold, cold as the statue--I might have prayed with better hope to the sculptured marble!"

But Petrarch did not limit his kind offices to sympathy and lamentation. Meditative as he was by character, and little habituated to what is called the business of life, he saw clearly the grave nature of his friend's position. The crime which Giacomo had actually committed--the abduction from her home of a noble virgin--subjected him, as we have said, to the punishment of death. Those only who could have read his heart, or knew the purity of his intentions, could have acquitted him; and even to those, his conduct would have appeared rash and unjustifiable. But to the citizens of Bologna, irritated and all but at war with the university, disposed to magnify every offence committed by a member of that body, and exasperated, moreover, by the late fruitless contest in which they had been engaged--the act of Giacomo would appear in all its unmitigated criminality. They were, in fact, resolved that he should not escape the utmost rigour of the law; they were already clamouring aloud for his death--his public execution.

There was but one man in Bologna who could save him. This was Romeo de' Pepoli, a man exceedingly rich--by far the richest in the city--and who, by a popular use of his wealth, had obtained a great ascendency in the republic. This Romeo de' Pepoli was secretly aiming at the tyranny. He failed, owing to the awakened jealousy of the people; but although he himself was banished from the city at the very moment when he seemed about to reap the fruits of his nefarious intrigues, he prepared the way to power for his sons, who were for some time tyrants of Bologna. There was no doubt that this man--and he alone--was able, if he chose, to rescue Giacomo from his threatened fate. For should his influence with the citizens fail to mitigate their animosity, still, in all the ill-assured governments of that day, such exorbitant wealth as he possessed gave something more than influence. Judgments of law were almost always to be bought, if a price high enough could be paid, or an armed force could be hired which would set the judgment of a court at defiance, and prevent its execution.

To this eminent citizen and nobleman Petrarch betook himself. So remarkable an event as that which had lately transpired in the city, we may be sure, had drawn the attention of this wily and ambitious personage. At first he had adopted the indignation and anger of the citizens, as being the part most likely to increase his popularity. But on reflection it had occurred to him, that a still greater advantage might perhaps be taken of this event, if, through his skilful mediation, and a dexterous advocacy of the cause of Giacomo, he should be able to obtain the favour and partisanship of the more spirited members of the university. Over these, no one had so great an influence as Giacomo--in the cause of no one could they be more deeply interested--nor was it likely that, an occasion would arise in which he could serve them more signally than by coming to his rescue. On the other hand, a thousand ways would still be open to appease and conciliate the offended citizens. Add to all which, Giacomo himself, like all those on whom classical literature and the early histories of Rome and of Greece were just re-opening, was distinguished by an ardent zeal for liberty. Without seeking actually to intermeddle in the political affairs of the city, he and his associates were accustomed--probably in much the same manner as the German students of the present day--to proclaim and uphold the cause of freedom in their songs, and with the oratory of the wine-cup. They might be calculated on as stanch friends to the republic, and deadly opponents to the tyranny. To gain over this band of ardent and enthusiastic spirits, would be a great step in the prosecution of his ambitious enterprise. Even their neutrality would be an incalculable advantage to him.

Petrarch had been always well received by one who was anxious to win all sorts of golden opinions, and therefore desirous to be thought an admirer of learning and a patron of youthful genius. On the present occasion, he found the ambitious nobleman singularly courteous, and not indisposed to listen to his ardent vindication of Giacomo. With the usual artifice of such men, Pepoli appeared to be listening to the reasoning of the young advocate, whilst he was revolving only his own thoughts, and was not unwilling to let it appear that predeterminations of his own were the results of another's eloquence.

"Let me see your unfortunate friend," he said, with a sort of relenting air; "something, perhaps, maybe done--I cannot tell. But you see the whole town is in arms against him. I shall be risking," he added with a smile,--for there is nothing more common with crafty men than to speak the very truth in a light jesting manner, giving their earnest motives the air of sport, and so expressing and disguising themselves at the same time--"I shall be risking all my popularity with the good Bolognese--I must proceed cautiously."

Petrarch ran back, full of sanguine hope, to his friend, and repeated the result of his mission. Giacomo shook his head mournfully. He was slow to enter into the exhilarating prospects placed before him. Perhaps he had read deeper into the character of this man than Petrarch.

The interview which Pepoli desired took place. What circuitous terms the ambitious man employed to suggest the price which was to be paid for his intermediation, we do not know; but the smile on the lip of Giacomo was interpreted as the smile of intelligence and acquiescence. Of intelligence it certainly was. At this interview it was agreed that the student should assemble together some of the most ardent and influential of his friends, that he should present Pepoli to them, and induce them to swear a sort of allegiance and fidelity to his cause, in return for the aid he pledged himself to bring to Giacomo.

With the liberty allowed by the Podesta to his prisoner, it was not difficult to arrange this meeting. He was permitted to invite to supper a considerable number of his most faithful adherents and intimate associates. It being understood that Pepoli was to be one of the guests, there was still less scruple in granting this permission.

The supper passed off, as may be supposed under such circumstances, with little hilarity. Being brought to a conclusion, Giacomo, at whose side sat Pepoli, entreated the attention of his guests. He rose and addressed them. He began by proclaiming the intended mediation of Pepoli in his behalf. Cheers followed this announcement. He proceeded to enlarge on the wealth, the power, the manifest pre-eminence in the state which Pepoli had acquired. The students still applauded, but the exact drift of these somewhat ambiguous praises--ambiguous in the mouth of a republican speaking of a republican--they could not well perceive. Pepoli alone seemed to understand and to approve. He then solemnly called upon his friends to take an oath with him before he died.

"But you shall not die!" was the exclamation with which both Pepoli and the students interrupted him.

"An oath," he continued, not heeding this interruption, "which I exact from you in the name of friendship, in the name of virtue, in the name of liberty. Is it not generous, this offer of Pepoli--of him who has been the champion of the citizen against the student--the most popular man in all Bologna,--is it not generous that he should step forward to rescue my life from the blind rage and mad injustice of the multitude? But you must understand there is a certain price to be given for this generosity. You do not expect him to sacrifice his popularity, which is his power, out of mere compassion to one who has never courted nor applauded him, without receiving, in return, some compensation. If you accept his benefits, you must forward his counsels, you must promote his designs. Say, will you swear?"

"Yes! yes! we swear!" was the general response.

"Students of Bologna!" he proceeded, elevating his voice. "I accept this mark of your friendship. For my sake you have promised to swear. Now hear the oath I propose, and to which I bind you. This man offers me my life, and the price of it is--the liberty of Bologna! Fellow students, Romeo de' Pepoli aims at the tyranny. Swear that you will never, on any condition, for any boon, aid him in his flagitious enterprise; that you will thwart, and resist, and combat it to the utmost. Swear that you will, at all times, reject his mediation--as I now reject, utterly and with scorn, the service that he proffers me. I unmask him to you ere I die. I, too, have lived for one good purpose. This man, my friends, would be tyrant of Bologna--swear, to me that he shall _not_!"

There was a pause of a few seconds. But it was soon evident that the noble spirit--of patriotism and of self-sacrifice--of their admired friend, had found a genuine response in all his hearers. He had touched the true chord. Carried forward by his disinterested enthusiasm, and pledged by the promise he, had somewhat artfully extorted from them, they rose, and with one voice repeated the oath proposed to, them. Pepoli, pale and aghast, and utterly confounded, and catching here and there the flashing of the half-drawn steel, made a precipitate retreat. Of all the assembly, Petrarch alone remained silent--he alone failed, or forgot, to take the oath;--full of concern for the safety of his noble friend, full of admiration for his greatness, he fell weeping upon his neck.