Chapter III: The Feast at the Villa Farnesina

My own chambers were on a quiet street near Messere Raffaello’s lodgings at the Palazzo dei Convertendi. On the walk I had time to reflect that ere actually embracing a career in the Church I ought to write to my father’s friend, the Senator Contarini of Venice, for his opinion as to my chances of advancement at the French court.

“Surely,” I considered, “Marianna must realize that I cannot marry her if I am to seek a secular career. A cardinal’s daughter is all very well, but she is not a countess; while if I become a churchman everything will go on as now, and my money will still be just as useful to her and to Forli. And why should I take holy orders just to humor them?” Amid such reflections I came to my palazzo.

Although Messere Chigi had invited us to “a very simple supper,” I knew I ought not to ignore my toilet. All the world was aware that the Chigis were brothers to Croesus and Crassus, that their banks covered the Levant, that twenty thousand men manned their argosies, and that barring the Fuggers of Augsburg, no mortals had more ready money to lend to King or Pope. Accordingly, I let Andrea and my second and third valets dress me with some carefulness; and as I paused before the glass while Andrea gave me a finishing touch of civet, I told myself I would make a tolerable figure. My Milanese tailor had provided a gray suit which set my unimposing figure to good advantage,--with a genteel fulness at the sleeves, and fashionable slashes at the hips. Fine French lace at my throat, a gold chain of curious carving, a couple of antique cameo rings, and some excellent Venetian chasing upon my silver hilt and scabbard,--these would make people say, “His Excellency the Conte knows how to dress.” My own face was too familiar for me to observe keenly, yet I remember thinking that with my black hair and mustache, I certainly passed for an Italian gentleman, not for the heir of as old a German house as could be found in the rolls of nobility at Vienna.

It had been dark for hours when I returned to the Forli palace to escort Marianna. We went with half a dozen stout fellows of the Cardinal, as well as four men of my own, for we had no wish to meet the surprise awaiting Monsignore di Bari. But despite two suspicious looking fellows lurking in the shadows by the Ponte Sisto, we had no adventures and came safely to the Villa Farnesina across the river whither Messere Chigi had invited us.

The now famous decorations in the hall--by Raffaello and his pupils--were not yet complete, but above our heads were already traced the graceful forms and elegant draperies of the myth of Psyche; and the master’s glorious Galatea in the antechamber I had long before admired. But I confess I had little interest in the paintings that night. After so many years,--so many scenes, grave and gay, flitting in between,--I recall this banquet, even as I recall my meeting with Marianna in the gardens, clearly, vividly. For was not this to be the last day and evening of my old life? My life as a child of the Southland,--careless, free, joyous,--obeying the law of fair fancy, with the harsh words “duty” and “conscience” very far away. I have learned to view life differently, yet well do I recall it all!

Messere Chigi had surpassed himself. He greeted us with his wonted courtly grace.

At his side was his beautiful friend, Francesca Andreozza, whom, the year following, he was to marry. Her diamonds, I swear, were better than those of the Queen of England. Raffaello was there and his delightful Fornarina. Signor Bembo, the Pontifical Secretary, and arbiter of correct Latin and Italian poetry, had come with his pleasant companion, Donna Morosina; but I will not name all the cardinals and their escorts, nor the Roman gentlemen,--Orsinis, Contis, Colonnas, Ludovisis, Rospigliosis, and the rest. In short, there were more than forty covers laid, and for elegance of manner and brilliancy of conversation a more notable company could not have been found in Rome. The guests then were worthy of Messere Chigi’s best, which “best” implied a feast such as an Apicius might have laid for an emperor.

The hall was cooled by great fans fixed overhead and worked by invisible hands; in the centre rose a column whereon a beautiful boy, stripped, and gilded like a statue, stood pouring water from a silver urn. The scores of servants passing with silent feet were clad in Eastern silks. The seneschal in charge changed his gorgeous dress four times during the banquet. Rose water was brought for our hands. Many of the dishes were triumphs of art--statuary rather than confectionery. Perseus was shown saving Andromeda, and Ceres came in her chariot drawn by five tigers. There was a sturgeon five feet long upon one silver dish, and a stag served whole. The very bread was gilded. Yet with it all there was no burden in the magnificence. Messere Chigi had all his guests at their ease, and I soon found myself separated from Marianna, who sat opposite with Rocca, while my companion chanced to be the vivacious Contessa della Valle, with the learned Master “Censor” Priario close at hand.

I forget all that we talked about during the innumerable courses, but I recall that when some luscious pheasants were served, the Contessa shrugged her shoulders.

“After all,” smiled she, “it is not yet midnight and to-day was Friday.”

“All things are permitted in Rome,” I replied lightly. “How is that, my wise Priario?”

“Excellently said,” returned the censor, lifting a choice morsel. “Says not Scripture, ‘The Kings of the Earth take tribute of strangers, but the Children (ourselves, of course), are free.’”

“Full pardon, then!” cried the Contessa, who had taken enough wine to be a little gay. She helped herself, and I was complimenting her upon some fine corals, when Cardinale di Porto, near by, asked if I had read Pomponazzi of Mantua’s new essay upon “The Immortality of the Soul.”

“Yes, I have read it,” I assented; “but I cannot claim to judge it as an expert churchman.”

“Yet you have an opinion?”

“If I were a theologian, I should say the learned author has the incredulity of Lucretius and the infidelity of a Moslem.”

“Too harsh, my dear Conte. It is a most excellent book. The author declares clearly he submits to the Church in all its teachings, even if the immortality of the soul is disproved by all human reasoning.”

“Nevertheless,” I contended, “for much lesser heresies better men have walked to the stake.”

“The stake! Don’t mention the horrid word, Eccellenza,” begged the lady nervously.

“Nevertheless,” I rejoined, “the book is so dangerous and heretical that its sale is forbidden in Venice.”

“Of course,” retorted Porto, “your Venetian is ultra-orthodox; praised be the immortals, His Holiness is more liberal!”

“I fear he would not prove so liberal,” I ventured, “if instead of writing for a few philosophers, Pomponazzi had declared to the multitude that ‘since it is doubtful whether we have immortal souls, it is also doubtful whether we ought to pay tithes to Rome.’”

“There is no parallel!” cried the lady.

“The Contessa is right,” chimed Porto. “It is quite a different matter to advance a cautious theory for the learned few, than to cast pearls before swine,--I mean to cast sage conclusions before the ignorant.”

“We will deal with your second case when it arises,” thrust in Priario grimly, but at this moment the discussion was widened by a question I heard the learned Messere Bembo putting, a little way down the table.

“And tell me, my dear Chigi, how the last indulgence in Germany sells? Will it not relieve His Holiness’s financial troubles?”

“The sale has hardly begun,” returned the banker; “but since the Archbishop of Mainz has taken it over, it seems likely to prosper tolerably. The appeal to ‘build St. Peter’s Church’ opens purse strings. Then I hear that some admirably clever preachers have been hired to do the hawking.”

“Clever?” queried Bembo, looking up from his goblet. “It cannot need great cleverness to bewitch the money from the pouches of those ‘Barbarians,’ as the great Magister Gustiniani called them.”

“Yet you wrong our Northern friends,” said Chigi lightly. “True they have more fleas than Latin words, more beer than good wine; and yet they have a hearty rude civility and a learning after the old pious sort. I have been in Nuremberg. I avow it was a passably handsome city.”

“Impossible!” challenged the savant. “‘What good can come from such a land of the frozen Hyperboreï?’ as Plato most irrefutably says in the ninth chapter of the Timeaus--”

“We do not all understand Greek,” said Chigi deprecatingly. Perhaps he saw that my face was growing red, and that others were looking at me. “In my day I have seen many men of many countries. Believe me, even a blackamoor improves on acquaintance. The French have a good proverb, ‘The absent are always wrong.’”

But the secretary arose in the dogmatic pride of a complacent pedant.

“I have seen the brutes. I have learned to despise them. The French are tolerable, but the Germans--” a gesture completed his disgust. “Their best Latinist, Erasmus--who is he but a mere schoolboy still conning his Donatus’s grammar?”

I was on my feet; Chigi beckoned for silence, but Bembo swept on.

“No thanks to Julius Cæsar, I assert, for bringing this disgusting North by his conquests within reach of our civilization. Let them freeze and moulder in their bogs! If their present credulity, ‘the sins of the Germans’ as we say, is profitable to Rome,--whether to build St. Peter’s or to pay His Holiness’s debts--’tis but the just tribute of vice to virtue, of ignorance to learning. I tell you, Chigi, neither you nor another can name a German or a son of a German who was a tolerable scholar, and by habits a virtuoso and a gentleman.”

The savant paused for breath. I attacked instantly. I spoke in my best Latin, choosing each word carefully. The wine had only made my senses more acute. I could see Marianna signalling to me “caution,” but my fighting spirit was roused.

“Magister Bembo,” I began, “do me the honor to hearken. I tell you that I am the son of a German nobleman, as honorable and perfect a cavalier as ever drew a sword; and I will not have my father’s nation slandered to my face. If I have spent most of my life in my mother’s Southland, it is not through shame for my father’s North. Nobility and learning, and ripe wisdom there are in the North,--things which it ill becomes you men of erudition to deny. Honesty, kindliness and loyalty there are in the North--things which you of Italy might learn right well. And if the Germans still believe heartily divers matters of religion, which you of Italy pretend to believe, and scoff at in private,--the greater glory theirs, the greater shame for you!”

Bembo was red now, and it was not from wine; but I would not cease in order to let him speak. My own anger was kindling. I was precisely in the mood for plain truths and cutting words.

“Let us be frank, noble friends! You know that this Christian religion which is so often on our tongues is to us as great a legend as that of Isis and Osiris of Egypt. If we acknowledge a deity is He not in reality the God of Plato, not of Moses and the Nazarene? Are not our master-philosophers and teachers from Athens, not from Jerusalem? Our wise Bembo, I understand, has lately warned his students against reading St. Paul because of his bad Greek. Rather let us tell the world to withdraw from the teachings of Matthew and Luke because they are but fair fables. Let us not depose His Holiness--avert it, Gods!--let us rather proclaim him the leader, the arch-hierophant of ourselves the emancipated, the lovers of the beautiful, of the eternal verities which we grasp, not through blind Jewish tradition, but through exalted reason. Then--_then_ we can taunt the Germans for their credulity, when we have ceased to take their money, and ceased to profess to believe a lie.”

I had silenced Bembo. That triumph at least was mine. Stunned by my audacity, no one for a long moment either laughed or applauded. Then I saw a lady--in scared fashion--crossing herself. Several of the older cardinals were trying hard to look horrified. Then came a little ripple of voices, half-deriding, half-approving, if not my sentiments, at least my boldness. I stood for a moment with the hot flush on my cheeks, my heart prompting me to say more; but Marianna’s upraised finger commanded silence, and Chigi with ready wit answered for the writhing Bembo.

“Monsignore the Secretary, I am sure, spoke in haste and without intent to insult the ancestors or fatherland of so illustrious a gentleman as the Conte di Palaestro. As for the latter’s answer, let us all confess it was not unprovoked. In the heat of such a sortie no man can be required to weigh all he utters. The Conte would hardly subscribe to-morrow to all he has expressed to-night. Heaven forbid, we should either undervalue or overrate his words! Being no learned classicist, as are these highly esteemed gentlemen, I cry their pardon if I beg them to forego this discussion before this most noble and virtuous company.”

I had shot my arrow, and readily bowed assent. Bembo muttered something about “having no desire to wound the Conte’s honor.” Monsignore Priario and a couple of other ecclesiastics looked at me rather blackly, but I felt none the worse for that. The conversation became general, everybody steering clear of dangerous subjects. The Prince of Colonna explained the latest discoveries of the Spaniards in the Indies and the possibility of a great increase in the supply of gold. Raffaello spoke charmingly about his latest project for the reconstruction of San Pietro. Bembo--quite mollified--told of the rediscovery of a manuscript of Plautus at the Milanese library, while Rocca aired his ingenious theory of how the ancient gourmands served oysters. The night, or rather the morning, advanced. The candles were changed; more wine was passed--although nobody was drinking really to excess. We were so charmed by our own wit that no one noted the hour when we dismissed the subject of the Laocoön, lately installed in the Vatican Belvidere, and took up the theory of Pindar, as propounded by the Bishop of Montebello,--“that a noble action is worthless to the doer, unless it is accompanied by the praise of his fellow-men.” On this point we all,--including the ladies,--had much to say, and I was being charmed by the manner wherewith Madonna Marianna entered into the argument, when I was diverted by the touch of a servant.

“Many pardons, Eccellenza; this gentleman says he must speak to you.”

Looking about I saw the guards-captain, Fabriano, our companion on the boat ride, and leaped up immediately.

“Happily met, good fellow,” I cried, holding out my hand; “the wine has loosed our tongues and unsealed our wit and wisdom. Here, boy--a chair and a glass for the noble captain.”

He did not take my hand, and gazed at me awkwardly.

“Pest take me, Gualtiero,” he began at last; “I scarce know what to say. I have come here as an official, not as a friend. Be sure I come with all the reluctance in the world.”

“But my dear fellow, I don’t see why you look at me as gingerly as San Giorgio at his dragon.”

He seized me by the sleeve, then blurted,

“The fiends make me out with it! I am come to demand your sword and take you to the Castle of San Angelo. The governor of the city has ordered it.”

“To arrest me?--” I was indeed dazed.

“Come quietly--at least away from here,” he urged; “I will explain--”

But here the Contessa della Valle, who had listened like a cat to everything, gave a little shriek.

“Arrested! Conte di Palaestro arrested! To San Angelo? Oh! impossible--”

The babel of conversation ceased instantly, and Chigi interposed without delay.

“You arrest the Conte, Fabriano? My guest? Monstrous! Incredible! An outrageous intrusion: explain!”

“Most noble banker,” returned the Captain, very ill at ease, “be assured I undertook this disagreeable task only that another less delicate officer might not perform it. I grieve to inform you that the Conte is charged with attempting to procure the murder of the Archbishop of Bari--”

“Murder Monsignore di Bari?” came as one cry from all over the room.

“Calm yourselves, illustrious ladies and gentlemen. The Archbishop is unharmed. Nevertheless, I must execute my orders.”

“At least,” spoke Chigi peremptorily, “you are to satisfy us that this charge is not a mere fiction, some ill-timed jest, aimed at the Conte di Palaestro?”

As I glanced towards Marianna and Rocca I could see them both flushed, disturbed and whispering excitedly one with the other. Then Madonna caught my eye and laid her hand upon her lips. There was dead silence whilst all craned and listened to Fabriano’s answer.

“Noble friends--believe me I did not announce this thing touching his Excellency the Conte as something proved, but only alleged. The known facts are these. This evening the Archbishop left his apartments near the Pantheon to keep an appointment with a lady in a garden near the Colosseum. He had had affairs with bravoes lately, and as precaution wore a ring shirt of proof. Luckily, too, he was followed by several trusty valets, among whom were two old soldiers from the Milanese wars. Passing a narrow street by San Pietro in Vincoli several men were observed following. Bari proceeded and the fellows disappeared; but when near their destination, on turning a convent wall, suddenly, three men ran out against them with drawn swords. The leader sprang on Bari and would infallibly have pierced him, but his sword was snapped on the ring mail. The recoil of the unfortunate stroke threw the murderer off his balance. He fell, and instantly his comrades fled into the darkness. Bari’s servants flung themselves upon the prostrate bravo and secured him. The Archbishop, finding himself unhurt, at once caused his people to conduct the prisoner to the Governor of Rome at San Angelo. The captive was promptly recognized as the desperate and notorious Ettore Orosi. Knowing that such a man only attempted murders for a price, he was at once confronted with the rack, to secure the name of his employer. After a certain hesitancy, he gave way before the threats, and presently mentioned our illustrious Conte; yet told his story with such plausibility that the Governor could only yield to the hot demands of Bari and direct me to summon the Conte to San Angelo.”

This somewhat long recital had given me time to recover my wits, and I divined quickly the signals cast me by Marianna and Rocca. I drew myself up a little haughtily.

“Worthy Fabriano,” I said, “I exonerate you in this strange affair, but as an immediate and noble vassal of the Holy See, I deny the right of the Governor of San Angelo to hale me before him on the witness of a professional bravo. Let me be taken not to San Angelo but to the Vatican; let me be examined at once by the Pope himself.”

“Impossible,” Fabriano began to object; “the lateness of the hour, my clear orders--”

But Rocca stepped forward. “I will take it upon myself to shield you from all consequences. Let the Conte be conducted instantly to His Holiness.”

“If the Cardinale di Rocca pledges,” bowed the captain, yielding; and so the matter was concluded. I could see well enough how Rocca was anxious for himself, and Marianna for her father in the business, and vastly preferred the sifting of the approachable Pope, rather than of the stern-browed Governor. As for myself, I was resolved to shield Forli and Rocca if I could, without putting my own affairs in too much jeopardy. Plainly Orosi had tried to screen his real employer by accusing me, and my wishes for the renowned bravo were not the kindest.

The feast broke up as I was led out. I pitied Messere Chigi. What an unlucky ending for a most carefully planned supper--and how all the tongues in Rome would wag in the morning!