Valperga (19 page)

Castruccio smiled; he hardly believed the simple sincerity of
Euthanasia; he understood well and judged with sagacity the
balancing objections in a question of interest; but the principle
of decision was always with him, that which would most conduce to
the fulfilment of his projects, seldom that of the good or evil
which affected others. Yet this was veiled even to his own mind, by
a habit of gentleness and forbearance, which even in this age of
the world, often fills the place, and assumes the form of
virtue.

And now Euthanasia was busy in preparing for a court, which she
had determined to hold, when peace should be ratified between the
contending powers of Tuscany; and Castruccio found her employed in
thefor her, unwonted toils, of the arrangement of silks, jewels,
and tapestry. She said: "You know that the dependents of
Valperga are lightly taxed; and the little money that enters my
coffers is chiefly expended in the succour of their own
necessities: yet of that little I have reserved a sum for periods
of sickness, scarcity, or any more agreeable occasion that may call
for it. A part of this will be expended on the present solemnity.
Nor do I think that I hurt my good people by such an extravagance:
their joy on this occasion will be far greater than mine; their
pride and love of pleasure will be gratified; for in arranging the
amusements of my court the country people will have a full share;
and, if we engage the attention of Borsiere, Guarino and other
distinguished Uomini di Corte, the buffoons, jugglers, and dancers,
will spread glee among the villagers."

The castle was fuller than usual of dependents and workmen, and
its cloister-like silence was exchanged for the noise of the
hammer, and the voices of Italians, ever louder than need is.
Euthanasia witnessed their eagerness with pleasure; and her
undisguised sympathy in their feelings made her adored by her
servants and dependents. She had now about her several of the
daughters of her richer subjects, who assisted in the arrangement
of her castle: and there were gathered in the hall men who had
grown grey on her estate, who remembered the dreadful battle of
Monte Aperto, the fall of Manfred, and the death of the last
unfortunate descendant of Frederic Barbarossa. These recounted the
feats and dangers of their youth to their descendants, until, so
strange are the feelings of our nature, war, peril and ruin seemed
joys to be coveted, not perils to be eschewed.

Among the attendants who most constantly waited on her person,
was a man who, from his diminutive stature, and strange dress,
might have been taken for the buffoon or dwarf so common at the
courts of princes in those days, had not the melancholy of his
looks forbidden that supposition. Yet he had some of the privileges
of the licensed fool; for he mingled in the conversation of his
superiors, and his remarks, generally pithy, were sometimes bitter
and satirical: yet indeed they were more commonly characterized by
a wild and imaginative originality, than by wit; and, if they
sometimes made others laugh, he never smiled. The playful and witty
disposition of Castruccio would often make him enter into
conversation with, and reply to, and try to draw out this strange
being, who was no less uncommon in his person than in his mind. He
was of that race of which there are a few native specimens in
Italy, generally called Albinois; his complexion was of a milky
fairness, his hair white, and his long white eyelashes hardly
shaded his light red eyes: he was brief of stature, and as slender
as he was short; the softness of his features, and the roundness
and flexibility of his limbs, manifested his want of strength; his
mild, but almost meaningless physiognomy betrayed the want of
judgement, courage, and all the more manly virtues. His mind seemed
to approach the feebler spark of animal life, had it not been
redeemed by an imagination of which he hardly appeared conscious
himself, but which raised him above many of the brutal and rough
peasants who despised him. Sometimes Castruccio laughed at
Euthanasia for keeping this strange creature about her, but she
defended herself, saying:

"Indeed, my lord, you must shew no disrespect towards this
servant of mine, and truly you will be little inclined to do so,
when I have summed up all his good qualities. First, he has by
heart, ready to quote on any suitable occasion, every prophecy that
has been made since the time of Adam, and knows all the vulgar
expositions of the sacred texts. Then he is an adept in the
knowledge of sacred trees, fountains, and stones, the flight of
birds, lucky and unlucky days; he has an extensive acquaintance
with witches, astrologers, sorcerers, and tempestarii; he knows
every peculiar ceremony for remarkable days, how to celebrate the
calends of January, those of August, and the Vindemie Nolane; none
of our cattle are blessed by St. Anthony until he has bound on
their crowns; the ceremonies attendant on the Nativity, Easter, and
other feasts, are all conducted under his guidance. He interprets
all the dreams of the castle, and foretells the point of time when
to begin any enterprize: he has a wonderful assortment of holy
legends and strange relics; such as a lock of Adam's hair, a
little of the sawdust from Noah's sawpit when he clove the
planks for the ark, a brick of the tower of Babel, and a tooth of
St. Theresa; he has presented many of these to the priest of San
Martino, and the people go and adore these shreds and patches of
religion with the veneration that its divine morality alone
demands. Although of a feminine and un--muscular form, he is
healthy; he is silent to a miracle; and among my noisy household he
alone flits about unheard, so much so that I have been assured that
grass yields not beneath his feet, and that he has no shadow; but
you can yourself ascertain that fact. I believe him to be faithful,
yet I think him to be attached to none, except the wild beings whom
his imagination invests with supernatural powers. But he is an
excellent guide for me in my various wanderings, since, as if he
had a clue of thread, he can find his unerring way amid the most
pathless deserts and forests. With all these wonderful acquirements
he is generally disliked; he is said to be the son of a witch, and
to have a natural propensity to evil; yet I have never heard of any
ill act of his doing; although in truth some strange events have
taken place with regard to him, that look as if he had communion
with the spirits of air.

"I have said that he is attached to no one among us, yet I
may be wrong. If he is always near my person, it is because he
seizes every moment, when he is permitted to enter, to creep near
me. Once, when I left him here during a visit to Florence, he pined
for some time, till every one believed that he was about to die;
and then taking a sudden resolution, like a dog following the scent
of his master, he departed on foot, and in less than twenty-four
hours, arrived half dead with fatigue at my palace at Florence.

"I have another motive for being attached to him: he was a
favourite of my father. He found him when a child, in a village not
far from Florence, half starved, and ill treated by the country
people; for he could not work, and, being an orphan, was destitute
of every resource; the idea of his unholy parentage and his strange
appearance, rendering the country-people even malignantly inclined
towards him. He loved my father, and almost sunk to the grave with
sorrow when he died; nor at that time would he leave the room where
I was, or if obliged to go, he crept near the door crouching like a
dog for the moment of admittance."

This being was now very busy amidst the preparations for the
court; preparations which engaged all the hands and all the heads
of Valperga. While the countess made provision for the
entertainment of her guests, her dependents practised the games and
exercises with which they should amuse the nobles: all was bustle
and animation, but all was joy and good humour. Castruccio and
Euthanasia became dearer to each other, as he perceived the
pleasure he was able to bestow upon her by a compliance with her
wishes; and she felt gratitude for the delight she enjoyed, towards
him whom she fondly looked upon as its cause.

AS the day approached on which Euthanasia was to hold her court,
her castle became thronged with the nobility, wealth, and beauty of
Tuscany and Lombardy. She had wished indeed to make this a public
union of the two parties which distracted Italy; but she was so
noted a Guelph that few Ghibelines appeared, although some were
attracted by the name of Castruccio, to come under his escort, and
in his company. First arrived her uncle, the lord Radolfo di
Casaregi; he was an old man, but he loved to encircle his bare
temples with an iron helmet, and to try his well used sword against
the unfleshed blades of the sons of his companions in arms in days
gone by. Then came the marquess Marcello Malespino of Valdimagra,
his wife, and three lovely daughters; they were accompanied by
three brothers of the Bondelmonti family of Florence: these claimed
affinity to the house of Adimari, and when by the laws of her
country Euthanasia was obliged to choose a guardian for her maiden
state, she had selected the eldest, count Bondelmonte de'
Bondelmonti to be her Mondualdo; this relationship had given rise
to a sincere friendship, which, although the difference of age was
inconsiderable, and the same reverence and obedience could never be
felt or exercised, yet in some sort was to Euthanasia in the stead
of her dead parents. There arrived soon after the chief members of
the Pazzi, Donati, Visdomini, Gianfigliazi, and other Guelph
families of Florence; there was Alberti count of Capraia, and all
the numerous troop that claimed relationship to him; and many
others, both Bianchi and Neri, both Guelph and Ghibeline, whose
names it would be needless to detail.

Then arrived a multitude of Uomini di Corte; story-tellers,
improvisatori, musicians, singers, actors, rope-dancers, jugglers
and buffoons. The most distinguished among the first class was
William Borsiere; a man of courteous yet frank manners, nice wit
and keen penetration: he was about forty years of age; but he had
lost none of the jovial temper of youth, and his generous and even
noble disposition made him more respected than men of his class
usually were. There was Bergamino, a man more caustic than
Borsiere, but whose insinuating address obtained pardon for his
biting words; no one knew better than Bergamino how to cure the
wounds his tongue had made. There was Andreuccio, whose satirical
mood and rough manners frequently drew upon him the anger of the
nobles on whose favour he depended; and he was so often dismissed,
disgraced and unrewarded, from the courts, where his companions
were loaded with presents, that, from his mean and sometimes ragged
appearance, and his snarling habits, he went by the name of the
Cane Mendicante. He wished to rival Borsiere and Bergamino who were
staunch friends, and endeavoured to make up for his lack of the
more delicate kind of wit by caustic sayings and contemptuous
remarks. There was Ildone, a foolish, smiling fellow, but who sang
sorrowful airs with so sweet and touching a voice, that, if you
shut your eyes, you might have imagined that St. Cecilia herself
had descended to entrance the world with heavenly melody.

Guarino, the Improvisatore, closed the list of the distinguished
Uomini di Corte. He was sought in every court in Lombardy for his
entertaining qualities: his tales displayed the fire of genius, and
the delicate observations of a lover of nature. But he was eaten up
by vanity and envy; he hated all those who were admired, from the
princely beauty who attracted all regards, down to the lowest
buffoon at court. If he were sought by the great, so much the more
was he avoided by his equals and inferiors; to the first he tricked
himself out with a flattering tongue, a mean and servile address,
and gross adulation; for the second he expressed hatred and
contempt; and he tyrannized over the last with a hand of iron. But
all three classes might equally dread his malignant calumnies, and
hatred of all that was good. He spared no art, no wit, no
falsehood, to detract from merit, however exalted or lowly; and so
full was he of wiles, that he was seldom detected in his serpent
craft. He had been a Ghibeline, and at one time was imprisoned by
the Dominican inquisitors as a heretic; but now he surpassed all
the Italians in superstition and credulity; his friends said that
he was truly pious, his enemies that he was the most deceitful of
hypocrites: but the trait that sealed his character, was his
intolerance and violent persecution of his former heretical
associates. Those who were most indulgent said, that he had been
first actuated by fear, and was now a sincere convert; he himself
pretended to attribute his conversion to a miracle, and of such
consequence was he in his own eyes, that he almost affirmed that a
saint from heaven had informed him, that the redemption of mankind
had been undertaken by the Almighty Saviour for his benefit
alone.

Many others followed and joined these; but they were a nameless
multitude, distinguished only for vulgar talents; some trying to
raise a laugh by folly, others by pert wit; many by manual jests
upon each other, in which innumerable were the blows given and
received: they were a strange set, and whether they were handsome
or ugly, old or young, agile or slow, expert or awkward, they
turned even their defects to account, and with a never-ceasing
grin, thronged around the nobles, forming a contrast to the
dignified deportment and rich dresses of the latter, by their
supple and serpentine motions, strange gait, and motley
habiliments; some being ragged from lack of wit, others from
detected roguery, all regarding with the eagerness of starved curs
the riches of the castle, and the generosity of its mistress.

The court opened on the first of May; it was to last four days;
and, on the evening before, surrounded by her guests, Euthanasia
issued forth the laws for their amusements on the occasion:
"The first day," said she, "we will give to hunting
and hawking; the country is well stocked with game, and each guest
has surely his falcon on his fist. I will install Antelminelli, the
liberatore of Lucca, king for that day; for he has been in foreign
countries, and has studied these amusements under the best masters
of the age; and I doubt not is well able to direct our exertions,
and secure us plentiful sport.