IV.—Night

Scene.—Inside the Palace by the Duomo. Monsignor, dismissing his Attendants.

Monsignor. Thanks, friends, many thanks! I chiefly
desire life now, that I may recompense every one of you.
Most I know something of already. What, a repast prepared?
Benedicto benedicatur—ugh, ugh! Where was
I? Oh, as you were remarking, Ugo, the weather is
mild, very unlike winter weather; but I am a Sicilian, you
know, and shiver in your Julys here. To be sure, when
'twas full summer at Messina, as we priests used to cross
in procession the great square on Assumption Day, you
might see our thickest yellow tapers twist suddenly in
two, each like a falling star, or sink down on themselves
in a gore of wax. But go, my friends, but go! [To the
Intendant.] Not you, Ugo! [The others leave the apartment.]
I have long wanted to converse with you, Ugo.

Intendant. Uguccio—

Monsignor. ... 'guccio Stefani, man! of Ascoli,
Fermo and Fossombruno—what I do need instructing
about are these accounts of your administration of my
poor brother's affairs. Ugh! I shall never get through a
third part of your accounts; take some of these dainties
before we attempt it, however. Are you bashful to that
degree? For me, a crust and water suffice.

Intendant. Do you choose this especial night to question
me?

Monsignor. This night, Ugo. You have managed my
late brother's affairs since the death of our elder brother
—fourteen years and a month, all but three days. On
the Third of December, I find him—

Intendant. If you have so intimate an acquaintance
with your brother's affairs, you will be tender of turning
so far back: they will hardly bear looking into, so far back.

Monsignor. Aye, aye, ugh, ugh—nothing but disappointments
here below! I remark a considerable payment
made to yourself on this Third of December. Talk
of disappointments! There was a young fellow here,
Jules, a foreign sculptor I did my utmost to advance, that
the Church might be a gainer by us both; he was going
on hopefully enough, and of a sudden he notifies to me
some marvelous change that has happened in his notions
of Art. Here's his letter: "He never had a clearly conceived
Ideal within his brain till today. Yet since his hand
could manage a chisel, he has practiced expressing other
men's Ideals; and, in the very perfection he has attained
to, he foresees an ultimate failure: his unconscious hand
will pursue its prescribed course of old years, and will reproduce
with a fatal expertness the ancient types, let the
novel one appear never so palpably to his spirit. There
is but one method of escape: confiding the virgin type to
as chaste a hand, he will turn painter instead of sculptor,
and paint, not carve, its characteristics"—strike out, I
dare say, a school like Correggio: how think you, Ugo?

Intendant. Is Correggio a painter?

Monsignor. Foolish Jules! and yet, after all, why
foolish? He may—probably will—fail egregiously; but
if there should arise a new painter, will it not be in some
such way, by a poet now, or a musician (spirits who have
conceived and perfected an Ideal through some other
channel), transferring it to this, and escaping our conventional
roads by pure ignorance of them; eh, Ugo? If
you have no appetite, talk at least, Ugo!

Intendant. Sir, I can submit no longer to this course
of yours. First, you select the group of which I formed
one—next you thin it gradually—always retaining me
with your smile—and so do you proceed till you have
fairly got me alone with you between four stone walls.
And now then? Let this farce, this chatter, end now;
what is it you want with me?

Monsignor. Ugo!

Intendant. From the instant you arrived, I felt your
smile on me as you questioned me about this and the
other article in those papers—why your brother should
have given me this villa, that podere—and your nod at
the end meant—what?

Monsignor. Possibly that I wished for no loud talk
here. If once you set me coughing, Ugo!—

Intendant. I have your brother's hand and seal to all I
possess: now ask me what for! what service I did him—ask me!

Monsignor. I would better not: I should rip up old
disgraces, let out my poor brother's weaknesses. By the
way, Maffeo of Forli (which, I forgot to observe, is
your true name), was the interdict ever taken off you,
for robbing that church at Cesena?

Intendant. No, nor needs be; for when I murdered
your brother's friend, Pasquale, for him—

Monsignor. Ah, he employed you in that business,
did he? Well, I must let you keep, as you say, this villa
and that podere, for fear the world should find out my
relations were of so indifferent a stamp? Maffeo, my family
is the oldest in Messina, and century after century
have my progenitors gone on polluting themselves with
every wickedness under heaven: my own father—rest his
soul!—I have, I know, a chapel to support that it may
rest; my dear two dead brothers were—what you know
tolerably well; I, the youngest, might have rivaled them
in vice, if not in wealth: but from my boyhood I came
out from among them, and so am not partaker of their
plagues. My glory springs from another source; or if
from this, by contrast only—for I, the bishop, am the
brother of your employers, Ugo. I hope to repair some
of their wrong, however; so far as my brother's ill-gotten
treasure reverts to me, I can stop the consequences
of his crime—and not one soldo shall escape me. Maffeo,
the sword we quiet men spurn away, you shrewd knaves
pick up and commit murders with; what opportunities
the virtuous forego, the villainous seize. Because, to
pleasure myself, apart from other considerations, my
food would be millet-cake, my dress sackcloth, and my
couch straw—am I therefore to let you, the offscouring
of the earth, seduce the poor and ignorant by appropriating
a pomp these will be sure to think lessens the abominations
so unaccountably and exclusively associated with
it? Must I let villas and poderi go to you, a murderer
and thief, that you may beget by means of them other
murderers and thieves? No—if my cough would but
allow me to speak!

Intendant. What am I to expect? You are going to punish me?

Monsignor. Must punish you, Maffeo. I cannot
afford to cast away a chance. I have whole centuries of
sin to redeem, and only a month or two of life to do it in.
How should I dare to say—

Intendant. "Forgive us our trespasses"?

Monsignor. My friend, it is because I avow myself a
very worm, sinful beyond measure, that I reject a line of
conduct you would applaud perhaps. Shall I proceed,
as it were, a-pardoning?—I?—who have no symptom
of reason to assume that aught less than my strenuousest
efforts will keep myself out of mortal sin, much less
keep others out. No: I do trespass, but will not double
that by allowing you to trespass.

Intendant. And suppose the villas are not your
brother's to give, nor yours to take? Oh, you are hasty
enough just now!

Monsignor. 1, 2—No. 3!—aye, can you read the substance
of a letter, No. 3, I have received from Rome? It
is precisely on the ground there mentioned, of the suspicion
I have that a certain child of my late elder brother, who
would have succeeded to his estates, was murdered in
infancy by you, Maffeo, at the instigation of my late
younger brother—that the Pontiff enjoins on me not
merely the bringing that Maffeo to condign punishment,
but the taking all pains, as guardian of the infant's heritage
for the Church, to recover it parcel by parcel, howsoever,
whensoever, and wheresoever. While you are now
gnawing those fingers, the police are engaged in sealing
up your papers, Maffeo, and the mere raising my voice
brings my people from the next room to dispose of yourself.
But I want you to confess quietly, and save me raising
my voice. Why, man, do I not know the old story?
The heir between the succeeding heir, and this heir's
ruffianly instrument, and their complot's effect, and the
life of fear and bribes and ominous smiling silence? Did
you throttle or stab my brother's infant? Come now!

Intendant. So old a story, and tell it no better?
When did such an instrument ever produce such an
effect? Either the child smiles in his face, or, most likely,
he is not fool enough to put himself in the employer's
power so thoroughly; the child is always ready to produce—as
you say—howsoever, wheresoever, and whensoever.

Monsignor. Liar!

Intendant. Strike me? Ah, so might a father chastise!
I shall sleep soundly tonight at least, though the gallows
await me tomorrow; for what a life did I lead! Carlo of
Cesena reminds me of his connivance, every time I pay
his annuity; which happens commonly thrice a year. If I
remonstrate, he will confess all to the good bishop—you!

Monsignor. I see through the trick, caitiff! I would
you spoke truth for once. All shall be sifted, however—seven
times sifted.

Intendant. And how my absurd riches encumbered
me! I dared not lay claim to above half my possessions.
Let me but once unbosom myself, glorify Heaven, and die!

Sir, you are no brutal, dastardly idiot like your brother
I frightened to death: let us understand one another. Sir,
I will make away with her for you—the girl—here close
at hand; not the stupid obvious kind of killing; do not
speak—know nothing of her nor of me! I see her every
day—saw her this morning. Of course there is to be no
killing; but at Rome the courtesans perish off every three
years, and I can entice her thither—have indeed begun
operations already. There's a certain lusty, blue-eyed,
florid-complexioned English knave I and the Police employ
occasionally. You assent, I perceive—no, that's not
it—assent I do not say—but you will let me convert my
present havings and holdings into cash, and give me time
to cross the Alps? Tis but a little black-eyed, pretty
singing Felippa, gay, silk-winding girl. I have kept her
out of harm's way up to this present; for I always intended
to make your life a plague to you with her. 'Tis
as well settled once and forever. Some women I have
procured will pass Bluphocks, my handsome scoundrel,
off for somebody; and once Pippa entangled!—you
conceive? Through her singing? Is it a bargain?

[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing.

Overhead the tree-tops meet,
Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet;
There was naught above me, naught below,
My childhood had not learned to know:
For, what are the voices of birds
—Aye, and of beasts—but words, our words,
Only so much more sweet?
The knowledge of that with my life begun.
But I had so near made out the sun,
And counted your stars, the seven and one;
Like the fingers of my hand:
Nay, I could all but understand
Wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges;
And just when out of her soft fifty changes
No unfamiliar face might overlook me—
Suddenly God took me.

[Pippa passes.

Monsignor [springing up]. My people—one and all—all-within
there! Gag this villain—tie him hand and
foot! He dares—I know not half he dares—but
remove him—quick! Miserere mei, Domine! Quick, I say!

Scene.—Pippa's chamber again. She enters it.

The bee with his comb,
The mouse at her dray,
The grub in his tomb,
While winter away;
But the firefly and hedge-shrew and lobworm, I pray,
How fare they?
Ha, ha, thanks for your counsel, my Zanze!
"Feast upon lampreys, quaff Breganze"—
The summer of life so easy to spend,
And care for tomorrow so soon put away!
But winter hastens at summer's end,
And firefly, hedge-shrew, lobworm, pray,
How fare they?
No bidding me then to—what did Zanze say?
"Pare your nails pearlwise, get your small feet shoes
More like"—what said she?—"and less like canoes!"
How pert that girl was!—would I be those pert,
Impudent, staring women! It had done me,
However, surely no such mighty hurt
To learn his name who passed that jest upon me:
No foreigner, that I can recollect,
Came, as she says, a month since, to inspect
Our silk-mills—none with blue eyes and thick rings
Of raw-silk-colored hair, at all events.
Well, if old Luca keep his good intents,
We shall do better, see what next year brings!
I may buy shoes, my Zanze, not appear
More destitute than you perhaps next year!
Bluph—something! I had caught the uncouth name
But for Monsignor's people's sudden clatter
Above us—bound to spoil such idle chatter
As ours; it were indeed a serious matter
If silly talk like ours should put to shame
The pious man, the man devoid of blame,
The—ah, but—ah, but, all the same,
No mere mortal has a right
To carry that exalted air;
Best people are not angels quite:
While—not the worst of people's doings scare
The devil; so there's that proud look to spare!
Which is mere counsel to myself, mind! for
I have just been the holy Monsignor:
And I was you too, Luigi's gentle mother,
And you too, Luigi!—how that Luigi started
Out of the turret—doubtlessly departed
On some good errand or another,
For he passed just now in a traveler's trim,
And the sullen company that prowled
About his path, I noticed, scowled
As if they had lost a prey in him.
And I was Jules the sculptor's bride,
And I was Ottima beside,
And now what am I?—tired of fooling.
Day for folly, night for schooling!
New Year's day is over and spent,
Ill or well, I must be content.
Even my lily's asleep, I vow:
Wake up—here's a friend I've plucked you!
Call this flower a heart's-ease now!
Something rare, let me instruct you,
Is this, with petals triply swollen,
Three times spotted, thrice the pollen;
While the leaves and parts that witness
Old proportions and their fitness,
Here remain unchanged, unmoved now;
Call this pampered thing improved now!
Suppose there's a king of the flowers
And a girl-show held in his bowers—
"Look ye, buds, this growth of ours,"
Says he, "Zanze from the Brenta,
I have made her gorge polenta
Till both cheeks are near as bouncing
As her—name there's no pronouncing!
See this heightened color too,
For she swilled Breganze wine
Till her nose turned deep carmine;
'Twas but white when wild she grew.
And only by this Zanze's eyes
Of which we could not change the size,
The magnitude of all achieved
Otherwise, may be perceived."

Oh, what a drear, dark close to my poor day!
How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?
Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's.
O lark, be day's apostle
To mavis, merle, and throstle,
Bid them their betters jostle
From day and its delights!
But at night, brother owlet; over the woods,
Toll the world to thy chantry;
Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods
Full complines with gallantry:
Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
[After she has began to undress herself.
Now, one thing I should like to really know:
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being, this long day—
Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so
As to—in some way ... move them—if you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind
Silk tomorrow, my silk may bind
[Sitting on the bedside.
And border Ottima's cloak's hem.
Ah me, and my important part with them,
This morning's hymn half promised when I rose!
True in some sense or other, I suppose.
[As she lies down.
God bless me! I can pray no more tonight.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
All service ranks the same with God—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.
[She sleeps.