Gerard took a modest lodging on the west bank of the Tiber, and every day went forth in search of work, taking a specimen round to every shop he could hear of that executed such commissions.
They received him coldly. “We make our letter somewhat thinner than this,” said one. “How dark your ink is,” said another. But the main cry was, “What avails this? Scant is the Latin writ here now. Can ye not write Greek?”
“Ay, but not nigh so well as Latin.”
“Then you shall never make your bread at Rome.”
Gerard borrowed a beautiful Greek manuscript at a high price, and went home with a sad hole in his purse, but none in his courage.
In a fortnight he had made vast progress with the Greek character; so then, to lose no time, he used to work at it till noon, and hunt customers the rest of the day.
When he carried round a better Greek specimen than any they possessed, the traders informed him that Greek and Latin were alike unsaleable; the city was thronged with works from all Europe. He should have come last year.
Gerard bought a psaltery. His landlady, pleased with his looks and manners, used often to speak a kind word in passing. One day she made him dine with her, and somewhat to his surprise asked him what had dashed his spirits. He told her. She gave him her reading of the matter. “Those sly traders,” she would be bound, “had writers in their pay, for whose work they received a noble price, and paid a sorry one. So no wonder they blow cold on you. Methinks you write too well. How know I that? say you. Marry—marry, because you lock not your door, like the churl Pietro, and women will be curious. Ay, ay, you write too well for them.”
Gerard asked an explanation.
“Why,” said she, “your good work might put out the eyes of that they are selling.”
Gerard sighed. “Alas! dame, you read folk on the ill side, and you so kind and frank yourself.”
“My dear little heart, these Romans are a subtle race. Me? I am a Siennese, thanks to the Virgin.”
“My mistake was leaving Augsburg,” said Gerard.
“Augsburg?” said she haughtily: “is that a place to even to Rome? I never heard of it, for my part.”
She then assured him that he should make his fortune in spite of the booksellers. “Seeing thee a stranger, they lie to thee without sense or discretion. Why, all the world knows that our great folk are bitten with the writing spider this many years, and pour out their money like water, and turn good land and houses into writ sheepskins, to keep in a chest or a cupboard. God help them, and send them safe through this fury, as He hath through a heap of others; and in sooth hath been somewhat less cutting and stabbing among rival factions, and vindictive eating of their opposites' livers, minced and fried, since Scribbling came in. Why, I can tell you two. There is his eminence Cardinal Bassarion, and his holiness the Pope himself. There be a pair could keep a score such as thee a writing night and day. But I'll speak to Teresa; she hears the gossip of the court.”
The next day she told him she had seen Teresa, and had heard of five more signors who were bitten with the writing spider. Gerard took down their names, and bought parchment, and busied himself for some days in preparing specimens. He left one, with his name and address, at each of these signors' doors, and hopefully awaited the result.
There was none.
Day after day passed and left him heartsick.
And strange to say this was just the time when Margaret was fighting so hard against odds to feed her male dependents at Rotterdam, and arrested for curing without a licence instead of killing with one.
Gerard saw ruin staring him in the face.
He spent the afternoons picking up canzonets and mastering them. He laid in playing cards to colour, and struck off a meal per day.
This last stroke of genius got him into fresh trouble.
In these “camere locande” the landlady dressed all the meals, though the lodgers bought the provisions. So Gerard's hostess speedily detected him, and asked him if he was not ashamed himself: by which brusque opening, having made him blush and look scared, she pacified herself all in a moment, and appealed to his good sense whether Adversity was a thing to be overcome on an empty stomach.
“Patienza, my lad! times will mend; meantime I will feed you for the love of heaven.” (Italian for “gratis.”)
“Nay, hostess,” said Gerard, “my purse is not yet quite void, and it would add to my trouble an if true folk should lose their due by me.”
“Why, you are as mad as your neighbour Pietro, with his one bad picture.”
“Why, how know you 'tis a bad picture?”
“Because nobody will buy it. There is one that hath no gift. He will have to don casque and glaive, and carry his panel for a shield.”
Gerard pricked up his ears at this: so she told him more. Pietro had come from Florence with money in his purse, and an unfinished picture; had taken her one unfurnished room, opposite Gerard's, and furnished it neatly. When his picture was finished, he received visitors and had offers for it: though in her opinion liberal ones, he had refused so disdainfully as to make enemies of his customers. Since then he had often taken it out with him to try and sell, but had always brought it back; and the last month, she had seen one movable after another go out of his room, and now he wore but one suit, and lay at night on a great chest. She had found this out only by peeping through the keyhole, for he locked the door most vigilantly whenever he went out. “Is he afraid we shall steal his chest, or his picture, that no soul in all Rome is weak enough to buy?”
“Nay, sweet hostess; see you not 'tis his poverty he would screen from view?”
“And the more fool he! Are all our hearts as ill as his? A might give us a trial first, anyway.”
“How you speak of him. Why, his case is mine; and your countryman to boot.”
“Oh, we Siennese love strangers. His case yours? Nay, 'tis just the contrary. You are the comeliest youth ever lodged in this house; hair like gold: he is a dark, sour-visaged loon. Besides, you know how to take a woman on her better side; but not he. Natheless, I wish he would not starve to death in my house, to get me a bad name. Anyway, one starveling is enough in any house. You are far from home, and it is for me, which am the mistress here, to number your meals—for me and the Dutch wife, your mother, that is far away: we two women shall settle that matter. Mind thou thine own business, being a man, and leave cooking and the like to us, that are in the world for little else that I see but to roast fowls, and suckle men at starting, and sweep their grownup cobwebs.”
“Dear kind dame, in sooth you do often put me in mind of my mother that is far away.”
“All the better; I'll put you more in mind of her before I have done with you.” And the honest soul beamed with pleasure.
Gerard not being an egotist, nor blinded by female partialities, saw his own grief in poor proud Pietro; and the more he thought of it the more he resolved to share his humble means with that unlucky artist; Pietro's sympathy would repay him. He tried to waylay him; but without success.
One day he heard a groaning in the room. He knocked at the door, but received no answer. He knocked again. A surly voice bade him enter.
He obeyed somewhat timidly, and entered a garret furnished with a chair, a picture, face to wall, an iron basin, an easel, and a long chest, on which was coiled a haggard young man with a wonderfully bright eye. Anything more like a coiled cobra ripe for striking the first comer was never seen.
“Good Signor Pietro,” said Gerard, “forgive me that, weary of my own solitude, I intrude on yours; but I am your nighest neighbour in this house, and methinks your brother in fortune. I am an artist too.”
“You are a painter? Welcome, signer. Sit down on my bed.”
And Pietro jumped off and waved him into the vacant throne with a magnificent demonstration of courtesy.
Gerard bowed, and smiled; but hesitated a little. “I may not call myself a painter. I am a writer, a caligraph. I copy Greek and Latin manuscripts, when I can get them to copy.”
“And you call that an artist?”
“Without offence to your superior merit, Signor Pietro.”
“No offence, stranger, none. Only, meseemeth an artist is one who thinks, and paints his thought. Now a caligraph but draws in black and white the thoughts of another.”
“'Tis well distinguished, signor. But then, a writer can write the thoughts of the great ancients, and matters of pure reason, such as no man may paint: ay, and the thoughts of God, which angels could not paint. But let that pass. I am a painter as well; but a sorry one.”
“The better thy luck. 'They will buy thy work in Rome.”
“But seeking to commend myself to one of thy eminence, I thought it well rather to call myself a capable writer, than a scurvy painter.”
At this moment a step was heard on the stair. “Ah! 'tis the good dame,” cried Gerard. “What oh! hostess, I am here in conversation with Signor Pietro. I dare say he will let me have my humble dinner here.”
The Italian bowed gravely.
The landlady brought in Gerard's dinner smoking and savoury. She put the dish down on the bed with a face divested of all expression, and went.
Gerard fell to. But ere he had eaten many mouthfuls, he stopped, and said: “I am an ill-mannered churl, Signor Pietro. I ne'er eat to my mind when I eat alone. For our Lady's sake put a spoon into this ragout with me; 'tis not unsavoury, I promise you.”
Pietro fixed his glittering eye on him.
“What, good youth, thou a stranger, and offerest me thy dinner?”
“Why, see, there is more than one can eat.”
“Well, I accept,” said Pietro; and took the dish with some appearance of calmness, and flung the contents out of window.
Then he turned, trembling with mortification and ire, and said: “Let that teach thee to offer alms to an artist thou knowest not, master writer.”
Gerard's face flushed with anger, and it cost him a bitter struggle not to box this high-souled creature's ears. And then to go and destroy good food! His mother's milk curdled in his veins with horror at such impiety. Finally, pity at Pietro's petulance and egotism, and a touch of respect for poverty-struck pride, prevailed.
However, he said coldly, “Likely what thou hast done might pass in a novel of thy countryman, Signor Boccaccio; but 'twas not honest.”
“Make that good!” said the painter sullenly.
“I offered thee half my dinner; no more. But thou hast ta'en it all. Hadst a right to throw away thy share, but not mine. Pride is well, but justice is better.”
Pietro stared, then reflected.
“'Tis well. I took thee for a fool, so transparent was thine artifice. Forgive me! And prithee leave me! Thou seest how 'tis with me. The world hath soured me. I hate mankind. I was not always so. Once more excuse that my discourtesy, and fare thee well.”
Gerard sighed, and made for the door.
But suddenly a thought struck him. “Signor Pietro,” said he, “we Dutchmen are hard bargainers. We are the lads 'een eij scheeren,' that is, 'to shave an egg.' Therefore, I, for my lost dinner, do claim to feast mine eyes on your picture, whose face is toward the wall.”
“Nay, nay,” said the painter hastily, “ask me not that; I have already misconducted myself enough towards thee. I would not shed thy blood.”
“Saints forbid! My blood?”
“Stranger,” said Pietro sullenly, “irritated by repeated insults to my picture, which is my child, my heart, I did in a moment of rage make a solemn vow to drive my dagger into the next one that should flout it, and the labour and love that I have given to it.”
“What, are all to be slain that will not praise this picture?” and he looked at its back with curiosity.
“Nay, nay; if you would but look at it, and hold your parrot tongues. But you will be talking. So I have turned it to the wall for ever. Would I were dead, and buried in it for my coffin!”
Gerard reflected.
“I accept the condition. Show me the picture! I can but hold my peace.”
Pietro went and turned its face, and put it in the best light the room afforded, and coiled himself again on his chest, with his eye, and stiletto, glittering.
The picture represented the Virgin and Christ, flying through the air in a sort of cloud of shadowy cherubic faces; underneath was a landscape, forty or fifty miles in extent, and a purple sky above.
Gerard stood and looked at it in silence. Then he stepped close, and looked. Then he retired as far off as he could, and looked; but said not a word.
When he had been at this game half an hour, Pietro cried out querulously and somewhat inconsistently: “well, have you not a word to say about it?”
Gerard started. “I cry your mercy; I forgot there were three of us here. Ay, I have much to say.” And he drew his sword.
“Alas! alas!” cried Pietro, jumping in terror from his lair. “What wouldst thou?”
“Marry, defend myself against thy bodkin, signor; and at due odds, being, as aforesaid, a Dutchman. Therefore, hold aloof, while I deliver judgment, or I will pin thee to the wall like a cockchafer.”
“Oh! is that all?” said Pietro, greatly relieved. “I feared you were going to stab my poor picture with your sword, stabbed already by so many foul tongues.”
Gerard “pursued criticism under difficulties.” Put himself in a position of defence, with his sword's point covering Pietro, and one eye glancing aside at the picture. “First, signor, I would have you know that, in the mixing of certain colours, and in the preparation of your oil, you Italians are far behind us Flemings. But let that flea stick. For as small as I am, I can show you certain secrets of the Van Eycks, that you will put to marvellous profit in your next picture. Meantime I see in this one the great qualities of your nation. Verily, ye are solis filii. If we have colour, you have imagination. Mother of Heaven! an he hath not flung his immortal soul upon the panel. One thing I go by is this; it makes other pictures I once admired seem drossy, earth-born things. The drapery here is somewhat short and stiff, why not let it float freely, the figures being in air and motion?
“I will! I will!” cried Pietro eagerly. “I will do anything for those who will but see what I have done.”
“Humph! This landscape it enlightens me. Henceforth I scorn those little huddled landscapes that did erst content me. Here is nature's very face: a spacious plain, each distance marked, and every tree, house, figure, field, and river smaller and less plain, by exquisite gradation, till vision itself melts into distance. O, beautiful! And the cunning rogue hath hung his celestial figure in air out of the way of his little world below. Here, floating saints beneath heaven's purple canopy. There, far down, earth and her busy hives. And they let you take this painted poetry, this blooming hymn, through the streets of Rome and bring it home unsold. But I tell thee in Ghent or Bruges, or even in Rotterdam, they would tear it out of thy hands. But it is a common saying that a stranger's eye sees clearest. Courage, Pietro Vanucci! I reverence thee and though myself a scurvy painter, do forgive thee for being a great one. Forgive thee? I thank God for thee and such rare men as thou art; and bow the knee to thee in just homage. Thy picture is immortal, and thou, that hast but a chest to sit on, art a king in thy most royal art. Viva, il maestro! Viva!”
At this unexpected burst the painter, with all the abandon of his nation, flung himself on Gerard's neck. “They said it was a maniac's dream,” he sobbed.
“Maniacs themselves! no, idiots!” shouted Gerard.
“Generous stranger! I will hate men no more since the world hath such as thee. I was a viper to fling thy poor dinner away; a wretch, a monster.”
“Well, monster, wilt be gentle now, and sup with me?”
“Ah! that I will. Whither goest thou?”
“To order supper on the instant. We will have the picture for third man.”
“I will invite it whiles thou art gone. My poor picture, child of my heart.”
“Ah, master, 'twill look on many a supper after the worms have eaten you and me.”
“I hope so,” said Pietro.
About a week after this the two friends sat working together, but not in the same spirit. Pietro dashed fitfully at his, and did wonders in a few minutes, and then did nothing, except abuse it; then presently resumed it in a fury, to lay it down with a groan. Through all which kept calmly working, calmly smiling, the canny Dutchman.
To be plain, Gerard, who never had a friend he did not master, had put his Onagra in harness. The friends were painting playing cards to boil the pot.
When done, the indignant master took up his picture to make his daily tour in search of a customer.
Gerard begged him to take the cards as well, and try and sell them. He looked all the rattle-snake, but eventually embraced Gerard in the Italian fashion, and took them, after first drying the last-finished ones in the sun, which was now powerful in that happy clime.
Gerard, left alone, executed a Greek letter or two, and then mended a little rent in his hose. His landlady found him thus employed, and inquired ironically whether there were no women in the house.
“When you have done that,” said she “come and talk to Teresa, my friend I spoke to thee of, that hath a husband not good for much, which brags his acquaintance with the great.”
Gerard went down, and who should Teresa be but the Roman matron.
“Ah, madama,” said he, “is it you? The good dame told me not that. And the little fair-haired boy, is he well is he none the worse for his voyage in that strange boat?”
“He is well,” said the matron.
“Why, what are you two talking about?” said the landlady, staring at them both in turn; “and why tremble you so, Teresa mia?”
“He saved my child's life,” said Teresa, making an effort to compose herself.
“What! my lodger? and he never told me a word of that. Art not ashamed to look me in the face?”
“Alas! speak not harshly to him,” said the matron. She then turned to her friend and poured out a glowing description of Gerard's conduct, during which Gerard stood blushing like a girl, and scarce recognizing his own performance, gratitude painted it so fair.
“And to think thou shouldst ask me to serve thy lodger, of whom I knew nought but that he had thy good word, oh, Fiammina; and that was enough for me. Dear youth, in serving thee I serve myself.”
Then ensued an eager description, by the two women, of what had been done, and what should be done, to penetrate the thick wall of fees, commissions, and chicanery, which stood between the patrons of art and an unknown artist in the Eternal City.
Teresa smiled sadly at Gerard's simplicity in leaving specimens of his skill at the doors of the great.
“What!” said she, “without promising the servants a share—without even feeing them, to let the signors see thy merchandise! As well have flung it into Tiber.”
“Well-a-day!” sighed Gerard. “Then how is an artist to find a patron? for artists are poor, not rich.”
“By going to some city nobler and not so greedy as this,” said Teresa. “La corte Romana non vuol' pecora senza lana.”
She fell into thought, and said she would come again to-morrow.
The landlady felicitated Gerard. “Teresa has got something in her head,” said she.
Teresa was scarce gone when Pietro returned with his picture, looking black as thunder. Gerard exchanged a glance with the landlady, and followed him upstairs to console him.
“What, have they let thee bring home thy masterpiece?”
“As heretofore.”
“More fools they, then.”
“That is not the worse.”
“Why, what is the matter?”
“They have bought the cards,” yelled Pietro, and hammered the air furiously right and left.
“All the better,” said Gerard cheerfully.
“They flew at me for them. They were enraptured with them. They tried to conceal their longing for them, but could not. I saw, I feigned, I pillaged; curse the boobies.”
And he flung down a dozen small silver coins on the floor and jumped on them, and danced on them with basilisk eyes, and then kicked them assiduously, and sent them spinning and flying, and running all abroad. Down went Gerard on his knees, and followed the maltreated innocents directly, and transferred them tenderly to his purse.
“Shouldst rather smile at their ignorance, and put it to profit,” said he.
“And so I will,” said Pietro, with concentrated indignation. “The brutes! We will paint a pack a day; we will set the whole city gambling and ruining itself, while we live like princes on its vices and stupidity. There was one of the queens, though, I had fain have kept back. 'Twas you limned her, brother. She had lovely red-brown hair and sapphire eyes, and above all, soul.”
“Pietro,” said Gerard softly, “I painted that one from my heart.”
The quick-witted Italian nodded, and his eyes twinkled.
“You love her so well, yet leave her.”
“Pietro, it is because I love her so dear that I have wandered all this weary road.”
This interesting colloquy was interrupted by the landlady crying from below, “Come down, you are wanted.” He went down, and there was Teresa again.
“Come with me, Ser Gerard.”
Gerard walked silently beside Teresa, wondering in his own mind, after the manner of artists, what she was going to do with him; instead of asking her. So at last she told him of her own accord. A friend had informed her of a working goldsmith's wife who wanted a writer. “Her shop is hard by; you will not have far to go.”
Accordingly they soon arrived at the goldsmith's wife.
“Madama,” said Teresa, “Leonora tells me you want a writer: I have brought you a beautiful one; he saved my child at sea. Prithee look on him with favour.”
The goldsmith's wife complied in one sense. She fixed her eyes on Gerard's comely face, and could hardly take them off again. But her reply was unsatisfactory. “Nay, I have no use for a writer. Ah! I mind now, it is my gossip, Claelia, the sausage-maker, wants one; she told me, and I told Leonora.”
Teresa made a courteous speech and withdrew.
Claelia lived at some distance, and when they reached her house she was out. Teresa said calmly, “I will await her return,” and sat so still, and dignified, and statuesque, that Gerard was beginning furtively to draw her, when Claelia returned.
“Madama, I hear from the goldsmith's wife, the excellent Olympia, that you need a writer” (here she took Gerard by the hand and led him forward); “I have brought you a beautiful one; he saved my child from the cruel waves. For our Lady's sake look with favour on him.”
“My good dame, my fair Ser,” said Claelia, “I have no use for a writer; but now you remind me, it was my friend Appia Claudia asked me for one but the other day. She is a tailor, lives in the Via Lepida.”
Teresa retired calmly.
“Madama,” said Gerard, “this is likely to be a tedious business for you.”
Teresa opened her eyes.
“What was ever done without a little patience?” She added mildly, “We will knock at every door at Rome but you shall have justice.”
“But, madama, I think we are dogged. I noticed a man that follows us, sometimes afar, sometimes close.”
“I have seen it,” said Teresa coldly; but her cheek coloured faintly. “It is my poor Lodovico.”
She stopped and turned, and beckoned with her finger.
A figure approached them somewhat unwillingly.
When he came up, she gazed him full in the face, and he looked sheepish.
“Lodovico mio,” said she, “know this young Ser, of whom I have so often spoken to thee. Know him and love him, for he it was who saved thy wife and child.”
At these last words Lodovico, who had been bowing and grinning artificially, suddenly changed to an expression of heartfelt gratitude, and embraced Gerard warmly.
Yet somehow there was something in the man's original manner, and his having followed his wife by stealth, that made Gerard uncomfortable under this caress. However, he said, “We shall have your company, Ser Lodovico?”
“No, signor,” replied Lodovico, “I go not on that side Tiber.”
“Addio, then,” said Teresa significantly.
“When shall you return home, Teresa mia?”
“When I have done mine errand, Lodovico.”
They pursued their way in silence. Teresa now wore a sad and almost gloomy air.
To be brief, Appia Claudia was merciful, and did not send them over Tiber again, but only a hundred yards down the street to Lucretia, who kept the glove shop; she it was wanted a writer; but what for, Appia Claudia could not conceive. Lucretia was a merry little dame, who received them heartily enough, and told them she wanted no writer, kept all her accounts in her head. “It was for my confessor, Father Colonna; he is mad after them.”
“I have heard of his excellency,” said Teresa.
“Who has not?”
“But, good dame, he is a friar; he has made vow of poverty. I cannot let the young man write and not be paid. He saved my child at sea.
“Did he now?” And Lucretia cast an approving look on Gerard. “Well, make your mind easy; a Colonna never wants for money. The good father has only to say the word, and the princes of his race will pour a thousand crowns into his lap. And such a confessor, dame! the best in Rome. His head is leagues and leagues away all the while; he never heeds what you are saying. Why, I think no more of confessing my sins to him than of telling them to that wall. Once, to try him, I confessed, along with the rest, as how I had killed my lodger's little girl and baked her in a pie. Well, when my voice left off confessing, he started out of his dream, and says he, a mustering up a gloom, 'My erring sister, say three Paternosters and three Ave Marias kneeling, and eat no butter nor eggs next Wednesday, and pax vobiscum!' and off a went with his hands behind him, looking as if there was no such thing as me in the world.”
Teresa waited patiently, then calmly brought this discursive lady back to the point: “Would she be so kind as go with this good youth to the friar and speak for him?”
“Alack! how can I leave my shop? And what need? His door is aye open to writers, and painters, and scholars, and all such cattle. Why, one day he would not receive the Duke d'Urbino, because a learned Greek was closeted with him, and the friar's head and his so close together over a dusty parchment just come in from Greece, as you could put one cowl over the pair. His wench Onesta told me. She mostly looks in here for a chat when she goes an errand.”
“This is the man for thee, my friend,” said Teresa.
“All you have to do,” continued Lucretia, “is to go to his lodgings (my boy shall show them you), and tell Onesta you come from me, and you are a writer, and she will take you up to him. If you put a piece of silver in the wench's hand, 'twill do you no harm: that stands to reason.”
“I have silver,” said Teresa warmly.
“But stay,” said Lucretia, “mind one thing. What the young man saith he can do, that he must be able to do, or let him shun the good friar like poison. He is a very wild beast against all bunglers. Why, 'twas but t'other day, one brought him an ill-carved crucifix. Says he, 'Is this how you present “Salvator Mundi?” who died for you in mortal agony; and you go and grudge him careful work. This slovenly gimcrack, a crucifix? But that it is a crucifix of some sort, and I am a holy man, I'd dust your jacket with your crucifix,' says he. Onesta heard every word through the key-hole; so mind.”
“Have no fears, madama,” said Teresa loftily. “I will answer for his ability; he saved my child.”
Gerard was not subtle enough to appreciate this conclusion; and was so far from sharing Teresa's confidence that he begged a respite. He would rather not go to the friar to-day: would not to-morrow do as well?
“Here is a coward for ye,” said Lucretia.
“No, he is not a coward,” said Teresa, firing up; “he is modest.”
“I am afraid of this high-born, fastidious friar,” said Gerard, “Consider he has seen the handiwork of all the writers in Italy, dear dame Teresa; if you would but let me prepare a better piece of work than yet I have done, and then to-morrow I will face him with it.”
“I consent,” said Teresa.
They walked home together.
Not far from his own lodging was a shop that sold vellum. There was a beautiful white skin in the window. Gerard looked at it wistfully; but he knew he could not pay for it; so he went on rather hastily. However, he soon made up his mind where to get vellum, and parting with Teresa at his own door, ran hastily upstairs, and took the bond he had brought all the way from Sevenbergen, and laid it with a sigh on the table. He then prepared with his chemicals to erase the old writing; but as this was his last chance of reading it, he now overcame his deadly repugnance to bad writing, and proceeded to decipher the deed in spite of its detestable contractions. It appeared by this deed that Ghysbrecht Van Swieten was to advance some money to Floris Brandt on a piece of land, and was to repay himself out of the rent.
On this Gerard felt it would be imprudent and improper to destroy the deed. On the contrary, he vowed to decipher every word, at his leisure. He went downstairs, determined to buy a small piece of vellum with his half of the card-money.
At the bottom of the stairs he found the landlady and Teresa talking. At sight of him the former cried, “Here he is. You are caught, donna mia. See what she has bought you?” And whipped out from under her apron the very skin of vellum Gerard had longed for.
“Why, dame! why, donna Teresa!” And he was speechless with pleasure and astonishment.
“Dear donna Teresa, there is not a skin in all Rome like it. However came you to hit on this one? 'Tis glamour.”
“Alas, dear boy, did not thine eye rest on it with desire? and didst thou not sigh in turning away from it? And was it for Teresa to let thee want the thing after that?”
“What sagacity! what goodness, madama! Oh, dame, I never thought I should possess this. What did you pay for it?”
“I forget. Addio, Fiammina. Addio, Ser Gerard. Be happy, be prosperous, as you are good.” And the Roman matron glided away while Gerard was hesitating, and thinking how to offer to pay so stately a creature for her purchase.
The next day in the afternoon he went to Lucretia, and her boy took him to Fra Colonna's lodgings. He announced his business, and feed Onesta, and she took him up to the friar. Gerard entered with a beating heart. The room, a large one, was strewed and heaped with objects of art, antiquity, and learning, lying about in rich profusion, and confusion. Manuscripts, pictures, carvings in wood and ivory, musical instruments; and in this glorious chaos sat the friar, poring intently over an Arabian manuscript.
He looked up a little peevishly at the interruption. Onesta whispered in his ear.
“Very well,” said he. “Let him be seated. Stay; young man, show me how you write?” And he threw Gerard a piece of paper, and pointed to an inkhorn.
“So please you, reverend father,” said Gerard, “my hand it trembleth too much at this moment; but last night I wrote a vellum page of Greek, and the Latin version by its side, to show the various character.”
“Show it me?”
Gerard brought the work to him in fear and trembling; then stood heart-sick, awaiting his verdict.
When it came it staggered him. For the verdict was, a Dominican falling on his neck.
The next day an event took place in Holland, the effect of which on Gerard's destiny, no mortal at the time, nor even my intelligent reader now, could, I think, foresee.
Marched up to Eli's door a pageant brave to the eye of sense, and to the vulgar judgment noble, but to the philosophic, pitiable more or less.
It looked one animal, a centaur; but on severe analysis proved two. The human half were sadly bedizened with those two metals, to clothe his carcass with which and line his pouch, man has now and then disposed of his soul: still the horse was the vainer brute of the two; he was far worse beflounced, bebonneted, and bemantled, than any fair lady regnante crinolina. For the man, under the colour of a warming-pan, retained Nature's outline. But it was subaudi equum! Scarce a pennyweight of honest horse-flesh to be seen. Our crinoline spares the noble parts of women, and makes but the baser parts gigantic (why this preference?); but this poor animal from stem to stern was swamped in finery. His ears were hid in great sheaths of white linen tipped with silver and blue. His body swaddled in stiff gorgeous cloths descending to the ground, except just in front, where they left him room to mince. His tail, though dear to memory, no doubt, was lost to sight, being tucked in heaven knows how. Only his eyes shone out like goggles, through two holes pierced in the wall of haberdashery, and his little front hoofs peeped in and out like rats.
Yet did this compound, gorgeous and irrational, represent power; absolute power: it came straight from a tournament at the Duke's court, which being on a progress, lay last night at a neighbouring town—to execute the behests of royalty.
“What ho!” cried the upper half, and on Eli emerging, with his wife behind him, saluted them. “Peace be with you, good people. Rejoice! I am come for your dwarf.”
Eli looked amazed, and said nothing. But Catherine screamed over his shoulder, “You have mistook your road, good man; here abides no dwarf.”
“Nay, wife, he means our Giles, who is somewhat small of stature: why gainsay what gainsayed may not be?”
“Ay!” cried the pageant, “that is he, and discourseth like the big taber.
“His breast is sound for that matter,” said Catherine sharply.
“And prompt with his fists though at long odds.”
“Else how would the poor thing keep his head in such a world as this?”
“'Tis well said, dame. Art as ready with thy weapon as he; art his mother, likely. So bring him forth, and that presently. See, they lead a stunted mule for him. The Duke hath need of him, sore need; we are clean out o' dwarven, and tiger-cats, which may not be, whiles earth them yieldeth. Our last hop o' my thumb tumbled down the well t'other day.”
“And think you I'll let my darling go to such an ill-guided house as you, where the reckless trollops of servants close not the well mouth, but leave it open to trap innocents, like wolven?”
The representative of autocracy lost patience at this unwonted opposition, and with stern look and voice bade her bethink her whether it was the better of the two; “to have your abortion at court fed like a bishop and put on like a prince, or to have all your heads stricken off and borne on poles, with the bellman crying, 'Behold the heads of hardy rebels, which having by good luck a misbegotten son, did traitorously grudge him to the Duke, who is the true father of all his folk, little or mickle?'
“Nay,” said Eli sadly, “miscall us not. We be true folk, and neither rebels nor traitors. But 'tis sudden, and the poor lad is our true flesh and blood, and hath of late given proof of more sense than heretofore.”
“Avails not threatening our lives,” whimpered Catherine; “we grudge him not to the Duke; but in sooth he cannot go; his linen is all in holes. So there is an end.”
But the male mind resisted this crusher.
“Think you the Duke will not find linen, and cloth of gold to boot? None so brave, none so affected, at court, as our monsters, big or wee.”
How long the dispute might have lasted, before the iron arguments of despotism achieved the inevitable victory, I know not; but it was cut short by a party whom neither disputant had deigned to consult.
The bone of contention walked out of the house, and sided with monarchy.
“If my folk are mad, I am not,” he roared. “I'll go with you and on the instant.”
At this Catherine set up a piteous cry. She saw another of her brood escaping from under her wing into some unknown element. Giles was not quite insensible to her distress, so simple yet so eloquent. He said, “Nay, take not on, mother! Why, 'tis a godsend. And I am sick of this, ever since Gerard left it.”
“Ah, cruel Giles! Should ye not rather say she is bereaved of Gerard: the more need of you to stay aside her and comfort her.”
“Oh! I am not going to Rome. Not such a fool. I shall never be farther than Rotterdam; and I'll often come and see you; and if I like not the place, who shall keep me there? Not all the dukes in Christendom.”
“Good sense lies in little bulk,” said the emissary approvingly. “Therefore, Master Giles, buss the old folk, and thank them for misbegetting of thee; and ho! you—bring hither his mule.”
One of his retinue brought up the dwarf mule. Giles refused it with scorn. And on being asked the reason, said it was not just.
“What! would ye throw all into one scale! Put muckle to muckle, and little to wee! Besides, I hate and scorn small things. I'll go on the highest horse here, or not at all.”
The pursuivant eyed him attentively a moment. He then adopted a courteous manner. “I shall study your will in all things reasonable. (Dismount, Eric, yours is the highest horse.) And if you would halt in the town an hour or so, while you bid them farewell, say but the word, and your pleasure shall be my delight.”
Giles reflected.
“Master,” said he, “if we wait a month, 'twill be still the same: my mother is a good soul, but her body is bigger than her spirit. We shall not part without a tear or two, and the quicker 'tis done the fewer; so bring yon horse to me.”
Catherine threw her apron over her face and sobbed. The high horse was brought, and Giles was for swarming up his tail, like a rope; but one of the servants cried out hastily, “Forbear, for he kicketh.” “I'll kick him,” said Giles. “Bring him close beneath this window, and I'll learn you all how to mount a horse which kicketh, and will not be clomb by the tail, the staircase of a horse.” And he dashed into the house, and almost immediately reappeared at an upper window, with a rope in his hand. He fastened an end somehow, and holding the other, descended as swift and smooth as an oiled thunderbolt in a groove, and lighted astride his high horse as unperceived by that animal as a fly settling on him.
The official lifted his hands to heaven in mawkish admiration. “I have gotten a pearl,” thought he, “and wow but this will be a good day's work for me.”
“Come, father, come, mother, buss me, and bless me, and off I go.”
Eli gave him his blessing, and bade him be honest and true, and a credit to his folk. Catherine could not speak, but clung to him with many sobs and embraces; and even through the mist of tears her eye detected in a moment the little rent in his sleeve he had made getting out of window, and she whipped out her needle and mended it then and there, and her tears fell on his arm the while, unheeded—except by those unfleshly eyes, with which they say the very air is thronged.
And so the dwarf mounted the high horse, and rode away complacent with the old hand laying the court butter on his back with a trowel.
Little recked Perpusillus of two poor silly females that sat by the bereaved hearth, rocking themselves, and weeping, and discussing all his virtues, and how his mind had opened lately, and blind as two beetles to his faults, who rode away from them, jocund and bold.
Ingentes animos angusto pectore versans.
Arrived at court he speedily became a great favourite.
One strange propensity of his electrified the palace; but on account of his small size, and for variety's sake, and as a monster, he was indulged on it. In a word, he was let speak the truth.
It is an unpopular thing.
He made it an intolerable one.
Bawled it.