Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster
: F. Marion Crawford
CHAPTER I
"The whole of this modern fabric of existence is a living lie!" cried
Marzio Pandolfi, striking his little hammer upon the heavy table with an
impatient rap. Then he dropped it and turning on his stool rested one
elbow upon the board while he clasped his long, nervous fingers together
and stared hard at his handsome apprentice. Gianbattista Bordogni looked
up from his work without relinquishing his tools, nodded gravely, stared
up at the high window, and then went on hammering gently upon his little
chisel, guiding the point carefully among the delicate arabesques traced
upon the silver.
"Yes," he said quietly, after a few seconds, "it is all a lie. But what
do you expect, Maestro Marzio? You might as well talk to a stone wall as
preach liberty to these cowards."
"Nevertheless, there are some--there are half a dozen--" muttered
Marzio, relapsing into sullen discontent and slowly turning the body of
the chalice beneath the cord stretched by the pedal on which he pressed
his foot. Having brought under his hand a round boss which was to become
the head of a cherub under his chisel, he rubbed his fingers over the
smooth silver, mechanically, while he contemplated the red wax model
before him. Then there was silence for a space, broken only by the
quick, irregular striking of the two little hammers upon the heads of
the chisels.
Maestro Marzio Pandolfi was a skilled workman and an artist. He was one
of the last of those workers in metals who once sent their masterpieces
from Rome to the great cathedrals of the world; one of the last of the
artistic descendants of Caradosso, of Benvenuto Cellini, of Claude
Ballin, and of all their successors; one of those men of rare talent who
unite the imagination of the artist with the executive skill of the
practised workman. They are hard to find nowadays. Of all the twenty
chisellers of various ages who hammered from morning till night in the
rooms outside, one only--Gianbattista Bordogni--had been thought worthy
by his master to share the privacy of the inner studio. The lad had
talent, said Maestro Marzio, and, what was more, the lad had
ideas--ideas about life, about the future of Italy, about the future of
the world's society. Marzio found in him a pupil, an artist and a
follower of his own political creed.
It was a small room in which they worked together. Plain wooden shelves
lined two of the walls from the floor to the ceiling. The third was
occupied by tables and a door, and in the fourth high grated windows
were situated, from which the clear light fell upon the long bench
before which the two men sat upon high stools. Upon the shelves were
numerous models in red wax, of chalices, monstrances, marvellous ewers
and embossed basins for the ablution of the priests' hands, crucifixes,
crowns, palm and olive branches--in a word, models of all those things
which pertain to the service and decoration of the church, and upon
which it has been the privilege of the silversmith to expend his art and
labour from time immemorial until the present day. There were some few
casts in plaster, but almost all were of that deep red, strong-smelling
wax which is the most fit medium for the temporary expression and study
of very fine and intricate designs. There is something in the very
colour which, to one acquainted with the art, suggests beautiful
fancies. It is the red of the Pompeian walls, and the rich tint seems to
call up the matchless traceries of the ancients. Old chisellers say that
no one can model anything wholly bad in red wax, and there is truth in
the saying. The material is old--the older the better; it has passed
under the hand of the artist again and again; it has taken form, served
for the model of a lasting work, been kneaded together in a lump, been
worked over and over by the boxwood tool. The workman feels that it has
absorbed some of the qualities of the master's genius, and touches it
with the certainty that its stiff substance will yield new forms of
beauty in his fingers, rendering up some of its latent capacity of shape
at each pressure and twist of the deftly-handled instrument.
At the extremities of the long bench huge iron vices were fixed by
staples that ran into the ground. In one of these was fastened the long
curved tool which serves to beat out the bosses of hollow and
small-necked vessels. Each of the workmen had a pedal beneath his foot
from which a soft cord ascended, passed through the table, and pressed
the round object on which he was working upon a thick leather cushion,
enabling him to hold it tightly in its place, or by lifting his foot to
turn it to a new position. In pots full of sand were stuck hundreds of
tiny chisels, so that the workmen could select at a glance the exact
form of tool needful for the moment. Two or three half balls of heavy
stone stood in leathern collars, their flat surfaces upwards and covered
with a brown composition of pitch and beeswax an inch thick, in which
small pieces of silver were firmly embedded in position to be chiselled.
The workshop was pervaded by a smell of wax and pitch, mingled with the
curious indefinable odour exhaled from steel tools in constant use, and
supplemented by the fumes of Marzio's pipe. The red bricks in the
portion of the floor where the two men sat were rubbed into hollows, but
the dust had been allowed to accumulate freely in the rest of the room,
and the dark corners were full of cobwebs which had all the air of being
inhabited by spiders of formidable dimensions.
Marzio Pandolfi, who bent over his work and busily plied his little
hammer during the interval of silence which followed his apprentice's
last remark, was the sole owner and master of the establishment. He was
forty years of age, thin and dark. His black hair was turning grey at
the temples, and though not long, hung forward over his knitted eyebrows
in disorderly locks. He had a strange face. His head, broad enough at
the level of the eyes, rose to a high prominence towards the back, while
his forehead, which projected forward at the heavy brows, sloped
backwards in the direction of the summit. The large black eyes were deep
and hollow, and there were broad rings of dark colour around them, so
that they seemed strangely thrown into relief above the sunken,
colourless cheeks. Marzio's nose was long and pointed, very straight,
and descending so suddenly from the forehead as to make an angle with
the latter the reverse of the one most common in human faces. Seen in
profile, the brows formed the most prominent point, and the line of the
head ran back above, while the line of the nose fell inward from the
perpendicular down to the small curved nostrils. The short black
moustache was thick enough to hide the lips, though deep furrows
surrounded the mouth and terminated in a very prominent but pointed
chin. The whole face expressed unusual qualities and defects; the gifts
of the artist, the tenacity of the workman and the small astuteness of
the plebeian were mingled with an appearance of something which was not
precisely ideality, but which might easily be fanaticism.
Marzio was tall and very thin. His limbs seemed to move rather by the
impulse of a nervous current within than by any development of normal
force in the muscles, and his long and slender fingers, naturally yellow
and discoloured by the use of tools and the handling of cements, might
have been parts of a machine, for they had none of that look of humanity
which one seeks in the hand, and by which one instinctively judges the
character. He was dressed in a woollen blouse, which hung in odd folds
about his emaciated frame, but which betrayed the roundness of his
shoulders, and the extreme length of his arms. His apprentice,
Gianbattista Bordogni, wore the same costume; but beyond his clothing he
bore no trace of any resemblance to his master. He was not a bad type
of the young Roman of his class at five-and-twenty years of age. His
thick black hair curled all over his head, from his low forehead to the
back of his neck, and his head was of a good shape, full and round,
broad over the brows and high above the orifice of the ear. His eyes
were brown and not over large, but well set, and his nose was slightly
aquiline, while his delicate black moustache showed the pleasant curve
of his even lips. There was colour in his cheeks, too--that rich colour
which dark men sometimes have in their youth. He was of middle height,
strong and compactly built, with large, well-made hands that seemed to
have more power in them, if less subtle skill, than those of Maestro
Marzio.
"Remember what I told you about the second indentation of the acanthus,"
said the elder workman, without looking round; "a light, light hand--no
holes in this work!"
Gianbattista murmured a sort of assent, which showed that the warning
was not wanted. He was intent upon the delicate operation he was
performing. Again the hammers beat irregularly.
"The more I think of it," said Marzio after the pause, "the more I am
beside myself. To think that you and I should be nailed to our stools
here, weekdays and feast-days, to finish a piece of work for a
scoundrelly priest--"
"A cardinal," suggested Gianbattista.
"Well! What difference is there? He is a priest, I suppose--a creature
who dresses himself up like a pulcinella before his altar--to--"
"Softly!" ejaculated the young man, looking round to see whether the
door was closed.
"Why softly?" asked the other angrily, though his annoyance did not seem
to communicate itself to the chisel he held in his hand, and which
continued its work as delicately as though its master were humming a
pastoral. "Why softly? An apoplexy on your softness! The papers speak as
loudly as they please--why should I hold my tongue? A dog-butcher of a
priest!"
"Well," answered Gianbattista in a meditative tone, as he selected
another chisel, "he has the money to pay for what he orders. If he had
not, we would not work for him, I suppose."
"If we had the money, you mean," retorted Marzio. "Why the devil should
he have money rather than we? Why don't you answer? Why should he wear
silk stockings--red silk stockings, the animal? Why should he want a
silver ewer and basin to wash his hands at his mass? Why would not an
earthen one do as well, such as I use? Why don't you answer? Eh?"
"Why should Prince Borghese live in a palace and keep scores of
horses?" inquired the young man calmly.
"Ay--why should he? Is there any known reason why he should? Am I not a
man as well as he? Are you not a man--you young donkey? I hate to think
that we, who are artists, who can work when we are put to it, have to
slave for such fellows as that--mumbling priests, bloated princes, a
pack of fools who are incapable of an idea! An idea! What am I saying?
Who have not the common intelligence of a cabbage-seller in the street!
And look at the work we give them--the creation of our minds, the labour
of our hands--"
"They give us their money in return," observed Gianbattista. "The
ancients, whom you are so fond of talking about, used to get their work
done by slaves chained to the bench--"
"Yes! And it has taken us two thousand years to get to the point we have
reached! Two thousand years--and what is it? Are we any better than
slaves, except that we work better?"
"I doubt whether we work better."
"What is the matter with you this morning?" cried Marzio. "Have you been
sneaking into some church on your way here? Pah! You smell of the
sacristy! Has Paolo been here? Oh, to think that a brother of mine
should be a priest! It is not to be believed!"
"It is the irony of fate. Moreover, he gets you plenty of orders."
"Yes, and no doubt he takes his percentage on the price. He had a new
cloak last month, and he asked me to make him a pair of silver buckles
for his shoes. Pretty, that--an artist's brother with silver buckles! I
told him to go to the devil, his father, for his ornaments. Why does he
not steal an old pair from the cardinal, his bondmaster? Not good
enough, I suppose--beast!"
Marzio laid aside his hammer and chisel, and lit the earthen pipe with
the rough wooden stem that lay beside him. Then he examined the
beautiful head of the angel he had been making upon the body of the
ewer. He touched it lovingly, loosed the cord, and lifted the piece from
the pad, turning it towards the light and searching critically for any
defect in the modelling of the little face. He replaced it on the table,
and selecting a very fine-pointed punch, laid down his pipe for a moment
and set about putting the tiny pupils into the eyes. Two touches were
enough. He began smoking again, and contemplated what he had done. It
was the body of a large silver ewer of which Gianbattista was
ornamenting the neck and mouth, which were of a separate piece. Amongst
the intricate arabesques little angels'-heads were embossed, and on one
side a group of cherubs was bearing a "monstrance" with the sacred Host
through silver clouds. A hackneyed subject on church vessels, but which
had taken wonderful beauty under the skilled fingers of the artist, who
sat cursing the priest who was to use it, while expending his best
talents on its perfections.
"It is not bad," he said rather doubtfully. "Come and look at it,
Tista," he added. The young man left his place and came and bent over
his master's shoulder, examining the piece with admiration. It was
characteristic of Marzio that he asked his apprentice's opinion. He was
an artist, and had the chief peculiarities of artists--namely,
diffidence concerning what he had done, and impatience of the criticism
of others, together with a strong desire to show his work as soon as it
was presentable.
"It is a masterpiece!" exclaimed Gianbattista. "What detail! I shall
never be able to finish anything like that cherub's face!"
"Do you think it is as good as the one I made last year, Tista?"
"Better," returned the young man confidently. "It is the best you have
ever made. I am quite sure of it. You should always work when you are in
a bad humour; you are so successful!"
"Bad humour! I am always in a bad humour," grumbled Marzio, rising and
walking about the brick floor, while he puffed clouds of acrid smoke
from his coarse pipe. "There is enough in this world to keep a man in a
bad humour all his life."
"I might say that," answered Gianbattista, turning round on his stool
and watching his master's angular movements as he rapidly paced the
room. "I might abuse fate--but you! You are rich, married, a father, a
great artist!"
"What stuff!" interrupted Marzio, standing still with his long legs
apart, and folding his arms as he spoke through his teeth, between which
he still held his pipe. "Rich? Yes--able to have a good coat for
feast-days, meat when I want it, and my brother's company when I don't
want it--for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the
last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of
beads and saints and little books with crosses on them--who would leer
at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the
house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a
Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all
such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like a head from a tombstone in
the Campo Varano for her husband, and who has brought up her daughter to
believe that her father is condemned to everlasting flames because he
hates cod-fish--salt cod-fish soaked in water! A wife who sticks images
in the lining of my hat to convert me, and sprinkles holy water on me
Then she thinks I am asleep, but I caught her at that the other night--"
"Indeed, they say the devil does not like holy water," remarked
Gianbattista, laughing.
"And you want to many my daughter, you young fool," continued Marzio,
not heeding the interruption. "You do. I will tell you what she is like.
My daughter--yes!--she has fine eyes, but she has the tongue of the--"
"Of her father," suggested Gianbattista, suddenly frowning.
"Yes--of her father, without her father's sense," cried Marzio angrily.
"With her eyes, those fine eyes!--those eyes!--you want to marry her. If
you wish to take her away, you may, and good riddance. I want no
daughter; there are too many women in the world already. They and the
priests do all the harm between them, because the priests know how to
think too well, and women never think at all. I wish you good luck of
your marriage and of your wife. If you were my son you would never have
thought of getting married. The mere idea of it made you send your
chisel through a cherub's eye last week and cost an hoax's time for
repairing. Is that the way to look at the great question of humanity?
Ah! if I were only a deputy in the Chambers, I would teach you the
philosophy of all that rubbish!"
"I thought you said the other day that you would not have any deputies
at all," observed the apprentice, playing with his hammer.
"Such as these are--no! A few of them I would put into the acid bath, as
I would a casting, to clean them before chiselling them down. They might
be good for something then. You must begin by knocking down, boy, if you
want to build up. You must knock down everything, raze the existing
system to the ground, and upon the place where it stood shall rise the
mighty temple of immortal liberty."
"And who will buy your chalices and monstrances under the new order of
things?" inquired Gianbattista coldly.
"The foreign market," returned Marzio. "Italy shall be herself again, as
she was in the days of Michael Angelo; of Leonardo, who died in the arms
of a king; of Cellini, who shot a prince from the walls of Saint Angelo.
Italy shall be great, shall monopolise the trade, the art, the greatness
of all creation!"
"A lucrative monopoly!" exclaimed the young man.
"Monopolies! There shall be no monopolies! The free artisan shall sell
what he can make and buy what he pleases. The priests shall be turned
out in chain gangs and build roads for our convenience, and the
superfluous females shall all be deported to the glorious colony of
Massowah! If I could but be absolute master of this country for a week I
could do much."
"I have no doubt of it," answered Gianbattista, with a quiet smile.
"I should think not," assented Marzio proudly; then catching sight of
the expression on the young man's face, he turned sharply upon him. "You
are mocking me, you good-for-nothing!" he cried angrily. "You are
laughing at me, at your master, you villain you wretch, you sickly
hound, you priest-ridden worm! It is intolerable! It is the first time
you have ever dared; do you think I am going to allow you to think for
yourself after all the pains I have taken to educate you, to teach you
my art, you ungrateful reptile?"
"If you were not such a great artist I would have left you long ago,"
answered the apprentice. "Besides, I believe in your principles. It is
your expression of them that makes me laugh now and then; I think you go
too far sometimes!"
"As if any one had ever gone far enough" exclaimed Marzio, somewhat
pacified, for his moods were very quick. "Since there are still men who
are richer than others, it is a sign that we have not gone to the
end--to the great end in which we believe. I am sure you believe in it
too, Tista, don't you?"
"Oh yes--in the end--certainly. Do not let us quarrel about the means,
Maestro Marzio. I must do another leaf before dinner."
"I will get in another cherub's nose," said his master, preparing to
relight his pipe for a whiff before going to work again. "Body of a dog,
these priests!" he grumbled, as he attacked the next angel on the ewer
with matchless dexterity and steadiness. A long pause followed the
animated discourse of the chiseller. Both men were intent upon their
work, alternately holding their breath for the delicate strokes, and
breathing more freely as the chisel reached the end of each tiny curve.
"I think you said a little while ago that I might marry Lucia," observed
Gianbattista, without looking up, "that is, if I would take her away!"
"And if you take her away," retorted the other, "where will you get
bread?"
"Where I get it now. I could live somewhere else and come here to work;
it seems simple enough."
"It seems simple, but it is not," replied Marzio. "Perhaps you could try
and get Paolo's commissions away from me, and then set up a studio for
yourself; but I doubt whether you could succeed. I am not old yet, nor
blind, nor shaky, thank God!"
"I did not catch the last words," said Gianbattista, hiding his smile
over his work.
"I said I was not old, nor broken down yet, thanks to my strength,"
growled the chiseller; "you will not steal my commissions yet awhile.
What is the matter with you to-day? You find fault with half I say, and
the other half you do not hear at all. You seem to have lost your head,
Tista. Be steady over those acanthus leaves; everybody thinks an
acanthus leaf is the easiest thing in the world, whereas it is one of
the most difficult before you get to figures. Most chisellers seem to
copy their acanthus leaves from the cabbage in their soup. They work as
though they had never seen the plant growing. When the Greeks began to
carve Corinthian capitals, they must have worked from real leaves, as I
taught you to model when you were a boy. Few things are harder than a
good acanthus leaf."
"I should think women could do the delicate part of our work very well,"
said the apprentice, returning to the subject from which Marzio was
evidently trying to lead him. "Lucia has such very clever fingers."
"Idiot!" muttered Marzio between his teeth, not deigning to make any
further answer.
The distant boom of a gun broke upon the silence that followed, and
immediately the bells of all the neighbouring churches rang out in quick
succession. It was midday.
"I did not expect to finish that nose," said Marzio, rising from his
stool. He was a punctual man, who exacted punctuality in others, and in
spite of his thin frame and nervous ways, he loved his dinner. In five
minutes all the men had left the workshop, and Marzio and his apprentice
stood in the street, the former locking the heavy door with a lettered
padlock, while the younger man sniffed the fresh spring air that blew
from the west out of the square of San Carlo a Catenari down the Via dei
Falegnami in which the establishment of the silver-chiseller was
situated.
As Marzio fumbled with the fastenings of the door, two women came up and
stopped. Marzio had his back turned, and Gianbattista touched his hat in
silence. The younger of the two was a stout, black-haired woman of
eight-and-thirty years, dressed in a costume of dark green cloth, which
fitted very closely to her exuberantly-developed bust, and was somewhat
too elaborately trimmed with imitation of jet and black ribands. A high
bonnet, decorated with a bunch of purple glass grapes and dark green
leaves, surmounted the lady's massive head, and though carefully put on
and neatly tied, seemed too small for the wearer. Her ears were adorned
by long gold earrings, in each of which were three large garnets, and
these trinkets dangled outside and over the riband of the bonnet, which
passed under her chin. In her large hands, covered with tight black
gloves, she carried a dark red parasol and a somewhat shabby little
black leather bag with steel fastenings. The stout lady's face was of
the type common among the Roman women of the lower class--very broad and
heavy, of a creamy white complexion, the upper lip shaded by a dark
fringe of down, and the deep sleepy eyes surmounted by heavy straight
eyebrows. Her hair, brought forward from under her bonnet, made smooth
waves upon her low forehead and reappeared in thick coils at the back of
her neck. Her nose was relatively small, but too thick and broad at the
nostrils, although it departed but little from the straight line of the
classic model. Altogether the Signora Pandolfi, christened Maria Luisa,
and wife to Marzio the silver-chiseller, was a portly and
pompous-looking person, who wore an air of knowing her position, and of
being sure to maintain it. Nevertheless, there was a kindly expression
in her fat face, and if her eyes looked sleepy they did not look
dishonest.
Signora Pandolfi's companion was her old maid-of-all-work, Assunta,
commonly called Suntarella, without whom she rarely stirred abroad--a
little old woman, in neat but dingy-coloured garments, with a grey
woollen shawl drawn over her head like a cowl, instead of a bonnet.
Marzio finished fastening the door, and then turned round. On seeing his
wife he remained silent for a moment, looking at her with an expression
of dissatisfied inquiry. He had not expected her.
"Well?" he ejaculated at last.
"It is dinner time," remarked the stout lady.
"Yes, I heard the gun," answered Marzio drily. "It is the same as if you
had told me," he added ironically, as he turned and led the way across
the street.
"A pretty answer!" exclaimed Maria Luisa, tossing her large head as she
followed her lord and master to the door of their house. Meanwhile
Assunta, the old servant, glanced at Gianbattista, rolled up her eyes
with an air of resignation, and spread out her withered hands for a
moment with a gesture of despair, instantly drawing them in again
beneath the folds of her grey woollen shawl.
"Gadding!" muttered Marzio, as he entered the narrow door from which the
dark steps led abruptly upwards. "Gadding--always gadding! And who minds
the soup-kettle when you are gadding, I should like to know? The cat, I
suppose! Oh, these women and their priests! These priests and these
women!"
"Lucia is minding the soup-kettle," gasped Maria Luisa, as she puffed up
stairs behind her thin and active husband.
"Lucia!" cried Marzio angrily, a flight of steps higher. "I suppose you
will bring her up to be woman of all work? Well, she could earn her
living then, which is more than you do! After all, it is better to mind
a soup-kettle than to thump a piano and to squeal so that I can hear her
in the shop opposite, and it is better than hanging about the church all
the morning, or listening to Paolo's drivelling talk. By all means keep
her in the kitchen."
It was hard to say whether Signora Pandolfi was puffing or sighing as
she paused for breath upon the landing, but there was probably something
of both in the labour of her lungs. She was used to Marzio. She had
lived with him for twenty years, and she knew his moods and his ways,
and detected the coming storm from afar. Unfortunately, or perhaps
fortunately, for her, there was little variety in the sequence of his
ideas. She was accustomed to his beginning at the grumbling stage before
dinner, and proceeding by a crescendo movement to the pitch of rage,
which was rarely reached until he had finished his meal, when he
generally seized his hat and dragged Gianbattista away with him,
declaring loudly that women were not fit for human society. The daily
excitement of this comedy had long lost its power to elicit anything
more than a sigh from the stout Maria Luisa, who generally bore Marzio's
unreasonable anger with considerable equanimity, waiting for his
departure to eat her boiled beef and salad in peace with Lucia, while
old Assunta sat by the table with the cat in her lap, putting in a word
of commiseration alternately with a word of gossip about the lodgers on
the other side of the landing. The latter were a young and happy pair:
the husband, a chorus singer at the Apollo, who worked at glove cleaning
during the day time; his wife, a sempstress, who did repairs upon the
costumes of the theatre. Their apartments consisted of two rooms and a
kitchen, while Marzio and his family occupied the rest of the floor, and
entered their lodging by the opposite door.
Maria Luisa envied the couple in her sleepy fashion. Her husband was
indeed comparatively rich, and though economical in his domestic
arrangements, he had money in the bank enough to keep him comfortably
for the rest of his days. His violence did not extend beyond words and
black looks, and he was not miserly about a few francs for dress, or a
dinner at the Falcone two or three times a year. But in the matter of
domestic peace his conduct left much to be desired. He was a sober man,
but his hours were irregular, for he attended the meetings of a certain
club which Maria Luisa held in abhorrence, and brought back opinions
which made her cross herself with her fat fingers, shuddering at the
things he said. As for Gianbattista Bordogni, who lived with them, and
consequently received most of his wages in the shape of board and
lodging, he loved Lucia Pandolfi, his master's daughter, and though he
shared Marzio's opinions, he held his tongue in the house. He understood
how necessary to him the mother's sympathy must be, and, with subtle
intelligence, he knew how to create a contrast between himself and his
master by being reticent at the right moment.
Lucia opened the door in answer to the bell her father had rung, and
stood aside in the narrow way to let members of the household pass by,
one by one. Lucia was seventeen years old, and probably resembled her
mother as the latter had looked at the same age. She was slight, and
tall, and dark, with a quantity of glossy black hair coiled behind her
head. Her black eyes had not yet acquired that sleepy look which
advancing life and stoutness had put into her mother's, as a sort of
sign of the difficulty of quick motion. Her figure was lithe, though she
was not a very active girl, and one might have predicted that at forty
she, too, would pay her debt to time in pounds of flesh. There are thin
people who look as though they could never grow stout, and there are
others whose leisurely motion and deliberate step foretells increase of
weight. But Gianbattista had not studied these matters of physiological
horoscopy. It sufficed him that Lucia Pandolfi was at present a very
pretty girl, even beautiful, according to some standards. Her thick
hair, low forehead, straight classic features, and severe mouth
fascinated the handsome apprentice, and the intimacy which had developed
between the two during the years of his residence under Marzio's roof,
from the time when Lucia was a little girl to the present day, had
rendered the transition from friendship to love almost imperceptible to
them both. Gianbattista was the last of the party to enter the lodging,
and as he paused to shut the door, Lucia was still lingering at the
threshold.
"Hist! They will see!" she protested under her breath.
"What do I care!" whispered the apprentice, as he kissed her cheek in
the dusky passage. Then they followed the rest.
CHAPTER II
That evening Marzio finished the last cherub's head on the ewer before
he left the shop. He had sent Gianbattista home, and had dismissed the
men who were working at a huge gilded grating ordered by a Roman prince
for a church he was decorating. Marzio worked on by the light of a
strong lamp until the features were all finished and he had indicated
the pupils of the eyes with the fine-pointed punch. Then he sat some
time at his bench with the beautiful piece of workmanship under his
fingers, looking hard at it and straining his eyes to find imperfections
that did not exist. At last he laid it down tenderly upon the stuffed
leather pad and stared at the green shade of the lamp, deep in thought.
The man's nature was in eternal conflict with itself, and he felt as
though he were the battle-ground of forces he could neither understand
nor control. A true artist in feeling, in the profound cultivation of
his tastes, in the laborious patience with which he executed his
designs, there was an element in his character and mind which was in
direct contradiction with the essence of what art is. If art can be said
to depend upon anything except itself, that something is religion. The
arts began in religious surroundings, in treating religious subjects,
and the history of the world from the time of the early Egyptians has
shown that where genius has lost faith in the supernatural, its efforts
to produce great works of lasting beauty in the sensual and material
atmosphere of another century have produced comparatively insignificant
results. The science of silver-chiselling began, so far as this age is
concerned, in the church. The tastes of Francis the First directed the
attention of the masters of the art to the making of ornaments for his
mistresses, and for a time the men who had made chalices for the Vatican
succeeded in making jewelry for Madame de Chateaubriand, Madame
d'Etampes, and Diane de Poitiers. But the art itself remained in the
church, and the marvels of _repousse_ gold and silver to be seen in the
church of Notre Dame des Victoires, the masterpieces of Ossani of Rome,
could not have been produced by any goldsmith who made jewelry for a
living.
Marzio Pandolfi knew all this better than any one, and he could no more
have separated himself from his passion for making chalices and
crucifixes than he could have changed the height of his stature or the
colour of his eyes. But at the same time he hated the church, the
priests, and every one who was to use the beautiful things over which he
spent so much time and labour. Had he been indifferent, a careless,
good-natured sceptic, he would have been a bad artist. As it was, the
very violence of his hatred lent spirit and vigour to his eye and hand.
He was willing to work upon the figure, perfecting every detail of
expression, until he fancied he could feel and see the silver limbs of
the dead Christ suffering upon the cross under the diabolical skill of
his long fingers. The monstrous horror of the thought made him work
marvels, and the fancied realisation of an idea that would startle even
a hardened unbeliever, lent a feverish impulse to this strange man's
genius.
As for the angels on the chalices, he did not hate them; on the
contrary, he saw in them the reflection of those vague images of
loveliness and innocence which haunt every artist's soul at times, and
the mere manual skill necessary to produce expression in things so
minute, fascinated a mind accustomed to cope with difficulties, and so
inured to them as almost to love them.
Nevertheless, when a man is constantly a prey to strong emotions, his
nature cannot long remain unchanged. The conviction had been growing in
Marzio's mind that it was his duty, for the sake of consistency, to
abandon his trade. The thought saddened him, but the conclusion seemed
inevitable. It was absurd, he repeated to himself, that one who hated
the priests should work for them. Marzio was a fanatic in his theories,
but he had something of the artist's simplicity in his idea of the way
they should be carried out. He would have thought it no harm to kill a
priest, but it seemed to him contemptible to receive a priest's money
for providing the church with vessels which were to serve in a worship
he despised.
Moreover, he was not poor. Indeed, he was richer than any one knew, and
the large sums paid for his matchless work went straight from the
workshop to the bank, while Marzio continued to live in the simple
lodgings to which he had first brought home his wife, eighteen years
before, when he was but a young partner in the establishment he now
owned. As he sat at the bench, looking from his silver ewer to the green
lampshade, he was asking himself whether he should not give up this life
of working for people he hated and launch into that larger work of
political agitation, for which he fancied himself so well fitted. He
looked forward into an imaginary future, and saw himself declaiming in
the Chambers against all that existed, rousing the passions of a
multitude to acts of destruction--of justice, as he called it in his
thoughts--and leading a vast army of angry men up the steps of the
Capitol to proclaim himself the champion of the rights of man against
the rights of kings. His eyelids contracted and the concentrated light
of his eyes was reduced to two tiny bright specks in the midst of the
pupils; his nervous hand went out and the fingers clutched the jaws of
the iron vice beside him as he would have wished to grapple with the
jaws of the beast oppression, which in his dreams seemed ever tormenting
the poor world in which he lived.
There was something lacking in his face, even in that moment of secret
rage as he sat alone in his workroom before the lamp. There was the
frenzy of the fanatic, the exaltation of the dreamer, clearly expressed
upon his features, but there was something wanting. There was everything
there except the force to accomplish, the initiative which oversteps the
bank of words, threats, and angry thoughts, and plunges boldly into the
stream, ready to sacrifice itself to lead others. The look of power, of
stern determination, which is never absent from the faces of men who
change their times, was not visible in the thin dark countenance of the
silver-chiseller. Marzio was destined never to rise above the common
howling mob which he aspired to lead.
This fact asserted itself outwardly as he sat there. After a few minutes
the features relaxed, a smile that was almost weak--the smile that shows
that a man lacks absolute confidence--passed quickly over his face, the
light in his eyes went out, and he rose from his stool with a short,
dissatisfied sigh, which was repeated once or twice as he put away his
work and arranged his tools. He made the rounds of the workshop, looked
to the fastenings of the windows, lighted a taper, and then extinguished
the lamp. He threw a loose overcoat over his shoulders without passing
his arms through the sleeves, and went out into the street. Glancing up
at the windows of his house opposite, he saw that the lights were
burning brightly, and he guessed that his wife and daughter were waiting
for him before sitting down to supper.
"Let them wait," he muttered with a surly grin, as he put out the taper
and went down the street in the opposite direction.
He turned the street corner by the dark Palazzo Antici Mattei, and
threaded the narrow streets towards the Pantheon and the Piazza Sant'
Eustachio. The weather had changed, and the damp south-east wind was
blowing fiercely behind him. The pavement was wet and slippery with the
strange thin coating of greasy mud which sometimes appears suddenly in
Rome even when it has not rained. The insufficient gas lamps flickered
in the wind as though they would go out, and the few pedestrians who
hurried along clung closely to the wall as though it offered them some
protection from the moist scirocco. The great doors of the palaces were
most of them closed, but here and there a little red light announced a
wine-shop, and as Marzio passed by he could see through the dirty panes
of glass dark figures sitting in a murky atmosphere over bottles of
coarse wine. The streets were foul with the nauseous smell of decaying
vegetables and damp walls which the south-east wind brings out of the
older parts of Rome, and while few voices were heard in the thick air,
the clatter of horses' hoofs on the wet stones rattled loudly from the
thoroughfares which lead to the theatres. It was a dismal night, but
Marzio Pandolfi felt that his temper was in tune with the weather as he
tramped along towards the Pantheon.
The streets widened as he neared his destination, and he drew his
overcoat more closely about his neck. Presently he reached a small door
close to Sant' Eustachio, one of the several entrances to the ancient
Falcone, an inn which has existed for centuries upon the same spot, in
the same house, and which affords a rather singular variety of
accommodation. Down stairs, upon the square, is a modern restaurant with
plate-glass windows, marble floor, Vienna cane chairs, and a general
appearance of luxury. A flight of steps leads to an upper story, where
there are numerous rooms of every shape and dimension, furnished with
old-fashioned Italian simplicity, though with considerable cleanliness.
Thither resort the large companies of regular guests who have eaten
their meals there during most of their lives. But there is much more
room in the house than appears. The vast kitchen on the ground floor
terminates in a large space, heavily vaulted and lighted by oil lamps,
where rougher tables are set and spread, and where you may see the
well-to-do wine-carter eating his supper after his journey across the
Campagna, in company with some of his city acquaintances of a similar
class. In dark corners huge wine-casks present their round dusty faces
to the doubtful light, the smell of the kitchen pervades everything,
tempered by the smell of wine from the neighbouring cellars; the floor
is of rough stone worn by generations of cooks, potboys, and guests.
Beyond this again a short flight of steps leads to a narrow doorway,
passing through which one enters the last and most retired chamber of
the huge inn. Here there is barely room for a dozen persons, and when
all the places are full the bottles and dishes are passed from the door
by the guests themselves over each other's heads, for there is no room
to move about in the narrow space. The walls are whitewashed and the
tables are as plain as the chairs, but the food and drink that are
consumed there are the best that the house affords, and the society,
from the point of view of Marzio Pandolfi and his friends, is of the
most agreeable.
The chiseller took his favourite seat in the corner furthest from the
window. Two or three men of widely different types were already at the
table, and Marzio exchanged a friendly nod with each. One was a florid
man of large proportions, dressed in the height of the fashion and with
scrupulous neatness. He was a jeweller. Another, a lawyer with a keen
and anxious face, wore a tightly-buttoned frock coat and a black tie.
Immense starched cuffs covered his bony hands and part of his fingers.
He was supping on a salad, into which he from time to time poured an
additional dose of vinegar. A third man, with a round hat on one side of
his head, and who wore a very light-coloured overcoat, displaying a
purple scarf with a showy pin at the neck, held a newspaper in one hand
and a fork in the other, with which he slowly ate mouthfuls of a ragout
of wild boar. He was a journalist on the staff of an advanced radical
paper.
"Halloa, Sor Marzio!" cried this last guest, suddenly looking up from
the sheet he was reading, "here is news of your brother."
"What?" asked Marzio briefly, but as though the matter were utterly
indifferent to him. "Has he killed anybody, the assassin?" The
journalist laughed hoarsely at the jest.
"Not so bad as that," he answered. "He is getting advancement. They are
going to make him a canon of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is in the
_Osservatore Romano_ of this evening."
"He is good for nothing else," growled Marzio. "It is just like him not
to have told me anything about it."
"With the sympathy which exists between you, I am surprised," said the
journalist. "After all, you might convert him, and then he would be
useful. He will be an archdeacon next, and then a bishop--who
knows?--perhaps a cardinal!"
"You might as well talk of converting the horses on Monte Cavallo as of
making Paolo change his mind," replied Pandolfi, beginning to sip the
white wine he had ordered. "You don't know him--he is an angel, my
brother! Oh, quite an angel! I wish somebody would send him to heaven,
where he is so anxious to be!"
"Look out, Marzio!" exclaimed the lawyer, glancing from the vinegar
cruet towards the door and then at his friend.
"No such luck," returned the chiseller. "Nothing ever happens to those
black-birds. When we get as far as hanging them, my dear brother will
happen to be in Paris instead of in Rome. You might as well try to catch
a street cat by calling to it _micio, micio_! as try and catch a priest.
You may as well expect to kill a mule by kicking it as one of those
animals, Burn the Vatican over their heads and think you have destroyed
them like a wasps' nest, they will write you a letter from Berlin the
next day saying that they are alive and well, and that Prince Bismarck
protests against your proceedings."
"Bravo, Sor Marzio!" cried the journalist. "I will put that in the paper
to-morrow--it is a fine fulmination. You always refresh my ideas--why
will you not write an article for us in that strain? I will publish it
as coming from a priest who has given up his orders, married, and opened
a wine-shop in Naples. What an effect! Magnificent! Do go on!"
Marzio did not need a second invitation to proceed upon his favourite
topic. He was soon launched, and as the little room filled, his pale and
sunken cheeks grew red with excitement, his tongue was unloosed, and he
poured out a continuous stream of blasphemous ribaldry such as would
have shocked the ears of a revolutionist of the year '89 or of a
_petroleuse_ of the nineteenth century. It seemed as though the spring
once opened would never dry. His eyes flashed, his fingers writhed
convulsively on the table, and his voice rang out, ironical and cutting,
with strange intonations that roused strange feelings in his hearers. It
was the old subject, but he found something new to say upon it at each
meeting with his friends, and they wondered where he got the imagination
to construct his telling phrases and specious, virulent arguments.
We have all wondered at such men. They are the outcome of this age and
of no previous time, as it is also to be hoped that their like may not
arise hereafter. They are found everywhere, these agitators, with their
excited faces, their nervous utterances, and their furious hatred of all
that is. They find their way into the parliaments of the world, into the
dining-rooms of the rich, into the wine-shops of the working men, into
the press even, and some of their works are published by great houses
and read by great ladies, if not by great men. Suddenly, when we least
expect it, a flaming advertisement announces a fiery tirade against all
that the great mass of mankind hold in honour, if not in reverence.
Curiosity drives thousands to read what is an insult to humanity, and
even though the many are disgusted, some few are found to admire a
rhetoric which exalts their own ignorance to the right of judging God.
And still the few increase and grow to be a root and send out shoots and
creepers like an evil plant, so that grave men say among themselves that
if there is to be a universal war in our times or hereafter it will be fought by Christians of all denominations defending themselves against those who are not Christians. |
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