VERNON
LEE
We had pretty well decided to send the « Prince of the Hundred
Soups » into the world just as if it were any other of the swarm of
story-books prepared for Christmas, and not to bother about any kind of
explanation, when, on second thoughts, my friend Mr. Unwin applied to me for a
preface giving some account of the authorship of the book and of the school of
art (if art may be connected with harlequinades) to which it belongs. And as it
is always better to avoid any kind of mystification of the public and the
reviewers, I am very willing to do so.
The curious circumstance about this “Prince of
the Hundred Soups” (which, as I shall explain further on, is a slightly modified
translation of an unpublished German MS.) is that it was intended by its author
not in the least as a Christmas book, but as the practical demonstration of a
theory based upon an enormous amount of research. It was an experiment to show
how much more interest could be got out of the Harlequins, Pantaloons,
Columbines, and so forth, of pantomimes and puppet-shows, than out of the
distressed men and women--who know that they ought not to do it, but insist
upon doing it nevertheless-- of modern fiction ; just on the same plan as
Monsieur Littré’s attempt to demonstrate, by translating Homer into medieval
French, what a very great pity it was that Alfred de Musset or Théophile
Gautier would write poems in the language of their own day. For learned folk are
liable to have very peculiar crotchets ; and the author of the “Prince of the
Hundred Soups” happened to be learned almost to the height of monomania. He was
the man who knew more than any other creature ever did about the Comedy of
Masks. What the Comedy of Masks is or was you probably, on reflection, don’t
know. I have myself written half a volume on the subject, but I fear you have
never read it, and perhaps never will read it (although I assure you it is by
no means a bad book in its way) ; so under the circumstances I had better tell
you a little about this Comedy of
Masks. But it would be simpler if I explained first who the author was,
and how the MS. came into my hands.
When I was a child there lived in Rome a German
old gentleman who was one of the sights of the place. Every town has several
curious and grotesque, or melancholy and mysterious, figures, or figures in
which all the four characters are curiously jumbled ; whose odd outline looms,
as it were, constantly on the horizon, familiar to every man, woman, and child
; so that every now and then one exclaims, “Oh, there’s so-and-so!” yet really
known to no one – living monuments, well-known as the church steeples, but
whose origin and history are wrapped in mystery. Of this kind was my old German
; one of my earliest recollections of Rome, and who, to my childish mind,
seemed as inevitable a part of it as did the Coliseum or St. Peter’s. The Roman
peopled called him Mangia-Zucchero,
“Eat-sugar”, probably because he appeared to live off nothing but sweets. I say
he appeared, because he took all his meals, or presumable meals, in public, and
nothing more substantial than cream tarts was ever seen in the process of being
eaten by him. For he spent an enormous proportion of his day in cabs, and he was
always eating something out of a paper : a wizened little old man, with the
most singular face conceivable, in shape like that of an ape, and with an ape’s
hundred wrinkles and anxious, nervous, melancholy expression, but white, like a
piece of bookbinder’s vellum. Whenever you least expected it, here he was in
his cab before you –invariably alone, and invariably eating. You would see that
cab of his (it was never the same one, although he might have bought a coach
and six with the money he must have spent on cab fares those endless years, I
should say) leisurely walking along the Corso, blocking up the way at the very
hour of the fashionable drive ; the magnificent carriage, poised like a boat on
its springs, of some woman of fashion behind ; the great blazoned and
hammer-clothed coach of some cardinal in front ; and there, between them, the
little old man cocked up in his cab, looking round him with benign contempt,
and munching something out of a paper bag. The cardinal’s lacqueys, hanging on
to the coach, would turn round and almost laugh in his face ; the swell
coachman behind would send his whip cracking almost into his ears, and the
jostled crowd would laugh and say, “Look at Mangia-Zucchero!” or some street
boy would cry out, “Well, Mangia-Zucchero, is it nice?” but he never took any
notice. Sometimes you would see his cab drawn up before Nazzarri’s, the grand
pastry-cook in Piazza di Spagna ; sometimes before some little stall in
Trastevere, where stale and highly varnished buns, and red and yellow painted
biscuits, and dried jujube berries and pine pips were for sale : he did not
mind what it was as long as it was sweet. I remember meeting a cab with
Mangia-Zucchero in it on bitter winter days among the aqueducts and tombs near
the city gates. He was always without a great coat or comforter ; for that was
another peculiarity of his, that he wore the same clothes all the year round ;
also in pelting rain eating his cakes under an umbrella, perfectly placid. The
only thing was that no one had ever seen him on foot, or otherwise than eating.
He must have been made of cast iron or of guttapercha, for climate had no
effect upon him, and he drove about just the same in the sharp snow-wind and
the burning August sun, braving heat, cold, malaria, fever, everything. And
thus he had been known, apparently unchanged, ever since the memory of man. No
one ever called him anything save Mangia-Zucchero ; but on inquiry he was found
to be called “Il Signor Todéro Vesedon” (I cannot make the Roman pronunciation
tally with any kind of English spelling), which, as I afterwards discovered,
was a form of Theodor Wesendonk. Tradition assigned to him a very miserable
house of only one storey (probably pulled down by this time) in a perfect Roman
St. Giles’, a network of dirty lanes behind S. Carlo a Cantinari, in a street
called Via della Fava d’Oro, or the Golden Bean, entirely inhabited by nailers,
who, with their black and half naked bodies bending over their anvils, looked
remarkably like the assistants of a medieval hangman. Further, the house was
stated to be full of monkeys, Mangia-Zucchero’s only servants ; and there were
vague reports of a wonderful theatre, in which only monkeys performed. Of
course he was said to be enormously rich.
Such was Theodor Wesendonk, otherwise
Mangia-Zucchero, as he exists in my childish recollections. You will ask what
this crazy person in his cab has to do with the Comedy of Masks and the “Prince
of the Hundred Soups”. A little patience, and you shall see. One year –it must
be some six years ago, or perhaps more– the familiar silhouette of the old
German munching in his cab was missing from the Roman horizon. I don’t know
whether any one noticed his absence ; there are figures which, familiar as long
as present, are forgotten as soon as they disappear, like a bench or a tree.
Anyhow, Mangia-Zucchero completely vanished from my mind. But now I am coming
to my story. Somewhat more recently I was in Rome again, and extremely taken up
with the Italian things of the eighteenth century. I was particularly studying
the subjects of which I treated in my essays on the Comedy of Masks, Goldoni,
and Gozzi. Such a study was not very easy anywhere ; and at that time the Roman
public library, or rather the chaos resulting from the fusion of half a dozen libraries
of suppressed religious establishments, was (as many students will remember)
wholly inaccessible. I was therefore reduced to getting my materials here,
there, and everywhere : one book at one bookstall, another elsewhere ; a print
here, another print there ; it was a perpetual hunt through the various
repositories of useless literature. One day, as good luck would have it, I
discovered a bookstall hitherto unknown to me, or rather, a shop for old books,
on the third floor of a house near the Sapienza, or Roman university. The owner
of it was quite out of the common run ; he was not a shopkeeper, but a real
bibliophile, and a man of excellent manners and much learning ; for the rest, a
singular character, exercising this trade not as a means of living, for he was
well off, but as the easiest way of satisfying his passion for rare books. As
long as a book possessed for him the first flavour of its rareness, no amount
of money would induce him to part with it ; but as soon as he grew tired of its
possession, or capriciously anxious to get some other book, he would sell it
for next to nothing. On my inquiring whether he had any books about the old
Italian comedy, he at first answered that he had none ; and I was on the point
of leaving the shop, when he stopped me and inquired into my reasons for
asking. We had some conversation on the subject of the Comedy of Masks, upon
which I was astonished to find that he was extremely well informed. He seemed
satisfied with my answers, and finding that I wanted the books not from any
spirit of collecting (for I never have possessed, and never shall possess, a
single book of any value, in my born days), but merely for the sake of
information to be got out of them, he confessed that he did possess some books
on the subject, but that they were not for sale ; but, he added (with that
generous helpfulness in literary matters which seems, alas, quite confined to
Italians), he would willingly lend me anything I might care for. Then he asked
me to return on a fixed day, on which he took me to another place of his,
crammed with invaluable old books. After displaying to me his pet treasures,
among which a complete set of various editions of “Poliphilo”, the original
editions of “Savonarola’s Sermons,” and two specimens of “Botticelli and
Dante,” he took me to a series of shelves, entirely covered with the rarest
books and prints connected with the Comedy of Masks. There were many more, he
said, but he had kept only the more valuable ones. Delighted with this
discovery, I asked him whether he himself had collected all this. “No,” he
said, “it is part of the library of a friend of mine, who died two years ago,
and left me all his books.” And, opening one of the volumes, he showed me an
elegant label, in which the usual coat of arms was replaced by a panoply of
masks, musical instruments, and similar attributes, and bearing the name,
“Theodor August Amadeus Wesendonk.”
“And who,” I inquired, “was this learned
gentleman ?” The bookseller hesitated for a moment.
“I think,” he said, “you must have known him
here in Rome – at least by sight – for he drove about a great deal : a quiet
little old man, thin, thin – un
vecchiettino secco, secco, secco. We used to call him
‘Mangia-Zucchero’.”
I gaped in astonishment, and at the same time
was very near bursting out laughing.
“Indeed !” I ejaculated, as the image of the
old man munching the buns out of his paper bag, in his cab going at a foot’s
pace, rose up, with so many other forgotten memories, in my mind.
“Ah !” sighed the bookseller ; “that was a man
! Such learning ! and wit ! Quite extraordinary ! Propio stupendo ! And
such an excellent judgement !”
“But,” I ventured to suggest timidly, “he was
surely rather –well, a singular man in his habits. I mean, he was quite
exceptionally fond of driving about.”
The bookseller’s face remained unmoved, as if
not an inkling of the comicality of poor Mangia-Zucchero’s habits had ever
occurred to him.
“Yes,” he said, stroking his long black beard,
and repeating his words in the pompous and meditative Roman drawl, “he drove
about a great deal –a great deal ; he had an opinion that it was dangerous to
walk, lest the feet should get chilled –yes, the feet chilled. It was an
opinion in which I was always unable to agree ; but still, every man knows
himself best –himself best.”
The kindness of Signor Spolverascaffali, who
has since died, I often recall with much gratitude. He certainly helped me more
than any other man in my studies. But this is irrelevant. Well, in the course
of my acquaintance with this unique bookseller, I learned a great deal about
poor old “Mangia-Zucchero.” The bookseller had been his sole friend for many
years, and always spoke of him with the greatest affection, and said he was a
most charming person –“una compitissima
persona.” His charity was almost as great as his eccentricity, for he
regularly supported some ten or twelve poor workmen disabled by illness, and
his whole fortune went to the great hospital of Santo Spirito. He had in his
youth, some sixty years ago, been a very popular German actor ; but the failure
of a play, written and acted by himself, had disgusted him with mankind, whose
society he had completely foresworn. Accident had stranded him in Rome, and
there he had lived fifty years in almost complete solitude. (Here I must
interrupt the bookseller’s account to say that he was, in all probability,
crazy.) He had, in his disgust with the modern stage, become, like Carlo Gozzi,
madly enthusiastic for the extinct Italian comedy of masks, and for its sole
modern representative, the puppet-show. He had filled his home with books,
prints, every manner of thing connected with the masks, and, being able to
draw, and very clever with his fingers, he had, with infinite patience and
expense, constructed in his house a magnificent puppet-stage, with the most
complicated machinery and a great variety of dresses and scenery. To improve
this, and write and rehearse plays for this stage, was for years the sole
occupation of the hours which he did not spend in the cab. He used to write
letters to all the sovereigns in Europe, urging upon them to set up
puppet-shows in their capitals, and forbid all realistic comedy, if they wished
to save their subjects from depravity and themselves from the guillotine. But
of grown-up folk only the bookseller, perhaps, ever witnessed his puppet
performances, which Signor Spolverascaffali declares to have been unique
spectacles ; although on Sundays and holidays the old gentleman would invite
all the poor children of the neighbourhood, and after a good supper, treat them
to a performance. The children of that poor district were quite devoted to him
; and when at last the poor old man died, it was found in his will that he
wished his coffin to be carried by eight boys, and the pall strings held by as
many girls. A great number of other children followed his funeral with torches
and sprigs of green. To each of his little friends he left wherewith to get a
complete new suit and a prayer-book.
Thus much of the life of Mangia-Zucchero.
One day my friend the bookseller, on my leaving
Rome, presented me with a heap of MSS. They were in German, which he could not
read ; but as they were written by Mangia-Zucchero, he did not doubt I should
find notes which would shed light upon my subject. Of these MSS. many did prove
to be historical notes and extracts from scarce books ; some were MSS. of his
puppet comedies ; but as he was in the habit of improvising nearly the whole
dialogue, they were extremely threadbare. Lastly, some fragments of essays and
MSS. of the “Prince of the Hundred Soups,” dated 1838. I have forgotten to
mention that the splendid puppet theatre, on which Mangia-Zucchero spent all
his ingenuity and time, was bought for five thousand francs (paid to the
hospital of Santo Spirito) by a man from Bologna, who travelled all over Italy
with it, until, after two years’ enormous success, the booth which contained it
was burnt down completely, owing to an accident, during a rehearsal at Rovigo.
I must now say a few words about the story
found among Theodor Wesendonk’s papers, and which, translated and slightly
abridged, Mr. Unwin and myself are now putting before English readers ; also a
few words concerning the comedy of masks, poor old Mangia-Zucchero’s craze, of
which this story may be considered as the latest and probably the last
outshoot. From the things told me by the bookseller, Spolverascaffali, and from
the fragmentary essays which formed part of the packet of MSS. which he handed
over to me, it is easy to reconstruct Wesendonk’s theories ; theories of which “the
Prince of the Hundred Soups” is the only remaining fruit. I must premise that
Theodor Wesendonk’s youth was influenced, like that of most Germans, and many
Frenchmen (I need only mention among the latter, Charles Nodier, Proper
Mérimée, Théophile Gautier, and above all, George Sand), of the earlier half of
this century, by the fantastic and humorous vagaries of certain eccentric
romanticists, now, alas, half-forgotten : Jean Paul, Tieck, Zimmermann,
Chamisso, and above all, Hoffmann. To their appeal from what mankind in its
dullness considers as important and interesting, the whimsical and imaginative
brain of Wesendonk had quickly responded : as an actor and a dramatic author he
had succeeded solely in the domain of the quaintly and humorously fantastic.
The ill success of a pet play of his own writing had drawn him off the stage,
and, as I have reason to believe, for some years into a madhouse. Be this as it
may, he had instinctively attributed this failure to the baneful influence of
realism ; and had instinctively sought consolation for his woes and incitement
to revenge in the style of literature (if literature it can be called) most
completely opposed to this realism. –“this puling, coffee-drinking,
crinoline-wearing female fiend, Realism,” as he wrote in 1852. Such was the old
Italian mask comedy. A comedy whose beginnings must be sought for in the
grotesque buffoons of earliest antiquity, and whose end in the pantomimes and
puppet-shows of our own days ; and which, depending mainly upon the improvised
jests and caperings of actors wearing the comical garments and masks of
Harlequin, Pantaloon, Pierrot, Columbine, and a whole host of others, triumphed
in Italy at a time when national literature was at its lowest, from the end of
the sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. These times were,
in themselves, highly comic, as the architecture, the poetry, and the art
(especially the wonderful caricatures of Jacques Callot) abundantly prove. So
that this Italian comedy of masks, steeped in the grotesqueness of the Italian
life of those days, naturally had a great attraction for many whimsical minds ;
as, for instance, George Sand, who made her son write a whole book on the
subject, and spent her leisure at Nohant presiding over puppet performances ;
Théophile Gautier, who got from it all the fascinating, quaint background of
his “Capitaine Fracasse”; and Hoffmann, whose story, called “Il Signor
Formica,” is a little masterpiece. As to poor Wesendonk, it simply made him
crazy and philosophic. The comedy of masks, complicated with its child, the
puppet-show, was to him the foundation of all drama and romance. “Only in the
world of Harlequins and Pantaloons,” he wrote, in a fragment entitled “Begriff
einer neuen Aesthetik” (“An attempt at Replacing all Previous Systems of
Aesthetics”), “can we really find that sovereign Idealism, serene and really
creatively human, after which man is for ever striving ; only with the
puppet-show can we get free from those psychological, political, and moralistic
ideas which are really foreign to art.” What the creatively human (“das Menschlich–Erzeugende”) exactly means I will
not stop to discuss; suffice it that Wesendonk aspired to nothing less than
revolutionizing all literature, dramatic and narrative, by basing it upon the
Comedy of Masks, “the highest product (“die höchste Leistung”) of the most
aesthetically endowed of all nations.” Given in a précis, and a précis by a
person who does not entirely agree with them, the ideas of Wesendonk must needs
appear very irrational ; but it is quite extraordinary how, in reading his
fragments, the sense of irrationality vanishes. The man, had he not been
crazed, would have had the stuff of another Hegel in him.
One fragment is entitled “Of Typicality.” The
fact of something being typical has given it (for reasons which I confess my
inability to follow) in the eyes of German metaphysicians, and of Mr. Taine and
sundry other French critics, an extraordinary artistic dignity ; and this, to
Wesendonk, was one great advantage of the Comedy of Masks. “In it alone,” he
writes, “can the type be obtained and preserved ; in every other form of art
purity is for ever troubled by the individual and the fortuitous.” For, in the
old Italian comedy (and in the puppet-show also), there exists a certain number
of fixed types, comic and serious, invariably dressing and feeling and speaking
in the same way, and rendered interesting only by being placed in continually
new positions. Thus (and this may help the understanding of “The Prince of the Hundred
Soups”) the silly, duped, good-natured papa, the noodle of the piece, is always
Pantalone, dressed in red and black Venetian robes ; the plotting old villain
is always Brighella, sometimes called Scappino (whence Molière’s “Fourberies de
Scapin”), and invariably dressed in black ; the stupid and roguish servant, the
sly clown, is the acrobat Harlequin in his stripes ; the bully is the red-nosed
Scaramuccia ; the young lady is Giacinta, Rosaura, or Clelia ; the lover, in
full splendour of feathers and ribbons, Lelio, Valerio, or, as in “The Prince
of the Hundred Soups,” Leandro ; finally, the waiting-maid is Harlequin’s
sweetheart, Colombina. These types are almost invariable, and the whole
ingenuity of the play consists in bringing their various peculiarities into
new, unexpected, and comical combinations. This will be sufficient explanation
of the comic system by which Wesendonk hoped to renovate the whole dramatic
literature of the world (“for,” he adds, “high pathos exists only in the
typical comedy”) by raising it to the long sought Idealism. Well, the tale
which its author called “Pantalone Doge,” a title which I have ventured to
replace by that of “The Prince of the Hundred Soups” –this tale is evidently
intended as a proof that the high idealism of Pantaloon and Harlequin may with
advantage be introduced not merely into the drama, but into narrative fiction,
to replace the realism of modern novels, which Wesendonk repeatedly stigmatises
as “nauseous,” “childish,” “depraving,” and “un-human.”
It is not, however, with a view to converting
mankind to Wesendonk’s (otherwise Mangia-Zucchero’s) “New System of Aesthetics”
that I have translated (abridging here and there where the love of typicality
produced a certain monotony) and am now editing “The Prince of the Hundred
Soups.” Perhaps the interest I take in Mask Comedy, and my consequent power of
investing Mangia-Zucchero’s personages with their quaint appearance, and
ascribing to their movements and speeches the grotesque jerkiness and piping
shrilliness of puppets, may give “The Prince of the Hundred Soups” a charm for
my own fancy which may not be intrinsic : I really feel that I am not a
competent judge. But it seems to me a pity that any work which may possibly
give pleasure should be utterly wasted ; and I confess, moreover, to a
sentimental reluctance that of all the passion and ingenuity of the poor old
man nothing whatever should remain. He himself, you see, was a kind of amusing
marionnette of my childish days, and I feel loth to push his work aside, as I
should feel loth to throw an old puppet, the darling of my nursery days, into
the fire. So I publish the tale, hoping not that it may convert aesthetes from
blood-and-bones lyricism to the serenity of puppet-shows, but that it may
perchance afford an hour’s amusement to some little boy or girl as nice as the
two long-legged foal to whom I have dedicated my editor’s work ; or to some
grown up simpleton as desultory and capricious as myself.
VERNON LEE
Florence, Oct. 24, 1882.
The prince of the
hundred soups
A puppet show in
narrative
CHAPTER I
It was in the morning of
the first day of the year one thousand six hundred and ninety five. All the
bells of the sixty four churches and convents of Bobbio were ringing; all the
twenty four cannons of Bobbio were banging on the bastions; all the thirty
thousand hearts of the thirty thousand subjects of the Serene and Unvanquished
Commonwealth of Bobbio were beating; the hostelries were encumbered with the
carts and mules of people who had driven in at daybreak from the remotest parts
of the state, a distance of a good twelve miles; the streets were lined by the
hundred grenadiers and the hundred Swiss of the Commonwealth; while the
celebrated horseless cavalry regiment, with their saddles on their shoulders,
kept order in the great square before the palace of the senate, which was
crowded with eager spectators. The forty senators of Bobbio had been locked up
three days and three nights to elect among themselves a new doge of Bobbio, a
“Dux inclytae Republicae Bobbulorum”, as he was styled in Latin documents; a
“magnifico Signore”, as he was denominated in Italian proclamations, “a prince
of the hundred soups”, as he was called in common parlance, from the one
hundred plates of soups prepared by the ducal cook, which it was his principal
duty to consume during his hundred days’ tenure of office, according to the
habit dating from the time of Charlemagne. The senators, or, as they were
called, the Signory, had now summoned the people to announce upon whom their
choice had fallen, and the people were waiting in intense excitement of
curiosity; for never in all the annals of Bobbio could there be found recorded
a ducal election more lengthy and more stormy, although ducal elections had
always been lengthy and stormy, and had always taken place regularly once every
three months.
By midday the
crowd, which had been stationed before the palace ever since the earliest
morning was growing impatient and hungry and thirsty, although vendors of wine
and salted pumpkin seeds had been elbowing all through their ranks. Suddenly
there was a flourish of trumpets and a roll of drums, and everyone became
breathless; the doors of the great palace balcony opened, and on it appeared
the venerable herald of the Republic, dressed in scarlet and armorial
embroideries, and preceded by two pages carrying trumpets with long streamers.
The pages blew their trumpets, and the herald, advancing to the front of the
balcony, announced in a loud, nasal voice that their high mightiness, the Senators
of Bobbio, had elected as Dux Bobbulorum the Magnificent Lord Pantalone
Busdrago I.
The crowd burst
into loud applause, “Long live the Signory! Long live the Doge! Long live
Bobbio! Long live the Magnificent Pantalone Busdrago I!”
The cries and
yells reached far and wide, and reached the ears of the most noble Scappino
Scappini, Count of Brighella, Generalissimo of the Republic, as he sat at his
embroidery frame in the great hall of the palace. Had the lightning darted
through the oaken roof and split through the marble floor behind him, the Count
of Brighella, Generalissimo of the Republic, could not have given a more
terrific start than the name of Pantalone Busdrago struck upon his ears. Down
crashed the embroidery frame, upon which he had been artistically working a
scarlet tulip, and off, to the farthest corners of the room, rolled half a
dozen balls of worsted, red and blue and green.
“Pantalone
Busdrago!” cried the Generalissimo in a stifled voice. “Pantalone Busdrago! He
-he– Doge of Bobbio – !” And the words stuck in his throat, and he sank on to a
chair, long, lank and rigid, like a collapsed puppet, his black silk
dressing-gown, fashioned out of an old senatorial robe, falling in stiff folds
on either side of the high-carved chair back.
Pantalone
Busdrago, Doge of Bobbio ! The Generalissimo’s plans defeated! His party
routed! All the insidious words, his insidious looks wasted! All the hatred of
years baffled in this way! He, the shrewdest head in all Bobbio, the noblest of
the old nobility, the inscrutable, invincible Scappino Brighella, defeated in
this way by a fat and foolish upstart, the great grandson of a sausage-maker,
who had only twenty years before bought the nobility of Bobbio. Oh shame,
sorrow, despair, wrath, vengeance!
And the Generalissimo
started to his feet and paced the room with feverish rapidity. He stopped every
now and then and looked around him at the faded and tattered hangings, at the
furniture with straw stuffing bursting out of the stained torn brocade, at the
blackened, wrinkled portraits, the portraits of his ancestors --of the noble
Scappini, Counts of Brighella, in armour and peaked beards and Doge’s purple.
That this should be the end of their family! That this unmitigated disgrace
should be permitted in the city which they had upheld with sword and counsel
ever since the days of Charlemagne! And the Generalissimo stood, erect and with
folded arms, gazing up at the face of Ugolino Brighella, despot of Bobbio in
the thirteenth century, who had conquered all the neighbouring states, and made
emperors and kings tremble at his name, and now looked down, blank and yellow,
upon the fallen fortunes of his house and upon his disconsolate descendant.
“ After this,”
exclaimed Scappino Brighella, “the aristocracy of Bobbio must fall for ever or
else--”, and he stopped, appalled at his own thought, “Bobbio must change, or
it will cease to exist!” And he looked up for approval from the yellow, blank
face, like that of a bonnet-block, of the despot of the thirteenth century. Thus
he stood a moment in deep thought; then suddenly light flashed into his eyes,
triumph lit up his face.
“I have it! ” he
exclaimed. “Pantalone Busdrago, we shall see which of us is the stronger!
Prince of the Hundred Soups, we shall see whether thou shalt eat thy hundredth
soup!”
He seized a bell
on a table and rang violently. No one answered. He went to the door, opened it,
and called “Arlecchino!”
There was no
answer, but only a nasal song met him from the court. He stepped out on to the
cloistered balcony surrounding it, and called again. There was a sound of
suddenly dropped brazen utensils, and a long, lithe figure, arrayed in
tight-fitting parti-coloured hose and jerkins, with many a blotch and patch,
let go a copper saucepan he had been scouring, and put his dark, threatening
head out of the kitchen window looking on to the court.
“Excellency?” he
asked.
“Come hither,
Arlecchino” ordered the Generalissimo, with dignity. The swarthy, lanky fellow
pulled off the kitchen apron and ran up the steps, turning a somersault as he
did so, from sheer animal spirits and natural dexterity of constitution. He
appeared before the Generalissimo cap in hand, and bowed deeply.
“Come hither,
Arlecchino”, said the Count Brighella, beckoning him into a dark study, fitted
up with carved oak and hung with gilded pig’s- leather.
Arlecchino
entered and shut the door behind him.
“Arlecchino,”
said the Generalissimo, seated gravely in a high-backed chair, “thou knowest
that I have ever been a good master to thee even from thy infancy. I have
protected thee from those who would have hanged thee for a thief and a
murderer. Thou art now the only remaining bravo in all Bobbio --thou alone,
despite the persecutions of the police; and what thou art thou owest to me. Now
I require a return to thy fidelity.”
The swarthy face
of the bravo lit up with a smile of pleasure, mixed with a sort of stupid
cunning.
“Command me, I
will do everything, Excellency,” he answered; and his hand mechanically sought
for the handle of the large kitchen knife stuck through his leathern belt.
“Listen then,
Arlecchino,” said Count Brighella, “and “remember: if a word of this ever
escapes thee, thou shalt be hanged the very next morning. This is a matter
which requires activity and adroitness, and above all, silence.”
Arlecchino bowed.
The Generalissimo beckoned to him to approach.
“Dost thou know
Master Fritello, the cook of the Signory?” he asked.
“I do,” answered
the bravo. “Your Excellence means a little fat, round man, who--”
“Yes, yes –well,
mark this. He is not to cook any more; at least, for a good long while. Dost
thou understand?”
Arlecchino’s face
broadened into a grin.
“But no scandal,
no violence, mind that!” said the Generalissimo; “No blood spilt, above all. It
will suffice if he be so unwell tomorrow that he be forced to send in his
resignation. Mark that, he must resign voluntarily. I leave it in thy hands.”
“He is now out at
his farm, on account of the leisure of the interregnum,” mused Arlecchino. “I
will upset his gig as he returns home this evening. His horse shies easily. At
all events a couple of kicks are never wasted. Reckon as if he were already
dispatched, Excellency.”
“Good,” answered
the Generalissimo ; “but this is only half the business. We must get another to
replace him. Dost thou know of a good cook in want of a place? He need not be
very good, but he ought to be impressionable, easily frightened.”
“There is the
hunchback. Your Excellency perhaps knows him? He served the late senator,
Ottavio Zanni! He is very devout --sees visions sometimes. St. Francis appeared
to him last December. I think he would do.”
“Very good,”
replied the Generalissimo. “Then listen,” and he lowered his voice to a whisper
so slight that only the sharp ears of Arlecchino could have heard it.
When the faithful
bravo, his kitchen knife stuck in his belt and his cap in hand, had bowed and
turned head over heels (which he always did in bowing) out of the room, the
Generalissimo walked to the open window, rubbing his hands in high glee.
He looked out, up
and down the street, whose windows and balconies were decorated with carpets
and draperies, while garlands of box, set with artificial flowers, hung from
cressets and torch-holders. He could see the crowd in the palace square, the
sheen of the breastplates of the Swiss guards, the banners of the guilds; he
could hear the crowd still shouting for the new Doge, Pantalone Busdrago.
Count Brighella
smiled as he looked on. “Prince of the Hundred Soups,” he muttered between his
teeth, “we shall see whether thou wilt swallow thy hundredth soup!”
And he shut the
window with a triumphant bang.
CHAPTER
II
Meanwhile,
unconscious of the mysterious storm which was brewing in the Generalissimo’s
kitchen, Pantalone Busdrago, first Doge of his name, was giving a grand
entertainment at his palace, the last which he could give before entering on
his ducal functions.
A
string of immense gilded coaches, with cherubs, armorial bearings, and all
manner of devices painted and sculptured on their panels, was drawn up in the
little square before the Busdrago palace: a magnificent structure, brilliant
with whitewash, in the most gorgeous architecture of the day, with columns like
piled cheeses, sustaining vases filled with plastic fire, and broken arches
bound with stucco garlands and inhabited by stucco virtues. Over the entrance
door two Cupids upheld the escutcheon of the Busdrago family, with the
marquis’s coronet (bought for five thousand crowns from the Duke of Massa Carrara) and the arms : in a field of
gules an azure dragon (Draco), covered with silver stars, eating a golden ox
(Bos); the two together constituting the arms of the Busdrago, or Bos Draconis
family, as elaborated by the chief herald of the Republic of Bobbio.
The
running footmen, with ribbons on their shoulders and long flying sleeves, waved
their torches by the coach sides; the pages in scarlet and blue and silver
jumped down from the back of the vehicles, where they clustered by threes, and
opened the doors to let out foreign ambassadors covered with golden collars and
parti-coloured ribbons, and senators in black robes and furred caps, and
officers in breastplates and high plumed hats, and cardinals in scarlet, and
prelates in purple, and last, but not least, ladies, superb in proud rouged
beauty and stiff stomachers embroidered with pearls, their satin and brocade
trains upheld by little curled pages, leaning on the arm of their cavaliere servente in chief, and
surrounded by a constellation of minor cavalieri
serventi, carrying their fans, their handkerchiefs, their nose-gays, or
their smelling bottles. Upstairs, in the great reception-rooms, an immense
crowd was already moving about among the magnificent furniture, the gilding and
stuccoing, and the superb liveries, all new, brand new, as was everything
belonging to the Magnificent Pantalone Busdrago.
And
there was His Magnificence in person --a round, fat, restless little man,
perpetually cheerful and merry; his enemies said that his constant good humour
and high spirits, his plump and active person, were signs of low birth ; and
so, perhaps they were. Be it as it may, the new Doge contrasted strangely with
the lantern-jawed, solemn, pompous dignitaries who surrounded him. The fact was
that Pantalone Busdrago was overflowing with happiness, bursting with
prosperity. He could have danced for joy at having been elected Doge at last,
but he knew that would show his base extraction, so he tried to repress his
glee, and to assume a serious and rather melancholy air, in which, however, he
could not succeed. All the ambassadors, cardinals, and grandees were
congratulating him upon his election ; mostly with real pleasure, on account of
his money, his generosity, and his good humour. But there were a few senators
whose congratulations were peculiarly frigid and forced. They had tried to
prevent his being elected; they belonged to the aristocratic party, headed by
the Generalissimo Brighella, which had been so signally defeated. After the
congratulations were ended, all the poets in Bobbio came forward and read
innumerable copies of verses in honour of the new Doge, in which he was
compared to Jupiter, Mars, the sun, moon, stars; and Fame was invariably
invited to blow her trumpet for his benefit. After that the curtain of a little
theatre erected in the palace court was raised, and there came forward sundry
nymphs in striped satin petticoats and pink silk stockings, with crooks in
their hands, and wreaths on their heads, and sundry ancient heroes, in blonde
wigs, plumed morions and sandals, who performed a pastoral in music, singing the
praises of a mysterious shepherd, Glaucus, the richest and wisest shepherd of
Arcadia, the beloved of the Gods, whom every one understood to be Pantalone
Busdrago ; the whole to the accompaniment of excellent symphonies of
harpsichords, viols, lutes, and flutes.
After
the pastoral there was a grand supper, Pantalone Busdrago sitting at the head
of the table, between the Dowager Grand Duchess of Guastalla and his own
beautiful daughter, Giacinta, magnificently dressed in violet and gold brocade,
which showed off her auburn curls and black eyes to perfection. But beautiful
as looked Giacinta Busdrago at the supper table, it was not till the fiddles
had come in and the ball had begun that she shone to full advantage, making all
the other ladies, though fair, seem like glow-worms by the side of the noonday
sun. They danced courantes and allemandes and stately minuets, all the
noble youths crowding round the new Doge’s beautiful daughter. With all she was
courteous and cheerful, but disdainful of their words of admiration and
passion, trampling royally upon the noblest hearts in Bobbio. With one,
however, she was neither courteous nor cheerful; she turned her back rudely to
him without answering his greeting. He was a stately youth, with long fair
curls and languishing blue eyes ; of slender and graceful figure, beautifully
dressed in long pale yellow waistcoat and olive embroidered coat, with purple
knits at his knees and in his shoes, and purple feathers on his laced hat ; a
gallant and discreet young man, made to charm the hearts of ladies. But he was
Leandro Scappini, son of the Generalissimo Brighella, the avowed enemy of
Giacinta Busdrago’s father, and as such a sworn enemy of Giacinta herself.
Now
it so happened that in this ball every lady received a nosegay entirely
composed of the same flowers, which she distributed to the cavaliers with whom
she condescended to dance, as a token of recognition and a pledge to fulfil her
promise. Some of the ladies had nosegays of carnations, others of roses, others
of orange blossoms, and various other sweet-smelling flowers ; that of Giacinta
Busdrago was of yellow jasmine. At the beginning of the ball all the gentlemen
crowded round her, each asking for a flower. And to each she gave one, until
there remained only a few sprigs in her hand. At that time, up came Leandro
Scappini, and made a low bow, casting at the same time a wrathful glance at
Giacinta. Every one looked on in wonder at what would happen, for there never
passed an opportunity of Leandro saying something sneering to Giacinta, and
Giacinta responding rudely to Leandro.
On
this occasion Leandro made a bow of mock courtesy, and in a voice of mock
humility asked, pointing to the jasmine in her hand--
“Has
the daughter of the Magnificent Pantalone Busdrago no flower for the son of
Scappino Brighella?”
Giacinta
glanced up scornfully at Leandro, who stood with a jaunty, conquering air
before her.
She
slowly unrolled the paper confining the few remaining jasmines, carefully
extricated them, and then handed to the confused and astonished gallant the
little damp, ragged paper.
“You
may wear this for my sake, sir,” she said scornfully, and swept away, leaving
the crestfallen Leandro to beat a retreat amidst the laughter of the
bystanders.
Leandro
Scappini retreated precipitately through the crowd of dancers, got out of the
palace into the street, and in a few moments reached the palace of his father.
He hastened up to his room, lit a candle, and locked the door. Then he drew
from his breast the damp, crumpled piece of paper which had brought so much
derision upon him, turned it round, kissed and re-kissed it, and then, having
carefully smoothed it out, held it close to the flame of the candle.
In a
few seconds dark marks began to appear on the paper, and in about ten minutes
they had turned into legible writing, into a letter which ran thus :--
“Leandro,
you are a fool, and I am growing sick of your stupid and cowardly vacillation.
Do you want to marry me or not? If you do, be a man for once and face your old
tyrant of a father. I believe you are as afraid of him as when you were a baby.
If he were my father he should soon
learn with whom he has to deal. I am sure he is up to some mischief against
poor papa. If you could only summon up one grain of spirit we would make him cede.
Papa would agree, although he hates you. I cannot go on waiting your pleasure
like this. I have already done poor papa a great injury by refusing the Senator
Scaramuccia, who is now our mortal enemy. And all this for the sake of a
wretched creature like you. Your GIACINTA.”
Signor
Leandro read and re-read this note, sighed, rose, paced up and down, and said
to himself, “She is right, I am a fool and a sneak. I must make an end of all
this.” And he began to muse over his evil fate.
Leandro
felt hurt in his dignity as a man and a soldier; for he was the colonel of the
cavalry of the Republic; that is to say, of a regiment of horse of which the
riders carried the saddles on their shoulders when on parade, as symbolical of
the steeds which had died many years before, and never been replaced; a
regiment which had done excellent service against the Turks in Hungary, under
the command of the Generalissimo Brighella. Leandro had the pride of a soldier,
and felt hurt at being thus twitted by a girl, and at having to endure such a
public insult as that he had just sustained; he was ashamed of not being master
of his own actions, of having to play at hide-and-seek with his feelings, at
having to slink away from under his father’s glance. He determined to be independent
once for all; to boldly go up to Pantalone Busdrago and demand of him the hand
of his daughter. The difficulty was to do so without the knowledge of his
terrible father. How could he find an opportunity? Perhaps the Generalissimo
might go for a day or two into the country to see that the agent did no cheat
as to the corn or the wine. Then Leandro might act boldly. Yes--he would do
that. He would go up to Busdrago, and say--what would he say?-- Something to
the effect that he was resolved to marry his daughter? And if Busdrago refused
or at least delayed, and the Generalissimo came up in the meanwhile? O heavens!
Leandro could never run into the jaws of such danger! He was his own master,
however; his father could not control his actions; and as to disinheriting him,
why, what inheritance was there? A crumbling palace, rotting furniture, just
enough sour wine and thin oil for the family use ; the husband of the greatest
heiress in Bobbio could well afford to lose all that. Nor could his father lock
him up, nor beat him, nor send him into exile. There was in reality nothing to
fear. Yes, he would act; he would show Giacinta that he was not afraid of his
father, that he was not the vacillating creature she imagined; she would show
those insolent jackanapes who had stood laughing at his supposed discomfiture
that Leandro Scappini could get more difficult prizes than jasmine sprigs.
Leandro had placed himself before the dim, cracked, dusty pier-glass, and was
pursuing these noble thoughts while contemplating his image, erect and firm,
one hand on his hip, the other complacently stroking his handsome chin and lip,
pulling imaginary moustachios, which the taste of the time forbade him to wear,
when, suddenly, steps were heard in the lobby, and a sharp, decided voice
called from without, “Leandro !”
Leandro
darted forward, unbolted the door, and appeared on the threshold, pale and
bewildered, before his father. The Generalissimo was wrapped in a dark robe,
and shaded a tallow candle with one hand, while with the other he held a small
bundle.
“Put
on these things at once,” he said, placing the bundle on a table. His son,
quaking internally, unrolled it and took out a black robe and maskhood (sic), similar to those of a penitent of some
confraternity.
“Put
them on at once,” ordered the Generalissimo. Leandro obeyed passively ;
buttoned the straight black robe, and slipped the hood over his head, only his
eyes remaining visible through the slits.
“Now
come,” said the Generalissimo, taking Leandro’s arm, and leading him along the
lobby.
“I
hear that that little minx of a daughter of Busdrago has insulted you this
evening. Ah, we shall soon be revenged on the whole pack of them.”
Leandro’s
heart sank within him, but he made no attempt at resistance or explanation.
CHAPTER
III
While
the noble folk of Bobbio were dancing and making merry at the reception of the
new Doge, a mysterious incident was taking place in one of the remoter parts of
the city. Master Truffaldino, usually called the Gobbo, or Hunchback, ex-cook of the late Senator Ottavio Zanni, was
quietly wending his way homewards from the Busdrago palace, where he had been
called in to lend a hand in preparing the supper. He took a short cut, avoiding
the main streets of the town, and skirting the ramparts, through many a little
blind alley and quiet lane. The moon was in and out among white, buff-tinted
clouds; the night was still and drowsy, with alternations of bright and
complete darkness. Somehow or other it depressed the Gobbo’s spirits, and led
him to melancholy thoughts. As he was passing along a narrow paved street, shut
in between the walls of a garden on the one side and those of a convent on the
other --a high square belfry, its rows of slender pillarets and fretted
bell-lofts, white against the bright blue sky, closing in the view; -- as he
was walking along, suddenly he thought he heard steps behind him, pit-a-pat
along the pavement. It first surprised, then worried, then fascinated his
sensitive and imaginative mind; he felt a longing to look behind him, and at
the same time an incomprehensible dread of so doing. The sound was becoming
intolerable. At length Master Truffaldino screwed up his courage, and turned
round to see who it might be. No one. Nothing but the long blank line of walls
on either side, a tree overtopping that of the garden, and the moonlight white
upon everything. Strange! He had heard footsteps. The matter made him uneasy,
and he quickened his pace uncomfortably. The moonlight was in and out, now
playing with the branches of the trees and the columns of the belfry, now
leaving all in darkness. At one moment the Gobbo thought he saw a figure in the
bell-loft --it might or might not be. Then, from some neighbouring place, he
heard a bleating as of a sheep or a goat. He remembered what he had heard from
his grandmother about Master Curtio, the magician who was burnt in effigy in
the year 1599, and of his expeditions through the air on a ram. The poor Gobbo
was getting very fidgetty. Again he heard the steps behind him; he was now at
the end of the blind alley. The bleating was repeated, together with sundry
strange sounds --whines, grunts, he knew not what. Master Curtio must certainly
be out to-night, so the Gobbo took to his heels and dashed up on to the
ramparts. In the open space he thought he would feel safer. But as he was
scrambling up on to the bastions, a gigantic white figure with flaming eyes
rose up from behind a tree, and caught him by the cloak. Truffaldino shrieked
in agony, gasped, tried to speak to call upon the saints, but his voice stuck
in his throat. The apparition, its terrible flaming eyes fixed upon him, held
him by the collar, and administered two or three vigorous kicks into his sides.
Truffaldino groaned and tried to call out ; but suddenly he was plunged in
darkness. A something thick and heavy intercepted his sight; he closed his eyes
in agony and resigned himself. Then he felt a violent jerk, as if he were being
thrown up into the air; after which he was rapidly borne away. Whither? And
how? On and on, heaven knows for how long, the unfortunate hunchback lay half
fainting, surrounded by darkness, muttering snatches of prayers all confused
together. Master Curtio the wizard had taken him; they were flying through the
air, skimming the corn which the peasants would find seared the next morning,
as it always was beneath the hoofs of Curtio’s ram. They were flying through
the country for miles and miles towards that terrible hollow in the mountains
where the devil was wont to appear with the legs of a cock. Truffaldino understood
it all. Holy Virgin! All the saints and martyrs defend him! He vowed candles
and silver images to all the altars in Bobbio. Suddenly, there was a thump;
they had stopped. They had got to the hollow, to the witches’ meeting-place. He
was to be fried by the witches and wizards, enchanted candles were to be made
out of him. He shrieked with terror. At that moment the darkness was removed
from his sight, and he was set on his feet on the firm ground, two more
mysterious kicks accompanying the action. He stood dazed and blinded, and
crossing himself and sinking on his knees. Little by little he regained his
sight, and discovered that he was in the middle of a large hall, dimly lit by a
chandelier in the middle, all the extremities hid in gloom. Before him was a
table covered with a dark cloth, and behind it sat three figures, robed and
cowled in black, with only their eyes shining in their hoods. Truffaldino
trembled harder than ever, and crossed himself more than before, grovelling
feebly on the ground. One of the figures gave a demoniac laugh, which went
through the marrow of the Gobbo’s bones, but the middle figure waved his hand
with a gesture of silencing, and spoke in strange, unearthly tones.
“Master
Truffaldino, attend,” he said. “Know that this night will be thy good fortune
or utter ruin. If you reveal a word of what has passed and shall pass, although
thou shouldst say it to a confessor, a tree, or a dead wall, it will be
instantly known to us, and thou shalt expiate thy indiscretion by death sudden
and more horrible than any yet imagined. Swear that thou wilt keep silence.”
And the long, black figure rose and pointed at the hunchback’s breast the
shining muzzle of a large embossed pistol.
“I
swear, I swear –to all the saints and the Madonna,” gasped the Gobbo,
convulsively, and clasping his hands. “Have pity on me! I will be silent! Only
spare me!”
The
figure in black put down the weapon and re-seated himself.
“To-morrow
morning,” he proceeded, “the Majordomo of the Signory will call for thee and offer
thee the place of the cook of the Commonwealth. Do thou accept, and follow
implicitly our orders.”
At
his announcement the Gobbo looked up in amazement. What! It was not the wizard
Curtio! He was in the presence of that mysterious council whose name might
never be whispered, which all knew to exist, but whose existence was too awful
to be avowed. Truffaldino‘s teeth chattered at the recollection of the vague
stories of men founded drowned in the river, or hanged to trees, or stabbed in
their beds, with the terrible initials of the council upon their corpses.
“Know”,
went on the black robed one, “that the cook of the Signory is the mysterious
agent of Heaven; that on his head weighs a strange responsibility; that he is
the receiver of an ancient and terrible tradition, which it is death to reveal.
Never must he cook save the sacred food of the Doge; no mortal save the Doge
may taste that food; the Doge may never, as long as Doge he be, eat aught else.
One hundred soups must be eaten by every Doge of Bobbio; soup which is to
accompany, and be an ingredient of, every other dish; soup of which this is the
venerable, holy recipe, transmitted to us from the earliest ages of the
Commonwealth; a recipe which must not be revealed under penalty of death.”
And
he drew out of a carved casket a little square of parchment, antique and weird
looking, which he kissed thrice. The two other masked figures approached, and
forced the Gobbo on to his knees, while the spokesman handed him the terrible
parchment.
He
took it all trembling, and stuffed it into his bosom.
“Remember!”
cried the masked one in an awful tone.
At
that moment Truffaldino felt himself thrown on his face by a violent kick; all
became dark; he heard once more the strange cackling laugh, and he was again
borne off into darkness.
All
this was too much for the Gobbo’s feelings, and he swooned away. When he
recovered consciousness, he was lying in bed –in his own bed, in his own room,
in his own house. What had happened? He looked around, made sure he was really
awake, really in his room. Yes, there could be no doubt; he was lying dressed
on his bed. The door was locked --locked on the inside; he alone could have
locked it. All that had happened must have been a hideous nightmare; perhaps he
had eaten something that disagreed with him in the Busdrago kitchen. Yes, it
must be so. At that moment there came a rap at the door. The Gobbo sprang off
his bed and opened it. He started back in amazement. There stood one of the
Swiss guards of the palace, in blue and yellow slashed jerkin and shining
helmet, a halberd in his hand.
“Truffaldino?”
he asked laconically.
“Truffaldino,
your servant,” answered the Gobbo, terrified.
“Come
with me,” said the Swiss.
The
Gobbo, in his disordered dress, followed. Was he being taken to prison? No ;
they crossed the square and made for the palace of the Signory, rising dark and
battlemented against the pale morning sky, with its tall red belfry by its
side. Truffaldino followed the Swiss, with a beating heart, through the
guard-room and immense corridors, to an antechamber, where they were met by a
page, to whom the Swiss duly consigned the Gobbo. The page opened a door and
lifted a curtain. They were in a large room, luxuriously furnished; on one side
was a table covered with papers and ledgers, at which sat a young man in black,
with white hands. Near the window was a toilet table, before which stood a
barber, elaborately curling the long black curls of a portly youngish cavalier
seated, elegantly draped in a lace gown, before the mirror. On the hunchback
entering, he turned round, scanned Truffaldino with a contemptuous look of
amusement, and said--
“Well,
little hunchy, canst thou cook?”
“Truffaldino
bowed low; he recognized the Senator
Scaramuccia, a descendant of Julius Caesar on his mother’s side, and Majordomo
of the Signory.
“Canst
thou cook?” asked the senator; and then tossed a paper to his secretary,
saying, “Read him the agreement.” And he began to hum an opera air in his
gruff, would-be sweet voice.
“His
Excellency desires to know,” said the secretary, gravely, “whether you, Master
Truffaldino, usually called the Gobbo, &c., &c., are ready and willing
to accept the supreme honour of becoming cook to the Signory?”
Truffaldino
turned ashy pale, his knees trembled; his dream, his terrible nightmare
returned to him.
“Ready
and willing and but too highly honoured,” he stammered.
The
secretary proceeded to fumble among his papers. The Senator Majordomo
Scaramuccia, descended from Julius Caesar, kept his eyes fixed on the droll
figure of the Gobbo, pale and dishevelled; then he burst into a loud cackling
laugh. It cut into Truffaldino’s nerves. When had he heard that laugh before?
The secretary gave him a paper to sign, bade him enter on his duties the next
morning, and made him a sign to withdraw, while the Senator Scaramuccia
continued singing between his teeth, as one black curl after the other was
drawn off the barber’s iron.
How
Truffaldino got out of the palace Heaven only knows, for all his ideas were in
a flutter. He ran home, rushed upstairs, locked himself in his room, and
fumbled in the bosom of his jerkin. With trembling hands he drew forth a
square, folded piece of yellow parchment. He unfolded it, and glanced with
amazement at the contents: a recipe in antique writing, with many a mysterious
abbreviation, and strange, weird x’s, and cabalistic figures. His dream had
been a reality!
CHAPTER
IV
The
Magnificent Pantalone Busdrago entered upon his ducal functions. He left his
own mansion, and was installed in the Doge’s apartments of the public palace.
It was a gloomy suite of rooms, furnished in the hardest dignified style, with
oaken ceilings, oaken chairs, oaken tables, everything solemn, sombre, and
rusty. Compared with the luxurious rooms of the Busdrago palace, with their brand-new
silk furniture and profuse gilding and bright frescoes, it was in the highest
degree dismal and uncomfortable. In these rooms the Dux Bobbulorum was confined
by etiquette and by force; two pages sat in the ante-chamber; four Swiss held
watch in the guard-room; there was no possibility of the Doge going out, or of
any one coming in, without the express order of the Senator Majordomo. For the
Republic of Bobbio was the most jealous and suspicious state existing; a Doge
it must have, but it arranged matters in such a way that he should be wholly
unable to stir one finger. The Doge could receive visits only in the presence
of a senator, and he could go out only in state, in one of the wondrous gilt
coaches of the Republic. No one was permitted to share the ducal meal, but some
dignitary was occasionally present while he partook of it. The life of the Dux
Bobbulorum was, therefore, the most uncomfortable and dreary that could
possibly be conceived; but such was the ambition of men that every one of the
forty senators was mad to become Doge, and ready to squander his fortune and
massacre his neighbours in order to obtain this honour. To be Doge was the
crowning success, the only missing happiness of Pantagone Busdrago’s successful
and ever happy life. He had the largest fortune, the most magnificent estates,
the most splendid villa, the most superb palace, liveries, kitchen, cellar,
picture-gallery, chapel of musicians, horses, carriages, and dogs, in all
Bobbio; he had the most beautiful daughter, the best constitution of body, the
happiest temper of mind, and now --he was Doge. When Pantalone Busdrago sat
down for the first time on the hard chair in the ducal room, he felt as if in
paradise; he could have kissed and hugged the very pages and guard who watched
before his door; nay, one of the valets later affirmed that having peeped
through the keyhole, as the valets of the Signory were in duty bound to do, in
order to prevent treason, he had seen the new Doge standing before the mirror
in his long rose-coloured satin robe, smiling and laughing for joy, and finally
dancing up and down the room in triumph.
Pantalone’s
heart beat when he sat down solitary at the ducal table to eat the first of his
hundred soups; round him, to celebrate the event, stood the forty Senators of
Bobbio in their black gowns and furred caps, looking on gravely. If Pantalone
Busdrago’s head had not been reeling with pride and joy, he might perhaps have
noticed a smile on the face of his arch-enemy the Generalissimo Brighella, a
smile of strange and evil import. But the new Doge was thinking only of his
soup and of the way he ought to take it. He would have gulped it down all at
once, but restrained himself, and tried to eat it gravely, sedately, as if he
had eaten nothing else all his life long. But he felt the forty pairs of
senatorial eyes upon him, and his hand trembled; he took up too much soup in
his spoon and spilled some of it over his lace ruffle; then, all crimson with
shame, he took so little that he carried the spoon almost empty to his lips;
his face more deeply suffused, the veins of his forehead distended, he looked
into his plate, hoping to see its embossed bottom; but no bottom was visible as
yet. He spooned away convulsively at it; at last the long-desired embossed work
became visible; he sighed and regained courage. At last he had got to the last
spoonful. Victory! He had eaten the first of his hundred soups! He rose from
table radiant. He was now really the Doge!
The
next day he hoped matters would go more easily; there were fewer senators
present, and he had gained practice. But, although he began more calmly, it now
struck him that the soup had a peculiar and vaguely disagreeable taste, he
could not tell of what. He felt ashamed of thinking it disagreeable, and
blushed internally at the thought that it was doubtless his baser origin, his
coarser plebeian palate, which was at fault. Even the gods had to grow
accustomed to the taste of ambrosia, and Pantalone Busdrago was well aware that
he was a divinity of very recent creation. Strange to say, the third day
brought no improvement, nor did the fourth, nor the fifth; on the contrary, the
strange unaccountable flavour seemed to become more and more strongly marked.
It was a desperate case. On the sixth day Pantalone’s spirits sank within him
on perceiving how little nature had fitted him to be a prince, and to eat ducal
soups. He wondered whether the Doges, his predecessors, had disliked their food
as much as he did; he was seized with a morbid longing to question one of them
on the subject. He tried one afternoon to bring round the conversation to the
subject of the soup; hoping that the old senator Bertoldo, who had been twice
Doge, and had five hundred Doges in this family, might shed some light on the
subject. He began, therefore, by praising the ducal soup, remarking on its
exquisite flavour.
“Humph!”
answered old Bertoldo, with the indifference of long habit, “ducal soup is no
better and no worse than any other.”
“Does
His Magnificence find that it has any peculiar flavour?” asked the
Generalissimo Brighella, fixing his great hawk’s eyes on the rosy face of
Pantalone.
His
Magnificence was taken aback. Confound that Brighella, must he always turn up
at the wrong moment! And yet he, Pantalone had paid him a nice round sum for the
ruins of his ancestral castle, when he bought the ground to build his great
villa. Pantalone regained his self-command however, and answered, “Oh, no
peculiar taste whatever.”
“I
thought Your Magnificence had just remarked that it was not like the soup --which--
which is eaten in ordinary houses,” answered the Generalissimo with exquisite
deference.
Pantalone
Busdrago could have seized Brighella by the collar, if Doges were permitted
such acts of violence. What! He had perceived that the ducal soup did not
please the plebeian palate, he had insinuated that no such soup had ever before
been tasted by a Busdrago? But Pantalone’s rage died away before the triumphant
reflection that although the soup was sour and his enemies bitter, he,
Pantalone Busdrago, had yet achieved his object in life, and was really and
truly Prince of the Hundred Soups.
CHAPTER
V
Pantalone
Busdrago’s reign began with a financial and diplomatic negotiation of extreme
importance and difficulty, the success of which could not but shed unwonted
lustre on his tenure of power; and which is duly registered, with full details,
in the Bobbian annals of the year 1695.
The
citizens of Bobbio had, during a preceding reign, petitioned the Signory to
create a new tax, lasting five years, of the tenth of a piece of copper, on every ounce of snuff that was sold in the
state, as their ancestors taxed themselves on the salt in order to raise the
great Gothic cathedral. The object of this voluntary taxation had been on the
present occasion to raise the money to engage for the theatre of the
Commonwealth, during the great fair of the Saint Draislianus, the most
illustrious singer, male or female, that Italy could boast. The five years had
now expired, the money had been raised, and the Signory, by a unanimous vote,
had decided that, as the most illustrious living singer had been stipulated
for, overtures should be made to the celebrated Signora Olimpia Fantastici.
Accordingly, a commission of Senators, chosen among the youngest and
best-looking, had been despatched to the Signora, then at the court of Cibo
Malaspina, in order to treat as to time and terms. Pantalone Busdrago’s
election had happened two days after the departure of the commission, and the
first week of his reign was entirely taken up in receiving and answering the
long despatches drawn up by the chief ambassador after every interview with the
lady, the greatest, most beautiful, but also the most fantastic and unruly
singer in the world. At first, Signora Olimpia Fantastici totally declined receiving
any overtures of all; then she demanded one third more ducats than the tax on
the snuff had produced in five years; then she manifested a desire to have the
great opera-house rebuilt, as she had been told it was draughty. The
ambassadors were in despair, the Doge and the senate at their wits’ ends; the
people, usually the most loyal and pacific, were growing irritated at the
delay.
Finally,
one day, as the senate had assembled to discuss how best to break the bad news
to the people, the sound of a horn was heard and the gallop of a horse on the
square below; a minute later a courier, booted and spurred and covered with
dust and foam, rushed into the council-hall, and, sinking exhausted on his
knees, handed the Doge a letter. Pantalone Busdrago seized it with trembling
fingers, and all the senators, forgetting rules and dignity, crowded round
eagerly on tiptoe, jostling and squeezing each other. In a faltering voice the
Doge read the contents. Victory! The Commonwealth had triumphed! That very
morning Signora Olimpia Fantastici had sent for the ambassador in chief and
declared that she would come for the proposed sum (as raised by the aforesaid
tax on snuff), without any further condition than that the Commonwealth should
dismiss the principal male performer, the composer, scene-painter,
candle-lighter, all of whom were to be replaced at her choice; and further,
that she should be left to decide the day and hour when she should first
enchant the ears and hearts of the Bobbians. Finally, that she would arrive the
very next evening. The good news was instantly ordered to be published by the
public criers, and all the citizens were requested to illuminate their windows,
which, indeed, they would have spontaneously done out of sheer joy.
Only
one person was there who, in the midst of universal jubilation, had the stumps
of his tallow candles set in front of his windows, and the scrapings of his
frying-pan emptied into the wrought-iron cresset, with no pleasant emotion in
his breast; and this one person was the Generalissimo Scappino Brighella. It
is, indeed, only fair to mention that as the fortunes of the house of Brighella
had somewhat fallen, it was annoying to a prudent man to see such a waste of
candle ends and grease; but we have reason for believing that the displeasure
of the great statesman had even weightier grounds. He had naturally hoped that
the negotiations with Signora Olimpia Fantastici would end unsuccessfully, and
that this discomfiture would cast much odium on the new Doge; their success
was, therefore, an extreme mortification to him. However, his mortification
soon gave way to hope, when he remembered the character of singers in general
and of this lady in particular, which would try the patience of the most expert
statesman; and Pantalone Busdrago, he well knew, was no statesman at all. Nay,
pondering over the matter, it appeared to him that what had at first seemed a
reverse to himself and to his party might, with very little trouble, be
converted into a triumph. So true it is that genius can turn evil into good.
With a face radiant with inspiration, he ordered additional candle stumps to be
brought up and more grease to be collected; he even amused himself watching the
lithe and swarthy Arlecchino clambering deftly on the window sills and balancing
himself upon the torch-holders, as the dexterous and faithful bravo arranged
the candles and grease pots for the illumination. Then he turned to his
embroidery frame, and began working with all his might.
All
day and all night did the Generalissimo sit at his embroidery frame, scorning
rest and food in his feverish work, and by the evening of the next day he had
finished two of the most exquisite satin slippers, fit for the feet of
Cinderella, on which were embroidered in coloured silk two Cupids, one holding
a lyre, the other a roll of music, with the initials O. F. surrounded by a
laurel crown. He looked at his work with the satisfaction of a great artist and
murmured:--
“They
are too small for her or for any woman; but that’ll flatter her all the more. I
know the heart of women ! Ah, Pantalone Busdrago, there is more in the workbox
of Scappino Brighella than thou hast ever dreamed of!”
At
the moment there was a sound of military music, a flash of torches. The
procession of the nobility, which had gone to meet the singer two miles outside
the gate, was returning. He went to the window. An immense train of musicians
and servants in livery, of magnificent coaches, with torches and banners, was
passing through the street. In the middle was a travelling coach, hermetically
closed, every curtain down and every window shut, and literally covered with
the roses which were being thrown from all the windows. Round it rode all the
noblest youths and maidens of Bobbio, headed by Giacinta Busdrago, radiant in a
cream-coloured palfrey trapped with purple and gold.
The
procession passed amidst loud shouts of welcome ; but the Generalissimo was too
absorbed in his thoughts to notice it, or to reflect upon the odd taste of
Signora Olimpia Fantastici preferring to make her triumphal entry in a
hermetically closed and completely dark vehicle.
Half
an hour later the door opened, and Leandro Scappini rushed in great excitement,
his fair locks dishevelled, his hat awry.
“What
has happened, Leandro?” asked the Generalissimo, sternly.
His
son stopped and, in hurried and confused words, narrated how, on the procession
reaching the ducal palace, and the Doge descending the steps to welcome the
great singer, no answer had issued from the closed coach; how it had been
opened, and how there had appeared, not the beautiful Olimpia, but a bundle of
wraps, a cage with a parrot, a dog, a cat, and a tame monkey, which had grasped
the extended hand of the astounded Doge.
“O
Providence, how thou favourest wisdom when devoted to the chastisement of
upstarts!” exclaimed the Generalissimo Brighella, clasping his hands in an
agony of joy.
CHAPTER
VI
When
the noble Senators and ladies assembled before the palace of the Commonwealth
had recovered from their stupefaction, their wrath and frenzy on discovering
that they had been escorting only a bundle of wraps, a cat , a dog, a parrot,
and an ape; when Pantalone Busdrago had retired, livid with shame and rage at
having extended his ducal hand to a monkey; when, in short, the feelings of the
assembly were somewhat calmed, news was brought that one hour before there had
arrived at the hostelry of the “Sword of Orlando” a one-horse chaise from which
had alighted a lady who was no other than the Signora Olimpia Fantastici. The
eccentric siren had heard of the honours with which she was to be met, and had
forthwith got out with her maid at the last stopping place on the way and,
hiring a chaise, had left her cumbersome travelling carriage to pursue its way
till it was met by the splendid procession of painted coaches and ladies and
gentleman on horse-back.
When
the nobles of Bobbio heard this they quivered with anger, the Senators turned
pale with impotent rage, and the Magnificent Pantalone Busdrago felt the most
violent desire to sign the death warrant of Signora Olimpia, or at least to
have her cast into the subterranean dungeon of the palace. But Doge and senate
and nobles were forced to stifle their anger; for what Doge, senate, or nobles
--nay, what king, emperor or pope-- had ever coped successfully with Olimpia
Fantastici? Had not threats been her laughing-stock? Had she not snapped her
fingers at armies? Had she not baffled the police? Had she not passed through
every door, however well locked, and through every window, however well grated?
Had she not trampled underfoot every sort of human rank, military, civil, or
ecclesiastic? Was she not the mistress of every situation? So instead of
attempting to obtain any sort of excuse, the Doge, senate, and nobles of Bobbio
sent the next morning to the inn of the “Sword of Orlando” to inquire how
Signora Olimpia had slept the night, to offer her apartments in the palace, and
to place at her feet the united homage of the city, together with a small
offering of a hundred pounds of wax lights, a hundred pounds of chocolate, a
hundred pounds of coffee, a hundred pounds of sugar, fifty pounds of vanilla,
fifty pounds of cinnamon, nutmeg, and other spices, twenty-five hams and fifty
Bologna sausages, twenty baskets of pears, peaches, nectarines, and almonds,
and a hundred yards of rose-coloured silk, as it was the habit of the Republic
to send to princes and great potentates passing through its dominions.
Signora
Olimpia answered that she had slept eight hours and a half; declined to leave
her quarters at the “Sword of Orlando”; accepted for herself the wax lights,
chocolate, vanilla and coffee; distributed the hams and sausages to the crowd
of beggars before her windows; made a present of the silk to her maid, and the
fruit and sugar to her monkey, her parrot, and her dog; and declined to take
any further notice of the senate and people of Bobbio. During the following
days there came more compliments and presents; sonnets from all the priestlets
in Bobbio; snuff-boxes, watches, fans, necklaces from all the gentlemen;
flowers and ribbons from all the ladies, of none of which she condescended to
take the slightest notice. The only two gifts which she glanced at were a
little bunch of coarse roses, sent by a poor deformed cobbler, which she put in
water, and a tiny pair of satin slippers, with Cupids holding lyres and music
books exquisitely embroidered upon them. She turned them around, and asked
disdainfully--
“Who
sent these?”
Colombina,
the maid, answered timidly (well accustomed to her lady’s scornful ways)--
“They
are from the Generalissimo Count Brighella, one of the oldest and noblest of
the senators, and worked entirely with his own fingers.”
Signora
Olimpia slightly raised one of her straight, black eyebrows and answered--
“I
don’t like Generals who embroider slippers. Tell him he may wear them himself
for my sake.”
Colombina
was silent, but felt mortified. She did not care about Generalissimo Brighella,
but she thought his messenger, Arlecchino, a well-bred and discrete youth, and
was sorry to have to give him such a message; the more so as the lithe, dark
creature had promised to take her all over the town and show her the sights. So
when Arlecchino returned, arrayed in a striped jerkin and hose of the Brighella
colours, a large felt hat cocked on one side, she said nothing about the
slippers, but simply accepted his escort for a walk, during which he showed her
all the principal monuments, and introduced her to the waiting-maids of various
noble ladies, whom it puzzled her very much that her mistress should decline to
know.