Chapter XV The Old Cabinet Tells Its Story
A few weeks passed with no excitement except Cynthia’s withdrawal from the Amen Corner. Madame was very indignant when Mr. Mudge reported Cynthia’s part in inviting the boys to attend our Catacomb party, and assisting them in entering and disguising themselves. It was rumoured that Cynthia was to be publicly expelled as a terrible example to all would-be offenders. She remained closeted in her room, whence the sound of weeping and wailing could be heard behind her locked door, but she steadily refused all overtures of sympathy on our part. We waited upon Madame in a body, and begged her to pardon Cynthia. Madame replied that she would consider the matter, and we hurried back and shouted the hopeful news through Cynthia’s keyhole. There was no reply.
“Do you think she has killed herself?” Milly asked in an awestruck whisper.
I applied my ear closely and heard stealthy steps. “She merely wishes to be let alone,” I said; “perhaps we are a little too exuberant in our expressions of sympathy.”
Miss Noakes entered presently and announced that Madame wished to see Cynthia; and that young lady went, with a very red nose, turned up at a very haughty angle. She returned shortly, and addressing herself to Adelaide, as she always did, even when she had something which she wished to communicate to the rest of us, said scornfully:
“Miss Armstrong, will you kindly say to the other young ladies [we were all present], that Madame has just told me that I am indebted to you for permission to remain and graduate with the class.”
A murmur of satisfaction ran around the room.
Cynthia’s eyes flashed fire. “Do not imagine for one moment,” she exclaimed, “that I would accept your hypocritical condescension, if I believed that it had been offered.”
“Don’t you believe that we interceded with Madame?” Winnie asked.
“I believe,” Cynthia replied, “that you have done the best you can, by tale-bearing, to induce Madame to expel me, and have not succeeded; and as I do not wish to associate with you any longer, I have written my parents asking them to withdraw me from the school.”
“I am sure no one will regret your departure,” Adelaide replied, with indignation. But Cynthia did not leave the school. Either her parents were too sensible to take her away just before her graduation, or her remark had been merely an idle threat. Madame gave her a room in another part of the building, and her place in the Amen Corner remained vacant for the rest of the term.
Winnie had finished her essay, and one evening we gathered in the little study parlor to hear her read it. The time for our parting was now very near, and we were all more or less sentimentally inclined. The old Amen Corner was very dear to us. Every piece of furniture had its associations, but none of them were quite so tragical as those which clustered around the old oak cabinet, and it seemed only fitting that Winnie should celebrate it in her parting essay. She apologized for the length of her paper. “Don’t think, girls,” she explained, “that I intend to read all this at commencement. I am going to ask Madame to make selections from it. The task that Professor Waite set me was to give a picture of Florentine life in the early part of the sixteenth century, and to bring in the characters who lived then as naturally as I could—Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Fra Bartolommeo, the Medici, Macchiavelli, Bibbiena and his niece, and others. While I was writing, my imagination carried me away, and I gave it free rein. You are the only ones who will have the full dose.”
We were very willing to hear it all. Winnie sat in the great comfortable wicker armchair with the lamplight gloating o’er her mischievous face. Adelaide had ensconced herself on the window seat, her classical profile clear cut against the night. Milly nestled on a cushion at her feet, and I had stretched myself luxuriously on the old lounge, and watched the others from the shadowy side of the room. Milly occasionally patted the cabinet at her side as Winnie referred to it.
The flickering light almost seemed to make the carved faces with which it was decorated grin sardonically, or knit their brows with threatening scowls, as Winnie read:
“I am the ghost of the cabinet, Giovanni de’ Medici they called me, in 1475, when the drops from the font fell on my forehead in the Baptistry in Florence, and Leo X, when in 1513 I was made Pope of Rome. I was the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Christianly christened as a babe and created Abbot of Fontedolce at the age of seven and Cardinal at seventeen, for my father was convinced, since the eldest son must carry down the family glory in succession, for me promotion lay only in the way of the Church.
“Nevertheless, I held, as it were, to that plough but with one hand, continually looking back, and ready to drop it altogether, so that, while I enjoyed the rank and revenue of a prince of the Church, I was not made a priest with vows of celibacy until the papacy was as good as in my hand, and until I had been determined thereunto by the closing to me of a fair pathway which led in quite another direction. For of my father’s choice for me I might have said:
“For that my fancy rather took
The way that led to town,
He did betray me to a lingering book,
And wrap me in a gown.
“None but the readers of this confession know of my lost love or fancy that I was capable of any passion save the ambition to reinstate my family in its ancient position of glory in Florence. Cardinal though I was, I yet played the spy and the thief to get at the opinions of Florentines of note and influence, and one of my confederates in my schemes was a certain carved oak cabinet, which stood in the library of the palazzo of my nephew by marriage, Filippo Strozzi. This Strozzi was a man so well regarded in Florence, that although he espoused Maddalena de’ Medici, the daughter of my banished brother Piero, yet was he never suspected of any plots to advance our family, and lived even with great freedom and popularity, keeping open house to all the literati of the city.
“My niece, who shared not altogether the republican sentiments of her husband, and in whom family affection was most deeply rooted, did sometimes entertain me after my banishment when my presence in Florence was not known by the Florentines in general or even to her most worshipful spouse. At such times I had for my bedchamber a little room partitioned only from the library of which I have spoken by heavy hangings of tapestry. Against this tapestry, on the library side, was set the oak cabinet, which was also a desk for writing, and here my nephew, Filippo Strozzi, was accustomed to write his letters. Hearing the scratch of his pen when he little suspected my neighbourhood, filled me with such an itching desire to know what he wrote, that one night after he had finished his writing, and had left the room, I slipped into the library, and found that, having completed his epistle, he had laid it inside the cabinet, and that this was without doubt the usual rendezvous for the letters of the family while awaiting the time for the departure of the post, for other letters, sealed and directed and ready for the sending, lay on the same shelf. On further examination of the cabinet I found that its back was a sliding panel, and that by cutting through the tapestry with my penknife I could open the cabinet from my own room, and abstract any letters which might have been placed within it under surety of lock and key. This seemed to me a most providential circumstance, for not only did my nephew write his letters here, but other guests of the house had the same custom, and it was most convenient for me thus to become acquainted with their secret opinions.
“I had another motive for lingering in Florence besides my political schemes, for as I have said I had not at this time so irrevocably fastened upon myself the vows of the church that they could not be shaken off, and I was greatly enamoured of the niece of the merry Cardinal Bibbiena, the incomparable Maria, whom I had met before my brother’s banishment at his court in Florence, she being a maid in waiting to his wife and greatly attached to her.
“Maria Bibbiena came frequently to visit my niece Maddalena Strozzi; and my niece, knowing my passion, gave me opportunity of meeting her, and I thought that I sped well in my wooing until the cabinet told me otherwise. My cabinet told me no lies, for Count Baltazar Castiglione, a most polished man of the world, and guarded in his spoken opinions of others, opened his mind most frankly in a letter to his friend and confidante, the gentle and witty Vittoria Colonna, which he wrote in that room and left in my power, and which was expressed with a freedom which he would never have allowed himself had he fancied that it would ever have fallen under my eye.
“I had one friend in Florence in whom I trusted, Niccolo Macchiavelli. I admired his statecraft and his policy, and I deemed him devoted to our family, but a letter from his own hand, obtained in like manner with the others, showed him to be two-faced and treacherous to all who trusted him—to the Medicis and to Strozzi, whose hospitality he scrupled not to abuse. It would seem at first sight that my thefts of letters were of service to me; but I was never able to really profit by them, and the knowledge which the letters gave me of the perfidy or dislike of their writers caused me only fruitless indignation and lasting pain, while the habit into which I had fallen of suspecting, prying, and stealing grew upon me day by day, till even death itself was powerless to correct it. When will mankind learn that habit can be so deeply fixed as to follow us beyond the portals of death.
“The old cabinet and I have been so long partners in guilt that my erring ghost visits it as of old, abstracting from it whatever is left to its treacherous keeping. I give back herewith the letters, and when this confession shall have been publicly read, I will render the moneys which I have more lately filched, and then my troubled spirit will be laid at rest. For I was not a great villain.
“Witch Winnie lied when she said I stole from this cabinet the freedom of the city of Florence, which my father writ out and placed here after the last visit of the unmannerly monk, Savonarola. I pardoned the enemies of our family in the day of my triumph, and I pardoned Raphael, yea, and befriended him and loved him, since he wronged me unwittingly; and none grieved more than I when we buried him beside his Maria, whom I fain would have called my own. And so, having forgiven those who have trespassed against me, and now making restitution, may I also be pardoned for filching these few letters, whereof the first was from:
“Count Baltazar Castiglione to the Excellent Lady Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, at Naples.
“Florence, 15th October, 1504.
“Most Worshipful Madonna and Admired Friend:
“I feel myself highly flattered in that you express yourself satisfied with my Cortigiano (which I caused to be writ out at your request), and which endeavoured, in some slight way, to reproduce the facetious pleasantry joined to the strictest morals which subsist at the Court of Urbino. And I deem your request for a like picture of Florentine society as a most pleasing proof that I have not been hitherto wearisome to you.
“In Florence, since the passing of the rule of the Medici, there has been a passing away also of all standards of aristocracy, so that many of the old families hang their heads in political disgrace, and there be many upstart ones who flaunt and wanton in gorgeousness of apparel. Neither is it possible to say what will be the outcome of this state of social incertitude. I have adopted what seemed to me a safe rule, and have paid my court neither to birth nor to fortune, but to genius. For it is not to be gainsayed that there is gathered in Florence at this time a remarkable circle of learned and clever men, who form, as it were, an order of aristocracy by themselves.
“I paid my respects first to Maestro Pietro Perugino, my sometime friend at Urbino, and whom we there regarded as the very cream and quintessence of painting. He has a home here, living in a goodly and comfortable state, but has grown somewhat crabbed and soured, as happens to men who feel themselves out of fashion and forgotten of the world. He has a rival here, one Michael Angelo, and Perugino having criticised a cartoon which this fellow had set up, representing I know not what absurdity, of bathing soldiers, Angelo replied that he considered Perugino to be a man ignorant in art matters. Which saying so cut to the quick my friend that he somewhat inconsiderately went to law upon the matter, where he gained scant salve for his bruises, being dismissed with the decree that the defendant had only said what was not to be denied.
“This discourteous fellow Angelo formeth the greatest contrast to Leonardo da Vinci, now the leading artist of Florence, in whom the word gentleman hath as full a showing as in any noble living. His fortune is sufficient to his tastes (which are of no niggard order), and his audience chamber is frequented by the nobles, the wits, the fashion, the learning, and beauty of the day.
“But truly, I must not further speak of this paragon, this florescence of his day and generation, or I shall have no space in which to make mention of lesser luminaries, and especially of my young friend, Raphael Santi of Urbino, who is also visiting at this time in Florence. Raphael, while he accords to da Vinci a full meed of praise, and goes daily to sketch from his masterpiece in the Palazzo Vecchio, and while he is as free from envy as an egg from vitriol, yet surprised me by this wondrously assuming assertion, greatly at variance with his usual modesty. ‘My dear Baltazar,’ said he, ‘keep the sketches and miniature I have made for thee. They will one day be as valuable as though signed by da Vinci!’ Truly, presumption dwelleth in the heart of youth, but experience with the world will drive it far from him.
“I am writing this at the Palazzo Strozzi, where I am for the time a grateful guest. Mine host and friend Filippo gave recently an artistic supper, the guests being either artists or lovers of that guild, whether patricians, such as Giocondo, Nasi, Soderini, and others; or scriveners, as Vasari, Macchiavelli, and Guicciardini, and churchmen, as Bibbiena, and Bembo; for all Florence will have its finger in this art pie, and they who have not the wit to paint or the money to purchase, affect superior knowledge, and wag their tongues in dispraise. Finding myself partitioned off between two of these worthies, I should have died of weariness had I not closed my ear on the one side to the borings of Macchiavelli (who had it upon his mind that Giovanni de’ Medici was in Florence, and would have fain tortured from me his hiding place), and on the other from the sleep-producing maunderings of Vasari, who delivered himself of condemnatory criticisms on Raphael. I would not for the world have awakened him to questions by a hint that I already knew more of Raphael than he was like to know in his whole life, but I suffered him to wander on, straining my ears the while to catch some shreds of a merry story with which the Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico (Bibbiena) was setting his end of the table in a roar. Supper being ended, I marked that the Cardinal drew Raphael’s arm within his own, and leading him to the garden, there left him with his niece Maria, a most sweet and loving damsel, and one exceptionally endowed by nature; for neither in Florence nor in the various outlandish cities which it hath been my hap to visit in the character of diplomatist, have I found in any five ladies, saving in yourself, worshipful madame, such gentleness, sprightliness, and wit as is bound up in one bundle in the person of Maria Bibbiena.
“Madonna Maddalena Strozzi has confided to me that her uncle Giovanni de’ Medici was in time past so greatly enamoured of this same Maria that he would fain have given up the Church. This were madness indeed on his part, since the wisest policy for any of that family is to keep himself from political ambition, than which there would seem to be no more convincing evidence to the vulgar than devotion to a life of celibacy and monkish austerity; a renouncing of the world, its pomps and vanities, and especially of family alliances and succession plots, friendships, betrothals, marriages, and the like; which, if they be not fooleries of youthful passion, savour of worldly ambition.
“All of this I imparted as my opinion to my hostess, but she sighed so deeply as to show that her sympathies are with her love-lorn uncle. After this we were bidden by her husband to an upper room, where was displayed a picture of Raphael’s.
“But to report the critiques which followed would be greatly wearisome to your ladyship, and so I kiss your hands, beseeching our Lord to make you as happy as you are pious.
“Your sincere friend and servitor,
“Baltazar Castiglione.
“Maria Bibbiena to the Lady Alfonsina Orsini Medici, wife of Piero de’ Medici, in Exile at Urbino.,
“Florence, October 12, 1504.
“Most magnificent, noble, and unfortunate Lady:
“For whom my tears cease not to fall, and my heart to long after with true devotion.
“Truly, madame, whatever may have been your heavy and sore trials in separation from your beloved Florence, you cannot have experienced more poignant smart than that which wrings the heart of your little friend, who in lonesomeness and delaying of hope counts the days of your absence. My uncle’s friend, Messer Macchiavelli, who passes for a man of deep designs, raised my hopes at one time by whispering that there was a plot to bring you back. But nothing came of it, and instead we were given up to the dreadful Piagnoni, so that my uncle, than whom there never was a more jocund man, so long as he was chancellor to your most worshipful husband, was forced to abandon politics and even for a time to hang his head in sadness. But having returned from Rome with a cardinal’s hat, since the death of Savonarola, I discern some faint return to his old cheerfulness.
“I was minded of you anew but recently. You will doubtless remember Madonna Lisa Giocondo. She is now having her portrait painted by Maestro da Vinci. It is his manner to invite light and diverting society to his studio to converse with and cheer the lady during her sitting, and to strive to bring to her lips a certain marvelous smile about which he is mightily concerned. Now it chanced that Maestro da Vinci heard that I played upon the lute at your court, in former days, and so he persuaded my uncle to bring me to his studio to play for the diversion of Mona Lisa. Presently there came in with Count Castiglione a young man of a most beautiful countenance, a divine tenderness suffusing his eyes; and a smile of such heavenly sweetness upon his lips, that methought that of Mona Lisa but an affected simper in comparison. After greeting us he remained a long time in a muse, his eyes fastened upon the canvas. Mona Lisa, perceiving that his entranced gaze was not so much in admiration of her beauty as in delight at the skill of the painter, took her departure, in some pique, while Maestro da Vinci waited upon her to the door. Raphael Santi, for so is this young man called, turned to me and spoke of the genius of da Vinci. After that the Maestro brought forward a portfolio of sketches and we overlooked them together. I mind me there was one drawing of the Madonna seated in the lap of Sta. Anna, caressing the infant Christ, who, in his turn, was toying with a lamb. And the younger artist said that what pleased him most in da Vinci’s paintings was the lovingness which he displayed, as here Sta. Anna was beaming proudly and graciously upon her daughter, who playfully and tenderly yearned over her son, who as charmingly petted his little lamb. And many more things he said, so sweetly, and with such courteous and gentle behaviour, that I wondered not that he was called Saint Raphael, for indeed he seemed unto me as one of the company of the blessed.
“But with all this I have not told you why it was that this should remind me of you. It was because I was told that he was from Urbino, and because he was able to give me comfortable tidings concerning you, which did not a little solace and unburden my heart.
“After this I met him several times in the outer cloisters of San Marco, whither I went first by chance with my uncle, who had some business with the prior of the convent, and who left me to wait for him in this place, which is assigned to the laity.
“Presently, while I waited here, Raphael came hastily in, having just completed his lesson in colouring with the Fra Bartolommeo, an artist who turned monk under the preaching of Savonarola, and whom Raphael has chosen as master during his stay in Florence. He told me somewhat of this good monk; how when he was a talented and rising young man, with life and ambition all before him, he gave his paintings to the flames with which the Piagnoni consumed the vanities of this world in the public streets, because he feared lest he loved his art more than God. But since he has renounced the world, the Prior has told him that he can best serve the Church by painting altar-pieces, so that his cell is changed to a studio, and God has granted him such access of genius that he paints more divinely than before, and churches and monasteries in Venice and other distant cities send daily for his paintings. But he knows not where they go, nor how much money they bring the convent, for he paints only for the love of God.
“Raphael told me also of the heavenly frescoes of Fra Angelico, with which the walls of the passages and even the cells of the convent, are covered, and he added, ‘Truly, I think that Art and a monastic life wed well together, and I would willingly retire to some cloistered garden afar from the world, if I might carry my box of colours with me, and might sometimes see in a vision a face like thine to paint from!’
“Then was I seized with a foolish timidity, so that I could in no wise answer, but my heart said, ‘And why afar from the world, why not in it, making all things better and happier?’
“Ah! sweet lady, I know you will say, ‘My little Maria is grown wondrous foolish and love-sick’; but I pray you chide me not, seeing that the matter cannot grow further, for I am not likely again to meet with Raphael, since I have come to visit for some days, on invitation of your sweet daughter Madonna Maddalena Strozzi. Nor were it best that I should see him often, for I do fear me that in such case my heart might become so rashly pitched and fixed upon him that I should in time most inconsiderately fall in love, which were a bold and unmaidenly thing to do; and I mind me that you were wont to tell me that no woman should allow her affections to conduct themselves thus insubordinately, until the church hath by the sacrament of marriage given her license thereto.
“And so, madame, praying Maria Sanctissima and Maria the sister of Lazarus, my patroness, to keep me constant in this mind, I rest your loving friend and devoted servitor,
“Maria Bibbiena.
“Niccolo Macchiavelli to Bramante, Architect to Pope Julius I, at Rome:
“Messer Bramante mio:
“We have no longer any politics in Florence. The Medici trusted to the luck of their name; but Florence would have none of them, and Piero had not the head for his position. He might have had the advantage of my brains if he had so chosen; but he had not the wit to appreciate wit. The Magnificent was right when he said that he had three sons, the one good, the second crafty, the third a fool. The good die young: Piero, the fool, has lost his inheritance; it remains for the crafty Giovanni to make good the prestige of his family. The chances are against him, but if he has something better than maccaroni under his tonsure, he will make the Church his ladder to power. I thought at one time that Savonarola was perhaps shrewder than he seemed, and that he would succeed in tumbling Alexander out of the Papal Chair and in taking his seat therein as the Pope Angelico. But it seemed that the dolt never cared for the Papacy, but only for saving souls! I fear no such cause of defeat for a Medici, but I hear rumours concerning Giovanni which make me fear that he is not crafty enough for success. He has been dissolute; that is no hindrance to a cardinal’s hat or even to the tiara; the folly I dread is more fatal. They say that he has reformed his life and is thinking of marriage. If this is true, I renounce his cause in favor of that of Cæsar Borgia, who has the audacity of a lion joined to the rascality of a fox, and who is not hindered from the putting in practice of my principles by any so cowardly and stupid a thing as a conscience. And yet they say that his superb physical manhood is now a wreck, bloated and permeated through and through with the subtle poison which his family alone knows how to prepare, and whose effects they can only partially eradicate. Savonarola, Borgia, Medici, blunderers all! What name will the next wave bring to the surface?
“But a truce to politics. You know this is a subject from which I can no more keep my thoughts than a greedy urchin can forbear thrusting his fingers into a pot of comfits. I am not so absorbed in my favourite pastime, however, but I can take an interest in all that interests my friends, especially in such matters as are flavoured with a spice of intrigue, than which no condiment soever is better suited to my palate. Touching, therefore, the matter concerning which you wrote me, I think that you, as chief architect to his Holiness, have indeed cause to fear the rivalry of Michael Angelo, for I am credibly informed that he is minded presently to journey toward Rome. Moreover, since it is the practice of popes to be always meddling with works of art, marring and defacing the excellent things done in the Pontificates of those preceding them,—when they cannot improve upon them,—and whereas they are a whimsical lot, not long contented with one object or one workman, be he ever so excellent, you have sufficient cause, I say, to fear, having now continued in favour for some time, that this Michael Angelo will supplant you in the favour of his Holiness. I would suggest, therefore, that you search about for some new artist, who shall occupy himself with a line of work as fresco painting, not in any way interfering with your own architectural designs, but rather depending upon them; and that you make haste to introduce him to the Pope, and if possible ingratiate him into his favour that, his mind being taken up with this new favourite, and his purse lightened by the dispensing of moneys for these new works, he will be less inclined to look favourably upon a new architect such as Michael Angelo. And inasmuch as it seemeth to me that this thing requireth haste, I have looked about me somewhat in Florence to find a man suited to your occasions.
“I first bethought me of Leonardo da Vinci as being the successful rival of Michael Angelo in this city, and against whom he could not for a moment contend. But da Vinci hath no drawings toward Rome. I have marked for a long time that he cutteth his doublet after the French fashion. Trust me, he is no man for us; he would rather trip it merrily with French dames than wear out his knees on the cold scagliola of the Vatican. I have bethought me also that Leonardo is too old and subtle for you; you need a man whom you can manage; who shall look up to you as a patron and as a superior. My eye hath lately fallen upon a youngster of surprising talent as a painter, a stranger in Florence, of no great influence, and utterly unknown to fame. He hath as yet no great opinion of himself; make haste to secure him before others shall enlighten him as to his merits. This youth is called Raphael Santi, and I make sure that the pope will greatly prefer this silken dove to that porcupine Angelo.
“I would the more willingly see him advanced in some foreign city in that my good friend Cardinal Bibbiena seems desirous with all expedition to get him forth from Florence, and yet it is not so much from a desire to pleasure Bibbiena, as from a conviction that I have found here a tool of proper service to thee, that I thus recommend him to thy good offices.
“To conclude, my Bramante, make all speed to inform his Holiness that the walls of the Vatican are cracked, smoky, filthy, and disgraceful, and above all things fetch thy Raphael quickly and gain for him a personal interview; for I trust more to the charm of his presence than to volumes of thy bungling speech.
“And when thou hast need of further counsel, or seest that the pope desireth an Ahithophel,—now the counsel of Ahithophel which he counselled in those days was as if a man had enquired at the oracle,—why send then and fetch thy ever loving and honest friend,
“Macchiavelli.
“Florence, October 12, 1504.
“Maria Bibbiena to the Lady Alfonsina Orsini Medici, wife of Piero dei Medici, at Urbino:
“Florence, October 15, 1504.
“Most magnificent, most beloved, and most sweet lady:
“Since I last made bold to write you of my small matters, others more weighty to me have transpired, which, as I have made a beginning, I will also make an end in the way of their narration. And first I have met with a small disquietness from your highness’s brother-in-law, the Cardinal, concerning whose presence in Florence I had not heard. For yestreen, when I was playing upon my lute in the garden of the palazzo of your daughter, Madonna Strozzi, he came upon me suddenly walking with your daughter. Whereat he seemed at first taken all aback, but the Lady Maddalena exclaimed, ‘A new Petrarch, and new Laura,’ and commanded him on his fame as a scholar to make some rhymes on that subject. Whereat he replied that if I would continue playing he would write, as his patron, St. Cupid, gave him utterance, and with that he improvised and wrote out the nonsense herewith following:
“In all Avignon’s gardens the nightingales were mute
As at her open casement she played upon her lute.
The lonely scholar Petrarch wandered all listlessly;
‘The old man with the hour-glass has sure some grudge ’gainst me.
The sands they fall so sluggishly that tell the flight of time;
My studies all are tedium, and weariness my rhyme.’
’Twas then the Lady Laura, with lips like ripened fruit,
And lily-petalled fingers, full sweetly touched the lute.
The lonely Petrarch listened, as she sang, so sweet and low,
A soft love-laden sonnet, writ by Boccaccio.
Till Cupid snatched the hour-glass from loitering Father Time,
And Petrarch’s life was all too short to tell his love in rhyme.
“After the reading, our lady daughter would have me crown the poet, but this I would in no manner consent unto. Nay, I even flung down my lute in vexation of spirit, and ran away to another part of the garden. But I gained nothing thereby, for Giovanni pursued after me and came up with me at the fountain, where he caught my hand and would in no wise restore my freedom till he had delivered his mind of what lay thereon, namely, that he sought me for his wife. Whereupon I told him very plainly that I knew that he had been bred up for the Church, and that it were disloyalty to his brother, your highness’s husband, and to his nephew, your son Lorenzo, for him to think of marriage and a worldly life, for by so doing the Medici interest would be divided. But he said that if I would but be his wife he would relinquish all claim to political power and Lorenzo should not fear for his succession, for he would go with me to dwell in foreign parts. And while I sought in the corners of my mind for some answer which should convince him of my utter lothness, and yet not offend so noble a gentleman, came suddenly your daughter to warn him that others were entering the garden; but ere he went he kissed a rose and tossed it to me saying, ‘This rose comes not from Giovanni the Cardinal, but Giovanni the soldier, for henceforth go I to fight the French and to win my bride.’
“Scarcely was he gone than I tore the rose in pieces, wroth that I had been so tongue-tied in his presence. And while I shred the petals all about me, I was aware of Raphael coming to meet me, and holding in his hand a lily such as we see in the pictures of the Virgin, which lily he placed in my hand, saying:
Sicut lilium inter spinas
Sic Maria inter filias.
“And as he saw me to tremble with the vexation and the disquiet of my interview with the gay cardinal, he most courteously and gently inquired the cause of my discomfort, and did so comfortably avail to assuage my distress that I presently forgot it. He told me also that since he had known me he had so grown into an affection for the name of Maria, that he had resolved to devote his life, in so far as choice should be vouchsafed him, to the painting of Maria Sanctissima. And many other things he said which it is not meet nor proper that I should write out here. Suffice it that you, who love your dear lord, can well understand my present joyful state, and why it is that the nuns, singing now the canticle for the Feast of the Purification in the convent next to the palazzo, seem to be addressing their song to me:
Gaude, virgo gloriosa!
Super omnes speciosa!
“For happiest of all Virgins is thy little
“Maria.
“It was this last letter which broke my heart, and yet did not so much break as bend it so that I gave up the hope which I could no longer keep not in bitterness or in wrath, and resigned myself to my destiny as monk and pope; when Maria Bibbiena died, all too early, I wept not my own shattered future alone, but Raphael’s as well, and so took him to my heart, though he knew not the reason, and so I beseech the efficacious prayers of all Christians for all true lovers.
“Et pro nobis Christum Exora.
“Giovanni de’ Medici,
“The Ghost of the Cabinet.”