Legend of the Piazza San Biagio
“For by diabolical art he assumed varied forms, even the human, and deceived people by many occult tricks.”—Fromann, Tractatus de Fascinatione, 1675.
This is a slight tale of light value, and not new, but it has assumed local colour, and may amuse the reader.
“It was a great art of witches and sorcerers of old to give a man or woman by art the appearance of another person, and this they called ‘drawing white lines with charcoal,’ and there is many a fine tale about it. Now it was about the time when Berta spun and owls wore silk cloaks that a Signore Nannincino lived in the old Piazza San Biagio. He had many small possessions in Florence, but the roast chickens of the supper, or his great piece, was an estate in the country called the Mula a Quinto, for which all his relations longed, like wolves for a fat sheep. And Nannincini, being sharp to a keen edge, and knowing how to lend water and borrow wine, had promised this estate in secret to everybody, and got from them many a gratification, and supped and dined with them for years, yet after this died without leaving a will.
“Then six of his relations assembled and resolved to secure the property, though they invoked the devil. And to aid them they took a certain scamp named Giano di Selva, who somewhat resembled the departed Nannincino, and he, calling in a witch of his acquaintance, was made by sorcery to look as much like the defunct as two beads of the same rosary. So Nannincino was removed and Giano put in his place, where he lay still for an hour, and then began to show signs of life. And after a time he called for a notary and began to make his will. First he left a house to one, and his sword to another, and so on, till it came to the Mula a Quinto.
“‘And who shall have the Mula a Quinto, dear good uncle?’ asked a nephew.
“‘That,’ replied the dying man, ‘I leave to my good friend, the only true friend I ever had, the noblest of men—’
“‘But what is his name?’ asked the nephew.
“‘Giano di Selva,’ gasped the dying man. And it was written down by the notary, and the will was signed, and the signer died immediately after. All their shaking could not revive him.
“The tale ends with these words: E così ingannati gli ingannatori, rimase Giano herede del podere—And thus the biters being bit, d’ye see, Giano took a handsome property.”
“And does his ghost still promenade the palace?”
“To oblige you, Signore, for this once—place a lei il comandare—it does. The ghost walks—always when the rent fails to come in, and there is no money in the treasury—cammina, cammina per un fil di spada—walks as straight as an acrobat on a rope. But I cannot give you a walking ghost of a rascal to every house, Signore. If all the knaves who made fortunes by trickery were to take to haunting our houses in Florence, they would have to lie ten in a bed, or live one hundred in a room, and ghosts, as you know, love to be alone. Mille grazie, Signore Carlo! This will keep our ghost from walking for a week.”
“Of which remark here made that ‘the ghost doth walk,’” comments the sage Flaxius, “when money is forbidden unto man (which is so commonly heard in theatrical circles when the weekly salary is not paid), I have no doubt that it comes from the many ancient legends which assign a jealous guardian sprite to every hoard. And thus in Spenser’s wondrous ‘Faerie Queene’ the marvellous stores in Mammon’s treasury, ‘embost with massy gold of glorious guifte,’ were watched by
“‘An ugly feend more fowle than dismall day;
The which with monstrous stalk behind him stept,
And ever as he went dew watch upon him kept.’
“The which quotation is in its turn otherwise curious since it gave, I doubt not, the original suggestion to Coleridge of the verse wherein mention is made in simile of one who walks in tear and dread, and dares not turn his head—
“‘For well he knows a griesly fiend
Doth close behind him tread.’
“‘More or less accurately, my masters, more or less.’ ‘’Tis sixty years since’—I read the original.”