The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales - Richard Garnett
The councillors reassembled and passed resolutions.
"But who shall be Regent?" inquired some one when Virgil had been elected
unanimously.
"Who but we?" asked Eustachio and Leonardo. "Are we not the heads of the
Virgilian party?"
Thus had the enthusiastic Manto, purest of idealists, installed in
authority the two most unprincipled politicians in the republic; and she
had lost her lover besides, for Benedetto fled the city, vowing vengeance.
Anyhow, the dead poet was enthroned Duke of Mantua; Eustachio and Leonardo
became Regents, with the style of Consuls, and it was provided that in
doubtful cases reference should be made to the Sortes Virgilianae. And
truly, if we may believe the chronicles, the arrangement worked for a time
surprisingly well. The Mantuans, in an irrational way, had done what it
behoves all communities to do rationally if they can. They had sought for a
good and worthy citizen to rule them; it was their misfortune that such an
one could only be found among the dead. They felt prouder of themselves for
being governed by a great man--one in comparison with whom kings and
pontiffs were the creatures of a day. They would not, if they could help
it, disgrace themselves by disgracing their hero; they would not have it
said that Mantua, which had not been too weak to bear him, had been too
weak to endure his government. The very hucksters and usurers among them
felt dimly that there was such a thing as an Ideal. A glimmering perception
dawned upon mailed, steel-fisted barons that there was such a thing as an
Idea, and they felt uneasily apprehensive, like beasts of prey who have for
the first time sniffed gunpowder. The railleries and mockeries of Mantua's
neighbours, moreover, stimulated Mantua's citizens to persevere in their
course, and deterred them from doing aught to approve themselves fools.
Were not Verona, Cremona, Lodi, Pavia, Crema, cities that could never
enthrone the Virgil they had never produced, watching with undissembled
expectation to see them trip? The hollow-hearted Eustachio and the
rapacious Leonardo, their virtual rulers, might indeed be little sensible
to this enthusiasm, but they could not disregard the general drift of
public opinion, which said clearly: "Mantua is trying a great experiment.
Woe to you if you bring it to nought by your selfish quarrels!"
The best proof that there was something in Manto's idea was that after a
while the Emperor Frederick took alarm, and signified to the Mantuans that
they must cease their mumming and fooling and acknowledge him as their
sovereign, failing which he would besiege their city.
II
Mantua was girt by a zone of fire and steel. Her villas and homesteads
flamed or smoked; her orchards flared heavenward in a torrent of sparks or
stood black sapless trunks charred to their inmost pith; the promise of her
harvests lay as grey ashes over the land. But her ramparts, though breached
in places, were yet manned by her sons, and their assailants recoiled
pierced by the shafts or stunned by the catapults of the defence. Kaiser
Frederick sat in his tent, giving secret audience to one who had stolen in
disguise over from the city in the grey of the morning. By the Emperor's
side stood a tall martial figure, wearing a visor which he never removed.
"Your Majesty," Leonardo was saying, for it was he, "this madness will soon
pass away. The people will weary of sacrificing themselves for a dead
heathen."
"And Liberty?" asked the Emperor, "is not that a name dear to those
misguided creatures?"
"So dear, please your Majesty, that if they have but the name they will
perfectly dispense with the thing. I do not advise that your imperial yoke
should be too palpably adjusted to their stiff necks. Leave them in
appearance the choice of their magistrate, but insure its falling upon one
of approved fidelity, certain to execute obsequiously all your Majesty's
mandates; such an one, in short, as your faithful vassal Leonardo. It would
only be necessary to decapitate that dangerous revolutionist, Eustachio."
"And the citizens are really ready for this?"
"All the respectable citizens. All of whom your Majesty need take account.
All men of standing and substance."
"I rejoice to hear it," said the Emperor, "and do the more readily credit
thee inasmuch as a most virtuous and honourable citizen hath already been
beforehand with thee, assuring me of the same thing, and affirming that but
one traitor, whose name, methinks, sounded like thine, stands between me
and the subjugation of Mantua."
And, withdrawing a curtain, he disclosed the figure of Eustachio.
"I thought he was asleep," muttered Eustachio.
"That noodle to have been beforehand with me!" murmured Leonardo.
"What perplexes me," continued Frederick, after enjoying the confusion of
the pair for a few moments, "is that our masked friend here will have it
that he is the man for the Dukedom, and offers to open the gates to me by a
method of his own."
"By fair fighting, an' please my liege," observed the visored personage,
"not by these dastardly treacheries."
"How inhuman!" sighed Eustachio.
"How old-fashioned!" sneered Leonardo.
"The truth is," continued Frederick, "he gravely doubts whether either of
you possesses the influence which you allege, and has devised a method of
putting this to the proof, which I trust will commend itself to you."
Leonardo and Eustachio expressed their readiness to submit their credit
with their fellow-citizens to any reasonable trial.
"He proposes, then," pursued the Emperor, "that ye, disarmed and bound,
should be placed at the head of the storming column, and in that situation
should, as questionless ye would, exert your entire moral influence with
your fellow-citizens to dissuade them from shooting you. If the column,
thus shielded, enters the city without resistance, ye will both have earned
the Dukedom, and the question who shall have it may be decided by single
combat between yourselves. But should the people, rather than submit to our
clemency, impiously slay their elected magistrates, it will be apparent
that the methods of our martial friend are the only ones corresponding to
the exigency of the case. Is the storming column ready?"
"All but the first file, please your Majesty," responded the man in the
visor.
"Let it be equipped," returned Frederick, and in half-an-hour Eustachio and
Leonardo, their hands tied behind them, were stumbling up the breach,
impelled by pikes in the rear, and confronting the catapults, _chevaux de
frise_, hidden pitfalls, Greek fire, and boiling water provided by their
own direction, and certified to them the preceding evening as all that
could be desired. They had, however, the full use of their voices, and this
they turned to the best account. Never had Leonardo been so cogent, or
Eustachio so pathetic. The Mantuans, already disorganised by the
unaccountable disappearance of the Executive, were entirely irresolute what
to do. As they hesitated the visored chief incited his followers. All
seemed lost, when a tall female figure appeared among the defenders. It was
Manto.
"Fools and cowards!" she exclaimed, "must ye learn your duty from a woman?"
And, seizing a catapult, she discharged a stone which laid the masked
warrior stunned and senseless on the ground. The next instant Eustachio and
Leonardo fell dead, pierced by showers of arrows. The Mantuans sallied
forth. The dismayed Imperialists fled to their camp. The bodies of the
fallen magistrates and of the unconscious chieftain in the mask were
brought into the city. Manto herself undid the fallen man's visor, and
uttered a fearful shriek as she recognised Benedetto.
"What shall be done with him, mistress?" they asked.
Manto long stood silent, torn by conflicting emotions. At length she said,
in a strange, unnatural voice:
"Put him into the Square Tower."
"And now, mistress, what further? How to choose the new consuls?"
"Ask me no more," she said. "I shall never prophesy again. Virtue has gone
away from me."
The leaders departed, to intrigue for the vacant posts, and devise
tortures for Benedetto. Manto sat on the rampart, still and silent as its
stones. Anon she rose, and roved about as if distraught, reciting verses
from Virgil.
Night had fallen. Benedetto lay wakeful in his cell. A female figure stood
before him bearing a lamp. It was Manto.
"Benedetto," she said, "I am a wretch, faithless to my country and to my
master. I did but even now open his sacred volume at hazard, and on what
did my eye first fall?
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres.
But I can no other. I am a woman. May Mantua never entrust her fortunes to
the like of me again! Come with me, I will release thee."
She unlocked his chains; she guided him through the secret passage under
the moat; they stood at the exit, in the open air.
"Fly," she said, "and never again draw sword against thy mother. I will
return to my house, and do that to myself which it behoved me to have done
ere I released thee."
"Manto," exclaimed Benedetto "a truce to this folly! Forsake thy dead Duke,
and that cheat of Liberty more crazy and fantastic still. Wed a living Duke
in me!"
"Never!" exclaimed Manto. "I love thee more than any man living on earth,
and I would not espouse thee if the earth held no other."
"Thou canst not help thyself," he rejoined; "thou hast revealed to me the
secret of this passage. I hasten to the camp. I return in an hour with an
army, and wilt thou, wilt thou not, to-morrow's sun shall behold thee the
partner of my throne!"
Manto wore a poniard. She struck Benedetto to the heart, and he fell dead.
She drew the corpse back into the passage, and hurried to her home. Opening
her master's volume again, she read:
Taedet coeli convexa tueri.
A few minutes afterwards her father entered the chamber to tell her he had
at last found the philosopher's stone, but, perceiving his daughter hanging
by her girdle, he forbore to intrude upon her, and returned to his
laboratory.
It was time. A sentinel of the besiegers had marked Benedetto's fall, and
the disappearance of the body into the earth. A pool of blood revealed the
entrance to the passage. Ere sunrise Mantua was full of Frederick's
soldiers, full also of burning houses, rifled sanctuaries, violated
damsels, children playing with their dead mothers' breasts, especially full
of citizens protesting that they had ever longed for the restoration of the
Emperor, and that this was the happiest day of their lives. Frederick
waited till everybody was killed, then entered the city and proclaimed an
amnesty. Virgil's bust was broken, and his writings burned with Manto's
body. The flames glowed on the dead face, which gleamed as it were with
pleasure. The old alchemist had been slain among his crucibles; his scrolls
were preserved with jealous care.
But Manto found another father. She sat at Virgil's feet in Elysium; and as
he stroked the fair head, now golden with perpetual youth, listened to his
mild reproofs and his cheerful oracles. By her side stood a bowl filled
with the untasted waters of Lethe.
"Woe," said Virgil--but his manner contradicted his speech--"woe to the
idealist and enthusiast! Woe to them who live in the world to come! Woe to
them who live only for a hope whose fulfilment they will not behold on
earth! Drink not, therefore, of that cup, dear child, lest Duke Virgil's
day should come, and thou shouldst not know it. For come it will, and all
the sooner for thy tragedy and thy comedy."
THE CLAW
The balm and stillness of a summer's night enveloped a spacious piazza in
the city of Shylock and Desdemona. The sky teemed with light drifting
clouds through which the beaming of the full moon broke at intervals upon
some lamp-lit palace, thronged and musical, for it was a night of
festivity, or silvered the dull creeping waters. Ever and anon some richly
attired young patrician descended the steps of one or other of these
mansions, and hurried across the wide area to the canal stairs, where his
gondola awaited him. Whoever did this could not but observe a tall female
figure, which, cloaked and masked, walked backwards and forwards across the
piazza, regarding no one, yet with an air that seemed to invite a
companion.
More than one of the young nobles approached the presumably fair
peripatetic, and, with courtesy commonly in inverse ratio to the amount of
wine he was carrying home, proffered his escort to his gondola. Whenever
this happened the figure removed her mask and unclasped her robe, and
revealed a sight which for one moment rooted the young man to the earth and
in the next sent him scampering to his bark. For the countenance was a
death's head, and the breast was that of a mouldering skeleton.
At last, however, a youth presented himself who, more courageous or more
tipsy than his fellows, or more helplessly paralysed with horror than they,
did not decline the proffered caress, and suffered himself to be drawn
within the goblin's accursed embrace. Valiant or pot-valiant, great was his
relief at finding himself clasped, instead of by a loathsome spectre, by a
silver-haired man of noble presence, yet with a countenance indescribably
haggard and anxious.
"Come, my son," he cried, "hasten whither the rewards of thy intrepidity
await thee. Impouch the purse of Fortunatus! Indue the signet of Solomon!"
The young man hesitated. "Is there nought else?" he cautiously demanded.
"Needs it not that I should renounce my baptism? Must I not subscribe an
infernal compact?"
"In thy own blood, my son," cheerfully responded the old gentleman.
"Peradventure," hesitatingly interrogated the youth, "peradventure you are
_he_?"
"Not so, my son, upon honour," returned the mysterious personage. "I am but
a distressed magician, at this present in fearful straits, from which I
look to be delivered by thee."
The youth gazed some moments at his companion's head, and then still more
earnestly at his feet. He then yielded his own hand to him, and the pair
crossed the piazza, almost at a run, the magician ever ejaculating, "Speed!
speed!"
They paused at the foot of a lofty tower, doorless and windowless, with no
visible access of any kind. But the magician signed with his hand,
pronounced some cabalistical words, and instantly stone and lime fell
asunder and revealed an entrance through which they passed, and which
immediately closed behind them. The youth quaked at finding himself alone
in utter darkness with he knew not what, but the wizard whistled, and a
severed hand appeared in air bearing a lamp which illuminated a long
winding staircase. The old man motioned to the youth to precede him, nor
dared he refuse, though feeling as though he would have given the world for
the very smallest relic of the very smallest saint. The distorted shadows
of the twain, dancing on stair and wall with the wavering lamp-shine,
seemed phantoms capering in an infernal revel, and he glanced back ever and
anon weening to see himself dogged by some frightful monster, but he saw
only the silver hair and sable velvet of the dignified old man.
After the ascent of many steps a door opened before them, and they found
themselves in a spacious chamber, brightly, yet from its size imperfectly
illumined by a single large lamp. It was wainscoted with ebony, and the
furniture was of the same. A long table was covered with scrolls, skulls,
crucibles, crystals, star-charts, geomantic figures, and other
appurtenances of a magician's calling. Tomes of necromantic lore lined the
walls, which were yet principally occupied with crystal vessels, in which
foul beings seemed dimly and confusedly to agitate themselves.
The magician signed to his visitor to be seated, sat down himself and
began:
"Brave youth, ere entering upon the boundless power and riches that await
thee, learn who I am and why I have brought thee here. Behold in me no
vulgar wizard, no mere astrologer or alchemist, but a compeer of Merlin and
Michael Scott, with whose name it may be the nurse of thy infancy hath
oft-times quelled thy froward humours. I am Peter of Abano, falsely
believed to have lain two centuries buried in the semblance of a dog under
a heap of stones hurled by the furious populace, but in truth walking earth
to this day, in virtue of the compact now to be revealed to thee. Hearken,
my son! Vain must be the machinations of my enemies, vain the onslaughts of
the rabble, so long as I fulfil a certain contract registered in hell's
chancery, as I have now done these three hundred years. And the condition
is this, that every year I present unto the Demon one who hath at my
persuasion assigned his soul to him in exchange for power, riches,
knowledge, magical gifts, or whatever else his heart chiefly desireth; nor
until this present year have I perilled the fulfilment of my obligation.
Seest thou these scrolls? They are the assignments of which I have spoken.
It would amaze thee to scan the subscriptions, and perceive in these the
signatures of men exemplary in the eyes of their fellows, clothed with high
dignities in Church and State--nay sometimes redolent of the very odour of
sanctity. Never hath my sagacity deceived me until this year, when, smitten
with the fair promise of a youth of singular impishness, I omitted to take
due note of his consumptive habit, and have but this afternoon encountered
his funeral. This is the last day of my year, and should my engagement be
unredeemed when the sun attains the cusp of that nethermost house of heaven
which he is even now traversing, I must become an inmate of the infernal
kingdom. No time has remained for nice investigation. I have therefore
proved the courage of the Venetian youth in the manner thou knowest, and
thou alone hast sustained the ordeal. Fail not at my bidding, or thou
quittest not this chamber alive. For when the Demon comes to bear me away,
he will assuredly rend thee in pieces for being found in my company. Thou
hast, therefore, everything to gain and nothing to lose by joining the
goodly fellowship of my mates and partners. Delay not, time urges, night
deepens, they that would drink thy blood are abroad. Hearest thou not the
moaning and pelting of the rising storm, and the muttering and scraping of
my imprisoned goblins? Save us, I entreat, I command, save us both!"
Screaming with agitation the aged sorcerer laid a scroll engrossed with
fairly written characters before the youth, stabbed the latter's arm with a
stylus that at once evoked and collected the crimson stream, thrust this
into his hand and strove to guide it to the parchment, chanting at the same
time litanies to the infernal powers. The crystal flagons rang like one
great harmonica with shrill but spirit-stirring music; volumes of vaporous
perfumes diffused themselves through the apartment, and an endless
procession of treasure-laden figures defiled before the bewildered youth.
He seemed buried in the opulence of the world, as he sat up to his waist in
gold and jewels; all the earth's beauty gazed at him through eyes brilliant
and countless as the stars of heaven; courtiers beckoned him to thrones;
battle-steeds neighed and pawed for his mounting; laden tables allured
every appetite; vassals bent in homage; slaves fell prostrate at his feet.
Now he seemed to collect or disperse legions of spirits with the waving of
a wand; anon, as he pronounced a spell, golden dragons glided away from
boughs laden with golden fruits. Well for him, doubtless, that in him
Nature had kneaded from ordinary clay as unimaginative a youth as could be
found in Venice: yet even so, dazzled with glamour, intoxicated with
illusion, less and less able to resist the cunningly mingled caresses,
entreaties, and menaces of Abano, he could not refrain from tracing a few
characters with the stylus, when, catching reflected in a mirror the old
magician's expression of wolfish glee, he dropped the instrument from his
grasp, and cast his eye upwards as if appealing to Heaven. But every drop
of blood seemed frozen in his frame as he beheld an enormous claw thrust
through the roof, member as it seemed of some being too gigantic to be
contained in the chamber or the tower itself. Cold, poignant, glittering as
steel, it rested upon a socket of the repulsive hue of jaundiced ivory,
with no vestige of a foot or anything to relieve its naked horror as, rigid
and lifeless, yet plainly with a mighty force behind it, it pointed at the
magician's heart. As Abano, following the youth's eye, caught sight of the
portent, his visage assumed an expression of frantic horror, his spells
died upon his lips, and the gorgeous figures became grinning apes or
blotchy toads: madly he seized the young man's hand, and strove to force
him to complete his signature. The robust youth felt as an infant in his
grasp, but ere the stylus could be again thrust upon him the first stroke
of the midnight hour rang through the chamber, and instantly the gigantic
talon pierced Abano from breast to back, projecting far beyond his
shoulders, and swept him upwards to the roof, through which both
disappeared without leaving a trace of their passage.
Horror and thankfulness rushed together into the young man's mind, and
there contended for some brief instants: but as the last stroke sounded all
the crystal vials shivered with a stunning crash, and their hellish
inmates, rejoicing in their deliverance, swarmed into the chamber. All made
for the youth, who, tugged, clawed, fondled, bitten, beslimed, blinded,
deafened, beset in every way by creatures of indescribable loathsomeness,
grasped frantically as his sole weapon, the stylus; but it had become a
writhing serpent. This was too much, sense forsook him on the spot.
On recovering consciousness he found himself stretched on a pallet in the
dungeons of the Inquisition. The Inquisitors sat on their tribunals;
black-robed familiars flitted about, or waited attentive upon their orders;
one expert in ecclesiastical jurisprudence proved the edge of an axe, and
another heated pincers in a chafing-dish; dismal groans pierced the massy
walls; two sturdy fellows, stripped to the waist, adjusted the rollers of a
rack. A surgeon approached the bedside, bearing a phial and a lancet. The
youth screamed and again became insensible.
But his affright was groundless. The Inquisitors had already taken
cognisance of Abano's scrolls, and found that, touching these at least, he
had spoken sooth. Besides kings, princes, ministers, magistrates, and other
secular persons who had owed their success in life to dealings with the
devil under his mediation, the infernal bondsmen included so many pillars
of the Church and champions of the Faith; prelates plenty, abbots in
abundance, cardinals not a few, a (some whispered _the_) Pope; above all,
so many of the Inquisitors themselves, that further inquiry could evidently
nowise conduce to edification. The surgeon, therefore, infused an opiate
into the veins of the unconscious youth, and he came to himself upon a
galley speeding him to the holy war in Cyprus, where he fell fighting the
Turk.
ALEXANDER THE RATCATCHER
"Alexander Octavus mures, qui Urbem supra modum vexabant, anathemate
perculit."[--_Palatius. Fasti Cardinalium_, tom. v.p. 46.]
I
"Rome and her rats are at the point of battle!"
This metaphor of Menenius Agrippa's became, history records, matter of fact
in 1689, when rats pervaded the Eternal City from garret to cellar, and
Pope Alexander the Eighth seriously apprehended the fate of Bishop Hatto.
The situation worried him sorely; he had but lately attained the tiara at
an advanced age--the twenty-fourth hour, as he himself remarked in
extenuation of his haste to enrich his nephews. The time vouchsafed for
worthier deeds was brief, and he dreaded descending to posterity as the Rat
Pope. Witty and genial, his sense of humour teased him with a full
perception of the absurdity of his position. Peter and Pasquin concurred in
forbidding him to desert his post; and he derived but small comfort from
the ingenuity of his flatterers, who compared him to St. Paul contending
with beasts at Ephesus.
It wanted three half-hours to midnight, as Alexander sat amid traps and
ratsbane in his chamber in the Vatican, under the protection of two
enormous cats and a British terrier. A silver bell stood ready to his hand,
should the aid of the attendant chamberlains be requisite. The walls had
been divested of their tapestries, and the floor gleamed with pounded
glass. A tome of legendary lore lay open at the history of the Piper of
Hamelin. All was silence, save for the sniffing and scratching of the dog
and a sound of subterranean scraping and gnawing.
"Why tarries Cardinal Barbadico thus?" the Pope at last asked himself
aloud. The inquiry was answered by a wild burst of squeaking and clattering
and scurrying to and fro, as who should say, "We've eaten him! We've eaten
him!"
But this exultation was at least premature, for just as the terrified Pope
clutched his bell, the door opened to the narrowest extent compatible with
the admission of an ecclesiastical personage of dignified presence, and
Cardinal Barbadico hastily squeezed himself through.