III
Among the monks who crowded to hear these words of Savonarola was the novice, Giovanni Boltraffio. When the company had dispersed, he too descended by the main staircase of the convent, and sat in his accustomed spot under the portico, where at this hour reigned solitude and calm.
The court was surrounded by the white monastery walls, and in it grew laurels, cypresses, and a thicket of damask roses. Report said that these roses were watered by angels. Fra Girolamo loved to preach amongst them.
The novice opened the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, and read: 'Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils.'
Then he rose and paced the cloister, recalling his thoughts and emotions during the year he had spent within the walls of San Marco. After the moral torture of the preceding months, he had at first experienced great peace in this retreat among the disciples of Savonarola.
Sometimes Father Girolamo would lead them out beyond the confines of the city. Following a steep path, which seemed to lead to heaven, they climbed the heights of Fiesole, from whence the City of Flowers, surrounded by smiling hills, appeared like some silver vision. The prior would seat himself in a meadow, enamelled with iris, tulips, and violets; the monks reclined in a circle round him, and talked and danced and frolicked like so many children, or played on viols and citherns, like those which the beato Angelico placed in the hands of his angels, circling as they sing in the choir of heaven. Fra Girolamo did not preach nor play the master, but talked affectionately and took his part in the games and laughter. And Giovanni, looking at the radiant smile on his countenance, there on the retired Fiesole hill, under the heaven of most pure azure, hearing the vibrating tones of the stringed instruments, and the voices blended in holy song, fancied himself an angel in the paradise of God. Sometimes at dawn Savonarola would walk to the edge of the slope, and look down on his Florence, bathed in the morning mist, even as a mother looks on her sleeping babe, and from below would rise the first clanging of the bells announcing the beginning of day, like the sleepy babble of a half-awakened child.
And on summer nights, when the fireflies moved through the embalmed air like the torches of unseen angels, and the roses exhaled their mystic odour in the convent-yard, Fra Girolamo would tell of the stigmata of St. Francis, of the wounds, perfumed like roses, which her divine love had impressed on the tender body of St. Catharine. The brethren sang:—
'Fac me plagis vulnerari,
Fac me Cruce inebriari,
Ob amorem Filii.'
And Giovanni would tremble in the anguished expectation of miracle—the trembling hope that rays of fire, springing from the cup of the Holy Sacrament, would burn his body likewise with the sacred wounds of the Crucified. 'Gesù, Gesù mio, amore!' he sighed, fainting in voluptuous ecstasy.
Once the prior sent him on a mission to the Villa Carreggi, two miles from Florence, where Lorenzo dei Medici had long sojourned, and at last had died. In one of the deserted saloons, lit by a ghostly light coming through the chinks of the shutters, Giovanni saw a picture of Botticelli's, called 'The Birth of Venus.'
White as a water-lily, bedewed with the briny freshness of the sea, standing on a pearly shell, the goddess floated over the waves, veiled in the abundant gold of her serpentine tresses, which she gathered in her hand. The fair naked body breathed the enticement of sin; yet was there a strange pathos in the pure childlike lips and the innocent eyes.
Giovanni shuddered; for it seemed to him that the face of the goddess was not new to him; he looked long at it, and remembered that he had already seen that countenance, those ingenuous, dewy eyes, those innocent lips with their tender sadness in another picture by that same Botticelli—a picture of the Mother of God. Inexpressible consternation filled his soul; he averted his eyes and fled from the villa.
Returning to Florence by a narrow lane, he saw at the angle of a cross-way an ancient Rood, and he sank on his knees and prayed for the driving from him of temptation. But at that moment came the trill of a mandoline from the roses behind the wall; a voice cried out, then murmured in a frightened whisper, 'No, no—leave me!' and another voice replied, 'Beloved! Love!—my love!' and then the mandoline fell, and a kiss was heard.
Giovanni sprang to his feet, reiterating, 'Gesù! Gesù!' but this time he dared not add 'amore!'
'Here also is she!' he said; 'everywhere! in the face of the Madonna, in the words of the holy hymns, in the breath of the roses which crown the crucifix!'
And hiding his face in his hands he fled, as if escaping from an unseen persecution.
Back in the convent, he went to Savonarola and told him all, and the prior exhorted him to fight against the devil by fasting and by prayer; and when the novice sought to explain that this torment was not the temptation of fleshly lust, but the seduction breathing from all the beauty of pagan antiquity, Savonarola, uncomprehending, at first showed astonishment, then told him sternly that he lied in thinking there could be aught in the pagan gods but concupiscence and pride. All beauty was contained in the Christian virtues. And Giovanni, not having found the looked-for comfort, from that day forth was possessed by the demons of restlessness and revolt.
Once Boltraffio heard Fra Girolamo, discoursing on painting, insist that every picture should have some moral utility for men, exciting them to the practice of those ascetic virtues which alone are healthful for the soul. And he added that the Florentines would do a work well-pleasing to God if they should destroy, at the hands of the executioner, all those images which entice to sin.
Then he went on to speak of knowledge:—'That man is a fool,' he said 'who conceives that by logic and by philosophy the truths of faith can be confirmed. Does a strong light need the help of a weak one? or the divine wisdom that of the human? Which of the apostles and the martyrs studied philosophy and logic? An old woman who can neither read nor write, but who prays fervently before the image of a saint, is nearer to the knowledge of God than all the sages and philosophers of the world. Neither logic nor science will stead them in the day of judgment: Homer and Virgil, Plato and Aristotle, all go to their end in the house of the devil; because, like the sirens, bewitching the ear with magic songs, they draw souls to eternal ruin. Science gives men stones for bread, and, verily, if you look at those who follow the teaching of this world, you will find in them that even their hearts are become as stones.'
'Who knows little, loves little. Great love is the daughter of great knowledge!' had said Leonardo da Vinci.
Only now did Giovanni realise the profundity of these words, as he listened to the anathema of the monk against knowledge and art, and remembered the wise reasonings of Leonardo, the calm of his countenance, his cold look, his wise and enchanting smile. Not that he had forgotten the poisoned tree, the Ear, the crane for the Holy Nail, but now he felt that he had not fathomed the depth of his master's soul, had not penetrated into the mysteries of his heart, nor untied the prime knot in which all the threads must meet.
Such were the memories upon which Giovanni looked back at the end of his first convent year. Deep in thought he paced the darkening cloister, till the evening had fallen and the Ave Maria rang through the dusk. The monks wended to the chapel, but Giovanni remained outside, reseating himself.
Then with a bitter smile he raised his eyes to the silent heaven, where shone the evening star, the torch of Lucifer, the most beautiful of angels, the bringer of light, son of the morning.
He returned to his cell and slept: towards the dawning he dreamed. And in his dream he was with Monna Cassandra, astride of a black goat, and fleeting through the morning air, 'To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!' cried the witch, turning to him her clear amber eyes; and he knew in her the goddess of earthly love, she with the heavenly sadness in her eyes—the diavolessa bianca. The full moon shone on her body. Sweet odours almost overpowered him. His teeth chattered with desire and with fear. 'Amore! Amore!' she cried and laughed, and the black goat-skin sank beneath them. Away! Away! they careered.