VII
In the dark, silent, and spacious halls of the Medicean palace, where all breathed the solemn grandeur of the past, the children became awestruck. But when the shutters had been flung open, the trumpets had blared, and the drums beat, then the youthful inquisitors scattered themselves through the rooms, shouting and laughing, and singing hymns, and executing the judgment of God on the sins of learning and art, gleefully prying into vanities by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Giovanni watched them at work, and noted some who, with frowning foreheads, hands decently folded, and the gravity of judges, paced among the statues of the philosophers and heroes of pagan antiquity. 'Pythagoras, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus,' read one of the boys from the Latin inscriptions on the marble bases.
'Epictetus?' said Federici, with the tone of a profound connoisseur, 'that is the particular heretic who permitted all pleasures and denied the existence of God. He merits burning; 'tis pity he is marble.'
'Never mind,' cried the cross-eyed Pippo, 'we'll have him in to the feast.'
'Nay,' interposed Giovanni; 'you are confounding Epictetus with Epicurus.'
He was too late; down came Pippo's hammer so clean on the philosopher's nose that the boys yelled in admiration.
'Epictetus or Epicurus, it's all one! If it isn't the broth, it's the sippets of bread! They shall all go to the house of the devil,' they cried, quoting Fra Girolamo.
However, contention arose before a picture of Botticelli's. Dolfo declared it was the naked Bacchus pierced by the shafts of love, but Federici, whose eye for 'anathemata' rivalled Dolfo's, examined the picture attentively and pronounced it a portrait of Stephen the proto-martyr.
The children stood round in perplexity, for the attire and the expression of the figure in nowise suggested a saint.
'Don't you believe him!' cried Dolfo; ''tis Bacchus, the abominable Bacchus!'
'You blasphemer!' shouted Federici, raising his crucifix for weapon, and the two boys fell upon each other with such goodwill that their followers could hardly separate them. The picture was left for future consideration.
Standing in wondering groups, the children rummaged amongst the properties of old carnivals—amongst the horrid masks of satyrs, grapes for bacchantes, bows, amongst quivers, and wings of Eros, the wands of Hermes, the tridents of Poseidon. Finally, drawing them forth amid shouts of laughter, they lighted on the wooden, gilded, cobwebbed thunderbolt of Jupiter Tonans, and the moth-eaten body of the Olympian eagle, with moulted tail, and wires and nails protruding from his perforated crop. A rat jumped out from the dusty golden wig once worn by Aphrodite, girls screamed, jumped on the couches and gathered up their petticoats. The shadows of terrified bats beating against the ceiling seemed the wings of unclean spirits, and a chill of horror and repulsion settled on the children as they touched this heathen lumber, this sepulchral dust of deities.
Dolfo running up announced that there was yet another room, its door guarded by a little, bald, furious, red-nosed, detestable man, who was hurling blasphemy and curses, and would permit no one to pass. The troop filed off to reconnoitre; and Giovanni, following them, found in the janitor his friend the bibliophile, Messer Giorgio Merula.
Dolfo gave the signal for attack; Messer Giorgio stood before the door preparing to defend it with his body. The children fell upon him, rolled him over, beat him with their crosses, searched his pockets till they had found the key, and opened the door. It was a small room with a library of precious books.
'Here, here!' suggested Merula, cunningly, 'the books you seek are in this corner. You needn't waste your time over the top shelves. There's nothing there.'
But the inquisitors heeded him not. All that came to hand they piled in a vast heap, especially the books in rich bindings. Then they opened the windows and flung the fat folios straight into the street, where carts were being loaded with 'vanities.' Tibullus, Horace, Ovid, Apuleius, Aristophanes, rare copies, unique editions flew through the air before Merula's very eyes. He rescued one small volume and hid it in his bosom. It was the history of Marcellinus, containing the life of Julian the Apostate. Seeing on the floor a delicately-illuminated manuscript of the tragedies of Sophocles, he snatched it up and made piteous supplication:—
'Children, dear children! spare Sophocles. He is the most innocent of poets. Let him alone! Let him alone!'
And he pressed the precious leaves convulsively to his breast, but finding them tear beneath his too loving hands he burst into sobs and groans, dropped his treasure, and cried in impotent fury:—
'Know, ye sons of dogs, that one line of this inestimable Sophocles is worth all the prophecies put together of your madman, Fra Girolamo.'
'Old man, if you don't want to be taken by the heels and thrown after your pagan poets, you'll hold your tongue!' cried the children, dragging him from the library.
Then leaving the palace, they passed by Santa Maria del Fiore, and marched to the Piazza della Signoria.