SUSPICION [1]
It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just prince—a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in their welfare, very seldom for his own.
Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.
Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and others—men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them. For mankind could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of demigods.
When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and, at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the mercy of a man without justice—a fellow-creature without feelings!
Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might. I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.
But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands every day and every moment—one who was born of the same mother with Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion.[2]
Yes, Suspicion;—the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being. This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch afraid of every soul among them.
Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of barbers! He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and thick walls. It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window. There was no other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or the inmates a place to breathe at. In this tower he slept; and it was his wife's business to put a ladder down for him when he came in. A dog kept watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was to be discerned about the place. Yet he had such little trust in her, that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for the night.
Of what use was it all? The woman herself killed him with his own sword, and his soul went straight to hell.
Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish. He did not weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, "I burn, I burn!" He evinced so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, "I must put this fellow into other quarters." Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the torments are beyond all others.
Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. At length they asked him the reason. The wretch then candidly acknowledged, that hell itself had no torments for him, compared with those which suspicion had given him on earth.
The sages of hell laid their heads together at this news. Amelioration of his lot on the part of a sinner was not to be thought of in a place of eternal punishment; so they called a parliament together, the result of which was an unanimous conclusion, that the man should be sent back to earth, and consigned to the torments of suspicion for ever.
He went; and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with a subtlety so incorporate, that their two natures were identified, and he became SUSPICION ITSELF. Fruits are thus engrafted on wild stocks. One colour thus becomes the parent of many, when the painter takes a portion of this and of that from his palette in order to imitate flesh.
The new being took up his abode on a rock by the sea-shore, a thousand feet high, girt all about with mouldering crags, which threatened every instant to fall. It had a fortress on the top, the approach to which was by seven drawbridges, and seven gates, each locked up more strongly than the other; and here, now this moment, constantly thinking Death is upon him, Suspicion lives in everlasting terror. He is alone. He is ever watching. He cries out from the battlements, to see that the guards are awake below, and never does he sleep day or night. He wears mail upon mail, and mail again, and feels the less safe the more he puts on; and is always altering and strengthening everything on gate, and on barricado, and on ditch, and on wall. And do whatever he will, he never seems to have done enough.
* * * * *
Great poet, and good man, Ariosto! your terrors are better than Dante's; for they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afflict humanity nor degrade God.
Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction, pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,—laughable with satirical archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the horde of the Satyrs, by mixing with their flock of goats,—as Norandino does in a passage imitated from Homer by Ariosto. The wife flatly refuses to do any such thing, and the poor wretch is obliged to steal out again.
"So soon as he the prison door did pass,
He ran as fast as both his feet could bear,
And never looked who behind him was,
Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear
That creeping close among the hives, to rear
An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy,
And him assailing, sore his carcass tear,
That hardly he away with life does fly,
Nor stays till safe himself he see from jeopardy.
Nor stay'd he till be came unto the place
Where late his treasure he entombèd had;
Where, when he found it not (for Trompart base
Had it purloined for his master bad),
With extreme fury he became quite mad,
And ran away—ran with himself away;
That who so strangely had him seen bestad,
With upstart hair and staring eyes' dismay,
From Limbo-lake him late escapèd sure would say.
High over hills and over dales he fled,
As if the wind him on his wings had borne;
Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped
His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn;
Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn,
Did all the way him follow hard behind;
And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn,
So shamefully forlorn of womankind,
That, as a snake, still lurkèd in his wounded mind.
Still fled he forward, looking backward still;
Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony
Till that he came unto a rocky hill
Over the sea suspended dreadfully,
That living creature it would terrify
To look a-down, or upward to the height
From thence he threw himself dispiteously,
All desperate of his fore-damnèd spright,
That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.
But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought,
He was so wasted and forpinèd quite,
That all his substance was consumed to nought,
And nothing left but like an airy sprite;
That on the rocks he fell so flit and light,
That he thereby received no hurt at all;
But chancèd on a craggy cliff to light;
Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl,
That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.
Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there
Resolved to build his baleful mansion,
In dreary darkness, and continual fear
Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon
Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon,
That he dare never sleep, but that one eye
Still ope he keeps for that occasion;
Nor ever rests he in tranquillity,
The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.
Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed
But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous,
Which in his cold complexion do breed
A filthy blood, or humour rancorous,
Matter of doubt and dread suspicious,
That doth with cureless care consume the heart,
Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious,
Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart,
And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.
Yet can he never die, but dying lives,
And doth himself with sorrow new sustain,
That death and life at once unto him gives,
And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain;
There dwells he ever, miserable swain,
Hateful both to himself and every wight;
Where he, through privy grief and horror vain,
Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite
Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight."
Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's; but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.
[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the Furioso, but in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name of the Five Cantos. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious one, especially as it seems to have been written after the Furioso; for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,—a whale inhabited by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.
Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his book entitled the Prince? It has perplexed all the world to this day, and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's.]
[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!
"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea
Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque,
La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea;
E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque,
Di tormentarle mai non rimanea.">[