A man of study, he neither loved to obey nor command; he was perfectly willing that his wife should be mistress in all things pertaining to household affairs, but not that he should be her slave; and if, at her request, he lent upon occasion the services of his pen, it was because he had a particular taste for such employments. And, moreover, he could refuse to do it, when not convinced of the propriety of her demand. “Well,” he would say, “do it yourself, since the matter appears so plain to you.” Donna Prassede, after vainly trying to induce him to submission, took refuge in grumbling against him as an original, a man who would have his own way, a mere scholar; which latter title, however, she never gave him without a degree of complacency, mingling itself with her displeasure.
Don Ferrante passed much time in his study, where he had a considerable collection of choice books; he had selected the most famous works on many different subjects, in each of which he was more or less versed. In astrology he was justly considered more than an amateur, because he not only possessed the general notions, and the common vocabulary of influences, aspects, and conjunctions, but he could speak to the point, and, like a professor, of the twelve houses of heaven, of the great and lesser circles, of degrees, lucid and obscure, of exaltations, passages, and revolutions; in short, of the principles the most certain and most recondite of the science. For more than twenty years, in long and frequent disputes, he had sustained the pre-eminence of Cardan against another learned man attached to the system of Alcabizio, “from pure obstinacy,” said Don Ferrante, who, in acknowledging voluntarily the superiority of the ancients, could not, however, endure the prejudice which would never accord to the moderns, even that which they evidently deserved. He had also a more than ordinary acquaintance with the history of the science; he could cite the most celebrated predictions which had been verified, and reason very skilfully and learnedly on other celebrated predictions which had not been verified, demonstrating that the failure was not owing to any deficiency in the science, but to the ignorance which could not apply its principles.
He had acquired as much ancient philosophy as would have contented a man of ordinary ambition, but he was continually adding to his stock from the study of Diogenes Laertius; however, as we cannot adhere to every system, and as, from among them all, a choice is necessary to him who desires the reputation of a philosopher, Don Ferrante made choice of Aristotle, who, as he was accustomed to say, was neither ancient nor modern. He possessed many works of the wisest and most subtle disciples of the school of Aristotle among the moderns; as to those of his opponents, he would not read them, “because it would be a waste of time,” he said, “nor buy them, because it would be a waste of money.” In the judgment of the learned, therefore, Don Ferrante passed for an accomplished peripatetic, although this was not the judgment he passed on himself, for, more than once, he was heard to declare, with singular modesty, that the essence, the universals, the soul of the world, and the nature of things, were not matters so clear as people thought.
As to natural philosophy, he had made it more a pastime than a study: he had rather read than digested the works of Aristotle himself on the subject. Nevertheless, with a slight acquaintance with that author, and the knowledge he had incidentally gathered from other treatises of general philosophy, he could, when necessary, entertain an assembly of learned persons in reasoning most acutely on the wonderful virtues and singular characteristics of many plants. He could describe exactly the forms and habits of the syrens, and the phœnix, the only one of its kind; he could explain how it was that the salamander lived in fire, how drops of dew became pearls in the shell, how the chameleon lived on air, and a thousand other secrets of the same nature.
He was, however, much more addicted to the study of magic and sorcery, as this was a science more in vogue, and withal more serviceable, and the facts of which were of pre-eminent importance. It is not necessary to add that, in devotion to such a science, he had no other purpose than to obtain an accurate knowledge of the worst artifices of the sorcerers, in order to guard himself against them. Guided by the great Martino Delrio, he was able to discourse, ex professo, on the enchantment of love, the enchantment of sleep, the enchantment of hatred, and on the innumerable species of these three chief enchantments, which, alas! are witnessed every day in their destructive and baneful effects.
His knowledge of history, especially universal history, was not less vast and solid. “But,” said he often, “what is history without politics? a guide who conducts without teaching any one the way; as politics without history, is a man without a guide to conduct him.” Here was then a small place on his shelf assigned to statistics; there, among others of the second rank, were seen Bodin, Cavalcanti, Sansovino, Paruta, and Boccalini. There were, however, two books that Don Ferrante preferred to all others on the subject; two, which he called, for a long time, the first of the kind, without deciding to which of the two this rank exclusively belonged. One was Il Principe and the Discorsi of the celebrated secretary of Florence. “A rascal, ’tis true,” said he, “but profound;” the other, La Ragion di Stato, of the not less celebrated Giovanni Botero. “An honest man, ’tis true,” said he, “but cunning.” But, a short time before the period to which our history belongs, a work appeared which had terminated the question of pre-eminence; a work in which was comprised and condensed a relation of every vice, in order to enable men to avoid it, and every virtue, in order to enable men to practise it,—a book of few leaves, indeed, but all of gold; in a word, the Statista Regnante of Don Valeriano Castiglione; of the celebrated man upon whom the most learned men emulated each other in bestowing praises, and for whose notice the greatest personages contended; whom Pope Urban VIII. honoured with a magnificent eulogium; whom Cardinal Borghese and the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pietro de Toledo, solicited to write, the first, the life of Pope Paul V., the second, the wars of the Catholic king in Italy, and both in vain; whom Louis XIII., King of France, with the advice of Cardinal Richelieu, named his historiographer; upon whom the Duke Carlos Emanuel, of Savoy, conferred the same office; and in praise of whom the Duchess Christina, daughter to his most Christian majesty, Henry IV., added in a diploma, after many other titles, “the renown he had obtained in Italy as the first writer of the age.”
But if Don Ferrante might be said to be well versed in all the above sciences, there was one in which he deserved, and really obtained, the title of professor, the science of chivalry. He not only spoke of it as a master, but was often requested to interfere in nice points of honour, and give his decision. He had in his library, and, we may add, in his head also, the works of the most esteemed writers on this subject, particularly Torquato Tasso, whom he had always ready; and he could, if required, cite from memory all the passages of the Jerusalem Delivered, which might be brought forward as authority in these matters. We might speak more at large of this learned man, but we feel it to be time to resume the thread of our history.
Nothing of importance occurred to any of the personages of our story before the following autumn, when Agnes and Lucy expected to meet again; but a great public event disappointed this hope. Other events followed, which produced no material change in their destiny. Then occurred new misfortunes, powerful and overwhelming, coming upon them like a hurricane, which impetuously tears up and scatters every object in its way, sweeping the land, and bearing off, with its irresistible and mighty power, every vestige of peace and prosperity. That the particular facts which remain to be related may not appear obscure, we must recur for awhile to the farther recital of general facts.