[CHAPTER V.]
THE CARDINAL AND THE JEW.
"I should like," said Ippolito, "to speak with that Jew before I leave you. He may help me to some curious manuscripts."
The Medici were very clever in hunting up curiosities of literature; for their encouragement of the arts sprang less from the love of that renown which rewards liberal patronage, than from real, genuine interest in arts and letters for their own sake. Hence the worship of their very names among poor literati, to whom sympathy and appreciation are dearer than gold, though they like that too. Pity that they loved Plato better than Christ! The spirit of poetical and philosophical emulation which they kindled was accompanied by utter obtuseness to spiritual things. A keen sense of purity of language fostered no love of purity of life; there was, in fact, complete antagonism between the elegant disciples of Lorenzo and the severe followers of Savonarola and Bernardino Ochino; and if the very light that was in them was darkness, how great was that darkness! The Medici retarded rather than advanced the spirituality of their age; and in like manner, though in different proportion, their elegant biographer has thrown a false shadow on good, and a false light on evil. Of course I shall be covered with obloquy for saying this.
Cardinal Ippolito received Bar Hhasdai in a cabinet adjoining the sala di compagnía, in which music and society-games were beguiling the tedium of the other guests. The Jew was a grand specimen of the Sephardim—he was a great deal older than he looked, his hair unbleached, and his head unbent by age.
"Your name is that of a great man," said the Cardinal to him.
"My descent is from him likewise," said the physician. "I am son, or, as your people would say, descendant of that Hhasdai ben Isaac who was Hagib to the second Abderrahman, and wrote the famous epistle—of which you doubtless have heard—to Joseph, King of Cozar."
"No, I never heard anything about it," said Ippolito with interest. "Who was the king of Cozar?"