“This tale doth teach,” notes the learned Flaxius, “as regards the folklore of the black dog, that in this life most things are good or bad, as we take them. For the black dog, Monsieur, of Cornelius Agrippa (like that in Faust) was a demon, albeit his pupil, Wierus, records that he himself knew the animal well, but never supposed there was aught of the goblin in it. And this same Wierus has mentioned (loc. cit., p. m. 325), that one of the things which most terrify the devil and all his gang is the blood of a black dog splashed on the wall. So in ancient symbolism death meant life, the two being correlative, and in witchcraft the spell of the frog and many more are meant to do deadly harm, or great good, according to the way in which they are worked. Wherein lies an immense moral lesson for ye all. Remember, children—
“‘There is no passion, vice, or crime,
Which truly, closely understood,
Does not, in the full course of time,
Do far less harm than good.’”
IL PALAZZO FERONI
showing how it got its name from a fairy
“Ah me! what perils do environ
The man who meddles with cold iron!
Thus sang great Butler long ago,
In Hudibras, as all men know;
But in this story you will see
How Iron was sold by irony.”
One of the most picturesque mediæval palaces in Florence is that of the Feroni, and its architectural beauty is greatly enhanced by its fine situation at the head of the Tornabuoni on the Piazza della Trinità, with the magnificent column of the Medicis just before its gate. According to Italian authority, “this palace may be called, after those of the Prætorio (i.e., Bargello) and the Signoria, the most characteristic building of its epoch in Florence. It is said to have been built by Arnolfo di Cambio. It once belonged to the Spini, from whom it passed to the Feroni.” When I was in Florence in 1846–47, this palace was the best hotel in Florence, and the one in which I lived. There have been great “restorations” in the city since that time, but very few which have not been most discreditably and foolishly conducted, even to the utter destruction of all that was truly interesting in them; as, for instance, “the house of Dante, torn down within a few years to be rebuilt, so that now not one stone rests upon another of the original;” and “Santa Maria Novella, where the usual monkish hatred of everything not rococo and trashy has shown itself by destroying beautiful work of earlier times, or selling it to the Kensington Museum,
setting up a barbarously gilt gingerbread high altar, and daubing the handsome Gothic sacristy with gaudy colours.” To which the author of Murray’s “Guide-Book for Central Italy” adds, that “perhaps on the whole list of ecclesiastical restorations there does not exist a more deplorable instance of monastic vandalism than has been perpetrated here by the architect Romoli”—a remark which falls unfortunately very far short of the truth. Such ruin is wrought everywhere at present; witness the beautiful Fonte Gaja, “the masterpiece of Jacopo della Quercia in Siena (1402), which, since the change of Government, was not ‘restored,’ but totally destroyed and carted away, a miserable modern copy having been recently set up in its place” (Hare, “Cities of Central Italy”), all of which was probably done to “make a job” for a favoured builder. “But what can you expect,” adds a friend, “in a country where it is common to cover a beautiful dry stone wall with plaster, and then paint it over to resemble the original stone,” because, as I was naïvely told, “the rough stone itself looks too cheap”? Anybody who has lived long in Italy can add infinitely to such instances. The Palazzo Feroni has, however, suffered so little, for a wonder, from restoration, and still really looks so genuinely old, that it deserves special mention, and may serve as an excuse for my remarks on the manner in which ancient works are destroyed so con amore by monks and modern municipalities. I may here note that this building is, in a sense, the common rendezvous for all the visitors to Florence, chiefly English and Americans, since in it are the very large circulating library and reading-rooms of Vieusseux. [212]
There is, of course, a legend attached to the Palazzo Feroni, and it is as follows:
“The Signore Pietro, who afterwards received the name Feroni, was a very rich man, and yet hated by the poor, on whom he bestowed nothing, and not much liked by his equals, though he gave them costly entertainments; for there was in all the man and in his character something inconsistent and contradictory, or of corna contra croce—‘the horns against the cross,’ as the proverb hath it, which made it so that one never knew where to have him:
“‘Un, al monte, e l’altro al pian,
Quel che, è oggi, non è doman.’“‘On the hill in joy, in the dale in sorrow—
One thing to-day, and another to-morrow.’