“And it is said that to this day the small owl still perches by night on the roof of the palace, wailing wearily—‘Unfinished! unfinished!’”
In no country in the world has unscrupulous vigorous intellect been so admired as in Italy, the land of the Borgias and Machiavellis. In the rest of Europe man finds a master in the devil; in Italy he aims at becoming the devil’s master. This is developed boldly in the legend of “Intialo,” to which I have devoted another chapter, and it appears as markedly in this. The idea of having an attendant demon, whom the master, in the consciousness of superior intellect, despises, knowing that he will crush him when he will, is not to be found, I believe, in a single German, French, or any other legend not Italian.
If this be so, it is a conception well deserving study, as illustrating the subtle and powerful Italian intellect as it was first analysed by Macaulay, and is now popularly understood by such writers as Scaife. [96] It is indeed a most unholy and unchristian conception, since it is quite at war with the orthodox theology of the Church, as of Calvin and Luther, which makes the devil the grand master of mankind, and irresistible except where man is saved by a special miracle or grace.
And it may also be noted from such traditions that folk-lore, when it shall have risen to a sense of its true dignity and power, will not limit itself to collecting variants of fairy tales to prove the routes of races over the earth, but rise to illustrating the characteristic, and even the æsthetic, developments of different stocks. That we are now laying the basis for this is evident.
Though the devil dared not depict lives and legends of the saints upon the palace, he did not neglect to put his own ugly likeness there, repeated above the four front windows in a perfectly appalling Gothic style, which contrasts oddly with the later and severe character of the stately building. These faces are fiendish enough to have suggested the story.
It may here be mentioned that it was in the middle of the Borgo degli Albizzi, near this palace, that that indefatigable corpse-reviver and worker of miracles, San Zenobio, raised from the dead the child of a noble and rich French lady. “Then in that place there was put a pillar of white marble in the middle of the street, as a token of a great miracle.”
“Hæc fabula docet—this fable teaches,” adds Flaxius the immortal, “that there was never yet anything left incomplete by neglect or incapacity or poverty, be it in buildings or in that higher structure, man himself, but what it was attributed to the devil. If it had not been for the devil, what fine fellows, what charming creatures, we would all have been to be sure! The devil alone inspires us to sin; we would never have dreamed of it. Whence I conclude that the devil is dearer to man, and a greater benefactor, than all the saints and several deities thrown in, because he serves as a scudaway scapegoat, and excellent excuse for the sins of all the orthodox of all time. How horrible it would be were we all made unto ourselves distinctly responsible for our sins—our unfinished palaces, our good resolutions broken; and how very pleasant it is that it is all the devil’s fault, and not our own! Oh my friends, did I believe as ye do—which I don’t—I would long ago have raised altars and churches to the devil, wherein I would praise him daily as the one who in spirit and in truth takes upon himself the sins of all the world, bearing the burden of our iniquities. For saying which thing, but in other words, the best Christian of his age, Bishop Agobard, was hunted down well-nigh to death. Thus endeth a great lesson!”
THE DEVIL OF THE MERCATO VECCHIO
“Have I not the magic wand, by means of which, having first invoked the spirit Odeken, one can enter the elfin castle? Is not this a fine trot on the devil’s crupper? Here it is—one of the palaces erected by rivals of the Romans. Let us enter, for I hold a hand of glory to which all doors open. Let us enter, hic et nunc, the palace fair. . . . Here it was once on a Sabato of the Carnival that there entered four graceful youths of noble air.”—Arlecchino alle Nozze di Cana.
I very naturally made inquiry as to whether there was not a legend of the celebrated bronze devil made by Giovanni di Bologna, which remained until lately in the Mercato Vecchio, and I obtained the following, which is, from intrinsic evidence, extremely curious and ancient.