Franciscus Columna / The Last Novella of Charles Nodier

by Charles Nodier

FRANCISCUS COLUMNA, A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOVELLA.

The Colonna family is certainly one of the most important in Rome and in Italy, but not all its branches were equally prosperous. Sciarra Colonna, a passionate Ghibelline, who made Boniface VIII the prisoner of the Agnani, and got carried away, in the ecstasy of his victory, to the point of slapping the Supreme Pontiff, was made to suffer cruelly for his violence under John XXII. He was exiled from Rome for life in 1328, had his children stripped of their nobility as was he, and all his worldly goods confiscated to enrich Stefano Colonna, his brother, who had never abandoned the party of the Guelphs. The descendants of the unfortunate Sciarra died, as he himself did, in Venice, in obscurity and poverty. By 1444 only one of them was left alive to inherit such misery. Francesco Colonna, born at the start of that year was twice made an orphan, losing his father, killed on the day before he was born, and his mother who died giving birth to him. Francesco, piously adopted by none other than Jacopo Bellini, the famous history painter, and tenderly brought up with his own children, showed himself worthy of the generous care he had had from his adoptive father and from the illustrious brothers of the latter, Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. From the age of eighteen onwards, he repeated in the history of painting the precocious triumphs of the young Mantegna: Giotto had another rival. Fate, however, which did not cease to dog Francesco's life, did not allow his young successes to be wreathed in glory, and it is under the name of Mantegna or one of the Bellinis that the masterpieces of his brush are admired today.

Painting, however, was far from being the exclusive focus of his studies and affections. He only accorded it an importance that was secondary among the arts that beautify man's earthly sojourn. Architecture, on the other hand, which raises monuments to the gods, solemn intermediaries between earth and heaven, took up the greater part of his thoughts, but he did not look for its laws and marvels in the gigantic creations of contemporary art, the bizarre and often grotesque whims and fancies of a fantasy, lacking, according to him, the outward grace of reason and taste. Carried forward by the motion of the Renaissance, which was by then starting to make itself felt in Italy, Francesco only still belonged as far as faith went to this modern world renewed by Christianity. He wholly admired Antiquity and worshipped at its shrine, and a strange alliance had taken place in his mind between the beliefs of a religious man and the aesthetics of a pagan. He took this preoccupation too far to see in modern languages themselves nothing other than rustic jargons more or less totally corrupted by Barbarians, which were only good to allow men to negotiate the material necessities of life, and which were not capable of rising to translate eloquently or poetically ideas and feelings. The result of this was that he had forged for his own usage a sort of intimate dialect in which Italian only served to define certain elements of syntax and the odd soft inflexion, but which was much more redolent of the followers of Homer or of Titus Livius and Lucan than of Petrarch and Boccaccio. This singular turn of mind, which was at that time the defining hallmark of original powers of organisation and a personality destined, to all appearances, to exert a great influence on the century, had isolated Francesco from the rest of the world. He gave to it the general impression of being a melancholic seer who had fallen prey to an illusory genius that had rendered him insensitive to the gentle ways of life in society. He was sometimes seen nevertheless in the palazzo of the illustrious Leonora Pisani, the heiress, at the age of eight and twenty, to the greatest fortune ever known in the whole of the Veneto after that of her cousin Polia, the only daughter of the last of the Poli in Treviso. The house of Leonora was then the sanctuary of poetry and the arts, and this muse's influence caused irresistibly to congregate around her all the talents of her age. It was soon noticed that Francesco was going there more often, although more absorbed in his daydreams and sadder than usual, but his visits suddenly became less frequent, and then he stopped coming altogether.

Polia dei Poli, whom I have just mentioned, was then in the palazzo of the Pisani family, where Leonora had decided her to come to spend the mad weeks of the Carnival. Eight years younger than her cousin, and more beautiful than Leonora was herself, Polia, dedicated, as were a great number of young ladies of noble birth, to serious studies, profited from her sojourn in the capital of the scholarly world to improve herself in areas of knowledge today quite alien to her sex, and the habit of these solemn meditations had imparted to her face something cold and austere which passed for pride. It was not really to be wondered at, however, for Polia was the last surviving remnant of the ancient Lelia family in Rome, from whom she was descended by way of Lelius Maurus, the founder of Treviso. She was brought up under the watchful eye of an imperious and haughty father, so proud of the splendour of his race, that he would have considered the marriage of his daughter to the greatest prince in Italy as marrying below her station, and besides, it was known that the treasures that she would inherit one day could suffice for the dowry of a queen. She had nonetheless granted to Francesco, in their first meetings, a few signs of almost affectionate benevolence, but, as time went on, she seemed to have gradually prescribed for herself a reserve that was severe, not to say disdainful, and when he stopped showing himself at the palazzo Pisani, she no longer bothered with him.

It was during the course of the month of February 1466. Spring, often early in that fair region, was beginning to fill it with all its favours. Polia was about to return to Treviso, and her cousin multiplied around her the various festivities that might enhance her sojourn in Venice and make it harder for her to leave. One day had been taken up by gondola outings on the Grand Canal and on that broad and deep arm of it that separates the Serenissima from the solitude of its Lido. But Francesco had not been overlooked in Leonora Pisani's invitations, and the letter which he had had from her contained such amiable and touching reproaches as to his long absence that for him to refuse would have been inconceivable. Polia was besides, as we have pointed out, on the point of leaving for Treviso, and we may safely assume that Francesco wanted to see her again in spite of the habitual coldness of her welcome. Thinking more and more about the drastic change that had so soon come about in the relations between them, he had ended up by persuading himself that this capricious metamorphosis was due to something other than hate. He found himself then on the steps of the palazzo Pisani, the general assembly point for the departure of the gondolas. The ladies, wearing masks and identical dominos, came out in a crowd from the hallway at the agreed upon signal, and each of them went to choose, as custom decreed, with the familiar decency imparted by disguise, the companion that they were pleased to attach to themselves for the journey. This way of doing things, more gracious and better understood than the one that has taken its place in balls and assemblies, also had less serious disadvantages, women never being more attentive to the preservation of their reputations than on those too rare occasions when they are wholly responsible for maintaining them. So Francesco was waiting, motionless and with downcast eyes, for someone to take notice of him, when a pretty gloved hand came to rest on his arm. He welcomed the unknown woman with modest and respectful assiduity, and led her to the gondola already prepared to receive them. A moment later the elegant flotilla was moving to the rhythmical splash of the oars on the calm and polished face of the canal.

The lady, who was seated at Francesco's left, remained silent for a time, as if she had needed to recollect herself and to master, before she spoke, some involuntary emotion. Then she undid the ties of her mask, threw it back upon her shoulder, and gazed at Francesco with that gentle and serious assurance that self-consciousness gives to elevated souls. It was Polia. Francesco trembled and felt a sudden shiver pass through all his veins, for he had expected nothing like this. Then he leaned his head and covered his eyes with his hand in the fear that it might be a kind of defilement for her to look at Polia so closely.

"This mask is useless," said Polia. "There is no reason for me to take advantage of the custom which allows me to keep it. Our friendship does not need it and its feelings are too pure for it to blush to express them. Do not be surprised, Francesco," she continued after a moment of silence, "to hear me speak of my friendship for you after so many days of rigorous constraint in which I may have given you grounds to doubt it. My sex is subject to certain laws of decorum which do not permit it to manifest its most legitimate sympathies to the interpretations of the crowd, and there is nothing more difficult than to feign to a correct extent an indifference one does not feel. Today I shall leave Venice, and although I am destined to live very near to you, it is quite probable that we will never see each other again. Henceforth there is no longer any possible way for us to communicate with each other than by memory, and I did not want to leave you with a false idea of me, or to take away of you an anxious and painful idea that would trouble my peace of mind. I have provided for the first eventuality by giving you an explanation that I thought I owed you. I expect from your sincerity that you will reassure me as to the second point by confiding in me, which is something that you owe to me perhaps. Don't be alarmed, Francesco. You yourself shall be the sole judge of whether my questions are appropriate or not."

Just before she had said this Francesco had opened his downcast eyes. He dared to look at Polia. He drank in her words avidly. "Ah!" he cried. "As God is my witness, my soul has no secret that does not belong to you."

"Your soul has a secret," replied Polia, "a secret that besets your friends and that certain people among those you love best may find it of use to fathom. Endowed with all the advantages that augur for a happy future: youth, ingenio, knowledge and already glory, you nonetheless abandon yourself to the languor of a mysterious sadness, you are consumed by a secret care, you neglect the works on which your reputation is based, you flee from a world that seeks you out in order to hide in almost opaque solitude days that so much success should make resplendent and, finally, if the rumours that are circulating are worthy of credence, you are on the point of breaking entirely with human society and retiring to a monastery. Is what I have just said to you true?"

Francesco seemed agitated by a thousand conflicting emotions. He needed a few moments to gather his strength. "Yes," he replied, "that is true. At least, all of it was true this morning. An event which has happened since has changed the course of my ideas without changing my resolutions. I will go to a monastery and my commitment is irrevocable, but I will go with a mind that is fully consoled and joyful, for my existence is complete and I cannot conceive of any other one so happy on earth that it would render me jealous. Born into obscurity and poverty, but stronger than my fate, I had only measured my unhappiness by the immensity of the void into which my heart had plunged. This void has been filled by the most delightful of hopes: you will remember me!"