BOOK V
THY WILL BE DONE—1494
'O mirabile giustizia di te, Primo Motore, tu non ai voluto mancare a nessuna potenzia l'ordine e qualità de suoi necessari effetti! O Stupenda Necessità.'—Leonardo da Vinci.
(O admirable Justice of Thee, Thou Prime Mover! To no force hast Thou permitted lack of the order and quality of its necessary effects. O Thrice-Marvellous Necessity!)
'Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.'—Paternoster.
I
Corbolo the shoemaker, a citizen of Milan, having returned home one night over merry, received from his wife, as he said, 'more blows than would have driven a tired ass from Milan to Rome.' The next morning, when his spouse had gone to her neighbour's to fetch the black pudding, Corbolo rooted some concealed coins out of his pouch, left the shop to his apprentice, and went off for a drink, to recover himself.
His hands in the pockets of his threadbare breeches, he sauntered along the narrow street—so narrow that a horseman must needs prick the foot-passengers with his spurs—and sniffed the eternal smell of oil, rotten eggs, sour wine, and mouldy cellars. Whistling a tune, he looked up at the narrow strip of blue sky between the roofs, and at the many-coloured rags and torn garments stretched across the lane on lines that they might be dried in the sun, and solaced himself with his favourite proverb (of which, however, he never took the advice), 'Mala femina, buona femina, vuol bastone.'
To shorten his road he passed through the cathedral, which was still in process of construction. Here there was noise and bustle as in a market-place. From door to door, notwithstanding the fine of five soldi imposed upon intruders, there passed persons carrying wine, baskets, cases, trunks, trays, planks, beams, bundles, some even leading asses and mules. The priests were praying and chanting; lamps burned on the altars, and murmurs came from the Confessional; yet the boys played at leap-frog, the dogs barked and fought, and sturdy beggars jostled each other in the quest for alms. Corbolo stood for a space in the crowd, listening with sly amusement to a dispute between two monks, a Franciscan, and a Domenican, on the comparative claims of St. Francis and St. Catharine to occupy the seat in heaven which had been left vacant by the fall of Lucifer.
Corbolo's eyes blinked as he came out of the cathedral gloom into the strong sunlight of the Piazza dell' Arrengo. This was the liveliest part of Milan, crowded with the booths of small vendors, and so overfilled with packing-cases and rubbish, that foot passengers could hardly make their way. From time immemorial these booths had lumbered the square, and no laws nor penalties could expel them.
'Salad of Valtellina! lemons! oranges! artichokes! asparagus!' cried the vegetable-seller.
The rag-wives babbled and cackled like brood-hens. A donkey, almost concealed under a mountain of grapes, oranges, cauliflowers, fennel, beetroot, tomatoes and onions, brayed in lacerating tones:—