The Virgins of the Rocks

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

I had seen those same peaks on the first evening of my arrival, flaming in the sky like rockets, shining with incredible radiance, the highest of them standing out like a tongue of flame against the background of general shadow, and cleaving the sky like a cry of hopeless passion. I was alone then in that remote twilight, and the three mysterious princesses were at hand in their walled garden, and my fate was still apart from their fate. But now in the same conjunction of circumstances the fate prophesied by that first agitation of my feelings was about to be fulfilled: I was about to utter solemn and irrevocable words. Was I indeed quite freed from perplexity? Had I at last chosen from those three blessed ones, whom I had seen in fancy on that far away evening receiving my spring gift with open arms, had I at last chosen out one for the necessary union? And was I about to pronounce her name in her father’s presence? Fresh uneasiness crept over me, and it seemed to me as if Anatolia were no longer alone in the shadow, but as if her sisters had come in silently and taken their places beside her, and as if their eyes were fixed anxiously upon me.

As I turned round I saw the white motionless figure in the corner, and everything else vanished, and all my vain restlessness was calmed.

She was the living symbol of security, the watcher and the guardian. With her strength and her patience, lit up by her own smile, she had turned sorrow into an adamantine armour which made her invincible. She was made to guard, nourish, and defend to the death that which was committed to her charge. And once again I saw her, in my dream, watching, her pure brow radiant with prophecy over the son of my blood and of my soul.

Then from the very roots of my being, where sleeps the indestructible virtue of ancestors, there arose and went forth towards the Elect the will to create that one to whom all the ideal riches of my race and my own conquests and the maternal perfections were to be transmitted. And deeper than ever grew the feeling of primary dependence which bound my actual being to my remotest ancestors; and just as the summit of the tree comprises in itself the whole life of the branching trunk down to the deepest roots, so I felt the life of the whole race living within me, that life which death could only destroy through its bodily manifestations in the transitory forms taken by succeeding generations. And the fulness and vehemence of that life seemed to overthrow the limits of my natural powers.

“Not long ago you recognised in me, not without a shade of severity, the descendant of Gian Paolo Cantelmo,” I said to the Prince, smiling. “I must confess that in my house the examples of disobedience and rebellion against kings are not rare. But the red Lion justifies them; and you cannot be unaware of the patent which the Cantelmi received from Charles II. of England. Being themselves of ancient royal blood, they have never easily resigned themselves to treating the king as other than their equal. It appears, too, that they never fight any other adversary with such zeal as they fight the king. And while Gian Paolo disturbed the slumbers of Ferdinand of Aragon, and humbled Alphonso, James I. and Menappo defeated Manfred at Benevento, James VIII. warred successfully against Ladislaus side by side with Braccio di Montone and the Sforza, while Antonio opposed René of Anjou. There is a natural tendency in every Cantelmo to form his own party, to separate himself, and to define his own person and power very clearly. It seems as if each of them founded his conception of his own dignity upon the firm conviction 'that being one is the root of being good, and that what is good is such, because it is one.’ I joyfully acknowledge in this, one of the essential characteristics of the ruler to come: of the Monarch, the Despot. But there is another peculiarity which strengthens my faith, and that is the great number of rulerships which have fallen into the hands of the Cantelmi on Latin soil. It may be said that at different times and separately they have held the government of all Italy. James I. is Ambassador for Peace to the Republic of Genoa, Vicar in Lombardy, Captain-General in the March of Ancona, Viceroy of the Abruzzi; James II. is Vicar and Podestà of Florence; Bonaventura VIII., Viceroy of Sicily; Rostaino VII., Captain-General of the Serenissima, Senator of Rome.... Everywhere they hold rule, and their experience of different peoples teaches them to 'know well how men are to be gained or lost.’ Everywhere they fight and lose their lives in the act of performing some prodigy of valour: the 'good Cantelmo,’ immortalised in Tasso’s verse, stains the walls of Jerusalem with his royal blood; James II. dies fighting for the Florentines against Castruccio Castracane; Nicholas, first Duke of Sora, dies with Constantine Paleologus in the defence of Constantinople; Ascanio dies in the waters of Lepanto beside the Archduke John of Austria; Bonaventura VIII. is deemed worthy by Charles V. of the defence of the whole empire; and it is of him the Emperor says that he would choose him for his champion had he to risk his crown in a joust. The great Andrea is an extraordinary example of a life spent entirely in ceaseless fighting from his earliest youth to his latest breath.... He is indeed the most finished type which my race has produced to this day. Andrea is one of the finest heroes of will and strength. We need not reckon up the number of his exploits. In Italy, Germany, Flanders, France, and Spain, innumerable are the cities and fortresses acquired by him and added to the Catholic empire, innumerable are the sieges he laid and sustained. He is the Poliorcetus par excellence, a more fertile master of stratagem than any other, at once eager and prudent; 'for in him we discover,’ says one of his biographers, 'the union of all those gifts and qualities which in other captains may be noticed separately.’ But what in my eyes raises him above the heads of all others is the unheard-of severity of the discipline he enforced on himself and his troops. Certain traits of this rigour fill me with more enthusiasm than the sight of the banners he took from the enemy. Though the troops he commanded are unpaid and badly armed, he manages to have them as ready and obedient to his hand as his own sword. No one ever understood better how to impress his own personality on the conduct of others. Eloquent and nervous in speech he yet always prefers the direct force of example to the power of words. He always moves at the head of his troops, on foot when he leads the infantry; he always sleeps in his clothes, eats and drinks nothing but what his soldiers eat and drink, is always the first in assault, the last in retreat; though covered with wounds, he refuses to take off his armour; on the field of victory or in the conquered city he never touches the booty. And in the war in Flanders he wins such terrible renown, that mothers use his name to frighten their children into obedience. Could any man determine his own likeness in clearer and more vigorous outline? Was ever coined metal stamped with a prouder effigy? In his time Andrea was surnamed the new Epaminondas. Well, even in this indefatigable warrior, the intellectual character of his race comes out. He is not only learned in speech, a distinguished mathematician, a master of military architecture, a writer on the science of war, but also a good connoisseur and splendid patron of the liberal arts. Eritio Puteano, in dedicating a Latin work to him, calls him Armorum gloria, Litterarum tutela. Cornelius Schult of Antwerp, presenting him with a book of fantastic designs, represents him as Eros cultivating elegance in the midst of arms, Heros inter arma elegantias colens. Andrea in this carries on the family tradition, the origin of which shines in the wreathed figure of Fanetta Cantelmo, Lady of Romanino, who composed poetry 'with a certain divine fury,’ among the laurels of Provence, in one of the courts of love. And does not some of the wonderful aptitude which raised Alessandro above the other disciples of Da Vinci at Milan seem to have been transmitted to him? He thinks out new methods of fortification, constructs the celebrated fort on the Meuse, named in honour of its inventor Fort Cantelmo, makes strange weapons which seem almost magical to his contemporaries.... Is there not something Leonardesque in these inventions, something which recalls Alessandro?”

I had uttered the name of him who lived in continual communion with my spirit, and whom I held to be the genius of the race, destined some day to reappear higher up the surviving family tree in some manifestation of sublime life. 'Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be.’ My task had been developed along definite lines under his gaze and his teaching; and now at the moment when I was about to take a great resolve, he stood by my side. I saw him alive before my eyes, as if his white tyrannical hand were resting on the corner of the table beside me, and as if the statuette of Pallas and the pomegranate with its pointed leaf and flaming flower were there too. 'Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be.’ And another youthful figure, apparently his younger brother, clung to him as closely as his shadow.

“Alessandro and Hercules! These were the two purple flowers so early cut off, which Leonardo and Ludovico gathered up and transmuted into imperishable essences. Andrea Cantelmo when he died had already displayed all the energies he possessed, and death overtook him on the verge of old age, covered with glory after that siege of Balaguer, which was the greatest of his heroic enterprises. But these two, facing life with their hands full of all the seeds of hope, had every great possibility open to them. Their youthful heads seemed made to wear the royal crown, that ancient crown which their fathers had already worn. In one of them Da Vinci divined the future founder of a new principality, the triumphant tyrant who was to lay upon the multitude the yoke of that science and beauty into which the great master had initiated his favourite disciple. But fate interfered with the fulfilment of his prophecy. Both of them threw away their lives in the first burst of their ardour, for they were devoured by too vehement enthusiasm. Hercules perished in the sands of the Po, fighting against the Sclavonians; Alessandro on the banks of the Taro in the battle of Fornovo. Do you remember the verses in which Ariosto celebrates the beautiful son of Sigismond Cantelmo?

'Il più ardilo garzon che di sua etade
Fosse da un polo a l’altro e da l’estremo
Lito de gli Indi a quello ove il Sole cade....’

“His death was too cruel! He was made prisoner in a rash inroad, and his head was cut off before his father’s eyes on the ship’s deck, which was used as a block. I can imagine the blood spurting from the wound like a flame and scorching the side of the galley. Indeed, I do not only imagine it, I see it. What a wonderful and terrible storm of youthful courage it must have been which provoked him to set spurs to his horse and rush furiously against the enemy’s entrenchments! Ah, dear father, I have known those storms myself, and my horse knows them, and so do the ruins of the Roman Campagna....

“No doubt at that moment Hercules felt worthy of bestriding the winged horse born of the blood of Medusa. Cave, adsum! Ariosto, as he sings his praises, uses an expression which of itself lights him up with glory, showing how the bold youth died to maintain the resolution which every Cantelmo makes—that of remaining at the post he has taken, and has thought to be the best, even in the face of the worst forms of death. He had a companion at his side during the assault. When both had rushed upon the enemy,