Save the one whereon his whole heart is set.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527).
FRA TIMOTEO’S MONOLOGUE.
FRA TIMOTEO (alone).
I have not been able to get a wink of sleep to-night, for wondering how Callimaco and the rest have been getting on. I have been trying to pass the time, while waiting, by attending to various matters. I said the morning prayers, read a chapter of the Lives of the Holy Fathers, went into church and lit a lamp which had gone out, and changed the veil of a statue of the Madonna which works miracles. How many times have I told the monks to keep that image clean? And then they wonder why there is a lack of devotion! I remember the time when there were five hundred images here, and now there are not twenty. This is all our own fault; we have not been able to keep up the reputation of the place. We used to go in procession after service every evening, and have the Lauds sung every Saturday. We always made vows here, so as to get fresh images, and we used to encourage the men and women who came to confession to make vows likewise. Nowadays none of these things are done, and we are astonished that there is so little enthusiasm! What an amazingly small quantity of brains these monks of mine have among them!
Niccolo Machiavelli.
THE MEDIÆVAL UNDERGRADUATE.
There was once at Padua a Sicilian scholar called Pontius, who seeing one day a countryman with a pair of fat fowls, pretending that he wanted to buy them, made a bargain with him and said, “Come home with me, and over and above the price I will give thee some breakfast.” So he led him to a place where there was a bell-tower, which is separate from the church, so that one can go all round it; and opposite one of the four faces of the Campanile was the end of a little street. Here Pontius, having first thought of what he wished to do, said to the countryman: “I have wagered these fowls with one of my comrades, who says that this tower is certainly forty feet in circumference; and I say no. So just at that moment when I met you I had been buying this string to measure it with; and before we go home, I want to ascertain which of us has won.” Thus saying, he took the string out of his sleeve, and gave one end of it to the countryman to hold, and saying, “Give here!” he took the fowls from him, and holding the other end of the string, began to go round the tower, as if to measure it, making the countryman stop on that side of the tower which was opposite the end of the little street. When he had reached this side he drove a nail into the wall and tied the string to it, and thus leaving it, went off quietly down the street with the fowls. The countryman remained for a great space of time, waiting till he should have finished measuring; but at last, when he had several times said, “What are you doing so long?” he went to see, and found that the one who held the string was not Pontius, but a nail driven into the wall, which was all that remained to him as payment for the fowls.
Baldassarre Castiglione (1478–1529).
The Bishop of Corvia, in order to find out the intentions of the Pope, one day said to him: “Holy father, it is commonly reported in all Rome, and even in the palace, that your holiness is about to make me governor.” Then the Pope replied, “Never mind what they say; they are nothing but low-tongued rascals.”
Baldassarre Castiglione.