Chapter 4

Now, Messer Francesco, I must inform you that Father Fontesecco has the heart of a flower. It feels nothing, it wants nothing; it is pure and simple, and full of its own little light. Innocent as a child, as an angel, nothing ever troubled him but how to devise what he should confess. A confession costs him more trouble to invent than any Giornata in my _Decameron_ cost me. He was once overheard to say on this occasion, 'God forgive me in His infinite mercy, for making it appear that I am a little worse than He has chosen I should be!' He is temperate; for he never drinks more than exactly half the wine and water set before him. In fact, he drinks the wine and leaves the water, saying: 'We have the same water up at San Domenico; we send it hither: it would be uncivil to take back our own gift, and still more to leave a suspicion that we thought other people's wine poor beverage.' Being afflicted by the gravel, the physician of his convent advised him, as he never was fond of wine, to leave it off entirely; on which he said, 'I know few things; but this I know well--in water there is often gravel, in wine never. It hath pleased God to afflict me, and even to go a little out of His way in order to do it, for the greater warning to other sinners. I will drink wine, brother Anselmini, and help His work.'

I have led you away from the younger monk.

'While Father Fontesecco is in the first stage of beatitude, chanting through his nose the _Benedicite_, I will attempt,' said Guiberto, 'to comfort Monna Tita.'

'Good, blessed Guiberto!' exclaimed Amadeo in a transport of gratitude, at which Guiberto smiled with his usual grace and suavity. 'O Guiberto! Guiberto! my heart is breaking. Why should she want you to comfort her?--but--comfort her then!' and he covered his face within his hands.

'Remember,' said Guiberto placidly, 'her uncle is bedridden; her aunt never leaves him; the servants are old and sullen, and will stir for nobody. Finding her resolved, as they believe, to become a nun, they are little assiduous in their services. Humour her, if none else does, Amadeo; let her fancy that you intend to be a friar; and, for the present, walk not on these grounds.'

'Are you true, or are you traitorous?' cried Amadeo, grasping his friend's hand most fiercely.

'Follow your own counsel, if you think mine insincere,' said the young friar, not withdrawing his hand, but placing the other on Amadeo's. 'Let me, however, advise you to conceal yourself; and I will direct Silvestrina to bring you such accounts of her mistress as may at least make you easy in regard to her health. Adieu.'

Amadeo was now rather tranquil; more than he had ever been, not only since the displeasure of Monna Tita, but since the first sight of her. Profuse at all times in his gratitude to Silvestrina, whenever she brought him good news, news better than usual, he pressed her to his bosom. Silvestrina Pioppi is about fifteen, slender, fresh, intelligent, lively, good-humoured, sensitive; and any one but Amadeo might call her very pretty.

_Petrarca._ Ah, Giovanni! here I find your heart obtaining the mastery over your vivid and volatile imagination. Well have you said, the maiden being really pretty, any one but Amadeo might think her so. On the banks of the Sorga there are beautiful maids; the woods and the rocks have a thousand times repeated it. I heard but one echo; I heard but one name: I would have fled from them for ever at another.

_Boccaccio._ Francesco, do not beat your breast just now: wait a little. Monna Tita would take the veil. The fatal certainty was announced to Amadeo by his true Guiberto, who had earnestly and repeatedly prayed her to consider the thing a few months longer.

'I will see her first! By all the saints of heaven I will see her!' cried the desperate Amadeo, and ran into the house, toward the still apartment of his beloved. Fortunately Guiberto was neither less active nor less strong than he, and overtaking him at the moment, drew him into the room opposite. 'If you will be quiet and reasonable, there is yet a possibility left you,' said Guiberto in his ear, although perhaps he did not think it. 'But if you utter a voice or are seen by any one, you ruin the fame of her you love, and obstruct your own prospects for ever. It being known that you have not slept in Florence these several nights, it will be suspected by the malicious that you have slept in the villa with the connivance of Monna Tita. Compose yourself; answer nothing; rest where you are: do not add a worse imprudence to a very bad one. I promise you my assistance, my speedy return, and best counsel: you shall be released at daybreak.' He ordered Silvestrina to supply the unfortunate youth with the cordials usually administered to the uncle, or with the rich old wine they were made of; and she performed the order with such promptitude and attention, that he was soon in some sort refreshed.

_Petrarca._ I pity him from my innermost heart, poor young man! Alas, we are none of us, by original sin, free from infirmities or from vices.

_Boccaccio._ If we could find a man exempt by nature from vices and infirmities, we should find one not worth knowing: he would also be void of tenderness and compassion. What allowances then could his best friends expect from him in their frailties? What help, consolation, and assistance in their misfortunes? We are in the midst of a workshop well stored with sharp instruments: we may do ill with many, unless we take heed; and good with all, if we will but learn how to employ them.

_Petrarca._ There is somewhat of reason in this. You strengthen me to proceed with you: I can bear the rest.

_Boccaccio._ Guiberto had taken leave of his friend, and had advanced a quarter of a mile, which (as you perceive) is nearly the whole way, on his return to the monastery, when he was overtaken by some peasants who were hastening homeward from Florence. The information he collected from them made him determine to retrace his steps. He entered the room again, and, from the intelligence he had just acquired, gave Amadeo the assurance that Monna Tita must delay her entrance into the convent; for that the abbess had that moment gone down the hill on her way toward Siena to venerate some holy relics, carrying with her three candles, each five feet long, to burn before them; which candles contained many particles of the myrrh presented at the Nativity of our Saviour by the Wise Men of the East. Amadeo breathed freely, and was persuaded by Guiberto to take another cup of old wine, and to eat with him some cold roast kid, which had been offered him for _merenda_. After the agitation of his mind a heavy sleep fell upon the lover, coming almost before Guiberto departed: so heavy indeed that Silvestrina was alarmed. It was her apartment; and she performed the honours of it as well as any lady in Florence could have done.

_Petrarca._ I easily believe it: the poor are more attentive than the rich, and the young are more compassionate than the old.

_Boccaccio._ O Francesco! what inconsistent creatures are we!

_Petrarca._ True, indeed! I now foresee the end. He might have done worse.

_Boccaccio._ I think so.

_Petrarca._ He almost deserved it.

_Boccaccio._ I think that too.

_Petrarca._ Wretched mortals! our passions for ever lead us into this, or worse.

_Boccaccio._ Ay, truly; much worse generally.

_Petrarca._ The very twig on which the flowers grew lately scourges us to the bone in its maturity.

_Boccaccio._ Incredible will it be to you, and, by my faith, to me it was hardly credible. Certain, however, is it that Guiberto on his return by sunrise found Amadeo in the arms of sleep.

_Petrarca._ Not at all, not at all: the truest lover might suffer and act as he did.

_Boccaccio._ But, Francesco, there was another pair of arms about him, worth twenty such, divinity as he is. A loud burst of laughter from Guiberto did not arouse either of the parties; but Monna Tita heard it, and rushed into the room, tearing her hair, and invoking the saints of heaven against the perfidy of man. She seized Silvestrina by that arm which appeared the most offending: the girl opened her eyes, turned on her face, rolled out of bed, and threw herself at the feet of her mistress, shedding tears, and wiping them away with the only piece of linen about her. Monna Tita too shed tears. Amadeo still slept profoundly; a flush, almost of crimson, overspreading his cheeks. Monna Tita led away, after some pause, poor Silvestrina, and made her confess the whole. She then wept more and more, and made the girl confess it again, and explain her confession. 'I cannot believe such wickedness,' she cried: 'he could not be so hardened. O sinful Silvestrina! how will you ever tell Father Doni one half, one quarter? He never can absolve you.'

_Petrarca._ Giovanni, I am glad I did not enter the house; you were prudent in restraining me. I have no pity for the youth at all: never did one so deserve to lose a mistress.

_Boccaccio._ Say, rather, to gain a wife.

_Petrarca._ Absurdity! impossibility!

_Boccaccio._ He won her fairly; strangely, and on a strange table, as he played his game. Listen! that guitar is Monna Tita's. Listen! what a fine voice (do not you think it?) is Amadeo's.

_Amadeo._ [_Singing._]

Oh, I have err'd! I laid my hand upon the nest (Tita, I sigh to sing the rest) Of the wrong bird.

_Petrarca._ She laughs too at it! Ah! Monna Tita was made by nature to live on this side of Fiesole.

BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES

_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, it is the king's desire that I compliment you on the elevation you have attained.

_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me was, 'Angélique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the bishop on the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank sufficient to confess, now you are duchess. Let him be your confessor, my little girl.'

_Bossuet._ I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.

_Fontanges._ Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should be ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank, who writes like an angel.

_Bossuet._ The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your goodness and modesty.

_Fontanges._ You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess to you, directly, if you like.

_Bossuet._ Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young lady?

_Fontanges._ What is that?

_Bossuet._ Do you hate sin?

_Fontanges._ Very much.

_Bossuet._ Are you resolved to leave it off?

_Fontanges._ I have left it off entirely since the king began to love me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.

_Bossuet._ In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than malice?

_Fontanges._ I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though several have told me they should die for me.

_Bossuet._ Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?

_Fontanges._ Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.

_Bossuet._ You have something to answer for, then.

_Fontanges._ No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.

_Bossuet._ So, then! you would really have them die for you?

_Fontanges._ Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never trust them again.

_Bossuet._ Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges._ A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and women!

_Bossuet._ I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and the devil?

_Fontanges._ Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the while, I will tell him so. I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh, I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt, nor do anything that I know of.

_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle Marie-Angélique de Scoraille de Rousille, Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?

_Fontanges._ Myself! does any one hate me? Why should I be the first? Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.

_Bossuet._ To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our bodies, if we would save our souls.

_Fontanges._ That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so detestable in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I think of Him, He has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate myself, if I would. As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it was He who made the king to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon that the hearts of kings are in His rule and governance. As for titles and dignities, I do not care much about them while his Majesty loves me, and calls me his Angélique. They make people more civil about us; and therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and a hypocrite who pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and Lisette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the mischievous old La Grange said anything cross or bold: on the contrary, she told me what a fine colour and what a plumpness it gave me. Would not you rather be a duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if the king gave you your choice?

_Bossuet._ Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of your question.

_Fontanges._ I am in earnest, as you see.

_Bossuet._ Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to pervert your intellect.

_Fontanges._ There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But his Majesty never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable!_ (what is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.

_Bossuet._ I would aspire to the glory of converting you.

_Fontanges._ You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras were heretics: you did right there. The king told the chancellor that he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two fingers at a time, when every one is taught to use only the second, whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for people might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that she kept a finger for each religion.

_Bossuet._ It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Maréchal.

_Fontanges._ I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you, monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I should like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man. I understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.

_Bossuet._ To what do you refer, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges._ That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of wonder, how could you manage that?

_Bossuet._ By the grace of God.

_Fontanges._ Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any preacher so much of His grace as to subdue this pest.

_Bossuet._ It has appeared among us but lately.

_Fontanges._ Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully, from a child.

_Bossuet._ Really! I never heard so.

_Fontanges._ I checked myself as well as I could, although they constantly told me I looked well in it.

_Bossuet._ In what, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges._ In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon time. I am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fénelon should incline to it,[1] as they say he does.

_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.

_Fontanges._ Is not then M. de Fénelon thought a very pious and learned person?

_Bossuet._ And justly.

_Fontanges._ I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about a knight-errant in search of a father. The king says there are many such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as much as the copy-book would hold; and I got through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his own story, and left them at once; in a hurry (I suppose) to set out upon his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the king has promised him a famous _heretic hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.

_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and if you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would be better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies on my humble labours.

_Fontanges._ You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing particular. The king assures me there is no harm whatever in his love toward me.

_Bossuet._ That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you abstract the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward Heaven----

_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I always did so--every time but once--you quite make me blush. Let us converse about something else, or I shall grow too serious, just as you made me the other day at the funeral sermon. And now let me tell you, my lord, you compose such pretty funeral sermons, I hope I shall have the pleasure of hearing you preach mine.

_Bossuet._ Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour is yet far distant when so melancholy a service will be performed for you. May he who is unborn be the sad announcer of your departure hence![2] May he indicate to those around him many virtues not perhaps yet full-blown in you, and point triumphantly to many faults and foibles checked by you in their early growth, and lying dead on the open road, you shall have left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be spared: I am advanced in age; you are a child.

_Fontanges._ Oh, no! I am seventeen.

_Bossuet._ I should have supposed you younger by two years at least. But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may preach a sermon at your funeral. We say that our days are few; and saying it, we say too much. Marie-Angélique, we have but one: the past are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall between us.[3] The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at one instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour, without admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the march of victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have animated armies at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its crevices and mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on this! Lady! so live as to think on it undisturbed!

_Fontanges._ O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It is in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened even at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let us talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a pin or button.

_Bossuet._ Leave it there!

_Fontanges._ Your ring fell from your hand, my lord bishop! How quick you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick it up?

_Bossuet._ Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved you more than my words.

_Fontanges._ It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the king for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from the chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to hear how prettily I shall ask him: but that is impossible, you know; for I shall do it just when I am certain he would give me anything. He said so himself: he said but yesterday--

'Such a sweet creature is worth a world':

and no actor on the stage was more like a king than his Majesty was when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at things.

_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to conciliate our regard and love.

_Fontanges._ Well, I think so, too, though I did not like it in him at first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to you with it upon my finger. But first I must be cautious and particular to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should say.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The opinions of Molinos on Mysticism and Quietism had begun to spread abroad; but Fénelon, who had acquired already a very high celebrity for eloquence, had not yet written on the subject. We may well suppose that Bossuet was among the earliest assailants of a system which he afterward attacked so vehemently.

[2] Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de Fontanges died in child-bed the year following: he survived her twenty-three years.

[3] Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a sentiment, his conduct towards Fénelon, the fairest apparition that Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.

While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by Marlborough; who said to the archbishop that, if he was sorry he had not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the pleasure of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.

JOHN OF GAUNT AND JOANNA OF KENT

Joanna, called the Fair Maid of Kent, was cousin of the Black Prince, whom she married. John of Gaunt was suspected of aiming at the crown in the beginning of Richard's minority, which, increasing the hatred of the people against him for favouring the sect of Wickliffe, excited them to demolish his house and to demand his impeachment.

_Joanna._ How is this, my cousin, that you are besieged in your own house by the citizens of London? I thought you were their idol.

_Gaunt._ If their idol, madam, I am one which they may tread on as they list when down; but which, by my soul and knighthood! the ten best battle-axes among them shall find it hard work to unshrine.