Part 11

"My mind doth see you, sitting, perchance, in your garden, by the dial, as is your wont after the business of the day is over, and mocking me, that I have found a new prophet. But, indeed, it doth seem so to me, and I am content to sit in his company gleaning the ripe ears of his wisdom. And if I have out-wearied your patience with my praise of him, whose every word hath the force of a deed, let me remind you of a summer day in the garden of your old house at Boston, how we plucked the apricocks from the espaliers, while you read to me the discourses of Sir Thomas More upon Augustine's _De Civitate Dei_, when, if I did not gape, it was but from politeness and my great respect for yourself. For this man doth stand among his countrymen like a giant in a city of pigmies, overlooking their petty disputations, and reading the future from the mirror of the past. He doth foresee the ruin of the Church, the birth of Empires, the dawn of a new greatness for the world, the emancipation of the peoples from the ecclesiastical tyranny of to-day. He standeth like one prophetic upon Pisgah. He doth see that the world must be freed from this pestilence of monks. He says: 'Our religion, having shown us the truth and the only way of salvation, hath lessened in our eyes the worth of worldly honours.... The ancient religions offered divine honours only to those illustrious with worldly glory, such as famous captains, and leaders of the Republic; our religion, on the contrary, only sanctifies the humble, and men given to contemplation rather than to an active life; she hath placed the _summum bonum_ in humility, in the contempt for worldly things, and even in abjection; while the pagans made it consist in greatness of soul, in bodily strength, and in all that might help to make men brave and robust. And if our religion asks us to have strength, it is rather the strength to suffer evils than to do great things. It seems that this new morality has made mankind weaker, and given the world over as a prey to the wicked.'

"All these sayings have sunk deep into my mind, as you may well perceive by the length of this letter. He hath taught me that, since the conditions of life are always the same, a man who hath strength and wit may rise to the same eminence in these days as the heroes of old time did in the past.

"I have sent to my lord the Cardinal a present of furs, which I pray you see conveyed to him with my humble duty. The cloak of furs is for yourself, and the necklace of amber beads for your good lady. Your advice I follow in my way of life; but, my good Will, sometimes I do regret the old times, when you and I were younger, and fond of wenches; or, perchance, when they were fonder of us. Three things I look forward to seeing next Spring: the fresh face of an English country maid, a Royal pageant on the Thames, and a bank of primroses with the rain on them."

Folding the paper neatly, he addressed it; and taking a sardonyx gem from his finger sealed up the edges with four seals. Then returning the ring to his finger, he considered his small, white, fat hands, pursing up his lips, with a curious air of meditative self-satisfaction. Lifting up his eyes again, after this pleasant relaxation of the mind, he found Machiavelli, who had entered softly so as not to disturb him if he were writing, looking at him with a gently ironic smile; and he started, somewhat annoyed that even for a moment he should have been taken off his guard.

"If you are occupied, Messer, I shall not disturb you. Do not move. I hope that you have asked for whatever you may have desired. Marietta tells me that you have been busy with your correspondence."

"I have also read a little," answered Cromwell.

"Ah, I see! the _De Monarchia_. I marvel always, Messer, that in spite of the overwhelming evidence of human depravity, men are to be found in every age who base their conceptions of the ideal state upon the hypothesis that mankind is naturally good."

"It is at least certain that each individual considers himself good," Cromwell said.

A light smile was the only reply. Machiavelli wore a long Florentine cloak reaching down to the ankles; loosening it a little he flung the ends back over the arms of his chair, and stretched his legs. His clothes were of the finest Florentine cloth, well-made, but a little worn--black and dark green in colour; he wore a collar of fine linen fitting close about the neck; his cloak was of brown home-spun. Every detail showed a scrupulous care for his appearance, but also a frugality of means. Cromwell, equally sober in his black and tawny, allowed himself little vanities; a gold chain with pendant jewels, and the white lawn collar neatly goffered, as also were the wrist-bands.

"Do you think this treatise a foolish book?" asked Cromwell bluntly.

"Dante was great in everything," answered Machiavelli. "He could not write foolish things; but he could be mistaken in his reasons, and as to the capacity of human nature. His ideal Emperor, his ideal Pope, would be gods, not men. His notion of the Church stripped of its temporal possessions is a chimera. As religion exists to-day, asserting its precedence over the State, or even its opposition to the State, it splits society in two, and divides it against itself. The religion of the pagans was merged in patriotism, and before a greater stability in social affairs is possible, mankind must either return to that ideal, or religion be considered as a matter for every individual to practise as he thinks best."

He spoke with little or no inflection of the voice, resting his chin on one hand. As he sat always with his head slightly bent, when he looked at his companion, with bright eyes under compressed brows, his face had an expression of stealthy alertness.

"Yes," said Cromwell; "if we turn away from Italy, and consider the other nations, we find that in every country the Church has an organisation, powerful and rich, which the State has to bribe; but since the Church has this organisation, acting directly on the mass of the people, and willing to support the State, in exchange for certain privileges and immunities, our princes find it convenient to govern by its help; and since the greater part of government consists of temporary expedients, statesmen will not be led easily to forego this convenience."

"That little book was written when Boniface VIII. sat in the chair of Peter. It is simply a protest against the ambition and arrogant pretensions of the popes. Innocent III. and Gregory VII. could launch their thunders against kings more or less successfully; but the anger of Boniface went out like a flame fallen in water; his selfish lust for power led to his complete downfall, and the victory of Philip. But Philip's victory caused a revulsion of feeling in the Pope's favour, so that Dante, though he hath thrust Boniface into Hell, yet calleth him Christ's Vicar, and doth compare his sufferings to Christ's Passion. Even Philip did not attack him openly, but used covert weapons, Sciarra and all the Colonnesi being his secret allies, and carrying with them the gonfalon of the Church; in what he did openly, Philip used traditional means, as summoning a council, and accusing the Pope of heresy. Still, I say to you that henceforth the great States will war continuously against the Church."

"And how should they attack her? Upon what side is the Church to be assailed?"

"Through the monks. 'The fat bellies of the monks' are become a proverb in Europe. Every people itch with the vermin. They have made the practice of poverty the most lucrative of trades. Their greed, their lewdness, and their obscenity, are the matter of every ballad, and the butt of every wit. And yet they are one of the chief supports of the Church, ever replenishing her treasuries with the offerings of the poor, and the fruit of their traffic in pardon and indulgences."

"I have observed," said Cromwell, "that, though kings have often despoiled the monasteries, such depredations have not increased their popularity; for, though the people do not defend the property of the monks when it is attacked, after a time the weight of their opinion is on the side of the Church, and they accuse the officers of the State of rapacity and harshness, and the King himself of greed."

"The people are too often ground between the upper and nether mill-stones of Church and State," said Machiavelli; "to them both tyrannies are equally hateful. And, also, Messer, the plundering of the monasteries hath nearly always been an act of kingly greed, to furnish the material for war and forge the instruments of a harsher tyranny. But let the King make his people his accomplices...."

He finished the sentence with a smile.

"Yes," said the other slowly; "yes."

He considered his soft, white hands, and pondered the matter as if it were an ordinary question of daily business. His fleshy face with a bright colour about the cheek-bones, the small, pointed nose, the watchful eyes, revealed nothing; but the mere quietness with which he considered the question was, in a sense, a revelation. Lifting his eyes again he spoke quietly.

"I see here," he said, turning the pages of the _De Monarchia_, "that Dante attributes the great power of the Roman Empire to the direct action of the divine providence. The Empire to him is a thing divinely ordained, and Augustus is the divine monarch."

"One must either attribute all things or nothing to providence," said Machiavelli. "It was the opinion of Plutarch that the Romans confessed their obligations to Fortune by consecrating a great number of temples and statues to that goddess. It was to the courage of her soldiers that Rome owed the Empire, and it was to the wisdom and conduct of her administrators and law-givers that she owed its preservation. If fortune or God rule the world, then man hath no remedy against the evils of his time, and his prudence avails him nothing. I am in part inclined to this opinion, since every day we see things happen contrary to all human expectation; yet, at the same time, man is in some measure free. What I say, then, is this: that fortune is mistress of little more than half of our actions, and man himself is master of all the rest. In all things we may observe the action of certain laws, to which man is subject, but within the limits of which he hath a certain freedom. So, as a sailor, knowing the changes of the tide and wind; how it bloweth from the shore at evening, and from the sea at dawn; and knowing also the mysterious currents in the sea, and the hidden shallows, and the free channels, and the stars by which he is to steer, may bring his venture into port, where one ignorant of these things would suffer shipwreck, the wise man judging of times and opportunities will use caution or courage, as best may serve the occasion. He will prosper most whose mode of acting is adapted to the change of times; but no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to all changes, both because he is naturally inclined to follow one course, and because having prospered in it hitherto he cannot be persuaded to change. Moreover, fortune is a blind and irresistible force, while the divine providence of Dante is mild and beneficent; and though we have instances of fortune we have none of providence; and to assert that fortune directed the growth of the Roman Empire is to say a childish thing, for fortune creates nothing, it rather destroys; but it is man, adapting himself to fortune, who is the creator. Though we may say that fortune doth in a large measure control the works of man, we cannot say that the divine providence hath inspired or maintained in power, by its singular favour, any people. But every people succeeds or fails according to its wisdom in dealing with events as they occur, and in guarding against all probabilities of mischance."

While he was speaking, his son, Piero, came into the room with some wine for them, which he put upon the table. He was not unlike his father, with a small, close-cropped head and slightly aquiline nose, but the face had the softer outline and delicacy of youth; something in the clean-cut features, the thoughtful brows, and firm lips, reminded Cromwell of a little head of Augustus upon a gem which he had seen at Rome, but even more, of a small head of Caligula, that debased and weaker image of Augustus. Machiavelli smiled, took his son's hand, and talked to him in that spirit of grave banter which is customary with men when they talk to children, and the boy answered him readily enough, with responsive smiles, and laughingly, but yet a little embarrassed by the presence of their guest. Presently his hand was released, and he slipped silently out of the room.

"It is sad when one thinks of the great empires of the past fallen into decay, and all their work perished, so that nothing of them can be said to remain except a shadowy legend and a name."

"Yes, it is sad; but it hath always been so," answered Machiavelli. "Everything is subject to change and death. Do you know these lines of Dante, since you study him?

"'_Atene e Lacedemone, che fenno Le antiche leggi, e furon sì civili, Fecero al viver bene un picciol cenno Verso di te, che fai tanto sottili Provvedimenti, che a mezzo novembre Non giunge quel che tu d'ottobre fili._'

"They are nothing but a song in our ears. And yet we may comfort ourselves. For I believe that the world has always been the same and has always contained an equal mass of good and evil, but I believe also that this good and evil passes from one country to another, as we may see by the records of these kingdoms of antiquity, which, as their manners changed, passed from one to the other, but the world itself remained the same. There is only this difference, that whereas first the seat of the world's greatness was at Assyria, whence it passed to the Medes, thence into Persia, until finally it came to Rome and Italy, and though no other Empire has followed which has proved lasting, yet now the greatness of the world is diffused through many nations, in which men live in orderly and civil fashion. Everything is subject to change and the vicissitudes of fortune; but passing from change to change all things return more or less to their former state."

"I remember the lines. Tell me, Messer: Dante calleth Virgil his master; do you think the poetry of Dante similar and equal to Virgil?"

Machiavelli moved a little in his chair.

"There is a Virgil by your hand, Messer," he said. "Open it. Look at the print and paper; it was printed at Venice. So I like to read that splendid verse. And yet Dante scarcely seems a poet to be read in print. I should like to possess his works written in a fine, neat, clerkly script, upon vellum, with little illuminations in the margin, angels in vermilion and ultramarine upon a golden ground; initial letters with quaint floral devices woven about them, heraldic monsters, the Gryphon with his car, Beatrice walking by the stream in the earthly Paradise. He chose Virgil as his master because, to him, Virgil was the sole Roman to whom the prophecy of Christ's coming had been revealed by the divine will; because Virgil himself had pictured the state of man after death; and, finally, because Virgil had been the singer of that Empire which Dante so greatly reverenced. The poetry of Dante has nothing of classical proportion; its unity is simply the unity of a philosophical system; its progress is like a pageant. But it is full of a sudden wilful beauty, a delight in natural things, moments of birdlike music when he speaks of birds, as in the lines:

"'_Nell'ora che comincie i tristi lai La rondinella presso alla mattina, Forse a memoria de' suoi primi guai._'

and when he describes the flight of cranes, or of the lark:

"'_Quale allodetta, che in aere si spazia Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta Dell' ultima dolcezza, che la sazia._'

It is like that delicate work of the illuminators, full of a kind of homeliness, a clear and luminous beauty; but it is not the same thing as Virgil's lines:

"'_.... et bibit ingens Arcus: et e pastu decedens agmine magno Corvorum increpuit densis exercitus alis._'

I do not think that Dante is a lesser poet; but he hath not, and never can have, the same universal appeal. He is terrible, full of swiftness, and energy, and hatred; devouring his subject like a flame. No poet hath lines so horrible, so inhuman as:

"'_due dì li chiamai poi che fur morti: Poscia, più che il dolor, potè il digiuno. Quand' ebbe detto ciò, con gli occhi torti Riprese il teschio misero coi denti, Che furo all' osso, come d'un can, forti._'

It is an exultation of hatred, a luxury in disgust, a joy in brutal vengeance which cannot be paralleled. Turn from it to these lines out of the _Paradiso_:

"'_O dolce Amor, che di riso t' ammanti, Quanto parevi ardente in quei flailli, Ch' aveano spirto sol di pensier santi._'

and you have some notion of his wide range from tumult into calm. Will you not drink a little wine?"

"This wine is excellent," said Cromwell. "As a rule I find the Italian wine a little harsh; but this is suave and of a delicate flavour. You are a great lover of poetry, Messer. I see that your volumes of Tibullus and Ovid are much worn."

"I carry them out with me when I go fowling, and read them beside the snares."

"I have little time for such pleasures, alas!" said Cromwell. "Yet I, too, have great need of the poets, sometimes. I have read the _Commedia_ closely. Tell me, Messer, since you have spoken of Dante's political principles as enunciated in the _De Monarchia_, did not they suffer a change in the _Commedia_?"

"Man's ideals are broken as he hath greater experience of life. Dante, like all enthusiasts, fashioned to his own mind a picture of the ideal state, upon the hypothesis, as I have said before, that all men are naturally good. But if you consider his poem you will find that it is nothing but a record of crimes and their punishment, while even the crystal air of heaven is disturbed by denunciations of evil. His notion that the civil power is of God, and that the Church should be subject to it, is expressed later with even a more vehement conviction in the _Paradiso_, by Justinian, the supreme legist. In the _De Monarchia_ he says: 'Si romanum imperium de jure non fuit, peccatum Adae in Christo non fuit punitum'; and in the _Commedia_ for having withstood the Empire, Brutus with Cassius still howls in Hell, and 'Piangene ancor la trista Cleopatra.' But, after his years of exile and wandering, he seems to have surrendered his faith in a kingdom, which should be of this world, and sought for justice and the triumph of the good beyond the grave, as so many others have, likewise; for in the next world we shall all be justified. Dante's poem is not like the _Æneid,_ an epic: it is an Apocalypse. The companion of his voyage is less the gentle Virgil, the maiden of the maiden city, than some later St John, continuing his fulminations from Patmos, judging all nations and condemning them. It is only in rare moments that he can speak a tender language as he does of the Florence of an earlier day, standing in peace, sober, chaste, with no houses void of a family; with her nobles in leather jerkins, and their ladies at the cradle, or the distaff, telling their handmaidens the tales of Troy, and Rome, and Fiesole. Such is the manner of poets: to praise times past in preference to the present, and usually without reason. A little later, you will hear Peter condemning his successors, who imitate him in that calling which he followed before he followed the call of Christ, rather than in his later life:

"'_Non fu nostra intenzion, ch'a destra mano Dei nostri successor parte sedesse, Parte dall' altra del popol cristiano: Nè che le chiavi, che mi fur concesse Divenisser segnacolo in vessillo, Che contra i battezzati combattessi: Nè ch' io fossi figura di sigillo Ai privilegi venduti e mendaci._'

Everything in the poem is a condemnation of this world. A sense of complete isolation has overcome the writer. He stands alone, neither Guelf nor Ghibelline, but a party to himself: the first Italian."

He paused, drank a little wine, and smiled tolerantly.

"I, too, began life in attaching myself to a party; and when my party was expulsed I became a Florentine, and now, having considered all the cities of Italy, I am an Italian. But the great mass of my countrymen are still as Dante saw them, split up into numerous factions, weak by divisions, a ready prey to any comer."

Cromwell stroked his chin meditatively and, discreet, said nothing.

"When our dreams have faded, Messer," continued the other, "we can only sit aloof, watching the comedy of life with at best a tolerant contempt, but more often hiding, under a mask of cynicism and sarcasm, the maimed heart that is in us."

The other was a little embarrassed, after a moment he spoke quickly.

"It seems, to my mind, Messer, that Dante's poem hath no progress, no dramatic progress; beyond the pedestrian interest of the scenes described there is no motion."

"Thought can be dramatic as well as action," replied the other; "but I am inclined to agree with you. Consider the poem as a whole system of thought starting from 'the master of those who know' and ending in the beatific vision; consider it, next, as a denunciation of all the lusts and depravity of the world, typified, and made incarnate in historical characters: Francesca, voyaging for ever through the dusky air, on a wind that seems to symbolise her own passion; Ugolino, turning his strong teeth upon that wretched skull: consider, finally, the little illuminations which have made me compare the poem to a missal or a book of hours; the terse phrase, the very simplicity of which bites like an acid, so keen it is. Then, I think, you will see how various was his mind. His poem is like a great life; his words like actions, sometimes terrible and inhuman, sometimes like a mother's tenderness with her child."

Cromwell suddenly broke into a smile.

"Yes, yes, as you say, Messer, it is a whole system of thought. Nay, even more, it is the whole structure of a past age. But how simple! How childish! The people of that time seem to me like a few men gathered together at night round an open fire; at hand is a cheerful warmth, and light, but a few paces away is the darkness full of terrors, and on the borders of darkness are monstrous shadows. They sit crouched about the fire, telling idle tales to beguile their fears, thinking that beyond that little glow of radiance is nothing, whereas, at no great distance from them is such another company round another fire. We have explored the darkness, and now the dawn is beginning."

"_Magnus nascitur ordo_," said Machiavelli, smiling. "How many ages have said the same thing?"

"But it is here. The new order is born. I am no scholar, Messer, but I have heard Dean Colet and Erasmus. The recovery of the Greeks hath let knowledge like a light into many dark places; the whole political fabric is dissolving, and flowing away into the limbo of dead conceptions. The secular power, which Dante wished, and which you wish, to see established, is here."

"Yes, it is here," answered Machiavelli; "but what is it going to do? Mankind is constantly labouring at an unknown task; and, in seeking to be free, doth often but rivet its own fetters more securely."

"What do you mean?"