 | Pippa Passes |  |
4. PART IV. NIGHT.
Scene.—Inside the Palace by the Duomo. Monsignor, dismissing his Attendants.Monsignor.
Thanks, friends, many thanks! I chiefly
desire life now, that I may recompense every one of you.
Most I know something of already. What, a repast prepared?
Benedicto benedicatur . . . ugh, ugh! Where
was I? Oh, as you were remarking, Ugo, the weather
is mild, very unlike winter-weather: but I am a Sicilian,
you know, and shiver in your Julys here. To be sure,
when 't was full summer at Messina, as we priests used
to cross in procession the great square on Assumption
Day, you might see our thickest yellow tapers twist
suddenly in two, each like a falling star, or sink down on
themselves in a gore of wax. But go, my friends, but
go!
[To the Intendant.]
Not you, Ugo!
[The others leave
the apartment.]
I have long wanted to converse with you, Ugo.
Intendant.
Uguccio—
. . . 'guccio Stefani, man! of Ascoli, Fermo
and Fossombruno;—what I do need instructing about, are
these accounts of your administration of my poor brother's
affairs. Ugh! I shall never get through a third part
of your accounts: take some of these dainties before we
attempt it, however. Are you bashful to that degree?
For me, a crust and water suffice.
Intendant.
Do you choose this especial night to question me?
Monsignor.
This night, Ugo. You have managed my
late brother's affairs since the death of our elder brother:
fourteen years and a month, all but three days. On the
Third of December, I find him . . .
Intendant.
If you have so intimate an acquaintance
with your brother's affairs, you will be tender of turning
so far back: they will hardly bear looking into, so far back.
Monsignor.
Ay, ay, ugh, ugh,—nothing but disappointments
here below! I remark a considerable payment
made to yourself on this Third of December. Talk of
disappointments! There was a young fellow here, Jules,
a foreign sculptor I did my utmost to advance, that the
Church might be a gainer by us both: he was going on
hopefully enough, and of a sudden he notifies to me some
marvellous change that has happened in his notions
of Art. Here's his letter,—“He never had a clearly
hand could manage a chisel, he has practised expressing
other men's Ideals; and, in the very perfection he has
attained to, he foresees an ultimate failure: his unconscious
hand will pursue its prescribed course of old years,
and will reproduce with a fatal expertness the ancient
types, let the novel one appear never so palpably to his
spirit. There is but one method of escape: confiding
the virgin type to as chaste a hand, he will turn painter
instead of sculptor, and paint, not carve, its characteristics,”
—strike out, I dare say, a school like Correggio:
how think you, Ugo?
Intendant.
Is Correggio a painter?
Monsignor.
Foolish Jules! and yet, after all, why
foolish? He may—probably will—fail egregiously; but
if there should arise a new painter, will it not be in
some such way, by a poet now, or a musician (spirits
who have conceived and perfected an Ideal through
some other channel), transferring it to this, and escaping
our conventional roads by pure ignorance of
them; eh, Ugo? If you have no appetite, talk at
least, Ugo!
Intendant.
Sir, I can submit no longer to this course
of yours. First, you select the group of which I formed
one,—next you thin it gradually,—always retaining me
with your smile,—and so do you proceed till you have
And now then? Let this farce, this chatter end now:
what is it you want with me?
Monsignor.
Ugo!
Intendant.
From the instant you arrived, I felt your
smile on me as you questioned me about this and the
other article in those papers—why your brother should
have given me this villa, that podere,—and your nod at
the end meant,—what?
Monsignor.
Possibly that I wished for no loud talk
here. If once you set me coughing, Ugo!—
Intendant.
I have your brother's hand and seal to all I
possess: now ask me what for! what service I did him—ask me!
Monsignor.
I would better not: I should rip up old
disgraces, let out my poor brother's weaknesses. By the
way, Maffeo of Forli (which, I forgot to observe, is your
true name), was the interdict ever taken off you, for
robbing that church at Cesena?
Intendant.
No, nor needs be: for when I murdered
your brother's friend, Pasquale, for him . . .
Monsignor.
Ah, he employed you in that business, did
he? Well, I must let you keep, as you say, this villa
and that podere, for fear the world should find out my
relations were of so indifferent a stamp? Maffeo, my
family is the oldest in Messina, and century after century
every wickedness under heaven: my own father . . .
rest his soul!—I have, I know, a chapel to support that
it may rest: my dear two dead brothers were,—what you
know tolerably well; I, the youngest, might have rivalled
them in vice, if not in wealth: but from my boyhood I
came out from among them, and so am not partaker of
their plagues. My glory springs from another source;
or if from this, by contrast only,—for I, the bishop, am
the brother of your employers, Ugo. I hope to repair
some of their wrong, however; so far as my brothers' illgotten
treasure reverts to me, I can stop the consequences
of his crime: and not one soldo shall escape me. Maffec,
the sword we quiet men spurn away, you shrewd knaves
pick up and commit murders with; what opportunities
the virtuous forego, the villanous seize. Because, to
pleasure myself apart from other considerations, my food
would be millet-cake, my dress sackcloth, and my couch
straw,—am I therefore to let you, the offscouring of the
earth, seduce the poor and ignorant by appropriating a
pomp these will be sure to think lessens the abominations
so unaccountably and exclusively associated with it?
Must I let villas and poderi go to you, a murderer and
thief, that you may beget by means of them other
murderers and thieves? No—if my cough would but
allow me to speak!
What am I to expect? You are going to
punish me?
Monsignor.
—Must punish you, Maffeo. I cannot
afford to cast away a chance. I have whole centuries of
sin to redeem, and only a month or two of life to it in.
How should I dare to say . . .
Intendant.
“Forgive us our trespasses”?
Monsignor.
My friend, it is because I avow myself a
very worm, sinful beyond measure, that I reject a line of
conduct you would applaud perhaps. Shall I proceed,
as it were, a-pardoning?—I?—who have no symptom of
reason to assume that aught less than my strenuousest
efforts will keep myself out of mortal sin, much less keep
others out. No: I do trespass, but will not double that
by allowing you to trespass.
Intendant.
And suppose the villas are not your brother's
to give, nor yours to take? Oh, you are hasty
enough just now!
Monsignor.
I, 2—N
o 3!—ay, can you read the substance
of a letter, No 3, I have received from Rome? It
is precisely on the ground there mentioned, of the suspicion
I have that a certain child of my late elder brother,
who would have succeeded to his estates, was murdered
in infancy by you, Maffeo, at the instigation of my late
younger brother—that the Pontiff enjoins on me not
merely the bringing that Maffeo to condign punishment,
for the Church, to recover it parcel by parcel, howsoever,
whensoever, and wheresoever. While you are
now gnawing those fingers, the police are engaged in
sealing up your papers, Maffeo, and the mere raising my
voice brings my people from the next room to dispose of
yourself. But I want you to confess quietly, and save
me raising my voice. Why, man, do I not know the old
story? The heir between the succeeding heir, and this
heir's ruffianly instrument, and their complot's effect,
and the life of fear and bribes and ominous smiling
silence? Did you throttle or stab my brother's infant?
Come now
Intendant.
So old a story, and tell it no better? When
did such an instrument ever produce such an effect?
Either the child smiles in his face; or, most likely, he
is not fool enough to put himself in the employer's power
so thoroughly: the child is always ready to produce—as
you say—howsoever, wheresoever, and whensoever.
Monsignor.
Liar!
Intendant.
Strike me? Ah, so might a father chastise!
I shall sleep soundly to-night at least, though the gallows
await me to-morrow; for what a life did I lead! Carlo of
Cesena reminds me of his connivance, every time I pay
his annuity; which happens commonly thrice a year. If I
remonstrate, he will confess all to the good bishop—you!
I see through the trick, caitiff! I would
you spoke truth for once. All shall be sifted, however—
seven times sifted.
Intendant.
And how my absurd riches encumbered
me! I dared not lay claim to above half my possessions.
Let me but once unbosom myself, glorify Heaven, and die!
Sir, you are no brutal dastardly idiot like your brother
I frightened to death: let us understand one another.
Sir, I will make away with her for you—the girl—here
close at hand; not the stupid obvious kind of killing; do
not speak—know nothing of her nor of me! I see her
every day—saw her this morning: of course there is to
be no killing; but at Rome the courtesans perish off
every three years, and I can entice her thither—have
indeed begun operations already. There's a certain lusty
blue-eyed florid-complexioned English knave, I and the
Police employ occasionally. You assent, I perceive—
no, that's not it—assent I do not say—but you will let
me convert my present havings and holdings into cash,
and give me time to cross the Alps? 'T is but a little
black-eyed pretty singing Felippa, gay silk-winding girl.
I have kept her out of harm's way up to this present;
for I always intended to make your life a plague to
you with her. 'T is as well settled once and for ever.
Some women I have procured will pass Bluphocks, my
entangled!—you conceive? Through her singing? Is it a bargain?
[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing—
Overhead the tree-tops meet,
Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet;
There was nought above me, nought below,
My childhood had not learned to know:
For, what are the voices of birds
—Ay, and of beasts,—but words, our words,
Only so much more sweet?
The knowledge of that with my life begun.
But I had so near made out the sun,
And counted your stars, the seven and one,
Like the fingers of my hand:
Nay, I could all but understand
Wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges;
And just when out of her soft fifty changes
No unfamiliar face might overlook me—
Suddenly God took me. [Pippa passes.
Monsignor
[springing up].
My people—one and all
—all—within there! Gag this villain—tie him hand
and foot! He dares . . . I know not half he dares—but
remove him—quick! Miserere mei, Domine! Quick,
I say!
The mouse at her dray,
The grub in his tomb,
Wile winter away;
But the fire-fly and hedge-shrew and lob-worm, I pray,
How fare they?
Ha, ha, thanks for your counsel, my Zanze!
“Feast upon lampreys, quaff Breganze”—
The summer of life so easy to spend,
And care for to-morrow so soon put away!
But winter hastens at summer's end,
And fire-fly, hedge-shrew, lob-worm, pray,
How fare they?
No bidding me then to . . . what did Zanze say?
“Pare your nails pearlwise, get your small feet shoes
“More like” . . (what said she?)—“and less like canoes!”
How pert that girl was!—would I be those pert
Impudent staring women! It had done me,
However, surely no such mighty hurt
To learn his name who passed that jest upon me:
No foreigner, that I can recollect,
Came, as she says, a month since, to inspect
Our silk-mills—none with blue eyes and thick rings
Of raw-silk-coloured hair, at all events.
We shall do better, see what next year brings.
I may buy shoes, my Zanze, not appear
More destitute than you perhaps next year!
Bluph . . . something! I had caught the uncouth name
But for Monsignor's people's sudden clatter
Above us—bound to spoil such idle chatter
As ours: it were indeed a serious matter
If silly talk like ours should put to shame
The pious man, the man devoid of blame,
The . . . ah but—ah but, all the same,
No mere mortal has a right
To carry that exalted air;
Best people are not angels quite:
While—not the worst of people's doings scare
The devil; so there's that proud look to spare!
I have just been the holy Monsignor:
And I was you too, Luigi's gentle mother,
And you too, Luigi!—how that Luigi started
Out of the turret—doubtlessly departed
On some good errand or another,
For he passed just now in a traveller's trim,
And the sullen company that prowled
About his path, I noticed, scowled
And I was Jules the sculptor's bride,
And I was Ottima beside,
And now what am I?—tired of fooling.
Day for folly, night for schooling!
New year's day is over and spent,
Ill or well, I must be content.
Wake up—here's a friend I've plucked you!
Call this flower a heart's-ease now!
Something rare, let me instruct you,
Is this, with petals triply swollen,
Three times spotted, thrice the pollen;
While the leaves and parts that witness
Old proportions and their fitness,
Here remain unchanged, unmoved now;
Call this pampered thing improved now!
Suppose there's a king of the flowers
And a girl-show held in his bowers—
“Look ye, buds, this growth of ours,”
Says he, “Zanze from the Brenta,
“I have made her gorge polenta
“Till both cheeks are near as bouncing
“As her . . . name there's no pronouncing!
“See this heightened colour too,
“For she swilled Breganze wine
“'T was but white when wild she grew.
“And only by this Zanze's eyes
“Of which we could not change the size,
“The magnitude of all achieved
“Otherwise, may be perceived.”
How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?
Ah Pippa, morning's rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's.
Oh lark, be day's apostle
To mavis, merle and throstle,
Bid them their betters jostle
From day and its delights!
But at night, brother howlet, over the woods,
Toll the world to thy chantry;
Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods
Full complines with gallantry:
Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
[After she has begun to undress herself.
Now, one thing I should like to really know:
I only fancied being, this long day:
—Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so
As to . . . in some way . . . move them—if you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind
Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind
[Sitting on the bedside.
And border Ottima's cloak's hem.
Ah me, and my important part with them,
This morning's hymn half promised when I rose!
True in some sense or other, I suppose.
[As she lies down.
God bless me! I can pray no more to-night.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
All service ranks the same with God—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
| Pippa Passes | |