The prophet of Florence [by] Mary Putnam Denny

Front matter

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9 H

II The Shadow Of A Palace

"A maze of corridors contrived for sin;

Dusk, winding stairs, dim galleries,

* * * and more strange —

A recess lurking here behind a range

Of banquet-rooms. Your finger thus you push

A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush

Upon the banqueters."

A great hush had fallen over Ferrara, from the banks of the Po, up through the varied paths that led to the city's heart, not a whisper of life seemed stirring. The great piazza was empty; and the heavy coverings were drawn over the stalls; save with the one exception of Bernardo, the flower vender, who was anxiously going over the clusters of lilacs, violets and jasmine, cutting out the withered sprays, and refilling the tall stone vases with fresh water; for the silence and the deep underwaves of feeling that seemed to whisper through the narrow viae were but the ominous prophecy of another hour, which he could closely devine — the hour when the great square would be wreathed with roses and the gullies run with wine, while the chief via of the city trembles with the tramp of the grand procession and the castle walls echo with the refrain as the trumpeters acclaim the new master of Ferrara. For in the great state chamber of the old palace, Duke n THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE

Borso, the second of the natural sons that Niccolo III. had caused to be legitimized that they might rule the realm during the minority of his son Ercole, lay dying.

It was said of Borso : " He was the Magnificent of Ferrara, as Lorenzo de Medici was of Florence; and was so renowned for the splendor of his court, and for his abilities and influence that in distant lands he was spoken of as the king of Italy."

In 1452 Frederick HI. had raised the Marquis to the ducal dignity, then followed the years of regal power and glory; when the palace halls shone as never before with the waxen tapers in the great crystal chandeliers, beneath which shimmered the silver gleam of the glittering armor of knights returned from tournaments; and the softer beauty of delicate gold and Persian silk, as a group of ladies paused before the glittering frame that mirrored their beauty in steel.

"The lady glanced at the mirroring steel, where

her form of grace was seen.

Where her eye shone clear and her dark locks

But now the lights were dim, and only the muffled tread of palefaced attendants could be heard in the halls. For even now before the word had left the lips of the old court physician — that death was hovering near — the grandees of the court, had deserted the palace and were making forced stages over the hills and valleys to meet Ercole in the mountain pass, whither he was coming from Florence — Ercole, their new master; Ercole, the son of another mother, the son of the daughter of the Medici, whom Niccoli II., in the face of every vow and trust had taken and declared with the sanction and authority of the church, his lawful wife.

The hush around the state chamber deepened; the silence far away and unearthly, as the padre, slowly rising from holding the sacrament — the wafer — to the dumb hps of the dying man, paced the floor, almost unconsciously moving his worn hand over the rosary, striving to breathe out a prayer for the sin of the life that was ending in darkness and despair. But above the word of petition came those words of judgment: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." It was the thought of a great wrong as it had shadowed and darkened the life of the son; of the hour when the father Niccolo de Este, just raised to the place of power, had used all the strength of the house of Este to crush the life of the beautiful girl wife, whose face, with its soft frame of curls, which pressaged in the tear mist that hovered before the dark eyes, or the tremulous quiver of her hand when moved by some deep hidden chord of feeling, a prophecy of dim unknown sorrow, had been the dream of the wandering musician or artist who lingered for a time beneath the shadows of the palace. The padre was too lost in these dim images of the past reflected in the hopeless darkness of the Duke's life to see a dark-robed woman, with a veil thrown over her hair and face, glide softly through the portal, and kneel in the shadow of the heavy curtains and draperies beside the dying man.

For hours there had not been a stir of recognition on the face; only the dim perception of suffering and struggle was pictured. Through the long moments of the deep night watch, the woman knelt there, fearing to move, to whisper through the dark, lest with the return of consciousness there should be again the sting of the cruel word of alienation — the cry from her child, transformed by the long years of contact with the emissaries of his father's cruel court, and in the hope and realization of supreme power, into an unnatural child, into a man in whose hardened face seemed alone expressed the cold materiahsm that springs from a grasp out toward the outer things of sense; the cry even in this last earth moment: "Put this woman forth! I do not call her mother!" But suddenly the great form of the man was wrought in one of the intense spasms of pain, and with a low cry, that seemed an echo of the primal longings of childhood he reached his hand out through the dark. And involuntarily the hand of the mother closed over that of her child. The man's hand clutched a moment in dull pressure as if searching out through the dark for the meaning of the strange sense of peace that was being borne from afar. Then the momentary recognition as he looked up into the face of the kneeling madonna, who had been to him for so many years but an outcast woman, and the word breathed more than spoken, "Madre!"

How the empty things of life fall from us in the one supreme hour of vision! The palace that stretched, in its turreted beauty, toward the skies; the long line of wall and rampart, over the glistening Po, that marked the boundary and strength of the city — all were forgotten now. Borso was no longer the archcuke of Ferrara, in the great state chamber of the palace, but once more a child out in the gardens, looking up into the face of his kneeling mother as she knelt over a cluster of lilies. It was only a moment of recognition, of love, but in that moment the woman lived over again all the gladness of her life, the beauty of her girlhood, the first joy of her motherhood; the short hour when she dreamed herself the Princess of Ferrara in the palace halls — all, all of life.

Slowly the earth vision grew dim and the man sank toward the last stupor; yet the light of the love that recreates life shone upon the silent face. The madre still lingered, hoping, longing, for one other word from out of the dark voids, where for so long her life happiness lay buried; yet there remained only the deepening silence and the dark. Yet she lingered still, till the slow step of the padre sounded nearer, and she could almost feel his outreach toward the dying man as he touched the heavy curtains. Then the harsh notes of the voice that had banished her forever from the palace seemed to resound again through the halls; the thought that this moment of love's realization was but a part of the old dream, that she was but an outcast woman, banished from church and throne — that to-morrow, yes, to-morrow, the son of the hated daughter of the Medici, she who had robbed her of her lover and child, would mount the ducal throne! The light faded, the way grew dark again; grief clutched at her throat like a heavy mailed hand, and as the padre paused, with his hand upon the curtain fold, to whisper another prayer over the face of the man who he knew had been swiftly borne through these moments far nearer the end, the woman, drawing close around her the heavy robe and veil, that she might be one with the darkness, and with one last pressure of the hand that was now growing cold and still, passed again with the flittering shadows, — unseen, unknown — through the palace halls.

If some maid, shrinking alone in a shadowy recess, watching for the passing of the silence and the darkness of the night of death, waiting for the dawning of the new reign, for the voice of Ercole, the son of the daughter of the Medici, to raise again the song of laughter, his touch to light again the waxen taper and beneath their golden light recreate the scenes of life and joy, discerned the lonely form as it flitted past from the dim tracery of gold or silver sheen, she only thought of it as some phantom from the past, some spirit form wafted back to mingle in the dirge of death and darkness.

The padre in the early morning watch, turning the glow of the lighted taper toward the silent face of the Prince, knelt in gratitude and praise, for was there not expressed in the lingering smile on the face some joy note, the aftermath of penitence, of forgiveness? And slowly, as the "Ave Maria" of the dawn stole through the silences, intermingled with the first prayer for the soul that had passed through the far portals, he whispered : " And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. "

Ill

THE MADONNA AND MARIA

THE first rays of the dawn showed a group of men, closely cloaked in their heavy mantles, silhouetted against the dark walls of the palace. The elder of the group as|he caught a glimpse of the strange madre as she sped through the via, exclaimed, "That might be the spirit of some fair life — some heavenly madonna come to minister in the room of death!"

Another rejoined, '* More likely the living phantom of the Monna Ghita, the real princess of the old Marquis, the outcast mother of Duke Borso, come to join her voice in the dark chorus of avenging spirits around her son's bier — "

"A fantasy," the elder man interrupted; "yet how well do I remember when the Marquis Niccolo, then in the first glow of his youth, the strongest knight that drew a lance, took the fair madonna from the beautiful villa of the Ghita, that is situate on the slopes beyond Florence. The family were neither noble nor of the contadini, but of those strong men of the goldsmith craft, one of the many guilds into which the great life of the city is divided. As long as Messer Ghita lived, and his strong arm rested in the great hall of the villa, the Prince was true to the madonna. It was only after Ghita was slain by a sword thrust by an unknown hand, that under cover of the perjured word of a false padre the Marquis dared to bring the daughter of the Medici into the palace of Ferrara.

The man paused here and looked up the great via, the path of the royal procession, with that dumb expectancy, that was beginning to dawn on the people, of the coming through the mountain fastnesses of Ercole and the full assertion of the power, through the son's strong hand, of the daughter of the Medici over the city. "And soon," he resumed, as if the others had been following his unspoken thought, "Ercole will wed Maria, of the house of the Strozzi."

"Ah!" Domenico hissed, just as the dark-robed figure turned the angle of the walls, and then passed along the path close beside them. "Though Maria be a natural daughter of the Strozzi, she is not an acknowledged child. It is only because of Piero de Strozzi's strong love for her mother, who died at the child's birth, whom he might have made his wife if she had lived, and because of her own rare beauty, that the child has been cared for all these years in the marble villa in the Via del Bardo. Even now Prince Ercole openly vows to the embassy that has returned from Florence that the marriage may not be publicly celebrated for two years, and you know what that means with Piero de Strozzi, seized with the first stroke of paralysis and the certainty of his death within those years; you know by all the dark years of suffering, of anguish of the mother of our great Duke Borso, the son that lies dying in yonder palace. " In a softer voice he murmured: "O that the child woman might remain in the marble villa of the Strozzi, in the Via del Bardo!"

"Might remain in the marble villa of the Strozzi, in the Via del Bardo, " echoed through the lonely street, as the woman hurried on. Ah! at last out of the dark night of her own grief there shone the light of good that she might do, from the marble halls of the villa of Strozzi, a beautiful life that she might save from the hand of the Medici, from the enthroned power and wrong that had wrecked her young womanhood.

The first gold of the sunrise bathed the white pillars of the great villa as the madre paused a moment in the portals, then pressed resolutely forward into the open court, where a group of noisy servants were chattering over the platters of fish, garnished with almonds and spices, and the figs and little chestnut cakes for the morning meal. They dropped their work, huddling behind the low divan, as the strange madonna appeared, with the rich dark tunic and the folds of the soft veiling falling back from her silver gray hair, disclosing a face with that pecuhar charm of beauty that is crystalized by the spiritual, deepened by years of suffering and heart grief. The vague awe and fear were only strengthened as the voice of the woman, which seemed in its depth to reach some forgotten, far-away chord that they had once heard, when the great cathedral chimes rang out in the hush of the night, sounded piteous in its appeal: "Can you lead me to the child Maria, of theStrozzi? I have a message."

"Madre mia, it must be the Mother of Christ, or some madonna that she has sent, come to show the way to the poor little Maria, for I heard her weeping last night when I drew back the curtains of the couch and lighted the taper, " the little maid Marie said as with one plump hand she smoothed out her madre's thin white hair, and with the other fingered nervously with the rosary hanging at her side; then, rising, she touched the strange madonna's sleeve timorously and led the way, past the heavy tapestries and hangings of the inner court, up the marble stairway to the dimly lighted apartment, separated by the heavy hangings into diminutive chambers, to where the daughter of the Strozzi rested. The little Marie moved cautiously lest some footstep might rouse her master as she passed his chamber, and guided, without speaking, to the furthest curtained recess, then waited on the outside, for Maria must see only the face of the heavenly visitant.

For a long dream moment the woman gazed down upon the softly shadowed face until the blue eyes opened. For a moment there was that first bewilderment that comes on waking, as the girl tried to separate the face of the kneeling madonna from the dream; then a startled movement, as the sight of the familiar furnishings, the morning light touching the blue and the gold curtains, brought the reality of the presence; then the frightened gaze grew tense and still, as of one under a spell, as she looked down into the strange, dark eyes of the woman. But as she spoke with the far note the word "Maria de Strozzi, " as with the wave of a magic wand the terrified look vanished. Again and again the woman repeated "Maria de Strozzi — Maria de Strozzi," groping through the spoken word toward the meaning of her message to the girl life.

And then, as with a great rush of memories the full meaning came, and with it mirrored in the fair face, in the soft languor of the blue eyes, pictures of her own life twenty, thirty years before — of the girl with the same glimmer of gold in her hair, looking out toward the wonder, the beauty hidden behind palace gates — the strong surge of feeling overcame her and she fell forward with a little cry, burying her face in the folds of the coverlid. Maria was by her side in a moment, throwing her soft white arms, hanging bare from the loose morning gown, around the black-robed figure, bending very near mutely trying to enter into the woman's sorrow. At the, touch of the girl's hand the thought of the wrong and anguish that awaited her grew strong again, and, rising above the flood tide of feeling of her own heart's deep sorrow, stretching her hand out first to the north casement from which the turrets of the palace glistened in the morning light, then as her voice came again, murmuring in a hoarse whisper, "It is a dark, dark way that leads only to the valley of Despair!" her voice rising out of herself toward the heights of pleading as she finished, "Maria de Strozzi, my child, by all the love of the Mother of Christ, can you not feel — see? "

Maria relaxed her grasp as the woman spoke and moved slowly across the little space, her silken robe sweeping the fur rugs and damask coverings, to the casement, where, pulling aside the curtain, she looked out toward the far way. The pure transparency of her beauty seemed marred, as when some alien covering hides the perfect expression of a picture or a floating cloud way shadows the blue heavens. She turned again toward the woman. " But, madonna mia, the way seems not dark. The morning light is working colors of blue and amber over the far spires of the great castle campanile" — ^her voice trembled as she continued, as if the troubled spirit of the dark- veiled madonna was swaying her. "I have the word of the Prince and of the padre that the way within is touched with music and the glory of joy and life. "

With a great wave of tenderness the woman reached her arms out again toward the girl who seemed to stand across a dark void of experience over which no word of hers might reach. Then as she tried to whisper in pleading again, the hand of the little maid Marie groped through the curtains motioning that she must not linger.

IV Parting Ways

IT was the eve of a festa in Ferrara, the great piazza was wreathed with flowers, and the triumphal arches draped with gold and silver cloth, while from the casements of a hundred homes floated the emblems of the ducal power of Ferrara. In the midst of the main square a pavilion of cloth of gold was raised, as the centre point where Duke Ercole should pass in the procession of grandees and churchmen, with the gray-cowled friars carrying the sacred relics in honor of Saint George. As the evening deepens from the casements of the castle flash a thousand tapers, while, as a light breeze stirred through the silver standards and ensigns of the far minarets and turrets of the campanile, it seemed to breathe forth to the waiting city the music and dancing within. Below the slight raise or miniature bluff, where rose the heavy walls and slender spires of the castle stretched a threaded path, the Via del Bardo, and near the limit of its extent rose the pretentious villa of Niccolo Savonarola, known as the son of the famous physician whom the elder Marquis Niccolo de Este had invited to his court.

Madonna Elena Savonarola, the wife and mother, had gathered the servants in the rear courtyard and bade them be merry there, with nuts and dried figs and a square of chestnut cake. Then she moved with quiet yet eager step through the villa, with her own hand putting the finishing touch of beauty and repose to the dehcate hangings of damask and purple weave, or arranging the roses the maid had brought from the gardens in their silver bowls on the marble pedestals. When she had finished she extinguished all the candles but the one that glimmered beneath the blue shade in the great court; then she sank down on a low seat near the north casement, alone in the semi-darkness, looking out toward the light that trailed down through the valley from the old castle.

The Madonna Elena liked it best : the silence and the dark, with the beauty of the far light touching all. For on these festa eves there came back the haunting pictures of the old life in Mantua, when she was a princess in the palace of the great house of Bonaccorsi, beneath the heights of Mantua. Not that the Madonna Elena regretted the hour when she stole past the mirrored steel and glistening candelabra of the silent halls, and out of the iron gateway, and then fearlessly crossed the mountain trail in the darkness of the night. No, it was not that. She would not have them again, the old days in palace halls. It was only the fond insistency with which one eagerly watches a bit of blue sky over far ways that recalls some sunlit picture of the past or the moment when we linger over the dream, over the picture of a place or face that once meant to us the joy of life.

In those moments when the images, the power of the old life, came again the Madonna Elena always cared to have her child Girolamo near her. Of all her children he seemed nearer to the heart of the life that had once been given her in the palace of Mantua. Something in the high, bold forehead, the blue eye that flashed through the dark, the deep moments of quiet and abstraction, reminded her of her princely father, Bardo Bonaccorsi.

On the old festa eves the boy always crept in unannounced, when he knew, by the gHmmer of the one faint taper, that the madre was watching in the great north casement the far glow of the castle light, and would throw himself down upon the divan in a shadowed corner of the room, and mutely follow her thought back through the years toward the glittering picture of the old life in Mantua. Sometimes the boy would take his lute and play some far-away strain that she had taught him to reach toward.

It was only after Girolamo's return from Faenza with the mysterious word treasured, which in after years he spoke of thus, "While I was still in the world I went for amusement to Faenza, and entering by chance the church of Saint Augustine I heard a word from an Augustine preacher, which I will not tell you now, but which to this hour I have in my heart, " that he did not seem to see, with the madre, the beauty of the palace ways. Some strange, shadowy form appeared to mar the picture, to stand between the glory of glimmering mirror and golden light. It was on the festa eve the year before that the son had entered as before, and sinking down in his old place on the divan tried to enter for a dream moment toward the madre's vision; then an impulse — strong, irresistible — moved him, and, rising, with a few quick strides over the wide court, he had repeated; "Hora novissima; tempora pessima, " (the world is very evil; the times are waxing late).

The madre turned — ^her hands touching, with a tremulous move, the folds of soft clinging silk at her feet — toward this higher expression of a strange, unknown power in her son. He seemed to her as one borne on the far waves of feeling and vision toward a shore where she could not follow, each moment separating them further; caught in the irresistible current of the realization of a world's sorrow which neither could stay nor hinder.

"Hora novissima; tempora pessima," was the hidden word that morning from the lips of the dull Augustinian in the great Cathedral of Faenza. Some chance picture which the monk had caught, and now carelessly showed, of the clank of heavy chains, as he explored the subterranean cellars of a palace; the opening of a secret door, and the looking down for an instant into the faces of men chained to the damp floors, and even as he looked listened to the strains of music and joy notes in the royal halls above. A chance echo of the world-grief.

Through the long drawn out moments the madre waited, stronger now than the fleeting pictures cotijured up by the far light of the castle was the thought of her son; through the year that she had mutely watched him drift away from her there had been the unvoiced hope that he would return — be again the child Girolamo Savonarola, listening at her feet when the grand festa eve, with its silences and glistening palace lights came again. Now, as he did not enter she arose and, stealing softly across the room, lest a heavy footfall might break the hush of the place, reached the south portals, where, in the garden, just out from the rear court she had watched Girolamo walking at dusk. Hoarse with the note of appeal came the voice: "Girolamo! Girolamo! Will you not come.^^" Then, fearing the answer to her own word, she swiftly turned back again into the court toward the window seat. After a moment there was the step upon the portal; not the glad, eager step, but the movement of hesitancy. Then for a time he rested, crouching in the old pose, in silence upon the divan.

Now as the madre waited through the silence, there came in one great moment of realization, no longer the sense of drifting apart, but the sudden, irrevocable thought of separation; in some spiritual way the vast gulf had been passed, the mooring cast, and no longer in vision and unity of thought was Girolamo Savonarola her son. For him lay the far ways. With a prophetic feeling out toward the morrow, the hush was broken by a sharp, fierce cry, as of a wild beast suddenly bereft of its young, that deepened into a low, half -broken sob.

Without trying to answer the cry of the madre's heart that he might come back, be once again the listening child, he reached for the lute upon the pedestal above, and began revealing one of those old strains that they had loved. First the mingled notes of struggle and striving, slowly leading, through the darkened way of suffering and of supreme renunciation, toward the place of realization, of victory.

All the varied beauty of every festa day of the past seemed merged in the glimmer of color and pageantry beneath the blue of the April sky this morning, as first came the serving maids, in their bright costumes, and carrying little woven baskets with fruits and flowers for the shrine of Saint George, for the Madonna Savonarola was lavish in her gifts to every young girl that served her, and delicate in her directions of their thought and worship. Next came the elder son, Ognibene, who was in the service of the Prince, with his blushing bride on his arm, whom he had a fortnight before wedded in Mantua, much to the delight of the madre, who rejoiced to see this soldier son, with his clumsy gait and heavy brogue, touched with the light and beauty of the city she loved. Bartolommeo, the second son, came next with his sister, Marie, carrying garlands of roses that she was ostensibly taking to adorn the shrine of Saint George, but really to heighten the beauty of her silken gown, as she waited, with the flower maidens, under the canopy of cloth of gold for the troops of knights who guarded their chief to pass; among which to Marie, shone alone the one with the dark eyes beneath the flashing steel. Last came the madre, with the same delicate, illusive beauty, only deepened by the touch of years, as when the son of the physician of Ferrara stole her from the palace of Mantua; her beauty accentuated to-day by the mist of tears that had veiled her vision in the night of sorrow and foreboding. The father had already found his place beneath the palace walls, with the other leading men of the council, to give the finishing directions to designer and page. And no one remained save Girolamo, standing beneath the rose hedge in the garden. **I will follow," he had answered as the madre looked back with the old pleading toward her child.

It was not until they all had gone, and the hours had deepened toward the noon, the great moment of the festa, that Girolamo did follow. First he went swiftly through hall and court, and last to his mother's chamber, with its delicate blue draperies. He lingered here the longest, as in some temple where is enshrined part of the vision and the joy of life. He took nothing save a haK-finished sketch, a Madonna that he had tried to draw from the face of Maria de Strozzi in that hour when he had first beheld her, after the return from the two years in Florence.