It is incomprehensible that he should want to have these futile people here, and still more incomprehensible that he should be able to sit and listen to them and their stupid chatter. I can understand that he may occasionally listen to poets reciting their verses; they can be regarded as buffoons such as are always kept at court. They laud the lofty purity of the human soul, great events and heroic feats, and there is nothing to be said against all that, particularly if their songs flatter him. Human beings need flattery; otherwise they do not fulfill their purpose, not even in their own eyes. And both the present and the past contain much that is beautiful and noble which, without due praise, would have been neither noble nor beautiful. Above all, they sing the praises of love, which is quite as it should be, for nothing else is in such need of transformation into something different. The ladies are filled with melancholy and their breasts heave with sighs; the men gaze vaguely and dreamily into space, for they all know what it is really like and realize that this must be an especially beautiful poem.
I also understand that there must be artists to paint religious pictures for the people, so that they may have something to worship which is not poor and dirty like themselves; beautiful, unearthly pictures of martyrs who, honored after execution, have been given costly garments and a gold ring around their pates, just as they too shall be honored after they have finished their miserable lives. Pictures which show the rabble that their God was crucified, and that it happened when He tried to do something here on earth, making them understand that there can be no hope down here. Those simple craftsmen are necessary to a prince, but I don’t know what business they have here in the palace. They give the people somewhere to dwell, a temple, a prettily decked torture chamber to which they can retire at any time in order to find peace, a place where their God hangs always upon His cross. I understand that, for I am a Christian myself; I have been baptized into the same faith as they, and it is a valid baptism, though it was done as a joke at the wedding of Duke Gonzaga and Donna Elena, when I was carried into the castle chapel as their first born, to whom the bride had given birth on the wedding day to the astonishment of all present. I have often heard it related as a very good joke, and I remember that so it was, for I was eighteen years old when it happened, and the Prince had lent me for the ceremony.
But what I cannot grasp is how anybody can listen to the people who talk about the meaning of life, to the philosophers with their profound meditations over life and death and the eternal problems, to sophistical expositions of virtue and honor and chivalry. And to those who deceive themselves into thinking that they know something about the stars, and who believe that these stars have some connection with human destiny. They are blasphemers, though I do not know what it is they blaspheme; that has nothing to do with me. They are buffoons, though they do not know it, nor does anybody else. Nobody laughs at them, nobody gets the least pleasure out of their fancies, nobody has the faintest idea why they have been summoned here to court. But the Prince listens to them as though their words were pregnant with meaning, and meditatively strokes his beard while he lets me fill their goblets, which are of silver like his own. The only time anybody ever laughs during their sessions is when they lift me onto their knees in order to help me pour the wine.
Who knows anything about the stars? Who can read their secret? Can these men? They believe that they can commune with the universe, and rejoice when they receive sapient replies. They spread out their star-maps and read the heavens like a book. But they are the authors of the book, and the stars continue on their shadowy ways and have no inkling of its contents.
I too read in the book of the night, but I cannot interpret it. My wisdom shows me not only the writing, but also that it cannot be interpreted.
At night they sit in their tower, the western tower, with their tubes and their quadrants, and believe that they are consorting with the universe. And I sit in the tower opposite which houses the old dwarfs’ apartment, where I live alone since I throttled Jehoshaphat, under the low ceilings suitable to our tribe, with windows small as arrow slits. Once upon a time many dwarfs dwelt here, collected from distant lands, even from the kingdom of the Moors, the gifts of princes and popes and cardinals, or goods of exchange, as is our custom. We dwarfs have no homeland, no parents; we allow ourselves to be born of strangers, anywhere, in secret, among the poorest and most wretched, so that our race should not die out. And when these stranger parents discover that they have begotten a creature of our tribe they sell us to powerful princes that we may amuse them with our misshapen bodies and be their jesters. Thus did my mother sell me, turning away from me in disgust when she saw what she had borne, and not understanding that I was of an ancient race. She was paid twenty scudi for me and with them she bought three cubits of cloth and a watchdog for her sheep.
I sit at the dwarfs’ window and gaze out into the night, exploring it as they do. I need no tubes nor telescopes, for my gaze itself is deep enough. I too read in the book of the night.
THERE is an explanation for the Prince’s interest in all these scholars, artists, philosophers, and stargazers, and it is a very simple one. He wants his court to be renowned and famous, and himself as honored and illustrious as possible. He wants to attain something which everyone can understand and which, as far as I know, is coveted by all mankind.
I thoroughly understand and approve.
The Condottiere Boccarossa has arrived in the town and installed himself and his great train in the Palazzo Geraldi, which has been uninhabited since that family’s exile. He visited the Prince and remained for several hours. Nobody else was permitted to be present.
He is a great and celebrated condottiere.
Work on the campanile has begun and we have been to see how far they have progressed. It will tower high above the dome of the cathedral, and when once the bells ring they will echo up to heaven. That is a pretty thought, as thoughts should be. The bells will hang higher than any others in Italy.
The Prince is much preoccupied with this building and this is quite understandable. He studied the drawings again and again on the spot, and he was entranced by the reliefs depicting scenes from the life of the Crucified One with which the base of the campanile is being decorated. So far they have not progressed much beyond this point.
It may never be completed. Many of my lord’s building ventures are never completed. They stand there, half-finished, beautiful as the ruins of some great conception. But ruins are also memorials to their creator, and I have never denied that he is a great prince. When he walks through the streets I have no objection to walking by his side. Everybody looks up to him, nobody sees me. Nor are they meant to. They salute him respectfully as though they felt him to be a superior being, but that is because they are a pack of ingratiating cowards, not because they love or esteem him, as he believes. If I walk alone in the town they see me at once and fling taunts after me. “That’s his dwarf! If you kick him, you kick his master!” They do not dare do that, but they throw dead rats and other foulnesses from the muck-heaps at me. When I draw my sword in rage, they roar with laughter. “What a mighty lord we have!” they shout. I cannot defend myself, for we do not fight with the same weapons. I have to run away with my clothing all soiled and dirty.
A dwarf always knows more about everything than his master.