"I am to enter the hermit order of St. Augustine," I again corrected.
"Ah!" said Caro, in his big, full voice. "He aspires not to Rome but to Heaven, my lord."
"Then what the devil does he in your house, Fifanti?" quoth the Cardinal. "Are you to teach him sanctity?"
And the table shook with laughter at a jest I did not understand any more than I understood my Lord Cardinal.
Messer Fifanti, sitting at the table-head, shot me a glance of anxious inquiry; he smiled foolishly, and washed his hands in the air again, his mind fumbling for an answer that should turn aside that barbed jest. But he was forestalled by my cousin Cosimo.
"The teaching might come more aptly from Monna Giuliana," said he, and smiled very boldly across at Fifanti's lady who sat beside me, whilst a frown grew upon the prodigious brow of the pedant.
"Indeed, indeed," the Cardinal murmured, considering her through half-closed eyes, "there is no man but may enter Paradise at her bidding." And he sighed furiously, whilst she chid him for his boldness; and for all that much of what they said was in a language that might have been unknown to me, yet was I lost in amazement to see a prelate made so free with. She turned to me, and the glory of her eyes fell about my soul like an effulgence.
"Do not heed them, Ser Agostino. They are profane and wicked men," she said, "and if you aspire to holiness, the less you see of them the better will it be for you."
I did not doubt it, yet I dared not make so bold as to confess it, and I wondered why they should laugh to hear her earnest censure of them.
"It is a thorny path, this path of holiness," said the Cardinal sighing.
"Your excellency has been told so, we assume," quoth Caro, who had a very bitter tongue for one who looked so well-nourished and contented.
"I might have found it so for myself but that my lot has been cast among sinners," answered the Cardinal, comprehending the company in his glance and gesture. "As it is, I do what I can to mend their lot."
"Now here is gallantry of a different sort!" cried the little Leocadia with a giggle.
"O, as to that," quoth Cosimo, showing his fine teeth in a smile, "there is a proverb as to the gallantry of priests. It is like the love of women, which again is like water in a basket—as soon in as out." And his eyes hung upon Giuliana.
"When you are the basket, sir captain, shall anyone blame the women?" she countered with her lazy insolence.
"Body of God!" cried the Cardinal, and laughed wholeheartedly, whilst my cousin scowled. "There you have the truth, Cosimo, and the truth is better than proverbs."
"It is unlucky to speak of the dead at table," put in Caro.
"And who spoke of the dead, Messer Annibale?" quoth Leocadia.
"Did not my Lord Cardinal mention Truth?" answered the brutal poet.
"You are a derider—a gross sinner," said the Cardinal languidly. "Stick to your verses, man, and leave Truth alone."
"Agreed—if your excellency will stick to Truth and quit writing verses. I offer the compact in the interest of humanity, which will be the gainer."
The company shook with laughter at this direct and offensive hit. But my Lord Gambara seemed nowise incensed. Indeed, I was beginning to conclude that the man had a sweetness and tolerance of nature that bordered on the saintly.
He sipped his wine thoughtfully, and held it up to the light so that the deep ruby of it sparkled in the Venetian crystal.
"You remind me that I have written a new song," said he.
"Then have I sinned indeed," groaned Caro.
But Gambara, disregarding the interruption, his glass still raised, his mild eyes upon the wine, began to recite:
Without completely understanding it, yet scandalized beyond measure at as much as I understood, to hear such sentiments upon his priestly lips, I stared at him in candid horror.
But he got no farther. Caro smote the table with his fist.
"When wrote you that, my lord?" he cried.
"When?" quoth the Cardinal, frowning at the interruption. "Why, yestereve."
"Ha!" It was something between a bark and a laugh from Messer Caro. "In that case, my lord, memory usurped the place of invention. That song was sung at Pavia when I was a student—which is more years ago than I care to think of."
The Cardinal smiled upon him, unabashed. "And what then, pray? Can we avoid these things? Why, the very Virgil whom you plagiarize so freely was himself a plagiarist."
Now this, as you may well conceive, provoked a discussion about the board, in which all joined, not excepting Fifanti's lady and Donna Leocadia.
I listened in some amazement and deep interest to matters that were entirely strange to me, to the arguing of mysteries which seemed to me—even from what I heard of them—to be strangely attractive.
Anon Fifanti joined in the discussion, and I observed how as soon as he began to speak they all fell silent, all listened to him as to a master, what time he delivered himself of his opinions and criticisms of this Virgil, with a force, a lucidity and an eloquence that revealed his learning even to one so ignorant as myself.
He was listened to with deference by all, if we except perhaps my Lord Gambara, who had no respect for anything and who preferred to whisper to Leocadia under cover of his hand, ogling her what time she simpered. Once or twice Monna Giuliana flashed him an unfriendly glance, and this I accounted natural, deeming that she resented this lack of attention to the erudite dissertation of her husband.
But as for the others, they were attentive, as I have said, and even Messer Caro, who at the time—as I gathered then—was engaged upon a translation of Virgil into Tuscan, and who, therefore, might be accounted something of an authority, held his peace and listened what time the doctor reasoned and discoursed.
Fifanti's mean, sycophantic air fell away from him as by magic. Warmed by his subject and his enthusiasm he seemed suddenly ennobled, and I found him less antipathic; indeed, I began to see something admirable in the man, some of that divine quality that only deep culture and learning can impart.
I conceived that now, at last, I held the explanation of how it came to pass that so distinguished a company frequented his house and gathered on such familiar terms about his board.
And I began to be less amazed at the circumstance that he should possess for wife so beautiful and superb a creature as Madonna Giuliana. I thought that I obtained glimpses of the charm which that elderly man might be able to exert upon a fine and cultured young nature with aspirations for things above the commonplace.
CHAPTER II. HUMANITIES
As the days passed and swelled into weeks, and these, in their turn, accumulated into months, I grew rapidly learned in worldly matters at Doctor Fifanti's house.
The curriculum I now pursued was so vastly different from that which my mother had bidden Fra Gervasio to set me, and my acquaintance with the profane writers advanced so swiftly once it was engaged upon, that I acquired knowledge as a weed grows.
Fifanti flung into strange passions when he discovered the extent of my ignorance and the amazing circumstance that whilst Fra Gervasio had made of me a fluent Latin scholar, he had kept me in utter ignorance of the classic writers, and almost in as great an ignorance of history itself. This the pedant set himself at once to redress, and amongst the earliest works he gave me as preparation were Latin translations of Thucydides and Herodotus which I devoured—especially the glowing pages of the latter—at a speed that alarmed my tutor.