"You are wrong, I think," he said. "Say that the Church has fallen a prey to self-seekers who have entered it under the cloak of the priesthood. What then? In their hands the Church has been enriched. She has gained power, which she must retain. And that is to the Church's good."
"And what of the scandal of it?" I stormed.
"O, as to that—why, boy, have you never read Boccaccio?"
"Never," said I.
"Read him, then," he urged me. "He will teach you much that you need to know. And read in particular the story of Abraam, the Jew, who upon visiting Rome was so scandalized by the licence and luxury of the clergy that he straightway had himself baptized and became a Christian, accounting that a religion that could survive such wiles of Satan to destroy it must indeed be the true religion, divinely inspired." He laughed his little cynical laugh to see my confusion increased by that bitter paradox.
It is little wonder that I was all bewildered, that I was like some poor mariner upon unknown waters, without stars or compass.
Thus that summer ebbed slowly, and the time of my projected minor ordination approached. Messer Gambara's visits to Fifanti's grew more and more frequent, until they became a daily occurrence; and now my cousin Cosimo came oftener too. But it was their custom to come in the forenoon, when I was at work with Fifanti. And often I observed the doctor to be oddly preoccupied, and to spend much time in creeping to the window that was all wreathed in clematis, and in peeping through that purple-decked green curtain into the garden where his excellency and Cosimo walked with Monna Giuliana.
When both visitors were there his anxiety seemed less. But if only one were present he would give himself no peace. And once when Messer Gambara and she went together within doors, he abruptly interrupted my studies, saying that it was enough for that day; and he went below to join them.
Half a year earlier I should have had no solution for his strange behaviour. But I had learnt enough of the world by now to perceive what maggot was stirring in that egg-shaped head. Yet I blushed for him, and for his foul and unworthy suspicions. As soon would I have suspected the painted Madonna from the brush of Raffaele Santi that I had seen over the high altar of the Church of San Sisto, as suspect the beautiful and noble-souled Giuliana of giving that old pedant cause for his uneasiness. Still, I conceived that this was the penalty that such a withered growth of humanity must pay for having presumed to marry a young wife.
We were much together in those days, Monna Giuliana and I. Our intimacy had grown over a little incident that it were well I should mention.
A young painter, Gianantonio Regillo, better known to the world as Il Pordenone, had come to Piacenza that summer to decorate the Church of Santa Maria della Campagna. He came furnished with letters to the Governor, and Gambara had brought him to Fifanti's villa. From Monna Giuliana the young painter heard the curious story of my having been vowed prenatally to the cloister by my mother, learnt her name and mine, and the hope that was entertained that I should walk in the ways of St. Augustine after whom I had been christened.
It happened that he was about to paint a picture of St. Augustine, as a fresco for the chapel of the Magi of the church I have named. And having seen me and heard that story of mine, he conceived the curious notion of using me as the model for the figure of the saint. I consented, and daily for a week he came to us in the afternoons to paint; and all the time Monna Giuliana would be with us, deeply interested in his work.
That picture he eventually transferred to his fresco, and there—O bitter irony!—you may see me to this day, as the saint in whose ways it was desired that I should follow.
Monna Giuliana and I would linger together in talk after the painter had gone; and this would be at about the time that I had my first lessons of Curial life from my Lord Gambara. You will remember that he mentioned Boccaccio to me, and I chanced to ask her was there in the library a copy of that author's tales.
"Has that wicked priest bidden you to read them?" she inquired, 'twixt seriousness and mockery, her dark eyes upon me in one of those glances that never left me easy.
I told her what had passed; and with a sigh and a comment that I would get an indigestion from so much mental nourishment as I was consuming, she led me to the little library to find the book.
Messer Fifanti's was a very choice collection of works, and every one in manuscript; for the doctor was something of an idealist, and greatly averse to the printing-press and the wide dissemination of books to which it led. Out of his opposition to the machine grew a dislike to its productions, which he denounced as vulgar; and not even their comparative cheapness and the fact that, when all was said, he was a man of limited means, would induce him to harbour a single volume that was so produced.
Along the shelves she sought, and finally drew down four heavy tomes. Turning the pages of the first, she found there, with a readiness that argued a good acquaintance with the work, the story of Abraam the Jew, which I desired to read as it had been set down. She bade me read it aloud, which I did, she seated in the window, listening to me.
At first I read with some constraint and shyness, but presently warming to my task and growing interested, I became animated and vivacious in my manner, so that when I ceased I saw her sitting there, her hands clasped about one knee, her eyes upon my face, her lips parted a little, the very picture of interest.
And with that it happened that we established a custom, and very often, almost daily, after dinner, we would repair together to the library, and I—who hitherto had no acquaintance with any save Latin works—began to make and soon to widen my knowledge of our Tuscan writers. We varied our reading. We dipped into our poets. Dante we read, and Petrarca, and both we loved, though better than the works of either—and this for the sake of the swift movement and action that is in his narrative, though his melodies, I realized, were not so pure—the Orlando of Ariosto.
Sometimes we would be joined by Fifanti himself; but he never stayed very long. He had an old-fashioned contempt for writings in what he called the "dialettale," and he loved the solemn injuvenations of the Latin tongue. Soon, as he listened, he would begin to yawn, and presently grunt and rise and depart, flinging a contemptuous word at the matter of my reading, and telling me at times that I might find more profitable amusement.
But I persisted in it, guided ever by Fifanti's lady. And whatever we read by way of divergence, ever and anon we would come back to the stilted, lucid, vivid pages of Boccaccio.
One day I chanced upon the tragical story of "Isabetta and the Pot of Basil," and whilst I read I was conscious that she had moved from where she had been sitting and had come to stand behind my chair. And when I reached the point at which the heart-broken Isabetta takes the head of her murdered lover to her room, a tear fell suddenly upon my hand.
I stopped, and looked up at Giuliana. She smiled at me through unshed tears that magnified her matchless eyes.
"I will read no more," I said. "It is too sad."
"Ah, no!" she begged. "Read on, Agostino! I love its sadness."
So I read on to the story's cruel end, and when it was done I sat quite still, myself a little moved by the tragedy of it, whilst Giuliana continued to lean against my chair. I was moved, too, in another way; curiously and unaccountably; and I could scarcely have defined what it was that moved me.
I sought to break the spell of it, and turned the pages. "Let me read something else," said I. "Something more gay, to dispel the sadness of this."
But her hand fell suddenly upon mine, enclasping and holding it. "Ah, no!" she begged me gently. "Give me the book. Let us read no more to-day."