Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Giovanni Pico, Conte della Mirandola, sat at the window of his apartment; the midday glow of a gentle winter sun was on his face; against the straight pink-toned marble front of the Palazzo opposite three dark pines rose and flung their long shadows up the street. The November sky was clear and cold in colour–the blue of chilly water.

Below in the street was silence, and in the chamber with the dull terra-cotta walls and sandstone floor was silence too.

Giovanni Pico was ill of slow fever that had long sucked his strength. He sat in a polished chair with gilt on it, and rested his long white hands on the sides of it; he wore a straight robe of soft red from his ears to his ankles; his sleeves were tight, and of gold net over orange velvet, and fell in embroidered points to his finger tips.

Round the high, close collar of his gown was a fine chain of silver and amber beads, which, passing several times round his throat, fell to his waist.

His hair, which was smooth and thick and fair, was parted in the middle and combed either side of his face; it fell in large curls on his breast and was finely scented. His countenance was sweet and good and lovely, the gray eyes large and gentle, the lips calm and sweetly curved. At present he was very pale, and there was a stillness in his expression and a motionlessness in his attitude that made his head and bust look like a carving in tinted alabaster.

The chamber was simple but beautiful. A low bed covered with silk draperies stood in one corner and near it was a table bearing costly books and a silver lamp.

On a dark cabinet stood a little broken figure of Tanagra, showing a dancing woman with a full robe held out; near her was an elusive glass of blue colour on a milk-white stem, like a bubble trembling to disperse. Above the bed hung a black crucifix and under it a red light burned with a quivering flame.

A scent of sandal-wood, nard and spikenard, was in the chamber; stirred occasionally by the breeze that whispered over Florence and entered the open window, this perfume strengthened and was wafted out into the street.

The sick man never moved as the hours went by; save that his eyes were opened and fixed with an enigmatic look on the quiet street below, he might have been asleep.

This young man, who sat alone gazing at Florence this November midday was one of the most famous people in Italy. The “Phoenix of Genius,” they called him, and he had early been renowned for his precocious learning, his vast industry, his beauty and his noble nature. To all his qualities his princely rank gave lustre; he had been one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and there was no one who could excel the brilliance of his reputation. As a prince who preferred letters to arms and distinction in the arts to any other ambition, he was unique; no man could ever have been more courted and praised and extolled than this man had been.

But to-day he was forgotten.

For it was the day fixed for the entry of the King of France into Florence, and though he came under the pretence of peace and an invitation to a treaty, he came stained with Italian blood and in the guise of a conqueror. And the Conte della Mirandola had been among the brightest in the bright rule of the resplendent Medici. Giovanni Pico had been at the death-bed of the great Lorenzo, who had spoken almost his last words to the gentle youth who had heard the Friar he had brought to Florence, FrÀ Girolamo, refuse the haughty ruler absolution unless he gave Florence her liberty.

And Lorenzo had turned his face to the wall and refused, and died with his sins on his head, and now his sons were eating the bread of charity in Rome, and FrÀ Girolamo was the greatest man in Florence, and Charles of France was entering the proud city at the twenty-first hour to-day.

Giovanni Pico thought of these things and of his dead friend, Lorenzo dei Medici; he believed that it was better for that Prince to have died, in pain of soul, than to have lived to see Florence to-day, changed indeed as it was since the days of his rule.

The Conte della Mirandola was changed also. It would have amazed Lorenzo to know that his most brilliant courtier was yearning for the plain habit of the brotherhood of St. Mark, and that the most learned and splendid noble in Florence wished to leave the world and follow FrÀ Girolamo Savonarola the steep way to Heaven.

But so it was with Giovanni. For some years past the eloquence of the Friar had wrought much with him; and lately, as the fierce politics of Italy sifted and clashed–as all the things he had known and loved fell and were broken–Giovanni Pico turned, as so many of the Florentines, to the shelter offered by the brotherhood of St. Mark.

Now, as he gazed down into the empty street, he wished that he had not so long delayed; he wished that he was, even now, in the dark robe of a brother of St. Mark, lying in his cell, face downwards, before the crucifix, praying for mercy for his soul and for those long years he had filled with worldly learning and in following the vain shadows of heathen philosophy.

He moved his fair head and sighed and lifted his right hand vaguely and looked at it. On the second finger was a yellow intaglio of a bull wreathed with flowers. It gave him pleasure even now in the midst of his thoughts of God. He watched the liquid light slip in and out of it in glints of amber and gold, and in looking at the exquisite workmanship and reflecting that there was not such another in the world, he forgot the convent of St. Mark in his joy in the heathen jewel.

The red hanging was lifted from the doorway and a dark figure entered–a monk in a russet gown, with a thin face and ardent eyes.

The young Prince looked up.

“FrÀ Girolamo!”

Savonarola approached him, looked at him with some tenderness in his harsh features.

“Why are you at the window?” he asked.

Giovanni Pico smiled in a melancholy manner. “I wish to see the French,” he answered. “Seated here I can view them, where the street ends, passing—”

He raised his pure face.

“On such a day as this can you find time for me?” he murmured.

FrÀ Girolamo’s eyes were flaming and troubled with many thoughts.

“It was you who persuaded the Medici to summon me to Florence,” he said. “But for you I should never have been here, doing what I can to save the city. Judge, then, if I cannot find time to come and watch with you a little when you are sick.”

“So sick!” smiled Giovanni. “I feel as if I was very old and had outlived all that I ever loved. What are my attainments now, or the praises I garnered? Where is the Prince who flattered me and the courtiers who bowed down? Gone, leaving a great emptiness; and you are the one person now who can bring me peace.”

“Will you follow the Lord?” asked FrÀ Girolamo quickly.

“I will. I will leave the world; though I am ‘lighter than vanity,’ I have the strength to do that. I will be one of your humble friars. Hark, what was that?”

A sound of trumpets quivered in the gentle stillness, and the sick man leant forward, gripping the arms of his chair.

“The French,” said Savonarola, and stepped out on to the balcony. “We have no fear of them; they come to treat with the Republic, not to conquer her, and Capponi is stronger than King Charles.”

He might have added that he was himself stronger than either, and that when he had walked into the French camp to warn the King of the Lord’s wrath if he behaved dishonourably to Florence that monarch had cowered before him.

Still, the fact was that King Charles had come as a conqueror into Italy, and that a foreign army was entering Florence, and this fact rankled in the mind of both Dominican and noble.

Giovanni Pico rang the silver handbell on the table near him, and two pages came from the next apartment. The Prince bade them lift him up and carry him out on to the balcony, which was done; and he hung weak as a woman between them, yet managed with their help to reach the balcony, and supported against the stone balustrade to stand feebly in the sunshine.

At the end of the street, a couple of houses away, was a good view of the Ponte Vecchio which spanned the Arno, and was to-day gaily decorated with flags and triumphal arches.

A great crowd of people had already assembled, and were running to and fro, shouting and laughing and hustling against one another; some had already overflowed into this side-street, which a while before had been so quiet, while at every window heads appeared and figures began to show on the roofs. Most of the houses were hung with arras and flags.

“We have no decoration,” said Pico della Mirandola.

Savonarola gave him a quick look, then passed into the chamber; he seemed like a man exalted in his soul.

But the friend of Lorenzo dei Medici remained on the balcony, supported by his pages and leaning on the stone that was pale gold in the winter sun.

A huge noise encroached on the lesser noises of the crowd–a noise like the din of an enormous fair, beating of drums, blowing pipes, and the shriek of trumpets, the clatter of arms and the sound of horses’ hoofs and horses’ harness as they jostled together.

A varie-coloured throng came jostling over the bridge; the foremost, before whom a little space was with some difficulty cleared, was mounted on a tall and handsome charger, over which a gorgeous baldaquin was upheld.

Giovanni noticed that this man was riding with his lance levelled–the sign of a conqueror; and as he hesitated, not knowing which way to turn, the Florentine had a good view of his person, which was extraordinarily misshapen.

He wore black velvet, and sat hunched together on the saddle, his body being prodigiously small, his legs long and twisted, his feet huge and deformed. A rich and cumbersome mantle of cloth of gold hung from his shoulders, emphasizing the meanness of his presence; his head was huge and lolled on his chest; his mouth was gaping; his hair so pale as to be almost white. This was all Giovanni could see of his face before a footman seized his bridle and he was guided out of sight.

Giovanni knew this horseman for the King of France. He was followed by four big drums played at the double, and two pipes; and close behind him, endeavouring to regain their places at his side, which they had lost in the jostle of the turning, came the two Cardinals of St. Piero in Vincoli St. Malo, and at a short distance some French Marshals, who were closely followed by the Royal bodyguard of bowmen; then some French knights on foot and the Swiss vanguard–the finest infantry in Europe, splendid in many colours, bearing burnished street-halberds and distinguished by the waving plumes on the helmets of the officers.

After them came the agile, small, Gascon Infantry, and then the gorgeous Cavalry, the finest knights among the French aristocracy, glittering in their gold and silver armour, their brocade mantles, their chains of gold and sparkling jewels.

Above their heads floated the silk pennons they carried, while the velvet banners clung round their poles in the breezeless air.

Tall and fierce-looking Scotch archers armed with terrible and heavy weapons came after these.

The French Artillery had gone on to Rome by another route, and there were no guns with the army; but their numbers, their strange attire and stranger weapons, the richness of their appointments, the discipline they used in their marching, made them a new and terrifying spectacle to a city that only knew mercenaries.

The knights, soldiers, and archers were still pouring over the bridge when Giovanni whispered to his pages to help him back to his chair.

He sank into it in his old attitude–his hands on the arms, his head resting against the back; only now his eyes were closed, and the steady sound of the passing army was in his ears.

Girolamo Savonarola stood in the corner of the chamber; he also was listening to the sounds of the French entering Florence, and though he stood very still, with his hands on his breast, there was something triumphant in his face.

“FrÀ Girolamo,” said Giovanni under his breath, “if I–should not live to enter your order, will you bury me in the habit of it?”

The Friar made no answer to this; he moved nearer the window and remarked, “Angelo Poliziano died this morning.”

“Ah!” A half-breath parted the young man’s full, pale lips, and a deeper look of sadness troubled the smooth calm of his gentle features. Poliziano was a name nearly as brilliant as his own, a man who had also been present at il Magnifico’s death-bed. It seemed as if all the friends of the old dynasty were following that dynasty’s fate.

“No one to-day will remember Poliziano,” said Giovanni, following out his thoughts; “and no one would remember Pico–if I were to die to-day.” He added instantly, turning his head towards the Friar, “Save only you, FrÀ Girolamo.”

Savonarola approached his chair and looked down at him with deep, sparkling eyes.

“Are you very ill?” he asked earnestly.

The young Prince smiled sweetly up at him.

“I am dying,” he said.

FrÀ Girolamo was startled; he lifted his right hand and let it fall on his heart.

“I received the viaticum this morning,” said Pico della Mirandola. “I have been surprised by death … too soon.… I would have died a Friar, and I would have died before I heard yonder army crossing the Arno.”

Savonarola still did not speak; his dark face was stained by a dusky flush of pain. He loved this beautiful young man who was so devoted and humble a follower of his doctrines–this prince whom neither great birth, great gifts, great fortune nor great praise had spoiled, and he hoped that he would not die. It was a marvellous thing if he, broken and ill, was to be spared and this youth to be taken in the flower of his days.

“Oh, what have I done with my life!” whispered Giovanni, and the tears sparkled in his long clear eyes.

“Are you at peace?” asked the Friar abruptly.

“Nay, not quite at peace, for I love the things of this world and cannot wholly forget them, even while every breath I draw brings me nearer the Judgment of God.”

The Friar looked at him earnestly.

“Why should you die, Giovanni? I think you will live.”

“No; death entered my chamber this morning and is here now, waiting his time.”

“Should I bring your friends or your physician?”

“Let me die alone,” answered Giovanni. “I have been too much in crowds all my life.”

“You have no great sins to answer for,” returned the Friar. “You need not be afraid to appear before God, Conte.”

“I am not afraid,” replied the young man faintly. “But I am very loth to leave the world, and that troubles me.”

A light of enthusiasm and joy sprang into the Friar’s eyes. He clasped his thin, nervous hands convulsively together.

“Could I but have brought you within the walls of St. Mark’s–into that great peace where the spirit of St. Antonine still dwells, where it is indeed like Heaven for the great company of angels painted by FrÀ Beato Angelico that beam from the walls!”

“Alas!” said the Conte della Mirandola; “such joy is not for me!”

Clouds had crept over the perfect blue; faint silver veils they were, and a pale rain descended and a low wind rose, stirring the boughs of the cypresses and the arras hanging before the houses.

Still could be heard the shouting, the tramp, the jostle of arms, the running to and fro, the tap of the drums, the whistle of the pipes.

And Pico della Mirandola could not close his ears to these sounds; he was thinking more of Florence than of God, and because of this the tears ran down his cheeks.

The Friar seemed to guess his thoughts.

“Florence is in God’s hands, and I am his instrument to preserve her people.”

Giovanni took his eyes from the rain and the cypresses and the soft grey sky, and looked at the Friar.

“Can you preserve Florence against a Borgia Pope and a French Conqueror?” he whispered.

“As God’s lieutenant, I can,” said FrÀ Girolamo in a firm and splendid voice.

Giovanni closed his eyes.

“I must forget Florence,” he answered. “I must forget the world.”

He drew the yellow intaglio from his finger and, still with his eyes closed, dropped it on the floor; it rolled away against the wall.

With slow movements he unwound the chain from his neck and cast that down too.

Then he opened his eyes.

“Bury me in your holy and humble habit,” he asked. “I have longed to wear it in life, and in death maybe I might be thought not unworthy–and lay me in St. Mark’s Church.”

“Giovanni, both these things will I do–yet I still think that you will not die.”

The Prince shook his head and called one of his pages, who came with his eyes red from weeping for this sickness of his master.

And Giovanni bade the boy take away the figure of Tanagra and all the heathen vanities of the room and bring him the crucifix above the bed.

Sadly the youth obeyed, and when he brought the crucifix Giovanni clasped it gladly in his two slim white hands and pressed it to his heart, murmuring some prayers in his throat.

The rain drifted in through the open window, a slight, sweet spray, and the perfumes of the chamber were lost in the freshness of it. Giovanni gazed at the lightly blowing clouds and the dark tops of the cypresses stirring against them, and he thought that these trees were like souls–rooted to the earth, yet striving to be free, bending and moaning in their efforts heavenwards.

“Will you not rest in your bed?” asked FrÀ Girolamo, for he saw a slow pallor coming over the young man’s face.

“No,” said Giovanni; “but out of your great goodness, pray for me now.”

And Savonarola knelt down and began to recite the penitential psalms in a low but strong voice.

And Giovanni Pico listened, but there was a languor and a weakness in his heart and in his mind, and he began to think of spring flowers, white and scented; of long galleries, cool with shade, looking into square courtyards full of orange trees with a fountain in the centre; of heathen statues, broken and white against a background of ilex and laurel; of the sea heated by the sun and sparkling with violet and blue; of engraved gems, yellow, tawny and orange; of alabaster heads of women, tinted faintly on the cheeks and lips and gilded in the hair-net. And none of these things were of Heaven, yet they occupied the whole of Giovanni Pico’s thoughts, and he forgot the crucifix in his slack hands; he forgot the Friar reciting the psalms; he forgot the army passing without, and his spirit turned backwards to the delights of dead springs and summers.

The Friar continued praying.

Giovanni closed his eyes; he thought that he was walking by a fountain round which little close violets grew beneath their leaves, and that a woman in a long green gown was plucking these violets and giving them to him till his hands were over-full, and the little flowers fell down in a shower on the surface of the water of the fountain and floated there above the reflection of the blue sky; and he stretched out his hands to regain them, and as he did so he noticed that his hands were bare, and with a cry he started up, crying, “Where is my intaglio ring?” And the crucifix fell to the floor.

FrÀ Girolamo picked up the holy symbol, and his glance was red with bitter fire.

“What are your thoughts in this hour?” he cried. “Do you still dream of the lusts and pleasures of the world?”

Giovanni bent his head and wept.

“Speak to me of God,” he whispered. “I am a great sinner.”

Savonarola placed the crucifix again in his hands, and now he grasped it so hard that the sharp edges of it entered his flesh, and at the pain he groaned, and was glad, for he felt his mind quickened with thoughts of God. Resolutely he drove all soft and beautiful images from him–all memories, all philosophies and learning, and they faded like snow before fire in front of the awful visage of God that began to rise slowly and terribly before Giovanni Pico.

The world turned the colour of dark smoke, and One with a long spear of living flame strode across the Heavens calling Judgment, and there was a drum beating and a trumpet calling.

He thought that he heard the voice of Lorenzo whispering in Hell, and he tried to lift his head to look for his friend, but it was so heavy that it would not move, and he cried out–

“There is a great change in him,” said FrÀ Girolamo, rising from his knees. “Surely he is dying.”

The cypress trees shook in the veil of the rain and the low clouds sailed more swiftly above the pink-fronted houses. Steadily the French knights went past the street, and the chamber was full of the sound of their armour and horses; but Giovanni Pico was in darkness, labouring up to God.

He rose up from his chair and stood erect a moment, the pale light of the fading afternoon clear on his blood-red gown and his fair locks and the dark crucifix he held, as with blind eyes he stared across the room.

“Death is terrible,” he said. He fell on his knees. “Friar, death is terrible.” He fell on his face. “Death is very terrible.”

They raised him up and laid him on his bed in the shadow, and as they lifted him his crimson gown fell apart and showed his striped hose and his pearl embroidered garters and the cross-work of jewels on his shoes; and his bed was very rich and lovely and carved with little dancing figures of fauns; and FrÀ Girolamo was grieved that he should die amid all this vanity, and prayed heartily to the Lord to forgive it. Then he bethought him that the Prince had wished to die in the habit of his own order, and feeling assured that he was yet many hours off death, he bid the pages watch by their master and left them to go himself to the convent of St. Mark to fetch a friar’s robe.

Giovanni Pico lay very still; his face was white and fallen and his eyes closed. The two boys looked at him and whispered together; they greatly loved their master, and they did not love, though they feared, FrÀ Girolamo.

One of them tip-toed out of the room and brought back the figure of Tanagra; the other took from a press a lustre dish of peaches and late white roses opening on to golden hearts, and took them to his master, who was muttering prayers with a feeble voice.

The boy held up the dish and said softly: “My noble lord, do not grieve so at what the Friar says, for surely Heaven is beautiful as Tuscany when the blossoms come out, and there is a pleasant company there seated on the grass and plaiting roses into crowns while God walks among them, very splendid and gentle.”

Giovanni opened his eyes and saw the flowers and fruit and smelt the rich perfume of them and faintly smiled; then he saw the figure of Tanagra, and his smile deepened, and all the world rushed round him again.

“There is great comfort in these things,” said the second page; “and wherefore should a Prince die like a poor Friar?”

He picked up the long chain Giovanni had flung down and brought it to the bed.

“My ring,” said the dying man: “the yellow intaglio—”

They found it where it had spun away against the wall, and tenderly brought it to him and slipped it on his finger, and he looked at it, still smiling.

Then one of them fetched a psalter, illuminated in colour and gold, with knobs of turkis on the cover, and put that in his right hand; and the other brought a casket showing a painting of Venus and Adonis on the lid and opened it, and from it took long locks of fair and dark hair that had once belonged to all the women Giovanni Pico had loved.

This casket he laid on the bed, and Giovanni looked at it; and God receded very far away again.

“What are those bells?” he asked.

“King Charles is being received in the Duomo by the Signorie, my lord.”

Pico della Mirandola moved his pale lips slowly.

“I hope Piero Capponi will know how to–deal with–these French–I hope–FrÀ Girolamo will save Florence–I wish Lorenzo had lived—”

He lifted the yellow ring to his cheek and fell, as they thought, asleep.

But when FrÀ Girolamo returned with the humble robe of a brother of St. Mark’s, Pico della Mirandola was dead amid his vanities, with the rare intaglio on his finger.

And Savonarola used no word of reproach, but permitted him to be buried in the friar’s habit and in the Church of St. Mark.

THE END

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.