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BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 10
At the Duke's express wish, Odo was to lodge in the palace; and when he
entered the courtyard he found Cantapresto waiting to lead him to his
apartment.
The rooms assigned to him lay at the end of one of the wings overlooking
the gardens; and as he mounted the great stairway and walked down the
corridors with their frescoed walls and busts of Roman emperors he
recalled the far-off night when he had passed through the same scenes as
a frightened awe-struck child. Where he had then beheld a supernatural
fabric, peopled with divinities of bronze and marble, and glowing with
light and colour, he now saw a many-corridored palace, stately indeed,
and full of a faded splendour, but dull and antiquated in comparison
with the new-fangled elegance of the Sardinian court. Yet at every turn
some object thrilled the fibres of old association or pride of race.
Here he traversed a gallery hung with the portraits of his line; there
caught a glimpse of the pages' antechamber through which he and his
mother had been led when they waited on the Duke; and from the windows
of his closet he overlooked the alleys and terraces where he had
wandered with the hunchback.
One of the Duke's pages came to say that his Highness would receive the
cavaliere when the court rose from dinner; and finding himself with two
hours on his hands, Odo determined to await his kinsman's summons in the
garden. Thither he presently repaired; and was soon, with a mournful
pleasure, retracing the paths he had first explored in such an ecstasy
of wonder. The pleached walks and parterres were in all the freshness of
June. Roses and jasmine mingled on the terrace-walls, citron-trees
ingeniously grafted with red and white carnations stood in Faenza jars
before the lemon-house, and marble nymphs and fauns peeped from thickets
of flowering camellias. A noise of childish voices presently attracted
Odo, and following a tunnel of clipped limes he came out on a theatre
cut in the turf and set about with statues of Apollo and the Muses. A
handful of boys in military dress were performing a series of evolutions
in the centre of this space; and facing them stood a child of about ten
years, in a Colonel's uniform covered with orders, his hair curled and
powdered, a paste-board sword in his hand, and his frail body supported
on one side by a turbaned dwarf, and on the other by an ecclesiastic who
was evidently his governor. The child, as Odo approached, was calling
out his orders to his regiment in a weak shrill voice, moving now here,
now there on his booted tottering legs, as his two supporters guided
him, and painfully trying to flourish the paper weapon that was too
heavy for his nerveless wrist. Behind this strange group stood another
figure, that of a tall heavy man, richly dressed, with a curious
Oriental-looking order on his breast and a veiled somnolent eye which he
kept fixed on the little prince.
Odo had been about to advance and do homage to his cousin; but a sign
from the man in the background arrested him. The manoeuvres were soon
over, the heir was lifted into a little gilded chariot drawn by white
goats, his regiment formed in line and saluted him, and he disappeared
down one of the alleys with his attendants.
This ceremony over, the tall man advanced to Odo with a bow and asked
pardon for the liberty he had taken.
"You are doubtless," said he, "his Highness's cousin, the Cavaliere
Valsecca; and my excuse for intruding between yourself and the prince is
that I am the Duke's physician, Count Heiligenstern, and that the heir
is at present undergoing a course of treatment under my care. His
health, as you probably know, has long been a cause of anxiety to his
illustrious parents, and when I was summoned to Pianura the College of
Physicians had given up all hope of saving him. Since my coming,
however, I flatter myself that a marked change is perceptible. My method
is that of invigorating the blood by exciting the passions most likely
to produce a generous vital ardour. Thus, by organising these juvenile
manoeuvres, I arouse the prince's martial zeal; by encouraging him to
study the history of his ancestors, I evoke his political ambition; by
causing him to be led about the gardens on a pony, accompanied by a
miniature pack of Maltese dogs in pursuit of a tame doe, I stimulate the
passion of the chase; but it is essential to my system that one emotion
should not violently counteract another, and I am therefore obliged to
protect my noble patient from the sudden intrusion of new impressions."
This explanation, delivered in a sententious tone, and with a strong
German accent, seemed to Odo no more than a learned travesty of the
familiar and pathetic expedient of distracting a sick child by the
pretence of manly diversions. He was struck, however, by the physician's
aspect, and would have engaged him in talk had not one of the Duke's
gentlemen appeared with the announcement that his Highness would be
pleased to receive the Cavaliere Valsecca.
Like most dwellings of its kind in Italy, the palace of Pianura
resembled one of those shells which reveal by their outer convolutions
the gradual development of the creature housed within. For two or three
generations after Bracciaforte, the terrible founder of the line, had
made himself master of the republic, his descendants had clung to the
old brick fortress or rocca which the great condottiere had held
successfully against the burghers' arquebuses and the battering-rams of
rival adventurers, and which still glassed its battlements in the slow
waters of the Piana beside the city wall. It was Ascanio, the first
Duke, the correspondent of Politian and Castiglione, who, finding the
ancestral lair too cramped for the court of a humanist prince, had
summoned Luciano da Laurana to build a palace better fitted to his
state. Duke Ascanio, in bronze by Verocchio, still looked up with pride
from the palace-square at the brick and terra-cotta facade with its
fruit-wreathed arches crowned by imperial profiles; but a later prince
found the small rooms and intricate passages of Laurana's structure
inadequate to the pomp of an ally of Leo X., and Vignola added the state
apartments, the sculpture gallery and the libraries.
The palace now passed for one of the wonders of Italy. The Duke's guest,
the witty and learned Aretino, celebrated it in verse, his friend
Cardinal Bembo in prose; Correggio painted the walls of one room, Guilio
Romano the ceiling of another. It seemed that magnificence could go no
farther, till the seventeenth century brought to the throne a Duke who
asked himself how a self-respecting prince could live without a theatre,
a riding-school and an additional wing to lodge the ever-growing train
of court officials who had by this time replaced the feudal men-at-arms.
He answered the question by laying an extra tax on his people and
inviting to Pianura the great Roman architect Carlo Borromini, who
regretfully admitted that his illustrious patron was on the whole less
royally housed than their Highnesses of Mantua and Parma. Within five
years the "cavallerizza," the theatre and the gardens flung defiance at
these aspiring potentates; and again Pianura took precedence of her
rivals. The present Duke's father had expressed the most recent tendency
of the race by the erection of a chapel in the florid Jesuit style; and
the group of buildings thus chronicled in rich durable lines the varying
passions and ambitions of three hundred years of power.
As Odo followed his guide toward the Duke's apartments he remarked a
change in the aspect of the palace. Where formerly the corridors had
been thronged with pages, lacqueys and gaily-dressed cavaliers and
ladies, only a few ecclesiastics now glided by: here a Monsignore in
ermine and lace rochet, attended by his chaplain and secretaries, there
a cowled Dominican or a sober-looking secular priest. The Duke was
lodged in the oldest portion of the palace, and Odo, who had never
visited these apartments, looked with interest at the projecting
sculptured chimney and vaulted ceiling of the pages' ante-chamber, which
had formerly been the guardroom and was still hung with panoplies.
Thence he was led into a gallery lined with scriptural tapestries and
furnished in the heavy style of the seventeenth century. Here he waited
a few moments, hearing the sound of conversation in the room beyond;
then the door of this apartment opened, and a handsome Dominican passed
out, followed by a page who invited Odo to step into the Duke's cabinet.
This was a very small room, completely panelled in delicate wood-carving
touched with gold. Over this panelling, regardless of the beauty of its
design, had been hung a mass of reliquaries and small devotional
bas-reliefs and paintings, making the room appear more like the chapel
of a wonder-working saint than a prince's closet. Here again Odo found
himself alone; but the page presently returned to say that his Highness
was not well and begged the cavaliere to wait on him in his bed-chamber.
The most conspicuous object in this room was a great bedstead raised on
a dais. The plumed posts and sumptuous hangings of the bed gave it an
altar-like air, and the Duke himself, who lay between the curtains, his
wig replaced by a nightcap, a scapular about his neck, and his
shrivelled body wrapped in a brocaded dressing-gown, looked more like a
relic than a man. His heavy under-lip trembled slightly as he offered
his hand to Odo's salute.
"You find me, cousin," said he after a brief greeting, "much troubled by
a question that has of late incessantly disturbed my rest--can the soul,
after full intuition of God, be polluted by the sins of the body?" he
clutched Odo's hand in his burning grasp. "Is it possible that there are
human beings so heedless of their doom that they can go about their
earthly pleasures with this awful problem unsolved? Oh, why has not some
Pope decided it? Why has God left this hideous uncertainty hanging over
us? You know the doctrine of Plotinus--'he who has access to God leaves
the virtues behind him as the images of the gods are left in the outer
temple.' Many of the fathers believed that the Neoplatonists were
permitted to foreshadow in their teachings the revelation of Christ; but
on these occult points much doubt remains, and though certain of the
great theologians have inclined to this interpretation, there are others
who hold that it leans to the heresy of Quietism."
Odo, who had inferred in the Duke's opening words an allusion to the
little prince's ill-health, or to some political anxiety, was at a loss
how to reply to this strange appeal; but after a moment he said, "I have
heard that your Highness's director is a man of great learning and
discrimination. Can he not help your Highness to some decision on this
point?"
The Duke glanced at him suspiciously. "Father Ignazio," said he, "is in
fact well-versed in theology; but there are certain doctrines
inaccessible to all but a few who have received the direct illumination
of heaven, and on this point I cannot feel that his judgment is final."
He wiped the dampness from his sallow forehead and pressed the scapular
to his lips. "May you never know," he cried, "the agony of a father
whose child is dying, of a sovereign who longs to labour for the welfare
of his people, but who is racked by the thought that in giving his mind
to temporal duties and domestic affections while such spiritual
difficulties are still unsolved, he may be preparing for himself an
eternity of torture such as that--" and he pointed to an old and
blackened picture of the Last Judgment that hung on the opposite wall.
Odo tried to frame a soothing rejoinder; but the Duke passionately
interrupted him. "Alas, cousin, no rest is possible for one who has
attained the rapture of the Beatific Vision, yet who trembles lest the
mere mechanical indulgence of the senses may still subject him to the
common penalty of sin! As a man who has devoted himself to the study of
theology is privileged to argue on questions forbidden to the vulgar, so
surely fasting, maceration and ecstasy must liberate the body from the
bondage of prescribed morality. Shall no distinction be recognised
between my conduct and that of the common sot or debauchee whose soul
lies in blind subjection to his lower instincts? I, who have laboured
early and late to remove temptation from my people--who have punished
offences against conduct as unsparingly as spiritual error--I, who have
not scrupled to destroy every picture in my galleries that contained a
nude figure or a wanton attitude--I, who have been blessed from
childhood by tokens of divine favour and miraculous intervention--can I
doubt that I have earned the privileges of that higher state in which
the soul is no longer responsible for the failings of the body? And
yet--and yet--what if I were mistaken?" he moaned. "What if my advisors
have deceived me? Si autem et sic impius sum, quare frustra laboravi?"
And he sank back on his pillows limp as an empty glove.
Alarmed at his disorder, Odo stood irresolute whether to call for help;
but as he hesitated the Duke feebly drew from his bosom a gold key
attached to a slender Venetian chain.
"This," said he, "unlocks the small tortoise-shell cabinet yonder. In it
you will find a phial of clear liquor, a few drops of which will restore
me. 'Tis an essence distilled by the Benedictine nuns of the Perpetual
Adoration and peculiarly effective in accesses of spiritual
disturbance."
Odo complied, and having poured the liquor into a glass, held it to his
cousin's lips. In a moment the Duke's eye revived and he began to speak
in a weak but composed voice, with an air of dignity in singular
contrast to his previous self-abandonment. "I am," said he, "unhappily
subject to such seizures after any prolonged exertion, and a
conversation I have just had with my director has left me in no fit
state to receive you. The cares of government sit heavy on one who has
scarce health enough for the duties of a private station; and were it
not for my son I should long since have withdrawn to the shelter of the
monastic life." He paused and looked at Odo with a melancholy kindness.
"In you," said he, "the native weakness of our complexion appears to
have been tempered by the blood of your mother's house, and your
countenance gives every promise of health and vivacity."
He broke off with a sigh and continued in a more authoritative tone:
"You have learned from Count Trescorre my motive in summoning you to
Pianura. My son's health causes me the liveliest concern, my own is
subject to such seizures as you have just witnessed. I cannot think
that, in this age of infidelity and disorder, God can design to deprive
a Christian state of a line of sovereigns uniformly zealous in the
defence of truth; but the purposes of Heaven are inscrutable, as the
recent suppression of the Society of Jesus has most strangely proved;
and should our dynasty be extinguished I am consoled by the thought that
the rule will pass to one of our house. Of this I shall have more to say
to you in future. Meanwhile your first business is to acquaint yourself
with your new surroundings. The Duchess holds a circle this evening,
where you will meet the court; but I must advise you that the persons
her Highness favours with her intimacy are not those best qualified to
guide and instruct a young man in your position. These you will meet at
the house of the Countess Belverde, one of the Duchess's ladies, a woman
of sound judgment and scrupulous piety, who gathers about her all our
most learned and saintly ecclesiastics. Count Trescorre will instruct
you in all that becomes your position at court, and my director, Father
Ignazio, will aid you in the selection of a confessor. As to the Bishop,
a most worthy and conversable prelate, to whom I would have you show all
due regard, his zeal in spiritual matters is not as great as I could
wish, and in private talk he indulges in a laxity of opinion against
which I cannot too emphatically warn you. Happily, however, Pianura
offers other opportunities of edification. Father Ignazio is a man of
wide learning and inflexible doctrine, and in several of our
monasteries, notably that of the Barnabites, you will find examples of
sanctity and wisdom such as a young man may well devoutly consider. Our
convents also are distinguished for the severity of their rule and the
spiritual privileges accorded them. The Carmelites have every reason to
hope for the beatification of their aged Prioress, and among the nuns of
the Perpetual Adoration is one who has recently received the ineffable
grace of the vulnus divinum. In the conversation of these saintly nuns,
and of the holy Abbot of the Barnabites, you will find the surest
safeguard against those errors and temptations that beset your age." He
leaned back with a gesture of dismissal; but added, reddening slightly,
as Odo prepared to withdraw: "You will oblige me, cousin, when you meet
my physician, Count Heiligenstern, by not touching on the matter of the
restorative you have seen me take."
Odo left his cousin's presence with a feeling of deep discouragement. To
a spirit aware of the new influences abroad, and fresh from contact with
evils rooted in the very foundations of the existing system, there was a
peculiar irony in being advised to seek guidance and instruction in the
society of ecstatic nuns and cloistered theologians. The Duke, with his
sickly soul agrope in a maze of Neoplatonism and probabilism, while his
people groaned under unjust taxes, while knowledge and intellectual
liberty languished in a kind of moral pest-house, seemed to Odo like a
ruler who, in time of famine, should keep the royal granaries locked and
spend his days praying for the succour that his own hand might have
dispensed.
In the tapestry room one of his Highness's gentlemen waited to reconduct
Odo. Their way lay through the portrait gallery of which he had
previously caught a glimpse, and here he begged his guide to leave him.
He felt a sudden desire to meet his unknown ancestors face to face, and
to trace the tendencies which, from the grim Bracciaforte and the
stately sceptical humanist of Leo's age, had mysteriously forced the
race into its ever-narrowing mould. The dusky canvases, hung high in
tarnished escutcheoned frames, presented a continuous chronicle of the
line, from Bracciaforte himself, with his predatory profile outlined by
some early Tuscan hand against the turrets of his impregnable fortress.
Odo lingered long on this image, but it was not till he stood beneath
Piero della Francesca's portrait of the first Duke that he felt the
thrill of kindred instincts. In this grave face, with its sensuous mouth
and melancholy speculative eyes, he recognised the mingled strain of
impressionability and unrest that had reached such diverse issues in his
cousin and himself. The great Duke of the "Golden Age," in his
Titianesque brocade, the statuette of a naked faun at his elbow, and a
faun-like smile on his own ruddy lips, represented another aspect of the
ancestral spirit: the rounded temperament of an age of Cyrenaicism, in
which every moment was a ripe fruit sunned on all sides. A little
farther on, the shadow of the Council of Trent began to fall on the
ducal faces, as the uniform blackness of the Spanish habit replaced the
sumptuous colours of the Renaissance. Here was the persecuting Bishop,
Paul IV.'s ally against the Spaniards, painted by Caravaggio in hauberk
and mailed gloves, with his motto--Etiam cum gladio--surmounting the
episcopal chair; there the Duke who, after a life of hard warfare and
stern piety, had resigned his office to his son and died in the
"angelica vestis" of the tertiary order; and the "beatified" Duchess who
had sold her jewels to buy corn for the poor during the famine of 1670,
and had worn a hair-shirt under a corset that seemed stiff enough to
serve all the purposes of bodily mortification. So the file descended,
the colours fading, the shadows deepening, till it reached a baby
porporato of the last century, who had donned the cardinal's habit at
four, and stood rigid and a little pale in his red robes and lace, with
a crucifix and a skull on the table to which the top of his berretta
hardly reached.
It seemed to Odo as he gazed on the long line of faces as though their
owners had entered one by one into a narrowing defile, where the sun
rose later and set earlier on each successive traveller; and in every
countenance, from that of the first Duke to that of his own peruked and
cuirassed grandfather, he discerned the same symptom of decadency: that
duality of will which, in a delicately-tempered race, is the fatal fruit
of an undisturbed pre-eminence. They had ruled too long and enjoyed too
much; and the poor creature he had just left to his dismal scruples and
forebodings seemed the mere empty husk of long-exhausted passions.
Content of BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 10 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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