Baglioni

“ Rappaccini!” whispered the professor when the stranger had passed. “Has he ever seen your face before?”
“Not that I know,” answered Giovanni, starting at the name.
“He HAS seen you! he must have seen you!” said Baglioni, hastily. “For some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I know that look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance of some experiment, he has killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as deep as Nature itself, but without Nature’s warmth of love. ”

“ When Julius reached Orvieto, he was met by Gianpaolo Baglioni, the bloody and licentious despot of Perugia. Notwithstanding Baglioni knew that Julius was coming to assert his supremacy, and notwithstanding the Pope knew that this might drive to desperation a man so violent and stained with crime as Baglioni, they rode together to Perugia, where Gianpaolo paid homage and supplied his haughty guest with soldiers. The rashness of this act of Julius sent a thrill of admiration throughout Italy, stirring that sense of terribilità which fascinated the imagination of the Renaissance. ”

“ From the 121 balconies and turrets of these palaces, swarming with their bravi, they surveyed the splendid land that felt their force—a land which, even in midsummer, from sunrise to sunset keeps the light of day upon its up-turned face. And from this eyrie they issued forth to prey upon the plain, or to take their lust of love or blood within the city streets. The Baglioni spent but short time in the amusements of peace. From father to son they were warriors, and we have records of few Italian houses, except perhaps the Malatesti of Rimini, who equalled them in hardihood and fierceness. ”

“ He would make his horse leap into the air, while he sat straight and square in the saddle, not stirring hand or foot. The citizens looked on marvelling at these feats of skill and daring. Gismondo was slim, and walked with the lightness of a cat, so that no man in Perugia, however quick of hearing, knew when he was coming. The richest and perhaps the handsomest of the Baglioni family was young Grifonetto Baglioni, whose beauty Matarazzo compares to Ganymede. He was the son of Grifone and Atalanta Baglioni, and nephew to Guido and Ridolfo. ”

“ Giovanni groaned and hid his face
"Her father," continued Baglioni, "was not restrained by natural affection from offering up his child in this horrible manner as the victim of his insane zeal for science; for, let us do him justice, he is as true a man of science as ever distilled his own heart in an alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a doubt you are selected as the material of some new experiment. Perhaps the result is to be death; perhaps a fate more awful still. Rappaccini, with what he calls the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing." ”

“ Often and often have those steps of the Duomo run with blood of Baglioni, Oddi, Arcipreti, and La Staffa. Once the whole church had to be washed with wine and blessed anew before the rites of Christianity could be resumed in its desecrated aisles. It was here that within the space of two days, in 1500, the catafalque was raised for the murdered Astorre, and for his traitorous cousin Grifonetto Baglioni. Here, too, if more ancient tradition does not err, were stretched the corpses of twenty-seven members of the same great house at the end of one of their grim combats. ”

“ Like this were the bravi who hunted Lorenzaccio to death at Venice. Like this was Pietro Paolo Baglioni, whose fault, in the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he could not succeed in being 'perfettamente tristo.' Beautiful, but inhuman; passionate, but cold; powerful, but rendered impotent for firm and lofty deeds by immorality and treason; how many centuries of men like this once wasted Italy and plunged her into servitude! Yet what material is here, under sterner discipline, and with a nobler national ideal, for the formation of heroic armies. ”

“ Shall a mere word set up a barrier for grown men?” demanded the fierce Baglioni.
“It would not for one woman that I know of,” said the clear boyish voice of Monna Panthasilea, and so drew upon herself, with those first words she had ventured to utter in that council, the gaze of all. There was a feverish light in her dark eyes, a feverish glow in her fair cheeks. Meeting their glances she addressed them: “What my Lord Gianpaolo has said is true. While Cesare Borgia lives there is no peace for middle Italy. ”

“ Bestow the vase and the precious liquid within it on your Beatrice, and hopefully await the result."
Baglioni laid a small exquisitely-wrought silver phial on the table and withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its effects upon the young man's mind.
"We will thwart Rappaccini yet," thought he, chuckling to himself, as he descended the stairs. "But let us confess the truth of him: he is a wonderful man—a wonderful man indeed—a vile empiric, however, in his practise, and therefore not to be tolerated by those who respect the good old rules of the medical profession." ”

“ But time would fail us to tell of the Baglioni, or Pope Paul the Borghese, or Fortebraccio, the chivalric condottiere who led the Perugians to war against their neighbors of Todi, or even the still burning memories of the sack of Perugia by command of the present pope. We can no longer turn our thoughts from the treasures of art which make Perugia rich above all cities of the Tiber, save Rome alone. ”

“ The Oddi, mad with fury, rush all armed to the piazza, striking at every Baglioni adherent whom they meet upon their way. The Baglioni are not slow to appear, as ready for the fight as anybody. The shops are closed, the citizens arm themselves, a procession wending its way to the Duomo is thrown into utter disorder, and even the women thrust their heads out of the windows and{55} throw down jugs and tiles and pitchers into the street below. The Bishop, the Priori, and the learned doctors of the law leave their houses and exhort the nobles to lay down their arms ”

“ What the pietism of Perugino's saints is to the feuds of the Baglioni, such is the Arcadian dream to the intellectual cynicism of Italian politics.
When children weave fancies of wonderland they use the resources of the imagination with economy; uninterrupted sunshine soon cloys. So too with these other children of the renaissance. Their wonderland is a place whither they may escape from the pressure of the world that is too much with them; they seek in it at least the virtue that its evils shall be the opposite of those from which they fly. ”

“ The Baglioni were chiefly lodged in houses on or near the Porta Marzia; Astorre and his bride, on the night of the murder, were lodged in the beautiful palace of Grifonetto, which was the wonder of Perugia, and always pointed out to strangers as a marvel of magnificence both inside and out. Among his other treasures, Grifonetto possessed a lion; Astorre and Gianpaolo, the sons of Guido and Ridolfo Baglione, each owned one of the royal beasts, and their fearful roaring at night struck terror to the hearts of belated Perugians on their way home. ”

“ Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one, and spoke like a man in a dream:
"Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now let me pass."
"Not yet—not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti," said the professor, smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest glance. "What! Did I grow up side by side with your father, and shall his son pass me like a stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand still, Signor Giovanni, for we must have a word or two before we part." ”

“ Gianpaolo heard of this in Assisi, and his rage was a prodigy even for a Baglioni. He was a black-browed, powerful man, built like an ape with a long body and short legs, a fine soldier, as all the world knows, endowed with a reckless courage and a persuasive tongue that lured men to follow him. In quitting Perugia, he had listened for once to the voice of discretion, urged by the cold and calculating quality of his hatred of the Borgia, and by the hope that in alliance with Petrucci he might stir up Tuscany, and so return in force against the duke. ”

“ What cared I whether France, Spain, or the Borgia ruled in Italy? What mattered it to me whether one crafty statesman held the reins of power, or another outdid him in craft and filched away his bone? My lady was in danger, and my honour might rot, and the Most Christian, the Most Catholic, and Most Holy wolves might tear each other's throats out before I would move a finger, take one step, until she was free. If I had to pull down Baglioni's hold with my hands, I would free her. ”

“ It was in vain that from time to time the people rose against them, massacring Pandolfo Baglioni on the public square in 1393, and joining with Ridolfo and Braccio of the dominant house to assassinate another Pandolfo with his son Niccolo in 1460. The more they were cut down, the more they flourished. The wealth they derived from their lordships in the duchy of Spoleto and the Umbrian hill-cities, and the treasures they accumulated in the service of the Italian republics, made them omnipotent in their native town. ”

“ The conquering Roman has left his sign-manual everywhere, but one is so used to him in Italy that the scantier records of later ages interest us more here. Like every other old Italian town, Perugia had its great family, the Baglioni, who lorded it over the place, sometimes harshly and cruelly enough, sometimes generously and splendidly—protectors of popular rights and patrons of art and letters. ”

“ After killing the Papal legate, Cinzio Filonardi, in 1534, he was dislodged four years afterwards, when Paul III. took final possession of the place as an appanage of the Church, razed the houses of the Baglioni to the ground, and built upon their site the Rocca Paolina. This fortress bore an inscription: 'Ad coercendam Perusinorum audaciam.' The city was given over to the rapacity of the abominable Pier Luigi Farnese, and so bad was this tyranny of priests and bastards, that, strange to say, the Perugians regretted the troublous times of the Baglioni. ”

“ It became the nobler ambition of Julius to aggrandize the church, and to reassume the protectorate of the Italian people. With this object, he secured Emilia, carried his victorious arms against Ferrara, and curbed the tyranny of the Baglioni in Perugia. ”

“ The nobles at this period were left unhindered to brawl as they pleased. The Baglioni, a race of men so renowned for crime, strength, bravery, and beauty, that they recall the heroes of the Iliad, and one wonders whether the old pagans were not better men than those so-called Christians, were always at war with the Oddi, till at last they worsted their rivals, and drove them out of Perugia; then they fell out among themselves. During their last struggle with the Oddi they took possession of the cathedral and fortified it. ”

“ As they ascended from the vast plain of Umbria, so leafless, grey and desolate under that leaden wintry sky, they perceived through a gap in the hills the cluster of little townships and hamlets, on the slopes and in the eastern valley, which formed the territory and dominion of Solignola. These lay practically without defences, and they must fall an easy prey to the Duke. But Baglioni knew that the fierce old Count was not the man to allow any such considerations to weaken his resolve to resist the Borgia, and to that resolve Gianpaolo hoped to spur him. ”

“ It was too late either for Pope or Saint to check so strong a flood as the ambition of men like the Oddi and the Baglioni. All over Italy at this period the character of individual families had grown too strong for outer influences to crush it, and the heads of the Guelph families were everywhere attempting to form themselves into ruling princes. In the case of this struggle at Perugia the most successful of the combatants were the Oddi and the Baglioni.{56} The struggle between them was a struggle unto death. ”

“ To Beatrice—so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by Rappaccini's skill—as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was death. And thus the poor victim of man's ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there at the feet of her father and Giovanni.
Just at that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunder-stricken man of science:
"Rappaccini, Rappaccini! And is this the upshot of your experiment?" ”

“ This was one of those duels to the death, like that of the Visconti with the Torrensi of Milan, on which the fate of so many Italian cities in the middle ages hung. The nobles fought; the townsfolk assisted like a Greek chorus, sharing the passions of the actors, but contributing little to the 120 catastrophe. The piazza was the theatre on which the tragedy was played. In this contest the Baglioni proved the stronger, and began to sway the state of Perugia after the irregular fashion of Italian despots. ”

“ The history of the Baglioni is one record of slaughter. Under their rule in Perugia human blood seems commonly to have flowed anywhere more freely than in human veins. It is no matter for wonder that the people sent their ambassador to thank Cesare for having delivered them from the yoke that had oppressed them.
Perugia having rendered him her oath of fealty, the duke left her his secretary, Agabito Gherardi, as his commissioner, whilst sending Vincenzo Calmeta to Fermo—Oliverotto’s tyranny—another State which was very fervent in the thanks it expressed for this deliverance. ”