Francesco

“ Now mind, Francesco! if it should please the Lord to call me unto Him, I say, The Nun and Fra Biagio will be found, after my decease, in the closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint Zacharias in blue and yellow.
Well done! well done! Francesco. I never heard any man repeat his prayers so fast and fluently. Why! how many (at a guess) have you repeated? Such is the power of friendship, and such the habit of religion! They have done me good: I feel myself stronger already. ”

“ I have opened a means of salvation for both of us—the Way of the Cross. A glorious way it is, for by it my soul shall belong to you! In the sight of men you are as nothing! The blot of your birth can never be effaced! But [Pg 16] you are my son! Therefore, here on my death-bed I command you to leave this world, that you may open the way to another,—a better one,—to both of us,—to both of us, Francesco,—to you and to me!"
There was a long silence between them, a silence of dread and expectation for the one,—of fear and despair for the other.
At last Francesco raised his head. ”

“ The face was turned in shadow. It waited.
"Has our good physician gone, Francesco?" asked the painter. [24]
Francesco bowed. There was silence in the room except for the fire.
"What does he say of us to-day?"
The youth brushed his hand across his eyes impatiently. "He always croaks. He is never hopeful." He approached the couch and knelt by it, his face in the shadow still.
The painter lay tranquil, watching the poplars. "Why grieve? An exile has not so many joys that he need fear to lose them, Francesco." ”

“ If Francesco, who had from nature a spirit of great vivacity, with a beautiful and graceful manner, had persisted in working every day, little by little he would have made such proficience in art, that, even as he gave a beautiful, gracious, and most charming expression to his heads, so he would have surpassed his own self and the others in the solidity and perfect excellence of his drawing. ”

“ In the man Francesco had long discovered the judicial mind, and the discreet intelligence of the trained statesman.
From the shadows the Pontiff was warily regarding the sun-steeped features of the young monk.
At last, his voice sinking down to its accustomed calm, he said, as if feeling his ground:
"Does the new life satisfy your soul?" ”

“ Upon Augustine's expressing his astonishment that so superior a mind should languish for so many years in the shameful bonds of love, Francesco passionately declares that it is the soul, the innate celestial goodness, that he loves and admires; that he owes all to her, who has preserved him from sin and stimulated him to develop his greatest powers. ”

“ The Church requires a statesman for a leader, not a saint! Behold your saintly Clement at Viterbo, invoking the divine wrath upon the heads of the just claimants of these realms! Cast off the garb which disgraces your manhood! Mount a steed, challenge the devil, and slay dragons!"
Francesco felt heavy at heart.
An inner voice had long apprised him that the duke had recognized the man beneath the garb, and that he was addressing his confidences to the ghost of Francesco's self. ”

“ Augustine. This acedia then, as I call it, affects everything; everything connected with yourself disgusts you?
Francesco. And not less everything that has to do with others.
Fortune has not been simply niggardly in her treatment of him but bitterly unjust, disdainful, and cruel. He rejects any comfort which might come from considering the destitution that he sees among the still less fortunate. He claims that he is not unreasonable in his demands. ”

“ And Francesco was a monk! He might break the shackles, defy the powers of the Church,—he was a monk nevertheless! It might be possible that his love proved stronger than his reason; it was possible that he might face the world and frown down the petty judgments of men! Glorious and transcendent sacrifice! She could face calumny beside him, as a [Pg 279] rock faces the froth of the waves, she could look Raniero in the eye and know neither pity nor shame. ”

“ Still at no time was Francesco a sensuous man or a libertine like his father. His devotionally-affected mother, Eleanora de Toledo, had trained him in moral ways, and had called forth in him regard for religion and sympathy for charitable objects. Possessed of great self-command and reticence, he never betrayed himself in any way; passionate he was beyond the ordinary, but never revengeful. He loved one woman, and only one, and to her he proved himself faithful until death took them away together; but she was not Giovanna, his political wife, she was Bianca, the wife of his heart and mind. ”

“ Besides that, Francesco was never much liked there, because he had a nature altogether opposed to that of the men of that country, where, even as those merry and jovial men are liked and held dear who live a free life and take part gladly in assemblies and banquets, so those are, I do not say shunned, but less liked and welcomed, who are by nature, as Francesco was, melancholy, abstinent, sickly, and cross-grained. ”

“ Through the years of desolation and ruin, which war brought in its wake, they preserved art, literature and religion and infused into civilization the principles of self-sacrifice, charity and chastity. They declared a message that protested against violence and injustice. Francesco saw men among the priests, whose broad shoulders, singularly brilliant dark faces and magnificent poise formed a striking contrast to those upon whose features had settled the beautiful, soft calm of spotless seclusion. ”

“ THE following weeks dragged along in hopeless monotony. The last night of Francesco's novitiate had come. There would not be a loophole of escape for him now. On the morrow, the eternal vows were to pass his lips. This night he was to spend in the chapel of the saint on his knees, supposedly in prayer. It was a solitary vigil, for no companion could be granted him. A dangerous thing for a novice it was, had the monks but realized it:—putting one for ten hours alone at the mercy of his thoughts. And Francesco shuddered as they left him, kneeling upon the stones before the solitary shrine. ”

“ Francesco pitied him, as he pitied all persons who were lonely and sorrowful. The Master, whom of all men he admired and loved, whom he set above the Michelangelo and the Raphael of the people's applause, was but a lonely and poor and despised old man, sitting on the grass among empty bird-cages, cutting his cheese with an old broken clasp-knife, chewing his bread with an effort because his jaws were weakened by age, his appetite lost by recent illness. ”

“ Ferdinando was determined to succeed Francesco as Sovereign of Tuscany, come what might!
Never was a man more changed than the Grand Duke Francesco when he placed the new Grand Duchess beside him on his throne. ”

“ In the end, having his mind still set on his alchemy, like every other man who has once grown crazed over it, and changing from a dainty and gentle person into an almost savage man with long and unkempt beard and locks, a creature quite different from his other self, Francesco went from bad to worse, became melancholy and eccentric, and was assailed by a grievous fever and a cruel flux, which in a few days caused him to pass to a better life. ”

“ Lying peacefully convalescent, Francesco looked back as from a still haven on the storms that had shaken him since his departure from Avellino. Had a great enfranchisement or a great imprisonment befallen him? Life, the master, would show him in good time. Certainly the entrance into fresh intellectual regions which had intoxicated him for the time, seemed less important now. For one thing, he perceived the passion for novelty, as synonymous with progress, to be a mere delusion of the arch-wizard, Time. ”

“ Accordingly, Francesco, from that moment, became the victim of the most sinful and delirious passion. He thought of the Pagan statuary Pygmalion, whose history had supplied him with a subject for one of his former profane works, and like him, he implored the gods, that they would infuse life into the creations of his art. Very soon it appeared to him as if the principal figures in his picture began to move and to swell forward in alto relievo; but when he tried to clasp the phantom in his arms, he found that the dead, cold canvass still mocked at his embrace! ”

“ Messer Raniero Frangipani and Madonna Ilaria Caselli are passing on their bridal journey to Rome!"
Francesco's face was so pale that no earthly tint seemed to have remained in it. Only the large eyes gave evidence of life. ”

“ Now Liberale, perceiving the fine genius of Francesco II Moro, conceived so great an affection for him, that at his death he left him heir to all his possessions, treating and loving him as his own son. Being thus put well into the way, Francesco, on the death of Liberale, obtained numerous commissions for works which are now in private houses; but those of his performances in Verona, for which he more particularly merits praise, are first, the four large pictures which he painted in fresco, on the vaulting of the principal chapel in the cathedral. ”

“ Francesco, the subject of this memoir, was the son of Piero de' Guicciardini, a celebrated advocate, and at one time commissary-general to the Florentine army. Francesco was one of eight children. His mother was Simona, daughter of the cavaliere Bongiani Gianfigliazzi, a noble {Pg 63} Florentine. He was born on the 6th of March, 1482. [32] He was educated with care by the best masters, and taught Greek and Latin. He applied himself, as he grew up, to the study of logic and of civil law, as he was destined for the robe. ”

“ Francesco would object that he began his poetical studies before he knew Laura, and had coveted the laurel chaplet from boyhood, and that without the inspiration of her name he would scarcely have overcome the many obstacles which stood between him and his coronation at Rome. This, his Confessor declares, is but one of the excuses which passion always finds; it is unworthy of a serious answer. ”

“ Francesco was born at Parma in the year 1504, and because he lost his father when he was still a child of tender age, he was left to the care of two uncles, brothers of his father, and both painters, who brought him up with the greatest lovingness, teaching him all those praiseworthy ways that befit a Christian man and a good citizen. ”

“ Francesco was indeed so well aware of the bold and copious powers of invention with which he had been endowed, that, perceiving his hand to be always obedient to his genius, he would gladly have occupied all his time with some great and extraordinary work. ”

“ None of his aspirations have ever seemed to him more noble than the very ones Augustine now reproaches him for. "What have I done to you," Francesco indignantly asks, "that you should seek to deprive me of my most glorious preoccupations and condemn to perpetual night the brightest portions of my soul?" It seems to him that his Confessor is indiscriminately condemning two quite different things when he declares love to be the maddest of all forms of madness. If love is sometimes the lowest form of passion it may also be the noblest activity of the soul. ”

“ Giovanni Francesco, who was born anno 1447, after holding the offices of Canonico of Florence, and Rector of the Lateran church, went to Rome, where he became chamberlain of the pontiff, and abbreviator of the apostolic epistles. ”

“ In early life the associate only of the cultivated and the refined, Father Francesco could not but experience at times an insupportable ennui in listening to the confessions of people who had never learned either to think or to feel with any degree of distinctness, and whom his most fervent exhortations could not lift above the most trivial interests of a mere animal life. ”

“ He could not bear the thought that his companions should know of his undoing. Despair is concealed more easily for an hour than unrest. And so Francesco heaved a long heavy sigh and went to the great carven chest wherein he kept his apparel. ”

“ To all this Augustine has two objections. In the first place, although Francesco's love may have saved him from minor errors, his anxiety for fame, which he attributes to it, has put him on the shortest road to spiritual death. In the second place, it is vain for him to maintain that he loves chiefly the soul ”

“ Augustine now turns to Francesco's longing for fame, which, with his passion for Laura, is the most inveterate and uncontrollable of his moral disorders. This yearning beyond measure for glory among men and an undying name may block his way to true immortality. He has no more grievous fault, although he may have uglier ones. What is fame? Nothing whatever but the general talk of the multitude about one ”

“ This Francesco, who learned the first principles of art from his father, afterwards exerted himself in such a manner that in a short time he became a much better master than his father had been, as the works that he executed in emulation of those of his father clearly demonstrate. Below his father's work on the altar of the Monte, in the aforesaid Church of S. Bernardino, Francesco painted in oils the folding-doors that enclose the altar-piece of Liberale ”

“ Such as the angels wear!
Francesco (stifling his rage) . Where is your son, my lord? 305
Velez. I have not seen him, father, since he left you.
Francesco. His lordship's generous nature hath deceiv'd him!
That Ferdinand (or if not he his wife)
I have fresh evidence—are infidels.
We are not safe until they are rooted out. 310
Maria. ”