The Well of Saint Clare
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THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION EDITED BY
FREDERIC CHAPMAN
THE WELL OF SAINT CLARE
[Illustration]
THE WELL OF SAINT CLARE
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY ALFRED ALLINSON
[Illustration]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMIX
WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
CONTENTS
Prologue--The Reverend Father Adone Doni 3
San Satiro 17
Messer Guido Cavalcanti 51
Lucifer 73
The Loaves of Black Bread 85
The Merry-Hearted Buffalmacco 95
i. The Cockroaches 96
ii. The Ascending up of Andria Tafi 106
iii. The Master 118
iv. The Painter 124
The Lady of Verona 133
The Human Tragedy 141
i. Fra Giovanni. 141
ii. The Lamp 150
iii. The Seraphic Doctor. 153
iv. The Loaf on the Flat Stone 156
v. The Table under the Fig-tree 159
vi. The Temptation 163
vii. The Subtle Doctor 169
viii. The Burning Coal 177
ix. The House of Innocence 179
x. The Friends of Order 187
xi. The Revolt of Gentleness 194
xii. Words of Love 200
xiii. The Truth 205
xiv. Giovanni's Dream 215
xv. The Judgment. 223
xvi. The Prince of this World 231
The Mystic Blood 243
A Sound Security 257
History of Dona Maria d'Avalos and the Duke d'Andria 271
Bonaparte at San Miniato 289
THE WELL OF SAINT CLARE
PROLOGUE
THE REVEREND FATHER ADONE DONI
PROLOGUE
THE REVEREND FATHER ADONE DONI
[Greek: _Ta gar physika, kai ta ethika, alla kai ta mathematika, kai
tous egkyklious logous, kai peri technon, pasan eichen
empeirian._]--_Diogenes Laertius_, IX, 37.[1]
[Footnote 1: "For of physical and ethical science, no less than of
mathematics and the common round of learning, as well as concerning
arts, he possessed full knowledge and experience."]
I was spending the Spring at Sienna. Occupied all day long with
meticulous researches among the city archives, I used after supper to
take an evening walk along the wild road leading to Monte Oliveto, where
I would encounter in the twilight huge white oxen under ponderous yokes
dragging a rustic wain with wheels of solid timber--all unchanged since
the times of old Evander. The church bells knelled the peaceful ending
of the day, while the purple shades of night descended sadly and
majestically on the low chain of neighbouring hills. The black squadrons
of the rooks had already sought their nests about the city walls, but
relieved against the opalescent sky a single sparrow-hawk still hung
floating with motionless wings above a solitary ilex tree.
I moved forward to confront the silence and solitude and the mild
terrors that lowered before me in the growing dusk. The tide of darkness
rose by imperceptible degrees and drowned the landscape. The infinite of
starry eyes winked in the sky, while in the gloom below the fireflies
spangled the bushes with their trembling love-lights.
These living sparks cover all the Roman Campagna and the plains of
Umbria and Tuscany, on May nights. I had watched them in former days on
the Appian Way, round the tomb of Caecilia Metella--their playground for
two thousand years; now I found them dancing the selfsame dance in the
land of St. Catherine and of Pia de' Tolomei, at the gates of Sienna,
that most melancholy and most fascinating of cities. All along my path
they quivered in the bents and brushwood, chasing one another, and ever
and anon, at the call of desire, tracing above the roadway the fiery
arch of their darting flight.
On the white ribbon of the road, in these clear Spring nights, the only
person I used to encounter was the Reverend Father Adone Doni, who at
the time was, like myself, working in the old Academy _degli Intronati_.
I had taken an instant liking for the Cordelier in question, a man who,
grown grey in study, still preserved the cheerful, facile humour of a
simple, unlettered countryman. He was very willing to converse; and I
greatly relished his bland speech, his cultivated yet artless way of
thought, his look of old Silenus purged at the baptismal font, the play
of his passions at once keen and refined, the strange, alluring
personality that informed the whole man. Assiduous at the library, he
was also a frequent visitor to the marketplace, halting for choice in
front of the peasant girls who sell oranges, and listening to their
unconventional remarks. He was learning, he would say, from their lips
the true _Lingua Toscana_.
All I knew of his past life, about which he never spoke, was that he was
born at Viterbo, of a noble but miserably impoverished family, that he
had studied the humanities and theology at Rome, as a young man had
joined the Franciscans of Assisi, where he worked at the Archives, and
had had difficulties on questions of faith with his ecclesiastical
superiors. Indeed I thought I noticed myself a tendency in the Father
towards peculiar views. He was a man of religion and a man of science,
but not without certain eccentricities under either aspect. He believed
in God on the evidence of Holy Scripture and in accordance with the
teachings of the Church, and laughed at those simple philosophers who
believed in Him on their own account, without being under any obligation
to do so. So far he was well within the bounds of orthodoxy; it was in
connection with the Devil that he professed peculiar opinions. He held
the Devil to be wicked, but not absolutely wicked, and considered that
the fiend's innate imperfection must always bar him from attaining to
the perfection of evil. He believed he discerned some symptoms of
goodness in the obscure manifestations of Satan's activity, and without
venturing to put it in so many words, augured from these the final
redemption of the pensive Archangel after the consummation of the ages.
These little eccentricities of thought and temperament, which had
separated him from the rest of the world and thrown him back upon a
solitary existence, afforded me amusement. He had wits enough; all he
lacked was common sense and appreciation of ordinary everyday things.
His life was divided between phantoms of the past and dreams of the
future; the actual present was utterly foreign to his notions. For his
political ideas, these came simultaneously from antique Santa Maria
degli Angeli and the revolutionary secret societies of London, and were
a combination of Christian and socialist. But he was no fanatic; his
contempt for human reason was too complete for him to attach great
importance to his own share in it. The government of states appeared to
him in the light of a huge practical joke, at which he would laugh
quietly and composedly, as a man of taste should. Judges, civil and
criminal, caused him surprise, while he looked on the military classes
in a spirit of philosophical toleration.
I was not long in discovering some flagrant contradictions in his mental
attitude. He longed with all the charity of his gentle heart for the
reign of universal peace. Yet at the same time he had a _penchant_ for
civil war, and held in high esteem that Farinata degli Uberti, who loved
his native Florence so boldly and so well that he constrained her by
force and fraud, making the Arbia run red with Florentine blood the
while, to will and think precisely what he willed and thought himself.
For all that, the Reverend Father Adone Doni was a tender-hearted
dreamer of dreams. It was on the spiritual authority of St. Peter's
chair he counted to establish in this world the kingdom of God. He
believed the Paraclete was leading the Popes along a road unknown to
themselves. Therefore he had nothing but deferential words for the
_Roaring Lamb of Sinigaglia_ and the _Opportunist_ _Eagle of
Carpineto_, as it was his custom to designate Pius IX and Leo XIII
respectively.
Agreeable as was the Reverend Father's conversation to me, I used, out
of respect for his freedom of action and my own, to avoid showing myself
too assiduous in seeking his society inside the city walls, while on his
side he observed an exquisite discretion towards myself. But in our
walks abroad we frequently managed to meet as if by accident. Half a
league outside the Porta Romana the high road traverses a hollow way
between melancholy uplands on either hand, relieved only by a few gloomy
larches. Under the clayey slope of the northern escarpment and close by
the roadside, a dry well rears its light canopy of open ironwork.
At this spot I would encounter the Reverend Father Adone Doni almost
every evening, seated on the coping of the well, his hands buried in the
sleeves of his gown, gazing out with mild surprise into the night. The
gathering dusk still left it possible to make out on his bright-eyed,
flat-nosed face the habitual expression of timid daring and graceful
irony which was impressed upon it so profoundly. At first we merely
exchanged formal good wishes for each other's health, peace and
happiness. Then I would take my place by his side on the old stone
well-head, that bore some traces of carving. It was still possible, in
full daylight, to distinguish a figure with a head bigger than its body
and representing an Angel, as seemed indicated by the wings.
The Reverend Father never failed to say courteously:
"Welcome, Signore! Welcome to the Well of St. Clare."
One evening I asked him the reason why the well bore the name of this
favourite disciple of St. Francis. He informed me it was because of a
very edifying little miracle, which for all its charm had unfortunately
never found a place in the collection of the _Fioretti_. I begged him to
oblige me by telling it, which he proceeded to do in the following
terms:
"In the days when the poor man of Jesus Christ, Francis, son of
Bernardone, used to journey from town to town teaching holy simplicity
and love, he visited Sienna, in company with Brother Leo, the man of his
own heart. But the Siennese, a covetous and cruel generation, true sons
of the She-Wolf on whose milk they boasted themselves to have been
suckled, gave a sorry welcome to the holy man, who bade them take into
their house two ladies of a perfect beauty, to wit Poverty and
Obedience. They overwhelmed him with obloquy and mocking laughter, and
drove him forth from the city. He left the place in the night by the
Porta Romana. Brother Leo, who tramped alongside, spoke up and said to
him:--
"'The Siennese have written on the gates of their city,--"Sienna opens
her heart to you wider than her doors." And nevertheless, brother
Francis, these same men have shut their hearts against us.'
"And Francis, son of Bernardone, replied:
"'The fault is with me, be sure of that, brother Leo, little lamb of
God. I have not known how to knock at the doors of their hearts
forcefully and skilfully enough. I am far below the fellows who set a
bear dancing in the Great Piazza. For they draw together a great crowd
by exhibiting the rude coarse beast, whilst I that had ladies of
celestial fairness to show them, I have attracted no one. Brother Leo, I
charge you, on your holy obedience, to say thus to me: "Brother Francis,
you are a poor man, without any merit whatsoever, a stumbling-block and
a very rock of offence!" And all the while Brother Leo was hesitating to
obey, the holy man suffered grievously within himself. As he went on his
murky way, his thoughts turned to pleasant Assisi, where he had left
behind him his sons in the spirit, and Clare, daughter of his soul. He
knew how Clare was exposed to great tribulations for the love of holy
Poverty. And he doubted whether his well-beloved daughter were not sick
of body and soul, and weary of well-doing, in the house of St. Damian.
"So sore did these doubts weigh on him, that arrived at this spot where
the road enters the hollow way between the hills, he seemed to feel his
feet sink into the ground at each step he took. He dragged himself as
far as the Well here, which was then in its pristine beauty and full of
limpid water, and fell exhausted on the well-head where we are seated at
this moment. A long while the man of God remained bent over the mouth of
the well. After which, lifting up his head, he said joyfully to Brother
Leo: 'What think you, brother Leo, lamb of God, I have seen in the
Well?'
"And Brother Leo answered:
"'Brother Francis, you saw the moon reflected in the well.'
"'My brother,' replied the Saint of God, 'it is not our sister the Moon
I saw in the well, but by the Lord, the true countenance of sister
Clare, and so pure and shining so bright with a holy joy that all my
doubts were instantly dispelled, and it was made plain to me that our
sister enjoys at this present hour the full content God accords his
chosen vessels, loading them with the treasures of Poverty.'
"So saying, the good St. Francis drank a few drops of water in the
hollow of his hand, and arose refreshed.
"And that is why the name of St. Clare was given to this Well."
Such was the tale told by the Reverend Father Adone Doni.
Night after night I returned to find the amiable Cordelier sitting on
the edge of the mystic well. I would seat myself by his side, and he
would tell over for my benefit some fragment of history known only to
himself. He had many delightful stories of the sort to relate, being
better read than any one else in the antiquities of his country. These
lived again and grew bright and young in his head, as if it contained an
intellectual Fountain of Eternal Youth. Ever fresh pictures flowed from
his white-fringed lips. As he spoke, the moonlight bathed his beard in a
silver flood. The crickets accompanied the narrator's voice with the
shrilling of their wing-cases, and ever and anon his words, uttered in
the softest of all dialects of human speech, would be answered by the
fluted plaintive croaking of the frogs, which hearkened from across the
road--a friendly, if apprehensive audience.
I left Sienna towards the middle of June; and I have never seen the
Reverend Father Adone Doni since. He clings to my memory like a figure
in a dream; and I have now put into writing the tales he told me on the
road of Monte Oliveto. They will be found in the present volume; I only
hope they may have retained, in their new dress, some vestiges of the
grace they had in the telling at the Well of St. Clare.
SAN SATIRO
TO ALPHONSE DAUDET
SAN SATIRO
_Consors paterni luminis,
Lux ipse lucis et dies,
Noctem canendo rumpimus;
Assiste postulantibus._
_Aufer tenebras mentium;
Fuga catervas daemonum;
Expelle somnolentiam,
Ne pigritantes obruat._[1]
(_Breviarium Romanum_
Third day of the week: at matins.)
[Footnote 1: "Partner of the Father's light, light of light and day of
day, we break the dusk of night with psalms; help us now, Thy
suppliants. Remove the darkness of our minds; scatter the demon hosts
away; expel the sin of drowsiness, lest we be slack in serving Thee."]
Fra Mino had raised himself by his humility above his brethren, and
still a young man, he governed the Monastery of Santa Fiora wisely and
well. He was devout, and loved long meditations and long prayers;
sometimes he had ecstasies. After the example of his spiritual father,
St. Francis, he composed songs in the vernacular tongue in celebration
of perfect love, which is the love of God. And these exercises were
without fault whether of metre or of meaning, for had he not studied the
seven liberal Arts at the University of Bologna?
Now one evening, as he was walking under the cloister arches, he felt
his heart filled with trouble and sadness at the remembrance of a lady
of Florence he had loved in the first flower of his youth, ere the habit
of St. Francis was a safeguard to his flesh. He prayed God to drive away
the image; nevertheless his heart continued sad within him.
"The bells," he pondered, "say like the Angels, AVE MARIA; but their
voice is lost in the mists of heaven. On the cloister wall yonder, the
Master Perugia delights to honour has painted marvellous well the three
Marys contemplating with a love ineffable the body of the Saviour. But
the night has veiled the tears in their eyes and the dumb sobs of their
mouths, and I cannot weep with them. Yonder Well in the middle of the
cloister garth was covered but now with doves that had come to drink,
but these are flown away, for they found no water in the hollows of the
carven well-head. And behold. Lord! my soul falls silent like the bells,
is darkened like the holy Marys, and runs dry like the well. Why, Jesus
my God! why is my heart arid, and dark, and dumb, when Thou art its
dayspring, and the song of birds, and the water-brook flowing from the
hills?"
Fra Mino dreaded to return to his cell, and thinking prayer would dispel
his melancholy and calm his disquiet, he passed into the Monastery
Church by the low door leading from the cloister. Silence and gloom
filled the building, raised more than a hundred and fifty years before
on the foundations of a ruined Roman Temple by the great Margaritone. He
traversed the Nave, and went and knelt in the Chapel behind the High
Altar dedicated to San Michele, whose legend was painted in fresco on
the wall. But the dim light of the lamp hanging from the vault was
insufficient to show the Archangel fighting with Satan and weighing
souls in the balance. Only the moon, shining through the great window,
threw a pale ray over the Tomb of San Satiro, where it lay under an
arcade to the right of the Altar. This tomb, in shape resembling the
great vats used at vintage time, was more ancient than the Church and in
all respects similar to a Pagan sarcophagus, except that the sign of the
Cross was to be seen traced in three different places on its marble
sides.
Fra Mino remained for hours prostrate before the Altar; but he found it
impossible to pray, and at midnight felt himself weighed down under the
same heaviness that overcame Jesus Christ's disciples in the Garden of
Gethsemane. And lo! as he lay there without courage or counsel, he saw
as it were a white cloud rise above the tomb of San Satiro, and
presently observed that this cloud was made up of a multitude of
cloudlets, of which each one was a woman. They floated in the dim air;
and through their light raiment shone the whiteness of their light
limbs. Then Fra Mino saw how among them were goat-footed young men who
were chasing them. These were naked, and nothing hid the terrifying
ardour of their desires. And the nymphs fled away from them, while
beneath their racing steps there sprang up flowery meadows and brooks of
water. Each time a goat-foot put out his hand to seize one of them, a
sallow would shoot up suddenly to hide the nymph in its hollow trunk as
in a cave, and the grey leaves shivered with light murmurings and spurts
of mocking laughter.
When all the women were hidden in the sallows, their goat-footed lovers,
sitting on the grass of the new-come meadows, breathed in their flutes
of reeds and drew from them sounds to destroy the peace of any creature
of the earth. The nymphs were fascinated, and soon began to peep out
between the branches, and one by one deserting the shady covert, drew
near under the irresistible attraction of the music. Then the goat-men
rushed upon them with a demoniac fury. Folded in the arms of their
ruthless assailants, the nymphs strove to keep up a while longer their
raillery and loud laughter, but the mirth died on their lips. With heads
thrown back and eyes swooning with joy and terror, they could only call
upon their mother, or scream a shrill "You are killing me," or keep a
sullen silence.
Fra Mino longed to turn his head, but he could not, and his eyes
remained wide open in spite of himself.
Meanwhile the nymphs, winding their arms about the goat-men's loins,
fell to biting and caressing and provoking their hairy lovers, and body
intertwined with body, they enfolded and bathed them in their tender
flesh that was sweeter and softer and more living than the water of the
brook which ran by them under the sallows.
At the sight, Fra Mino fell, in mind and intention, into deadly sin. He
desired to be one of these demons, half men and half beasts, and hold to
his bosom, after their carnal fashion, the fair lady of Florence he had
loved in the flower of his years, and who was now dead.
But already the goat-men were scattering through the country-side. Some
were busied gathering honey in the hollow trunks of oaks, others carving
reeds into the shape of flutes, or butting one against the other,
crashing their horned brows together. Meantime the bodies of the nymphs,
sweet wrecks of love, lay motionless, strewing the meadows. Fra Mino lay
groaning on the Chapel flags; for so fierce had been the desire of sin
within him that now he was filled full of bitter shame at his own
weakness.
Suddenly one of the nymphs, chancing as she lay to turn her eyes upon
him, cried out:
"A man! a man!"
And pointing him out to her companions:
"Look, sisters; yonder is no goat-herd, he has no flute of reed beside
him. Nor yet do I recognize him for the master of one of those rustic
farmsteads whose garden-close, sloping to the hill-side beneath the
vines, is guarded by a Priapus hewn out of a stump of beech. What would
he among us, if he is neither goat-herd, nor neat-herd, nor gardener?
His looks are harsh and gloomy, and I cannot read in his eyes the love
of the gods and goddesses that people the wide sky, the woods and
mountains. He wears a barbarous habit; perhaps he is a Scythian. Let us
approach the stranger, my sisters, and make sure he is not come as a foe
to sully our fountains, hew down our trees, tear open our hill-sides
and betray to cruel men the mystery of our happy lurking places. Come
with me, Mnais; come, AEgle, Neaera and Melib[oe]a.
"On! on!" returned Mnais, "on, with our arms in hand!"
"On! on!" all cried in chorus.
Then Fra Mino saw them spring up, and gather great handfuls of roses,
and advance upon him in a long line, each armed with roses and thorns.
But the distance that separated them from him, which at first had seemed
very short, for indeed he thought almost to touch them and felt their
breath on his face, appeared suddenly to increase, and he watched them
coming as though from out a far-off forest. Impatient to be at him, they
began to run, threatening him with their cruel flowers, while menaces
flew from their flower-like lips. And lo! as they came nearer, a change
was wrought in them; at each step they lost something of their grace and
beauty, and the bloom of their youth faded as fast as the roses in their
hands. First their eyes grew hollow and the mouth fell in. The neck, but
now so pure and white, hung in great hideous folds, and grey elf-locks
draggled over their wrinkled brows. On they came; and their eyes were
circled with red, their lips drawn in upon the toothless gums. On they
came, carrying dead roses in their arms, which were black and writhen
as the old vine stocks the peasants of Chianti burn for firewood in the
winter nights. On they came, with shaking heads and palsied thighs,
tottering and trembling.
Arrived at the spot where Fra Mino stood rooted to the ground with
affright, they were no better than a crowd of horrid witches, bald and
bearded, nose and chin touching, and bosoms hanging loose and flabby.
They came crowding round him:
"Ah, ha! the pretty darling!" cried one. "He is as white as a sheet, and
his heart beats like a hare the dogs are snapping at. AEgle, sister mine,
say, what must be done with him?"
"Neaera mine!" AEgle replied, "why! we must open his breast, tear out his
heart and put a sponge in its place instead."
"Not so!" said Melib[oe]a. "That were making him pay too dear for his
curiosity and the pleasure he has had in surprising our frolic. Enough
for this time to inflict a light chastisement. Say, shall we give him a
good whipping?"
Straightway surrounding the Monk, the sisters dragged his gown above his
head and belaboured him with the handfuls of thorns they still held.