“Ale ich Abschied nahm, ale ich Abschied nahm
Waren Kisten und Kasten schwer;
Ale ich wieder kam, ale ich wieder kam,
War alles leer.”
RAYMOND left the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere with a strange lightness of heart. He knew that he was a forlorn and hunted fugitive, with nowhere to lay his head, and not a coin in his pocket wherewith to purchase the simplest necessaries of life; and he feared that he had alienated forever the friend who had been to him as a brother. And yet he could have sung aloud for very joy and gladness of heart. He was free, the whole world was before him, and Viola di Porcaro had not denied that she loved him. He could afford to think of Theodore with tender, remorseful pity. Fate had been very hand on him―very; and well and patiently would Raymond seek in the after years to recompense his generous kindness, and to win back his love.
But in the meantime the August sun was blazing down upon his head, and he must find shelter somewhere. Whither could he bend his steps? He would find no welcome, even in a wine shop, without a baiocco to pay for a draft of wine. Should he have recourse to Cardinal Bessarion, in former days a munificent patron of the Humanists, and even now, in their time of persecution, their steady, though cautious friend? Unfortunately for him the good cardinal was “in villegiatura,” having wisely exchanged the stifling heat and fever-laden atmosphere of the city for the refreshing breezes of the Albanian hills.
Another resource occurred to him. Between the Humanists and the printers there existed a close friendship and alliance. Both belonged to the new age that was dawning on the world, both were laborers in the same cause, the cause of intellectual light and liberty. Two liberal-minded Germans, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Manetz, had lately established a printing press in Rome under the friendly patronage of the Bishop of Aleria, who had been one of the pupils of the excellent Vittorino de la Feltre. Raymond thought of taking up, for a time, the compositor’s stick, and finding at once daily bread and effectual concealment in the “chapel,” or workshop, of the Palazzo Massario.
But the risk was too great. What if the fiery Pope should discover his retreat, and wreak his vengeance on the harmless printers, scattering their type, shutting up their workshop, and perhaps destroying their priceless MSS.? Raymond shuddered at the thought, and decided that nothing should tempt him so to endanger them, and the great cause they and he alike represented.
While pondering thus he crossed the Ponte Sisto, and finding himself among the narrow crowded streets on the other bank of the Tiber, he walked aimlessly onwards. But he soon began to feel weak and weary, for the unaccustomed exercise told quickly upon limbs long confined to a prison cell. Having wandered as far as the Palazzo Cenci, he sat down to rest and to ponder his situation under the high narrow archway of that ill-fated mansion, whose gloomy and sinister aspect already seemed to forebode the dark tragedy of which it was one day to be the theater. Here, in the shade, the drowsy spirit of the Roman noontide stole over him, and he was about to indulge in a brief siesta, when he fortunately remembered that under his present circumstances nothing could possibly be more dangerous, and, rousing himself with a strong effort, he shook off the inclination to slumber. Now, when all Rome was asleep, must he be awake and stirring; too soon would the shops be unclosed and the silent streets once more full of life and business.
A great longing came over him to revisit the Barden on the Quirinal, where he had spent so many happy hours, listening to the discourses of Pomponius or holding converse with him and his friends. So he stepped silently and slowly through the streets and squares of the sleeping city―sleeping more profoundly now than in the noon of night―scarce a sound breaking on his ear, sane the musical trickle and murmur of Rome’s many fountains. Here and there a beggar, dozing in the shade, turned and looked up, murmuring a drowsy prayer for baiocchi, but found it too much trouble even to curse him for refusing, and turned over again to finish his siesta. His own footsteps grew feeble and listless long before his goal was reached. With tottering feet he passed along the familiar Via Cornelia, gazed with a mournful sigh at the Lecture Hall―so dearly loved in other days―and almost as sadly at the beautiful villa which his friend Platina had scarcely completed when he was forced to exchange it for a gloomy cell in the Castle of St. Angela. He was glad to find himself at last beneath the olives and evergreen oaks of his master’s garden. The trees were unchanged, but all else had run riot, or bore the marks of confusion and decay. The borders of box, once so quaint and square cut, trimmed as they were by the master’s own hand. after the antique pattern, now grew freely as their nature prompted. The succulent cabbages, broccoli, and lettuces which had been the master’s pride as much as that of Diocletian, had fallen a prey to the petty pilferers of the neighborhood, and only foul, decaying refuse was left to taint the air. But in compensation luscious roses shed their leaves and their perfumes unheeded, and all varieties of bright southern summer flowers threw themselves about in a wild tangle of color and sweetness, interlacing their stems and mingling their blossoms.
The heart of Raymond grew sad over the desolation. He laid himself down under an olive tree, and the mournful thoughts that oppressed him found relief in tears. The master’s school seemed to him like the master’s garden. Where was now the band of noble youths that used to cluster around him beneath the shadow of those trees, or within the walls of that Lecture Hall, so near at hand? One was in his grave, a martyr to his faithful love for him; the rest were captives, fugitives―or at best they were cowed, silent, and dismayed. The wind of destruction had swept over all.
But there are some things that are indestructible. Had the storm of persecution scattered a congregation of primitive Christians on that very hill, brokers up a synagogue in the Trastevere, dispersed a conventicle of sectaries like Giulio in some fair Provencal valley, yet all these, or what they represented, would have risen undecayed from the ashes of their ruin. Was the Roman Academy like these? Did Pomponius Laetus and his disciples represent phases of thought and feeling that were passing, or principles that were permanent? Could these dry bones live again? The answer Raymond’s heart foreboded was a mournful negative, and he was partly, though not wholly, in the right. In these ardent students the passion of the Age for antiquity, its thirst for the inspiration to be caught from the mighty spirits of old, found expression, and so far they fulfilled a need and accomplished a mission. But though they belonged to the new world―the world of modem thought and feeling―they were not great enough to conquer and to keep a place amongst its monarchs and rulers. Like other schools of the Renaissance, theirs had in it the seed of corruption in the fatal severance between intellectual and spiritual light, between knowledge and holiness. God was not in all their thoughts; and therefore when they themselves were taken away “their thoughts perished.”
Not however that the work of Pomponius Laetus was over at this time. In after days he was permitted to resume his teaching, and the Roman Academy flourished once more under his auspices. But although his labors and those of his friends and disciples―whose names now sound but faintly through the trumpet of fame―no doubt form part of the great intellectual heritage into which we have entered unconsciously, they only live, like the planta of his own garden, transmuted into the nourishment of other forms of life, not like the stately cedars that shelter a hundred generations beneath their spreading branches. Few care anything now for Pomponius Laetus and the Humanista of the Roman Academy.
But even a temporary return of prosperity was beyond the anticipation of Raymond. A chill and saddening sense of failure stole over his heart. The master’s want of steadfastness to his principles had been a cruel blow to him. It seemed as if Pomponius could not bear, for the sake of his own honor, what, others had borne so heroically for him. The modern representative of Brutus and Regulus was on his knees at the feet of the Pope.
All is well, though a standard-bearer fall, if the soldiers can raise their eyes to the king’s own pennon, still waving proudly in the thickest of the fight. Raymond had not this consolation. His soul owned allegiance to no master greater than Pomponius, and when his faith in him was shattered, it seemed as though the foundations of his intellectual life were giving way.
But the life, even of the body, is worth preserving―at least in this fair world, and with those left who love us and whom we love. Therefore Raymond rose at last, and having found amongst the refuse a few lettuces. still unspoiled, washed them at the spring, and appeased his hunger with this very primitive faro.
The noonday heat was now beginning to abate, and a fresh breeze was springing up. Raymond looked at the distant hills, flecked with white and silvery clouds, and his soul longed for the rest and shelter they seemed to promise. Somewhere over there was the ancestral home of Campano, and had he not the last messages of his friend to deliver? Would not his kindred give him a welcome and a refuge? He did not doubt. it. “And on the way,” he said, any contadino will share his hut with me.”