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twenty-five crowns, while a blow costs little or nothing. He is a young man of admirable talents, and supports his poor family by his labor in great abundance; I would to God that our city had plenty of this sort, instead of the present dearth of them."

Among the magistrates were some Radical fellows with turned-up hoods, who had been influenced by the entreaties and the calumnies of my opponents, because they all belonged to the party of Fra Girolamo; and these men would have had me sent to prison and punished without too close a reckoning. But the good Prinzivalle put a stop to that. So they sentenced me to pay four measures of flour, which were to be given as alms to the nunnery of the Murate. I was called in again; and he ordered me not to speak a word under pain of their displeasure, and to perform the sentence they had passed. Then, after giving me another sharp rebuke, they sent us to the chancellor, I muttering all the while, "It was a slap and not a blow," with which we left the Eight bursting with laughThe chancellor bound us over upon bail on both sides; but only I was punished by having to pay the four measures of meal. Albeit just then I felt as though I had been massacred, I sent for one of my cousins, called Maestro Annibale, the surgeon, father of Messer Librodoro Librodori, desiring that he should go bail for me. He refused to come, which made me so angry, that, fuming with fury and swelling like an asp, I took a desperate resolve.

ter.

At this point one may observe how the stars do not so much sway as force our conduct. When I reflected on the great obligations which this Annibale owed my family, my rage grew to such a pitch that, turning wholly to evil, and being also by nature somewhat choleric, I waited till the magistrates had gone to dinner; and when I was alone, and observed that none of their officers were watching me, in the fire of my anger, I left the palace, ran to my shop, seized a dagger, and rushed to the house of my enemies, who were at home and shop together. I found them at table; and Gherardo, who had been the cause of the quarrel, flung himself upon me. I stabbed him in the breast, piercing doublet and jerkin through and through to the shirt, without however grazing his flesh or doing him the least harm in the world. When I felt my hand go in, and heard the clothes tear, I thought that I had killed him; and seeing him fall terror-struck to earth, I cried: "Traitors, this day is the

day on which I mean to murder you all." Father, mother, and sisters, thinking the last day had come, threw themselves upon their knees, screaming out for mercy with all their might; but I perceiving that they offered no resistance, and that he was stretched for dead upon the ground, thought it too base a thing to touch them. I ran storming down the staircase; and when I reached the street, I found all the rest of the household, more than twelve persons, one of them had seized an iron shovel, another a thick iron pipe, one had an anvil, some of them hammers, and some cudgels. When I got among them, raging like a mad bull, I flung four or five to the earth, and fell down with them myself, continually aiming my dagger now at one and now at another. Those who remained upright plied both hands with all their force, giving it me with hammers, cudgels, and anvil; but inasmuch as God does sometimes mercifully intervene, He so ordered that neither they nor I did any harm to one another. I only lost my cap, on which my adversaries seized, though they had run away from it before, and struck at it with all their weapons. Afterwards, they searched among their dead and wounded, and saw that not a single man was injured.

I went off in the direction of Santa Maria Novella, and stumbling up against Fra Alessio Strozzi, whom by the way I did not know, I entreated this good friar for the love of God to save my life, since I had committed a great fault. He told me to have no fear; for had I done every sin in the world, I was yet in perfect safety in his little cell.

After about an hour, the Eight, in an extraordinary meeting, caused one of the most dreadful bans which ever were heard of to be published against me, announcing heavy penalties against who should harbor me or know where I was, without regard to place or to the quality of my protector. My poor afflicted father went to the Eight, threw himself upon his knees, and prayed for mercy for his unfortunate young son. Thereupon one of those Radical fellows, shaking the crest of his twisted hood, stood up and addressed my father with these insulting words: "Get up from there, and begone at once, for to-morrow we shall send your son into the country with the lances." My poor father had still the spirit to answer: "What God shall have ordained, that will you do, and not a jot or tittle more." Whereto the same man replied that for certain God had ordained as he had spoken. My father said: "The thought

consoles me that you do not know for certain ;" and quitting their presence, he came to visit me, together with a young man of my own age, called Piero di Giovanni Landi- we loved one another as though we had been brothers.

Under his mantle the lad carried a first-rate sword and a splendid coat of mail; and when they found me, my brave father told me what had happened, and what the magistrates had said to him. Then he kissed me on the forehead and both eyes, and gave me his hearty blessing, saying: "May the power and goodness of God be your protection;" and reaching me the sword and armor, he helped me with his own hands to put them on. Afterwards he added: "Oh, my good son, with these arms in thy hand thou shalt either live or die." Pier Landi, who was present, kept shedding tears; and when he had given me ten golden crowns, I bade him remove a few hairs from my chin, which were the first down of my manhood. Frate Alessio disguised me like a friar and gave me a lay brother to go with me. Quitting the convent, and issuing from the city by the gate of Prato, I went along the walls as far as the Piazza di San Gallo. Then I ascended the slope of Montui, and in one of the first houses there I found a man called Il Grassuccio, own brother to Messer Benedetto da Monte Varchi. I flung off my monk's clothes, and became once more a man. Then we mounted two horses, which were waiting there for us, and went by night to Siena. Grassuccio returned to Florence, sought out my father, and gave him the news of my safe escape. In the excess of his joy, it seemed a thousand years to my father till he should meet that member of the Eight who had insulted him; and when he came across the man, he said: "See you, Antonio, that it was God who knew what had to happen to my son, and not yourself?" To which the fellow answered: "Only let him get another time into our clutches!" And my father: "I shall spend my time in thanking God that He has rescued him from that fate."

HOW TO AND HOW NOT TO EDUCATE A PRINCE

BY RABELAIS.

[FRANCOIS RABELAIS, French satirist and humanist, was born at Chinon, 1483 or 1495. He was a Benedictine monk, left the order in a quarrel, became a physician, and finally rector of Meudon. He was a disinterested and charitable man, and a zealous teacher, and his house was the resort of the learned. He died at Paris, 1553 or 1559. His one remembered work is the extravaganza, "The Lives, Heroic Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel," in which deep thoughts and ideas of enlarged common sense are imbedded in masses of fantastic romance, horse-play, and other matter.]

GARGANTUA with all his heart submitted his study to the discretion of Ponocrates; who first of all appointed that he should do as he was accustomed, to the end it might be understood by what means, in so long time, his old masters had made him such a sot and puppy. He disposed, therefore, of his time in such fashion that ordinarily he did awake betwixt eight or nine o'clock, whether it was day or night (for so had his ancient governors ordained), alleging that which David saith: Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere. Then did he tumble and toss, wag his legs, and wallow in the bed some time, the better to stir up and rouse his vital spirits, and appareled himself according to the season; but willingly he would wear a great long gown of thick frieze, furred with fox-skins. Afterward he combed his head with a comb de al-main, which is the four fingers and the thumb, for his preceptors had said that to comb himself otherways, to wash and make himself neat, was to lose time in this world. Then he . . . to fortify against the fog and bad air, went to breakfast, having some good fried tripes, fair rashers on the coals, good gammons of bacon, store of good minced meat, and a great deal of sippet-brewis, made up of the fat of the beef-pot, laid upon bread, cheese, and chopped parsley strewed together.

Ponocrates shewed him that he ought not to eat so soon after rising out of his bed, unless he had performed some exercise beforehand. Gargantua answered: "What! have not I sufficiently well exercised myself? I have wallowed and rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed, before I rose; is not that enough? Pope Alexander did so, by the advice of a Jew, his physician, and lived till his dying day in despite of his enemies. My first masters have used me to it, saying, that to eat breakfast made a good memory; and therefore they drank first. am very well after it, and dine but the better. And Master

Tubal (who was the first licentiate at Paris) told me that it was not enough to run apace, but to set forth betimes. So the total welfare of our humidity doth not depend upon drinking, switter-swatter like ducks, but in being at it early in the morning; Unde versus,

"Lever matin n'est point bonheur,

Boire matin est le meilleur.'”

To rise betimes is good for nothing,
To drink betimes is meat and cloathing.

After a good breakfast he went to church, and they carried to him in a great basket a huge breviary, weighing, what in grease, clasps, parchment, and cover, little more or less than eleven hundred and six pounds: There he heard six and twenty or thirty masses: This while, to the same place, came his matinmumbler, muffled up about the chin, round as a hoop, and his breath pretty well antidoted with the vine-tree sirup with him he mumbled all his kiriels, which he so curiously thumbed and fingered, that there fell not so much as one bead of them to the ground.

As he went from the church they brought him, upon a dray drawn with oxen, a confused heap of patenotres of Saint Claude, every one of the bigness of a hat-block; and sauntering along through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he riddled over more of them than sixteen hermits would have done. Then did he study some paultry half-hour with his eyes fixed upon his book ; but (as the comedy has it) his mind was in the kitchen. Then he sat down at table: and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he began his meal with some dozens of gammons, dried neats' tongues, botargos, sausages, and such other forerunners of wine; in the meanwhile, four of his folks did cast into his mouth, one after another continually, mustard by the whole shovels full. Immediately after that, he drank a horrible draught of white wine for the comfort of his kidneys. When that was done, he ate according to the season, meat agreeable to his appetite; and then left off eating when his belly was like to crack for fullness. As for his drinking, he had in that neither end nor rule; for he was wont to say that the limits and bounds of drinking were, that a man might drink till the cork of his shoes swells up half a foot high.

Then with a starched phiz mumbling over some scraps of a scurvy grace, he washed his hands in fresh wine, picked his

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