Part 7

‘_Arno mio!_ you are in a tremendous hurry to get to the sea, and all the more because you have just had an _accessit_, a remittance, of rain from the mountain-banks. _Buon pro vi faccia_, much good may it do you! So every mortal fain would rise and run. So every shopman hurries to become a great merchant when he gets some money, and every farmer a signore, and every signore a great lord, and every great lord a ruler at court and over all the land--_prorsum et sursum_. And when they _get there_, or when you get to the sea, then ye are all swallowed up in greater lives, interests and actions; and so the rivers run for ever on--longer yet ever seeming less unto yourselves. And so--_ad altiora tendunt omnes sic_--all to the Higher ever doth aspire, the flower-edged torrent and the Florentine.’....

When he suddenly heard above his head a spirit-voice, clear, sweet and strange, singing not in words, or on the ear, but by tones of unearthly music, of which languages there are many among the unearthlies, each unto its ‘chaos,’ all being wordless songs or airs suggesting speech and yet conveying ideas more rapidly. It was the Goblin of the Tower to him of the tower next beyond on the further hill, and he said:

‘How many ghosts there are abroad to-night!’

‘Yes; it is a fine night for ghosting. Moonlight is mid-summer for them, poor souls! But I say, brother, who is yonder _Frate_, the dark monk-spectre, who always haunts your tower, lingering here and there about it? What is the spell upon that _spirito_?’

‘He is one to be pitied,’ replied the goblin of the _Trinità_. ‘He was a good fellow while he lived, but a little too fond of money. He was afflicted with what the doctors called in Rome, when I was young, the _amor sceleratus_, or _sal aeratus habendi_. So it came to pass that he died, leaving a treasure, _mille aureos_, or a thousand gold crowns, buried in my tower, unknown to any one, and for that he must walk the earth until some one living wins the money. For money is as life to all men, and he who destroys it is, in a way, a murderer.’

Flaxius pricked up his ears. He understood all that the goblins said, but they had no idea that the man in a scholar’s robe who sat below knew Goblinese.

‘What must a mortal do to get the gold?’ inquired the second goblin.

‘Truly he must do what is well-nigh impossible,’ replied the Elf of the Tower, ‘for he must, without the aid of magic--note that--bring to me here, in this month of January, a fresh, full-blown rose.’

The voices were silent; a cloud passed over the face of the moon; the river rushed and roared on; Flaxius sat in a Vandyke-brown study, thinking how he could obtain peace and repose for the ghostly monk, and also get the _solatium_ or reward.

‘Here is,’ he thought, ‘_aliquid laborare_, something to be worked out. Now is the time, and here is the chance, _ingirlandisi di lauro_, to win the laurel wreath. A rose in January! What a pity it is not four hundred years later, when people will have green-houses, and blue-nosed vagabonds will be selling red roses all the winter long in the Tornabuoni! Faith! it is sometimes inconvenient to be behind, or in advance of the age!

‘_Eureka!_ I have it!’ he at last exclaimed, ‘have it by the neck and tail! I will _spogliar la tesoria_, rob the treasury and spoil the Egyptian. _Si non in errore versatus sum_, unless I am stupendously mistaken, monk, thy weird will soon be dreed, thy penance prophesied will soon be o’er!’

Saying this he went into the city. And there the next day, going to a fair lady of his acquaintance who excelled all in Italy in ingenious needlework, he had made of silk a rose; and so deftly was it done, that had it been put on a bush you would have sworn that a nightingale would have sung to it, or a bee sought to ravish it.

Then going to a Venetian perfumer’s in the Via Vacchereccia close by the Signoria, the wise Flaxius had his flower well scented with best attar of roses from Constantinople, and when midnight struck he was at the tower once more, where he called to the goblin.

‘_Che vuoi!_ What dost thou seek?’ cried the elf.

‘The treasure of the monk.’

‘_Bene!_ Give me a rose?’

‘_Ecco!_ There it is!’ replied Flaxius extending it.

‘_Non facit_--it won’t do,’ answered the goblin in Latin, thinking Flaxius to be a monk. ‘It is a sham rose of silk, artificially coloured--_murice tincta est_.’

‘Smell it,’ replied Flaxius calmly.

‘The _smell_ is all right and sweet, I admit,’ answered the guardian of the gold. ‘The perfume is delicious’--here he sniffed at it seriously, being like all of his kind enraptured with perfume--‘and that much of it is, I grant, the real thing.’

‘Then tell me truly,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and swear by thy great ancestress Diana, the mother of the Spirits of the Night, and her sister-daughter Herodias, and her Nine Cats, by the Moon and her eternal shadow Endamone, and the word which Bergoia whispered into the ear of the Ox, and the Nails of Nortia, and the Lamia whom thou lovest!--what is it makes a man? Is it his soul or his body?’

‘Man of mystery and master of the old Etruscan hidden lore!’ replied the awe-struck goblin, ‘it is his soul.’

‘And is not the perfume of the rose its _soul_, that which breathes its life, in which it speaks to fairies or to men? Is not the voice in song or sweetened words the perfume of the spirit ever true? Is not----’

‘I give it up,’ replied the goblin. ‘The priest may turn in now for a long, long nap. Here, take his gold, and may you have a merry time with it; there is a great deal of good drinking in a thousand crowns, to say nothing of the eating! Do you ever play at dice, old man, _ludere latrunculis_? When you do, I promise you three sixes. By the way, I’ll just keep this rose to remember you by. _Addio, a rivederla!_ Good-bye and _au revoir_!’

So the bedesman slept among his ashes cold, and Flaxius, who was a stout carl for the nonce, with a broad back and a great beard, returned, bearing a mighty sack of ancient gold, which stood him in good stead for many a day. And the goblin is still there in the tower.

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, as he revised the proof with a red pencil for which he had paid a penny at Ancora’s ancient stationery shop in the Via Condotti, ‘this tale teaches that in this life there is naught which hath not its ideal side or idol inner-soul, which may raise us to high reflection or great profit if we will but seek it.

‘The lower the man the less he sees, and the lower he looks, but it is all to his loss.

‘Now every chapter in this book, or in that of thy life, O my son, or daughter! may seem to thee to be only a rose of silk, yet do not stop at that, but try to find therein its perfume.

‘For thou art thyself, I doubt not, such a rose, even if thy threads, as in most of us, be somewhat worn or torn or faded; and yet thou _hast_ a soul far better than many deem who see thee only from a distance. And this my book is written for the perfume, not the silk of my reader. And there is no person who is better in any way than what the world deems him or her to be who will not find in it comfort.’

But, friend, how was it that it came to pass that I found out this veritably and authentically ancient legend of the Tower of the Triple Arches, which, when I wrote, rose opposite my window over the Arno? My dear reader, it was written down for me by a witch, in very truth, who had learned it of her strange kind and with it many more, which you might have collected as well as I, if you could have kept such company and wandered in such paths as I did. And know that the Sleepy Hollow of the Hudson is not more haunted by marvellous spirits of a bygone age, or more strangely shaded with legends of goblins and fair, quaint mysteries of the golden time than is this city which is named from Flowers, or it may be from Flora, _la belle Romaine_, the beautiful sorceress who bewitched all with love. Villon asked what became of her:

‘Where is there left on earth a trace Of Flora once the Roman fair? Or Archipiada and Thais, That bright and ever queenly pair? Echo will fling the question back O’er silent lake and streamlet lone, All earthly beauty fades away, Where have the snows of winter gone?’

Here the old Roman enchantress yet lives as much as she ever did in fact in Rome,--for she was there only a world-old Indian myth of pleasure and beauty,--in the city of the Lily. And here indeed there is, according to legend, a goblin by every bridge, an elf in every tower and old palazzo, a fairy of the ancient Roman kind in form, changed to a later hue in colour, a witch _aura_ lingering in many a darkling corridor and chamber, a something between sweet perfume and the conjurer’s fumigations to raise spirits. I have learned that in my barber’s shop opposite the great column of Cosimo, San Zenobio once wrought a miracle, and in my café, a fair maid was bewitched into a cow.

‘All over doth this modern life An ancient life enfold.’

These things you may read in full in many a story, as set forth in _The_ (aforesaid) _Legends of Florence_, which grew out of the first draft of the sketch of Flaxius.

[4] _Legends of Florence_, 2 vols.: London, D. Nutt.

FLAXIUS AND THE EMPEROR JULIAN

‘The Emperor Julian in his _Cæsars_ gives the preference to Marcus Aurelius, who having been greatly honoured for his merits, replied modestly “that it had always been his care to imitate the gods.”’--_The Spectator_, No. 635.

‘I SHOULD really like,’ said Flaxius to his attendant pocket-imp, Puttuli, ‘to see this grand young man, our Emperor Julian.’

[‘_Grand jeune homme_’ was a term applied in later days to Mr. James G. Bennett, of the _New York Herald_ by the _Figaro_, but Flaxius was the inventor of it.’]

‘Nothing easier,’ replied the goblin. ‘You give the _atriensis_, or janitor, a hundred _nummos_ or _sestertios_, or a ring, or any trifle, and so you may be admitted to a private-public view. For a _sestertium_ he will manage an opportunity to speak to Cæsar. But you can have a good street view for nothing, and I think,’ added Puttuli as he critically eyed his master, ‘if he saw you he might speak to you; he isn’t at all particular as to his company.’

‘_Gratias tibi ago_, thank you for the compliment,’ replied the sage, ‘but as it concerns an emperor, we may as well do things genteelly. Assume a respectable form, if you know how----’

(‘_Gratias tibi_, or _not_ tibi _ago_,’ murmured the imp.)

‘----and hire a place _dans la première loge_. For a _sestertium_.’

‘Would your excellency like to carry a _bouquet_?’ inquired Puttuli impudently.

‘A good idea! Yes, order me one of rue, concordia and verbena.’

‘Well, of all the nosegays that ever were nosed, that is the queerest,’ answered the servant. ‘But, _fiat voluntas tua_, my lord’s will be done! A great deal of rue with plenty of concordia, and most of all verbena. I will go to the pretty herb-seller in the Suburra. She has the vegetables.’

‘I must choose a lucky day,’ said Flaxius.

‘To-morrow,’ answered Puttuli, ‘is the three hundred and sixty-fifth day of the year three hundred and sixty-five A.D.’

So it came to pass that, twenty-four hours after, Flaxius stood in the grand hall of the imperial palace amid the row of suitors and courtiers and other great or wise, or otherwise, folk who awaited audience of Julian. He looked at the emperor with approbation.

‘I knew the first Julian,’ he reflected; ‘the man who bought the empire at auction and resigned in sixty-six days. He was indeed a _caducus_,--a word which will live in later days as _cad_--an imperial snob. This is a horse of another colour.’

Meanwhile the emperor who had the keenest eye in Rome for observing all sorts and conditions of men, and who, after sitting an hour in the amphitheatre, could describe the appearance of everybody present who was anybody, had not failed to note the tall and stately form of the philosopher, and his grandly flowing beard. Now Julian, having a very fine beard of his own, was deeply interested in this subject, as appears from his great work _Misopogon_, meaning ‘Enemy of the Beard,’ that is to say of wisdom, to say nothing of his ‘Letters.’ And as Flaxius had a very beard of beards flowing and curling in indescribable magnificence, and as he wore the purely white, long-flowing robe which indicated the professional philosopher, a being dearer to the emperor than the prettiest woman living, he gazed at Flaxius with what became absolute approval or admiration.

‘By Esculapius and Jupiter!’ he exclaimed, ‘that is a good-looking man. Something in my line, I think! Who is he?’

‘Cæsar!’ replied Puttuli, who had assumed the form and voice of Bumbulbulus, the court factotum, ‘that is the great Flaxius, a sage who has travelled all over the world, and who is reported to know everything from the works of Moloch the Pismirist, up to those of God.’

‘That is a large order,’ replied the emperor reflectively, ‘_magnum postulatum est_. But bring him here that I may measure him.’

‘That will take more time, O Cæsar, than it would for him to measure you!’ thought Puttuli, as he departed. ‘He needs a long line who would sound such a sea as the Master. Come now! I think we are as good as established at court.’

Now the emperor had for many years been devoted to magic and _occulta_, and observing the herb-bouquet which Flaxius bore, grasped its hidden meaning with great pleasure.

‘_Salve_, Cæsar!’ said the sage.

‘_Salve, adepte!_’ replied the monarch. ‘So thou hast mastered the lore of the Etruscan, as I read by the _Concordia_, “_Janus adorandus cum quo Concordia mitis_,” as Ovid saith; of Egypt, as the rue proclaims; “_cingebat rutæ quæ coma multicomæ_’; and of Persia, I see by the verbena, _Verbenasque adole pinguis et mascula thura_. Hem! Virgil!’

‘I have heard, even in the remotest region of the earth,’ replied Flaxius, ‘that what Cæsar could not do in the way of apt quotation was not worth doing.’

‘_Um!_ I flatter myself that I know a thing or two,’ replied the emperor--the very phrase occurs in his _Epistolæ_--‘but like Apicius with the British oysters, I am always ready for a few more. And I read it in thee, O Flaxius,’ he added, suddenly changing his whole mien and manner, and looking through his tangled locks with that strange, unearthly glare which so impressed his contemporary familiars, as if he had become another man, ‘that thou canst teach me much which I do _not_ know, therefore I ask thee to sup with me to-night.’

The emperor said this, turning away so abruptly, that all present who did not know his ways inwardly thanked God, according to their heathen or Christian faith, that they did not stand in the shoes of that philosopher with the flowing beard. But those who knew him better looked gravely, and said, ‘Cæsar hath found a new friend!’

But Flaxius himself was deeply amazed when Julian, leading him to a table, by which stood a single Greek servant--there was no other soul present--showed him with some pride that the meal consisted only of a grilled fish and _garum_, with bread and olives, new cheese and fruit.

‘There is your supper, Flaxius!’ he exclaimed, ‘and much good may it do you!’

‘By the lance and laurel bough or olive of the god Honour, whose temple is by the Campidoglio!’ cried the sage, ‘what am _I_, O Cæsar! that thou shouldst treat me with such esteem!’

‘_Non rectis oculis aspice_, never do you mind _that_,’ replied Julian. ‘Truly if I were going to entertain a Bythnian prince or a sow-bellied contractor for the army, whom I hoped some day to crucify, I would have given him a hundred courses of ortolans stuffed with oysters, and galantine with truffles and pistachios, and all that sort of thing. But to a philosopher whom I wish to treat as a brother, I give just what I am accustomed to eat myself. One cannot be a slave at the same time to his brain and his belly--_non potes Tethidem simul et Galateam amare_, as Lucian says.’

‘Now, I see,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘that when a man is a gentleman at heart, he can turn even his vanity to a kindness. A marvellous character is this Cæsar, and one who will do much to be misunderstood in history.’

So they held wondrous discourse of great and glorious things in philosophy, over which the emperor quoted nearly all the Orphic sayings, with the Poemander of Hermes, and finally came to what he had been aiming at from the first, by bluntly asking:

‘Knowest thou aught of magic?’

‘O Cæsar! do not think I seek to quibble or raise a sophistical cloud between us,’ replied Flaxius, ‘if I ask thee what is the meaning of magic.’

‘It is,’ replied the emperor--who had been there before--‘the violation of the laws of nature.’

‘And what is nature?’ asked the Sage.

‘H’m!--the eternal order of things--the action of laws, or _potentia quatenus in potentia_.’

‘Rather vague, yet good so far as it goes. But, Cæsar, if there be but one substance, though you call it matter in one form and spirit in another, and one eternal law manifesting itself in infinite forms, there can be no violation of them. Miracle or magic is only _something which man cannot explain_, something which puzzles and astonishes him. _Si placet_--give me an example for a miracle!’

‘I am devilish thirsty,’ replied Julian. ‘That _garum_ or fish-sauce is pungent enough to make a Nazarene drink a gallon of strong Sicilian wine. Now, if you could pour me any kind of wine which I may call for out of one and the same bottle----

‘It may be done, O Cæsar! but remember that to do this one must invoke the invisible spirits or forces of nature, whom we call the gods, to aid in such mysteries.’

After a long pause of reflection, the emperor slowly replied, ‘Granted.’ He did not see that Puttuli, reduced to his natural stature of three inches, and who sat unseen behind him, advanced his thumb to his nose, and waved his fingers, making thereby an ancient and mysterious Egyptian sign used by the priests of Memphis when they initiated some great sage to their rites.

Then Flaxius winked to Puttuli, who presently reappeared in the form of Bumbulbulus.

‘Go to my rooms,’ said the sage, ‘and bring hither the ancient goblet of Bacchus!’

The goblin obeyed, and returned with a very large bottle of black _cuir bouilli_ or moulded leather. It was of graceful shape, apparently of great antiquity, covered with exquisite silver relief, representing the deeds of Bacchus. Handling it with great reverence, Flaxius pronounced over it in a voice which was half-singing, such as one may hear to this day among witches in Italy when they chant the following:

INCANTATION TO BACCHUS

‘Golden master of the earth! King of joy and lord of mirth! By thy mother the divine, Of the ancient Cadmean line! Semele of Earth the pride; Who of Jove’s great splendour died! By the Seasons, who in truth, Nursed thee from thy early youth! Or fair Ino, who they say, Brought thee from Arabia! By the lion’s form you wore When gods and Titans fought of yore! And by the holy miracle Of which the morning poets tell; When from Naxos thou didst sail With a gentle, favouring gale, And pirates sought to conquer thee But fell into captivity: By the hour when thou did’st go To the darkling realms below, And brought thy mother, “ever bright,” To the upper world of light, And all that Nonnus ever sung Of thee with mystic, golden tongue! I conjure thee--the all-divine-- To give me what I ask, of wine!’

Saying this he took a small gold cup and said:

‘Now, Cæsar, ask for what wine thou wilt.’

‘Let it be Cæcuban,’ replied the emperor.

Then Flaxius poured forth wine from the bottle into the cup, and extended it to Julian.

‘Cæcuban it is, sure enough,’ replied the emperor when he had drunk to the last drop, which he poured _super naculum_ upon his thumb-nail.

‘Wilt thou have another draught?’ inquired Flaxius. ‘If so--of what?’

‘Falernian,’ answered the emperor.

‘_Sit_,’ replied Flaxius. ‘Here you are. But, O Cæsar, I have not hung an ivy garland as yet round the cup, as the conjuration requires.’

‘_Vino vendibili suspensâ hederâ nihil opus._ Good wine needs no bush,’ answered Julian. ‘The miracle is wrought, and I wish that all were as agreeable. And now, Flaxius, since thou sayest that all miracles can be explained by natural causes, I pray thee to naturalise me this, for verily _ut turris super omnes_, it is a huckleberry above my persimmon, and I would like to know how it is done.’

‘Easily enough, O Cæsar. The bottle is made from a certain flexible substance, and it contains many chambers or cells, in each of which there is a different kind of wine. When I press on any one of these it pours forth its content.’

‘Then the incantation was all gammon?’ remarked Julian.

‘Not so, O Cæsar. It made the miracle.’

‘_Hum-um-um-ump!_’ replied the monarch. ‘And yet, Flaxius, it still seems to me that there are and must be miracles surpassing all human skill and knowledge, which the utmost wisdom cannot compass or explain, and _never_ will.’

‘Can your Greatness give me an example?’ replied Flaxius.

‘It is written in thine own ancient Etruscan chronicles,’ replied Julian, ‘that in the early time the mysterious nymph, Begoe or Bergoia, before the world, and in the Capitol, slew an ox by whispering in his ear a single word. Now, I believe, that had I tried, I might have worked out an explanation of thy Holy Bottle; but in the miracle of Bergoia I have reflected many a time and oft, without solving it, and therefore do I conclude that it _was_ a violation of the laws of Nature.’

‘O Cæsar!’ replied Flaxius, ‘great is the man who can infallibly decide where human reason leaves off and Divinity begins, for, _nusquam est, qui ubique est_, that which is everywhere is nowhere, and this is true of miracle. But what if I perform for thee--openly before all thy court--and all Rome if thou wilt, that same miracle?’

‘By Hercules!’ cried Julian, amazed and delighted beyond measure, his wild and mysterious eyes gleaming so as to make a very respectable miracle of their own if he had but known it, ‘thou art a man of gold, set with gems--the first real sage I ever found in the stuffing of this duck of a world. And you really will in good faith--_honestus Indicus_--slay the ox with a whisper!’