“NO, as I entered this place so will. I leave it,” said the aged Francesco Foscari to those who urged him to quit the stately palace of the Doges by a private way, and thus avoid the gazing crowds in the Place of St. Mark. For he was Doge of Venice no longer now; at length his enemies had won their wish and fulfilled their work. The torture and banishment, and eventually the murder, of his innocent and only son, had not satiated the vengeance of Loredano for an injury which after all seems to have existed merely in his own imagination. The last drop in the cup of bitterness was the deposition of the aged Doge himself, after five-and-thirty years of patient and efficient service to as hard a master as any crowned tyrant―a jealous, cruel, and suspicious oligarchy.
The old man submitted, and veiled brokers heart under a proud and calm exterior.
“And leaning on his staff, he left the hall
By the same stairs up which he came in state,
Those where the giants stand, guarding the ascent,
Monstrous, terrific. At the foot he stopped,
And on his staff still leaning, turned and said,
‘By mine own merits did I come. I go,
Driven by the malice of mine enemies’”
The common people, by whom he was beloved, crowded the piazza to see him depart, and showed their sympathy by their reverently uncovered heads, their sighs and tears and murmured lamentations. But amongst those who stood nearest to the marble steps were Theodore Benedetto and Raymond Chalcondyles; for their intimacy had progressed quickly, and they were now constant companions. Raymond had espoused the cause of the outraged Doge with a boy’s generous, reckless enthusiasm; and as the old man passed them by, his young clear voice rang out above the murmurs of the crowd, “God go with you, my lord!” Foscari heard, and his weary sorrowful face brightened for a moment. But others heard too. Theodore plucked his friend by the long falling sleeve of his overcoat. “Take care!” he whispered.
“Ay, take care!” cried Raymond, “and let the foulest wrong ever done on God’s earth pass unreproved! Cowards, to hunt an old man down with such remorseless cruelty, and bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave!―But he heard me, Theodore; I could swear he heard me.”
“I dare say,” said Theodore drily; “you spoke loud enough. But let us get away from this crowd. Come to the Piazzetta. My gondola waits there.”
They had a holiday; and Raymond was willing to accompany his friend wherever he wished to go. Theodore directed the gondolier to bring them to his father’s garden, a beautiful little islet laved by the soft waters of the lagoon, and blooming with rare and exquisite flowers. Here they left the gondola in charge of the rowers, and found themselves a luxurious resting place, in a bower overgrown with roses and jessamine. There were many things Theodore wished to say, and he had chosen this quiet time and place on purpose. While Raymond sat, he preferred to recline face downwards on the ground, his hands supporting his chin. He began abruptly, “So you, who are not yet fifteen, think you have happened to witness the foulest wrong ever done in this world, which has lasted more than five thousand years? You talk of an old man’s gray head. Did you ever see a boy’s gray head, Raymond? That is a sadder sight.”
Raymond laughed incredulously. “Not I!” he said, “nor you, nor anyone.”
“Nay, but I have. Or at least, I have seen a man whose head was gray when his years were few as yours. It is not so very strange. There are many things which blanch the locks untimely. My father has a chart of the southern seas, sent to him by a friend in Lisbon, the work of a certain cunning draughtsman named Christopher Colon. His head has been white ever since he was thirty years of age. That was the work of thought and toil; but the young gray head I tell of was bleached by agony―bitter agony of mind and body. The boy was of our kindred, my mother’s brother. Ay,” he continued with intense earnestness, “we of Hebrew race are heirs to a heritage of woe that dwarfs the puny troubles of the Goim. ‘Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?’ said our prophet-poet long ages since, and still the sad pre-eminence is ours. We are proud of it. We are kings of sorrow, crowned with anguish as with a diadem.”
“But I do not think,” Raymond interposed, “that is altogether true, here and now. Your father, for instance―he does not look very like an inheritor of woe.” And Raymond, as he thought of the genial, prosperous banker, could not help the sunny smile that rippled over his face at the incongruity of the idea.
“One here and there may escape the doom. I love my father well, but I hold by my mother’s race, Raymond. And this is how my uncle’s hair grew white at fifteen. He knew himself―that innocent-hearted boy―the murderer of father, mother, brothers―their blood was on his head.”
“How could that possibly be?” asked Raymond, now thoroughly roused and interested.
Theodore, before he answered, clutched a weed that grew near, pulled it up, and flung it from him with a gesture of bitter, angry contempt certainly not meant for the harmless green thing. Then he said, quietly enough― “Where they lived the Goim hated my people, because they were clever and industrious and therefore rich. So they invented a hideous lie―that the Jews, at one of their feasts, kidnapped and crucified a little Christian child.”
“But who would believe such a story?”
“Those who would believe any absurdity under the sun—that is, those who choose to believe. Again and again, and in many different lands, has the same infamous falsehood, or that other, yet more monstrous, about poisoning the wells, been used as a weapon of destruction against us. We have even had companions in misery. I have heard that in France, long ago, thousands of unhappy lepers were tortured and slain under that last horrible delusion. Then, now, and ever the way of the world was, and is, to persecute those whom God has smitten.”
“But surely, Theodore, the Jews and the lepers drank themselves of the same wells as their neighbors. Then why should they poison them? And what could they get by it?”
“Do you think men reasonable enough to ask and answer such questions as these would have let themselves be turned into the wild beasts that tore down the houses of the Jews in Segovia, and dragged their owners to prison? Not so. Given the fanatical fury of a few cruel bigoted shavelings, and the hypocritical greed of a few licentious spendthrifts who owed money they could not pay, and the rest was done by pure ignorance and stupidity. When I think of the tremendous power of ignorance and stupidity, how they rule mankind with a rod of iron, I am tempted to believe the world, like King Saul of old, given over by the curse of its Maker to those two spirits of evil, that they may possess and torment it.”
“Yes, of course we scholars can afford to despise the multitude. They are ignorant and foolish,” said Raymond, complacently.
“Are we better, as scholars? Do you think playing at Greek, at Latin―do you think Homer’s verse or Tully’s prose will renew the face of the earth? Would an oration of Demosthenes have, given the rabble of Segovia the hearts of men, instead of the brute instincts of wild beasts?”
“I wish you would not talk that way, Theodore. No one. else does. Did you ever hear any of the Professors or Masters say such things? It looks so strange for the best scholar of us all, to talk as if he despised learning. ―But go on, tell me of your mother’s brother. How could all that have made him―that dreadful thing you said?”
“Cannot you guess? The Jews were accused and imprisoned without evidence. But there are means to make the accused their own accusers and the betrayers of their friends.”
“The Question?” said Raymond in an awestruck whisper.
“Yes; what Giacopo Foscari suffered, and worse. Few have the strength of mind and body which enabled the Doge’s son to endure and be silent; and how could it be expected from a hapless boy―almost a child? What things he was made to say no one ever quite knew. He himself could only remember them afterward as a patient remembers the ravings of delirium, which in truth they were. Enough. My grandfather and the other accused suffered the Boom of fire. Only my mother and that unhappy boy were allowed to live, in cruel kindness. Compassionate friends sent them to my father, who gave them a home and afterward espoused my mother.”
“Do you remember your uncle?”
“Well. He lingered year after year, in a kind of living death, until I was about five years old. I used to amuse him, and he was fond of me. To little children all things alike are wonderful; I was accustomed to his gray hair and sad face, and never thought about them till my mother told me his story after his death.”
“Theodore, we ought indeed to be friends. We are both strangers and exiles, and have both horrible wrongs to remember, and perhaps to avenge.”
“I am your friend, Raymond,” said Theodore, and the words, from him, meant much.
“But do not, I pray you, talk of your lot and your wrongs with mine. You have friends and kindred; to you, indeed, all the world is akin. Your home is everywhere. You think the same thoughts, you worship the same God as those around you.”
“I own,” Raymond said candidly, “that I have never felt quite happy about the unleavened wafer. But my mother wished me to conform to the Latin ritual.”
“Unleavened wafer! Latin ritual!” Theodore repeated with ineffable scorn. “Have you any conception how infinitely little these things look to a man who thinks the wafer only a morsel of dough, and Him they believe it is changed into only a―” He caught himself up suddenly, bit his lip, and threw a quick glance around him. Not that he had really much to fear, even had his rash words been overheard, which was most What has been called the Inquisition of Venice was purely an engine of State, far more likely to take cognizance of an expression of sympathy for the deposed Doge than of disbelief in the dominant religion. Moreover, indifference was the fashion; most of the great scholars of the age were not religious, and most of the great Churchmen of the age were scholars. Mitered abbots and courtly cardinals might have said as much over their wine as Theodore Benedetto had just breathed or hinted. But then they would have said it carelessly, and smiling, “twist lip and wine cup,” keeping all the earnestness they possessed for the quantities of their Latin verse or the decorating of their palace walls. Theodore was right in thinking that such scholarship would never regenerate the world; but he was right also in his instinctive feeling that his own earnestness had better not be betrayed too plainly, since it showed his spirit the very opposite of theirs, one in which there was force and fire for good or evil, and therefore danger. At all events there was no use in shocking his friend.
But Raymond was not shocked. His own religious sentiments were well-nigh reduced to a few superstitions brought with him from the home of his childhood, and these were every day growing fewer and fainter. His plastic mind was bending unconsciously, but strongly, in the direction of the dilettanti semi-Paganism, which was then the scholar’s favorite religion. He looked at Theodore with just a little surprise, and said coolly―
“Why, how vehement you are! But I see now how it is, that, with all your splendid abilities, you do not like the Church. It is a pity. You might be a cardinal, or a bishop, or a dean, with a dozen fat benefices. And now, instead, you will only be a physician. Though,” he added, in consideration for the feelings of his friend, “that is a very good thing too. You will make quite a magnifico, with a gold-headed cave and diamond ring, and doctor’s ermine-lined robe.”
Theodore replied by a gesture of contempt. “I hated that only a little less than the other, until I read your book, Raymond. I thank you for that book; it is a right noble one, and written too by one of my people. Even yet the light comes from the East” (a kind of subdued glow passed over his own face as he spoke). “Moses Maimonides, philosopher and physician, was a wise man. He saw and he thought. That is better than all the learning in the world; for everything that exists is worth seeing. Even this root in my hand, that I have just pulled up, may hold a secret far more precious than those Greek roots we study at school. That is, if we have eyes to see. Thanks to you and Maimonides, I feel now as if I dare to use mine, and to think of what they tell me; nay more, as if it were in an especial manner the physician’s business to do it. I have taken a long time and a devious way to thank you for your gift, Raymond; but I do thank you. I wished you to know this―and me,” he added in a lower voice. Then, with a change of tone, “Now let us explore the garden, and find, if we can, some roses worthy the acceptance of your lady-mother.”
When they reclined once more in the luxurious ease of the gondola, Theodore said abruptly, after a silence of some minutes “―Do not misunderstand my words, Raymond. I am not devout. I shall never be a priest. But I fear God―the God of my fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob―Jehovah.” The last word was uttered solemnly, and after a reverent pause.
Raymond did not answer. In fact, he had nothing to say. The subject scarcely interested him, except so far that he wished his friend to believe and to do everything that was right, and nothing that was singular. His own faith was a dead one. He had, no conception at all of God as a living Person, with whom he had to do.