"Ah! this Plutarch, he had a wondrous art, Francesco.How each character standeth out alive on his page: how full of nature each, yet how unlike his fellow!"Jacques Bonaventura."Give me the Signor Boccaccio."His Holiness."An excellent narrator, capitano, and writeth exquisite Italian.But in spirit a thought too monotonous.Monks and nuns were never all unchaste: one or two such stories were right pleasant and diverting; but five score paint his time falsely, and sadden the heart of such as love mankind.Moreover, he hath no skill at characters.Now this Greek is supreme in that great art: he carveth them with pen; and turning his page, see into how real and great a world we enter of war, and policy, and business, and love in its own place: for with him, as in the great world, men are not all running after a wench.With this great open field compare me not the narrow garden of Boccaccio, and his little mill-round of dishonest pleasures.""Your holiness, they say, hath not disdained to write a novel.""My holiness hath done more foolish things than one, whereof it repents too late.When I wrote novels I little thought to be head of the Church.""I search in vain for a copy of it to add to my poor library.""It is well.Then the strict orders I gave four years ago to destroy every copy in Italy have been well discharged.However, for your comfort, on my being made Pope, some fool turned it into French: so that you may read it, at the price of exile.""Reduced to this strait we throw ourselves on your holiness's generosity.Vouchsafe to give us your infallible judgment on it!""Gently, gently, good Francesco.A Pope's novels are not matters of faith.I can but give you my sincere impression.Well then the work in question had, as far as I can remember, all the vices of Boccaccio, without his choice Italian."Fra Colonna."Your holiness is known for slighting Aeneas Silvius as other men never slighted him.I did him injustice to make you his judge.Perhaps your holiness will decide more justly between these two boys-about blessing the beasts."The Pope demurred.In speaking of Plutarch he had brightened up for a moment, and his eye had even flashed; but his general manner was as unlike what youthful females expect in a Pope as you can conceive.I can only describe it in French.Le gentilhomme blase.
A highbred, and highly cultivated gentleman, who had done, and said, and seen, and known everything, and whose body was nearly worn out.But double languor seemed to seize him at the father's proposal.
"My poor Francesco," said he, "bethink thee that I have had a life of controversy, and am sick on't; sick as death.Plutarch drew me to this calm retreat; not divinity.""Nay, but, your holiness, for moderating of strife between two hot young bloods, <Makarioi oi eirinopioi>.""And know you nature so ill, as to think either of these high-mettled youths will reck what a poor old Pope saith?""oh! your holiness," broke in Gerard, blushing and gasping, "sure, here is one who will treasure your words all his life as words from Heaven.""In that case," said the Pope, "I am fairly caught.As Francesco here would say -<ouk estin ostis est' anyr eleutheos>.
I came to taste that eloquent heathen, dear to me e'en as to thee, thou paynim monk; and I must talk divinity, or something next door to it.But the youth hath a good and a winning face, and writeth Greek like an angel.Well then, my children, to comprehend the ways of the Church, we should still rise a little above the earth, since the Church is between heaven and earth, and interprets betwixt them.
"The question is then, not how vulgar men feel, but how the common Creator of man and beast doth feel, towards the lower animals.
This, if we are too proud to search for it in the lessons of the Church, the next best thing is to go to the most ancient history of men and animals."Colonna."Herodotus."
"Nay, nay; in this matter Herodotus is but a mushroom.Finely were we sped for ancient history, if we depended on your Greeks, who did but write on the last leaf of that great book, Antiquity."The friar groaned.Here was a Pope uttering heresy against his demigods.
"'Tis the Vulgate I speak of.A history that handles matters three thousand years before him pedants call 'the Father of History.'"Colonna."Oh! the Vulgate? I cry your holiness mercy.How you frightened me.I quite forgot the Vulgate.""Forgot it? art sure thou ever readst it, Francesco mio?""Not quite, your holiness.'Tis a pleasure I have long promised myself, the first vacant moment.Hitherto these grand old heathen have left me small time for recreation."His Holiness."First then you will find in Genesis that God, having created the animals, drew a holy pleasure, undefinable by us, from contemplating of their beauty.Was it wonderful? See their myriad forms; their lovely hair and eyes, their grace, and of some the power and majesty: the colour of others, brighter than roses, or rubies.And when, for man's sin, not their own, they were destroyed, yet were two of each kind spared.
"And when the ark and its trembling inmates tumbled solitary on the world of water, then, saith the word, 'God remembered Noah, and the cattle that were with him in the ark.'
"Thereafter God did write His rainbow in the sky as a bond that earth should be flooded no more; and between whom the bond?
