by George Eliot
CHAPTER FORTY NINE.
THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES.
The wintry days passed for Romola as the white ships pass one who isstanding lonely on the shore--passing in silence and sameness, yet eachbearing a hidden burden of coming change. Tito's hint had mingled somuch dread with her interest in the progress of public affairs that shehad begun to court ignorance rather than knowledge. The threateningGerman Emperor was gone again; and, in other ways besides, the positionof Florence was alleviated; but so much distress remained that Romola'sactive duties were hardly diminished, and in these, as usual, her mindfound a refuge from its doubt.
She dared not rejoice that the relief which had come in extremity andhad appeared to justify the policy of the Frate's party was making thatparty so triumphant, that Francesco Valori, hot-tempered chieftain ofthe Piagnoni, had been elected Gonfaloniere at the beginning of theyear, and was making haste to have as much of his own liberal way aspossible during his two months of power. That seemed for the momentlike a strengthening of the party most attached to freedom, and areinforcement of protection to Savonarola; but Romola was now alive toevery suggestion likely to deepen her foreboding, that whatever thepresent might be, it was only an unconscious brooding over the mixedgerms of Change which might any day become tragic. And already byCarnival time, a little after mid-February, her presentiment wasconfirmed by the signs of a very decided change: the Mediceans hadceased to be passive, and were openly exerting themselves to procure theelection of Bernardo del Nero as the new Gonfaloniere.
On the last day of the Carnival, between ten and eleven in the morning,Romola walked out, according to promise, towards the Corso degliAlbizzi, to fetch her cousin Brigida, that they might both be ready tostart from the Via de' Bardi early in the afternoon, and take theirplaces at a window which Tito had had reserved for them in the Piazzadella Signoria, where there was to be a scene of so new and striking asort, that all Florentine eyes must desire to see it. For the Piagnoniwere having their own way thoroughly about the mode of keeping theCarnival. In vain Dolfo Spini and his companions had struggled to getup the dear old masques and practical jokes, well spiced with indecency.Such things were not to be in a city where Christ had been declaredking.
Romola set out in that languid state of mind with which every one enterson a long day of sight-seeing purely for the sake of gratifying a child,or some dear childish friend. The day was certainly an epoch incarnival-keeping; but this phase of reform had not touched herenthusiasm: and she did not know that it was an epoch in her own lifewhen _another_ lot would begin to be no longer secretly but visiblyentwined with her own.
She chose to go through the great Piazza that she might take a firstsurvey of the unparalleled sight there while she was still alone.Entering it from the south, she saw something monstrous andmany-coloured in the shape of a pyramid, or, rather, like a hugefir-tree, sixty feet high, with shelves on the branches, widening andwidening towards the base till they reached a circumference of eightyyards. The Piazza was full of life: slight young figures, in whitegarments, with olive wreaths on their heads, were moving to and froabout the base of the pyramidal tree, carrying baskets full ofbright-coloured things; and maturer forms, some in the monastic frock,some in the loose tunics and dark-red caps of artists, were helping andexamining, or else retreating to various points in the distance tosurvey the wondrous whole: while a considerable group, amongst whomRomola recognised Piero di Cosimo, standing on the marble steps ofOrgagna's Loggia, seemed to be keeping aloof in discontent and scorn.
Approaching nearer, she paused to look at the multifarious objectsranged in gradation from the base to the summit of the pyramid. Therewere tapestries and brocades of immodest design, pictures and sculpturesheld too likely to incite to vice; there were boards and tables for allsorts of games, playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them,dice, and other apparatus for gambling; there were worldly music-books,and musical instruments in all the pretty varieties of lute, drum,cymbal, and trumpet; there were masks and masquerading-dresses used inthe old Carnival shows; there were handsome copies of Ovid, Boccaccio,Petrarca, Pulci, and other books of a vain or impure sort; there wereall the implements of feminine vanity--rouge-pots, false hair, mirrors,perfumes, powders, and transparent veils intended to provoke inquisitiveglances: lastly, at the very summit, there was the unflattering effigyof a probably mythical Venetian merchant, who was understood to haveoffered a heavy sum for this collection of marketable abominations, and,soaring above him in surpassing ugliness, the symbolic figure of the olddebauched Carnival.
This was the preparation for a new sort of bonfire--the Burning ofVanities. Hidden in the interior of the pyramid was a plentiful storeof dry fuel and gunpowder; and on this last day of the festival, atevening, the pile of vanities was to be set ablaze to the sound oftrumpets, and the ugly old Carnival was to tumble into the flames amidthe songs of reforming triumph.
This crowning act of the new festivities could hardly have been preparedbut for a peculiar organisation which had been started by Savonarola twoyears before. The mass of the Florentine boyhood and youth was nolonger left to its own genial promptings towards street mischief andcrude dissoluteness. Under the training of Fra Domenico, a sort oflieutenant to Savonarola, lads and striplings, the hope of Florence,were to have none but pure words on their lips, were to have a zeal forUnseen Good that should put to shame the lukewarmness of their elders,and were to know no pleasures save of an angelic sort--singing divinepraises and walking in white robes. It was for them that the ranges ofseats had been raised high against the walls of the Duomo; and they hadbeen used to hear Savonarola appeal to them as the future glory of acity specially appointed to do the work of God.
These fresh-cheeked troops were the chief agents in the regeneratedmerriment of the new Carnival, which was a sort of sacred parody of theold. Had there been bonfires in the old time? There was to be abonfire now, consuming impurity from off the earth. Had there beensymbolic processions? There were to be processions now, but the symbolswere to be white robes and red crosses and olive wreaths--emblems ofpeace and innocent gladness--and the banners and images held aloft wereto tell the triumphs of goodness. Had there been dancing in a ringunder the open sky of the Piazza, to the sound of choral voices chantingloose songs? There was to be dancing in a ring now, but dancing ofmonks and laity in fraternal love and divine joy, and the music was tobe the music of hymns. As for the collections from street passengers,they were to be greater than ever--not for gross and superfluous:suppers, but--for the benefit of the hungry and needy; and, besides,there was the collecting of the _Anathema_, or the Vanities to be laidon the great pyramidal bonfire.
Troops of young inquisitors went from house to house on this excitingbusiness of asking that the Anathema should be given up to them.Perhaps, after the more avowed vanities had been surrendered, Madonna,at the head of the household, had still certain little reddened ballsbrought from the Levant, intended to produce on a sallow cheek a suddenbloom of the most ingenuous falsity? If so, let her bring them down andcast them into the basket of doom. Or, perhaps, she had ringlets andcoils of "dead hair?"--if so, let her bring them to the streetdoor, noton her head, but in her hands, and publicly renounce the Anathema whichhid the respectable signs of age under a ghastly mockery of youth. And,in reward, she would hear fresh young voices pronounce a blessing on herand her house.
The beardless inquisitors, organised into little regiments, doubtlesstook to their work very willingly. To coerce people by shame, or otherspiritual pelting, into the giving up of things it will probably vexthem to part with, is a form of piety to which the boyish mind is mostreadily converted; and if some obstinately wicked men got enraged andthreatened the whip or the cudgel, this also was exciting. Savonarolahimself evidently felt about the training of these boys the difficultyweighing on all minds with noble yearnings towards great ends, yet withthat imperfect perception of means which forces a resort to somesupernatural constraining influence as the only sure hope.
TheFlorentine youth had had very evil habits and foul tongues: it seemed atfirst an unmixed blessing when they were got to shout "_Viva Gesu_!"But Savonarola was forced at last to say from the pulpit, "There is alittle too much shouting of `_Viva Gesu_!' This constant utterance ofsacred words brings them into contempt. Let me have no more of thatshouting till the next Festa."
Nevertheless, as the long stream of white-robed youthfulness, with itslittle red crosses and olive wreaths, had gone to the Duomo at dawn thismorning to receive the communion from the hands of Savonarola, it was asight of beauty; and, doubtless, many of those young souls were layingup memories of hope and awe that might save them from ever resting in amerely vulgar view of their work as men and citizens. There is no kindof conscious obedience that is not an advance on lawlessness, and theseboys became the generation of men who fought greatly and endured greatlyin the last struggle of their Republic. Now, in the intermediate hoursbetween the early communion and dinner-time, they were making their lastperambulations to collect alms and vanities, and this was why Romola sawthe slim white figures moving to and fro about the base of the greatpyramid.
"What think you of this folly, Madonna Romola?" said a brusque voiceclose to her ear. "Your Piagnoni will make _l'inferno_ a pleasantprospect to us, if they are to carry things their own way on earth.It's enough to fetch a cudgel over the mountains to see painters, likeLorenzo di Credi and young Baccio there, helping to burn colour out oflife in this fashion."
"My good Piero," said Romola, looking up and smiling at the grim man,"even you must be glad to see some of these things burnt. Look at thosegewgaws and wigs and rouge-pots: I have heard you talk as indignantlyagainst those things as Fra Girolamo himself."
"What then?" said Piero, turning round on her sharply. "I never said awoman should make a black patch of herself against the background. Va!Madonna Antigone, it's a shame for a woman with your hair and shouldersto run into such nonsense--leave it to women who are not worth painting.What! the most holy Virgin herself has always been dressed well; that'sthe doctrine of the Church:--talk of heresy, indeed! And I should liketo know what the excellent Messer Bardo would have said to the burningof the divine poets by these Frati, who are no better an imitation ofmen than if they were onions with the bulbs uppermost. Look at thatPetrarca sticking up beside a rouge-pot: do the idiots pretend that theheavenly Laura was a painted harridan? And Boccaccio, now: do you meanto say, Madonna Romola--you who are fit to be a model for a wise SaintCatherine of Egypt--do you mean to say you have never read the storiesof the immortal Messer Giovanni?"
"It is true I have read them, Piero," said Romola. "Some of them agreat many times over, when I was a little girl. I used to get the bookdown when my father was asleep, so that I could read to myself."
"_Ebbene_?" said Piero, in a fiercely challenging tone.
"There are some things in them I do not want ever to forget," saidRomola; "but you must confess, Piero, that a great many of those storiesare only about low deceit for the lowest ends. Men do not want books tomake them think lightly of vice, as if life were a vulgar joke. And Icannot blame Fra Girolamo for teaching that we owe our time to somethingbetter."
"Yes, yes, it's very well to say so now you've read them," said Piero,bitterly, turning on his heel and walking away from her.
Romola, too, walked on, smiling at Piero's innuendo, with a sort oftenderness towards the old painter's anger, because she knew that herfather would have felt something like it. For herself, she wasconscious of no inward collision with the strict and sombre view ofpleasure which tended to repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice.Sorrow and joy have each their peculiar narrowness; and a religiousenthusiasm like Savonarola's which ultimately blesses mankind by givingthe soul a strong propulsion towards sympathy with pain, indignationagainst wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must always incurthe reproach of a great negation. Romola's life had given her anaffinity for sadness which inevitably made her unjust towards merriment.That subtle result of culture which we call Taste was subdued by theneed for deeper motive; just as the nicer demands of the palate areannihilated by urgent hunger. Moving habitually amongst scenes ofsuffering, and carrying woman's heaviest disappointment in her heart,the severity which allied itself with self-renouncing beneficentstrength had no dissonance for her.
