Then and Now

by W. Somerset Maugham

  But some months later the whole country was startled to hear that he had escaped, and after a hazardous journey, disguised as a merchant, had reached Pamplona, the capital of his brother-in-law, the King of Navarre. The news raised the spirits of his partisans and in the cities of Romagna there were wild scenes of rejoicing. The petty princelings of Italy trembled in their cities. The King of Navarre was at the time at war with his barons and he put Caesar Borgia in command of his army.

  During these four years Machiavelli was kept hard at work. He went on various missions. He was given the difficult task of constituting a militia so that Florence should not be altogether dependent on mercenaries, and when not otherwise occupied had handled the affairs of the Second Chancery. His digestion had always been poor and the journeys on horseback through the heat of summer, in the cold, wind, rain and snow of winter, the extreme discomfort of the inns, the poor food at irregular hours had exhausted him, and in February – February of the year of Our Lord fifteen hundred and seven – he fell seriously ill. He was bled and purged and took his favourite remedy, a pill of his own concoction, which to his mind was a specific for every human ailment. He was convinced that it was to this, rather than to the doctors, that he owed his recovery, but his illness and its treatment had left him so weak that the Signory granted him a month's leave of absence. He went down to his farm at San Casciano, which was some three miles from Florence, and there quickly regained his health.

  Spring had come early that year, and the countryside, with the trees bursting into leaf, the wild flowers, the fresh green of the grass, the rich growth of wheat, was a joy to the eye. To Machiavelli the Tuscan scene had a friendly, intimate delight that appealed to the mind rather than to the senses. It had none of the sublimity of the Alps, nor the grandeur of the sea; it was a plot of earth, graceful, lightly gay and elegant, for men to live on who loved wit and intelligent argument, pretty women and good cheer. It reminded you not of the splendid solemn music of Dante, but rather of the light-hearted strains of Lorenzo de' Medici.

  One March morning Machiavelli, up with the sun, went to a grove on his small estate that he was having cut. He lingered there, looking over the previous day's work, and talked with the woodmen; then he went to a spring and sat himself down on a bank with a book he had brought in his pocket. It was an Ovid, and with a smile on his thin lips he read the amiable and lively verses in which the poet described his amours and, remembering his own, thought of them for a while with pleasure.

  'How much better it is to sin and repent,' he murmured, 'than to repent for not having sinned!'

  Then he strolled down the road to the inn and chatted with the passers-by. For he was a sociable creature and if he could not have good company was willing to put up with poor. When his hunger told him that it must be getting on towards dinner-time he sauntered home and sat down with his wife and the children to the modest fare his farm provided. After dinner he went back to the inn. The innkeeper was there, the butcher, the miller and the blacksmith. He sat down to play a game of cards with them, a noisy, quarrelsome game, and they flew into a passion over a penny, shouted at one another, flung insults across the table and shook their fists in one another's face. Machiavelli shouted and shook his fist with the best of them. Evening drew near and he returned to his house. Marietta, pregnant for the third time, was about to give the two little boys their supper.

  'I thought you were never coming,' said she.

  'We were playing cards.'

  'Who with?'

  'The usual lot, the miller, the butcher and Batista.'

  'Riff-raff.'

  'They keep my wits from growing mouldy, and when all's said and done they're no stupider than ministers of state, and on the whole not more rascally.'

  He took his eldest son, Bernardo, now getting on for four, on his knees and began to feed him.

  'Don't let your soup get cold,' said Marietta.

  They were eating in the kitchen, with the maid and the hired man, and when he had finished his soup the maid brought him half a dozen larks roasted on a skewer. He was surprised and pleased, for as a rule supper consisted of nothing but a bowl of soup and a salad.

  'What is this?'

  'Giovanni snared them and I thought you'd like them for your supper.'

  'Are they all for me?'

  'All.'

  'You're a good woman, Marietta.'

  'I haven't been married to you for five years without finding out that the way to your heart is through your stomach,' she said dryly.

  'For that sound piece of observation you shall have a lark, dear,' he answered, taking one of the tiny birds in his fingers and popping it, notwithstanding her remonstrance, into her mouth.

  'They fly towards heaven in their ecstasy, their hearts bursting with song, and then, caught by an idle boy, they're cooked and eaten. So man, for all his soaring ideals, his vision of intellectual beauty and his yearning for the infinite, in the end is caught by the perversity of fate and serves no other purpose than to feed the worms.'

  'Eat your food while it's hot, dear, you can talk afterwards.'

  Machiavelli laughed. He slipped another lark off the skewer and while crunching it with strong teeth looked at Marietta with affection. It was true she was a good woman,- she was thrifty and good-tempered. She was always sorry to see him go on one of his journeys and glad to see him come back. He wondered if she knew how unfaithful he was to her. If she did, she had never given a sign of it, which showed that she was sensible and good-natured; he might have gone farther and fared worse; he was very well pleased with his wife.

  When they had finished and the maid was washing up, Marietta put the children to bed. Machiavelli went upstairs to take off the clothes, muddy and dirty, that he had worn all day, and put on what he liked to describe as courtly and regal garments; for it was his habit to spend the evening in his study reading the authors he loved. He was not yet dressed when he heard a horseman ride up and in a moment a voice he recognized asking the maid for him. It was Biagio, and he wondered what had brought him out from the city at that hour.

  'Niccolo,' he shouted from below. 'I have news for you.'

  'Wait a minute. I'll come down as soon as I'm ready.'

  Since it was still a trifle chilly as the day drew in he slipped his black damask robe over his tunic and opened the door. Biagio was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

  'Il Valentino is dead.'

  'How do you know?'

  'A courier arrived from Pamplona today. I thought you'd want to know so I rode out.'

  'Come into my study.'

  They sat down, Machiavelli at his writing-table and Biagio in a carved chair which was part of Marietta's dowry. Biagio told him the facts as he had learnt them. Caesar Borgia had established his headquarters at a village on the Ebro and planned to attack the castle of the Count of Lerin, the most powerful of the insurgent barons. Early in the morning, on the 12th of March, there was a skirmish between his men and the Count's. Caesar Borgia was still in his rooms when the alarm sounded; he donned his armour, mounted his horse and flung himself into the fray. The rebels fled, and he, without looking round to see if he was followed, pursued them down into a deep ravine, and there, surrounded and alone, unhorsed, he fought fiercely till he was killed. Next day the King and his men found the body, naked, for they had stripped him of his armour and his clothes, and the King with his own cloak covered his nakedness.

  Machiavelli listened to Biagio attentively, but when he had finished remained silent.

  'It is good that he is dead,' said Biagio after a while.

  'He had lost his states, his money and his army, and yet all Italy feared him still.'

  'He was a terrible man.'

  'Secret and impenetrable. He was cruel, treacherous and unscrupulous, but he was able and energetic. He was temperate and self-controlled. He let nothing interfere with his chosen course. He liked women, but he used them only for his pleasure and never allowed himself to be swayed by them. He created
an army that was loyal to him and trusted him. He never spared himself. On the march he was indifferent to cold and hunger, and the strength of his body made him immune to fatigue. He was brave and mettlesome in battle. He shared danger with the meanest of his soldiers. He was as competent in the arts of peace as in the arts of war. He chose his ministers with discrimination, but took care that they should remain dependent upon his good will. He did everything that a prudent and clever man should do to consolidate his power, and if his methods did not bring him success it was through no fault of his, but through the extraordinary and extreme malice of fortune. With his great spirit and lofty intentions he could not have conducted himself otherwise than he did. His designs were thwarted only by Alexander's death and his own illness; if he had been in health he could have surmounted all his difficulties.'

  'He suffered the just punishment of his crimes,' said Biagio.

  Machiavelli shrugged his shoulders.

  'Had he lived, had fortune continued to favour him, he might have driven the barbarians out of this unhappy country and given it peace and plenty. Then men would have forgotten by what crimes he had achieved power and he would have gone down to posterity as a great and good man. Who cares now that Alexander of Mace-don was cruel and ungrateful, who remembers that Julius Caesar was perfidious? In this world it is only necessary to seize power and hold it, and the means you have used will be judged honourable and will be admired by all. If Caesar Borgia is regarded as a scoundrel it is only because he didn't succeed. One of these days I shall write a book about him and what I learnt from my observation of his actions.'

  'My dear Niccolo, you're so impractical. Who d'you think would read it? You're not going to achieve immortality by writing a book like that.'

  'I don't aspire to it,' laughed Machiavelli.

  Biagio looked suspiciously at a pile of manuscript on his friend's writing-table.

  'What have you there?'

  Machiavelli gave him a disarming smile.

  'I had nothing much to do here and I thought I'd pass the time by writing a comedy. Would you like me to read it to you?'

  'A comedy?' said Biagio doubtfully. 'I presume it has political implications.'

  'Not at all. Its only purpose is to amuse.'

  'Oh, Niccolo, when will you take yourself seriously? You'll have the critics down on you like a thousand of bricks.'

  'I don't know why; no one can suppose that Apuleius wrote his Golden Ass or Petronius the Satyricon with any other object than to entertain.'

  'But they're classics. That makes all the difference.'

  'You mean that works of entertainment, like loose women, become respectable with age. I've often wondered why it is that the critics can only see a joke when the fun has long since seeped out of it. They've never discovered that humour depends upon actuality.'

  'You used to say that not brevity, but pornography was the soul of wit. You've changed your mind?'

  'Not at all. For what can be more actual than pornography? Believe me, my good Biagio, when men cease to find it so they will have lost all interest in reproducing their kind, and that will be the end of the Creator's most unfortunate experiment.'

  'Read your play, Niccolo. You know I don't like to hear you say things like that.'

  With a smile Machiavelli took his manuscript and began to read.

  'A Street in Florence.'

  But then he was seized with the slight misgiving of an author who reads something for the first time to a friend and is not sure that it will please. He interrupted himself.

  'This is only a first draft and I dare say I shall make a good many changes when I go over it again.'

  He flipped the pages uncertainly. The play had amused him to write, but one or two things had happenes that he had not counted on. The characters had taken on a life of their own and had diverged a good deal from their models. Lucrezia had remained as shadowy as Aurelia had been, and he had not seen how to make her more substantial. The exigencies of the plot had obliged him to make her a virtuous woman induced by her mother and her confessor to submit to something her conscience disapproved of. Piero, whom he had called Ligurio, on the contrary played a much greater part than he had intended. It was he who suggested the scheme by which the foolish husband was taken in, he who got round Lucrezia's mother and the monk, he in short who staged the intrigue and conducted it to a happy conclusion. He was astute, ingenious, quickwitted and pleasantly unprincipled. Machiavelli found it very easy to put himself into the rascal's shoes, but by the time he had finished discovered that there was as much of himself in the artful schemer as in the lovesick gallant who was his hero.

  Thinking how odd it was that he should play two parts in one play, he looked up and asked Biagio:

  'By the way, have your heard anything lately of your nephew Piero?'

  'In point of fact I have. I meant to tell you, but with all the excitement of Il Valentino's death I quite forgot. He's going to be married.'

  'Is he? Is it a good match?'

  'Yes, he's marrying money. You remember Bartolo-meo Martelli at Imola? He was some sort of relation of mine.'

  Machiavelli nodded.

  'When Imola revolted he thought it safer to get away till he saw how things were going. You see, he'd been one of the Duke's chief partisans and he was afraid he'd have to pay for it. He went to Turkey, where he had a business. The papal troops got to the city before there were any real disturbances, and as luck would have it Piero was with them. It seems he was well liked by some influential men who had the ear of the Pope and he managed to protect Bartolomeo's property. But Bartolomeo was banished, and lately the news has arrived that he died in Smyrna, and so Piero is going to marry the widow.'

  'Very right and proper,' said Machiavelli.

  'They tell me she's young and good-looking; evidently she needed a man to protect her, and Piero has a head on his shoulders.'

  'That was the impression he gave me.'

  'There's only one fly in the ointment. Bartolomeo had a little boy, between three and four years old, I think he is, and that won't improve the prospects of any children Piero might have.'

  'I think you may be sure that he will cherish the little boy as if he were his own,' said Machiavelli dryly.

  He returned to his manuscript. He smiled with some complacency. he could not help thinking that he had succeeded with Fra Timoteo. His pen had been dipped in gall and as he wrote he chuckled with malice. Into that character he had put all the hatred and contempt he felt for the monks who fattened on the credulity of the ignorant. By that character his play would stand or fall. He began again.

  'A Street in Florence.'

  He stopped and looked up.

  'What is the matter?' asked Biagio.

  'You say that Caesar Borgia suffered the just punishment of his crimes. He was destroyed, not by his misdeeds, but by circumstances over which he had no control. His wickedness was an irrelevant accident. In this world of sin and sorrow if virtue triumphs over vice it is not because it is virtuous, but because it has better and bigger guns; if honesty prevails over double-dealing, it is not because it is honest, but because it has a stronger army more ably led; and if good overcomes evil it is not because it is good, but because it has a well-lined purse. It is well to have right on our side, but it is madness to forget that unless we have might as well it will avail us nothing. We must believe that God loves men of good will, but there is no evidence to show that He will save fools from the result of their folly.'

  He sighed, and for the third time started reading.

  'A Street in Florence.'

  THE END

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