Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
in disposing of it.' The master appeared to be satisfied with the
argument. 'Thou shalt not find me exacting,' said he; 'give me the
sixty pieces, and the wine shall be thine.' At a signal, when the
contract was agreed to, the two slaves entered, bringing a hamper of
jars. 'Read the contract before thou signest,' cried the master. He
read. 'How is this? how is this? _Sixty golden ducats to the brothers
Antonio and Bernabo Panini, for wine received from them?_' The aged
men tottered under the stroke of joy; and Bernabo, who would have
embraced his brother, fainted.
On the morrow there was a calm, and the weather was extremely sultry.
The canonico sat in his shirt on deck, and was surprised to see, I
forget which of the brothers, drink from a goblet a prodigious draught
of water. 'Hold!' cried he angrily; 'you may eat instead; but putrid
or sulphureous water, you have heard, may produce the plague, and
honest men be the sufferers by your folly and intemperance.' They
assured him the water was tasteless, and very excellent, and had been
kept cool in the same kind of earthern jars as the wine. He tasted it,
and lost his patience. It was better, he protested, than any wine in
the world. They begged his acceptance of the jar containing it. But
the master, who had witnessed at a distance the whole proceeding, now
advanced, and, placing his hand against it, said sternly, 'Let him
have his own.' Usually, when he had emptied the second bottle, a
desire of converting the Mohammedans came over him: and they showed
themselves much less obstinate and refractory than they are generally
thought. He selected those for edification who swore the oftenest and
the loudest by the Prophet; and he boasted in his heart of having
overcome, by precept and example, the stiffest tenet of their
abominable creed. Certainly they drank wine, and somewhat freely. The
canonico clapped his hands, and declared that even some of the
apostles had been more pertinacious recusants of the faith.
_Eugenius._ Did he so? Cappari! I would not have made him a bishop for
twice the money if I had known it earlier. Could not he have left them
alone? Suppose one or other of them did doubt and persecute, was he
the man to blab it out among the heathen?
_Filippo._ A judgment, it appears, fell on him for so doing. A very
quiet sailor, who had always declined his invitations, and had always
heard his arguments at a distance and in silence, being pressed and
urged by him, and reproved somewhat arrogantly and loudly, as less
docile than his messmates, at last lifted up his leg behind him,
pulled off his right slipper, and counted deliberately and distinctly
thirty-nine sound strokes of the same, on the canonico's broadest
tablet, which (please your Holiness) might be called, not inaptly,
from that day the tablet of memory. In vain he cried out. Some of the
mariners made their moves at chess and waved their left hands as if
desirous of no interruption; others went backward and forward about
their business, and took no more notice than if their messmate was
occupied in caulking a seam or notching a flint. The master himself,
who saw the operation, heard the complaint in the evening, and lifted
up his shoulders and eyebrows, as if the whole were quite unknown to
him. Then, acting as judge-advocate, he called the young man before
him and repeated the accusation. To this the defence was purely
interrogative. 'Why would he convert me? I never converted him.'
Turning to his spiritual guide, he said, 'I quite forgive thee: nay, I
am ready to appear in thy favour, and to declare that, in general,
thou hast been more decorous than people of thy faith and profession
usually are, and hast not scattered on deck that inflammatory language
which I, habited in the dress of a Greek, heard last Easter. I went
into three churches; and the preachers in all three denounced the
curse of Allah on every soul that differed from them a tittle. They
were children of perdition, children of darkness, children of the
devil, one and all. It seemed a matter of wonder to me, that, in such
numerous families and of such indifferent parentage, so many slippers
were kept under the heel. Mine, in an evil hour, escaped me: but I
quite forgive thee. After this free pardon I will indulge thee with a
short specimen of my preaching. I will call none of you a generation
of vipers, as ye call one another; for vipers neither bite nor eat
during many months of the year: I will call none of you wolves in
sheep's clothing; for if ye are, it must be acknowledged that the
clothing is very clumsily put on. You priests, however, take people's
souls aboard whether they will or not, just as we do your bodies: and
you make them pay much more for keeping these in slavery than we make
you pay for setting you free body and soul together. You declare that
the precious souls, to the especial care of which Allah has called and
appointed you, frequently grow corrupt, and stink in His nostrils.
Now, I invoke thy own testimony to the fact that thy soul, gross as I
imagine it to be from the greasy wallet that holds it, had no carnal
thoughts whatsoever, and that thy carcass did not even receive a
fly-blow, while it was under my custody. Thy guardian angel (I speak
it in humility) could not ventilate thee better. Nevertheless, I
should scorn to demand a single maravedi for my labour and skill, or
for the wear and tear of my pantoufle. My reward will be in Paradise,
where a houri is standing in the shade, above a vase of gold and
silver fish, with a kiss on her lip, and an unbroken pair of green
slippers in her hand for me.' Saying which, he took off his foot
again, the one he had been using, and showed the sole of it, first to
the master, then to all the crew, and declared it had become (as they
might see) so smooth and oily by the application, that it was
dangerous to walk on deck in it.
_Eugenius._ See! what notions these creatures have, both of their
fool's paradise and of our holy faith! The seven Sacraments, I warrant
you, go for nothing! Purgatory, purgatory itself, goes for nothing!
_Filippo._ Holy Father! we must stop thee. _That_ does not go for
nothing, however.
_Eugenius._ Filippo! God forbid I should suspect thee of any heretical
taint; but this smells very like it. If thou hast it now, tell me
honestly. I mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are rather lax. Even
Son Cosimo might be stricter: so they say: perhaps his enemies. The
great always have them abundantly, beside those by whom they are
served, and those also whom they serve. Now would I give a silver
rose with my benediction on it, to know of a certainty what became of
those poor creatures the abbates. The initiatory rite of Mohammedanism
is most diabolically malicious. According to the canons of our
Catholic Church, it disqualifies the neophyte for holy orders, without
going so far as adapting him to the choir of the pontifical chapel.
They limp; they halt.
_Filippo._ Beatitude! which of them?
_Eugenius._ The unbelievers: they surely are found wanting.
_Filippo._ The unbelievers too?
_Eugenius._ Ay, ay, thou half renegade! Couldst not thou go over with
a purse of silver, and try whether the souls of these captives be
recoverable? Even if they should have submitted to such unholy rites,
I venture to say they have repented.
_Filippo._ The devil is in them if they have not.
_Eugenius._ They may become again as good Christians as before.
_Filippo._ Easily, methinks.
_Eugenius._ Not so easily; but by aid of Holy Church in the
administration of indulgences.
_Filippo._ They never wanted those, whatever they want.
_Eugenius._ The corsair then is not one of those ferocious creatures
which appear to connect our species with the lion and panther.
_Filippo._ By no means, Holy Father! He is an honest man; so are many
of his countrymen, bating the Sacrament.
_Eugenius._ Bating! poor beguiled Filippo! Being unbaptized, they are
only as the beasts that perish: nay worse: for the soul being
imperishable, it must stick to their bodies at the last day, whether
they will or no, and must sink with it into the fire and brimstone.
_Filippo._ Unbaptized! why, they baptize every morning.
_Eugenius._ Worse and worse! I thought they only missed the stirrup;
I find they overleap the saddle. Obstinate blind reprobates! of whom
it is written ... of whom it is written ... of whom, I say, it is
written ... as shall be manifest before men and angels in the day of
wrath.
_Filippo._ More is the pity! for they are hospitable, frank, and
courteous. It is delightful to see their gardens, when one has not the
weeding and irrigation of them. What fruit! what foliage! what
trellises! what alcoves! what a contest of rose and jessamine for
supremacy in odour! of lute and nightingale for victory in song! And
how the little bright ripples of the docile brooks, the fresher for
their races, leap up against one another, to look on! and how they
chirrup and applaud, as if they too had a voice of some importance in
these parties of pleasure that are loath to separate.
_Eugenius._ Parties of pleasure! birds, fruits, shallow-running
waters, lute-players, and wantons! Parties of pleasure! and composed
of these! Tell me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what complexion in
general have the discreeter females of that hapless country.
_Filippo._ The colour of an orange-flower, on which an overladen bee
has left a slight suffusion of her purest honey.
_Eugenius._ We must open their eyes.
_Filippo._ Knowing what excellent hides the slippers of this people
are made of, I never once ventured on their less perfect theology,
fearing to find it written that I should be abed on my face the next
fortnight. My master had expressed his astonishment that a religion so
admirable as ours was represented should be the only one in the world
the precepts of which are disregarded by all conditions of men. 'Our
Prophet,' said he, 'our Prophet ordered us to go forth and conquer; we
did it: yours ordered you to sit quiet and forbear; and, after
spitting in His face, you threw the order back into it, and fought
like devils.'
_Eugenius._ The barbarians talk of our Holy Scriptures as if they
understood them perfectly. The impostor they follow has nothing but
fustian and rodomontade in his impudent lying book from beginning to
end. I know it, Filippo, from those who have contrasted it, page by
page, paragraph by paragraph, and have given the knave his due.
_Filippo._ Abdul is by no means deficient in a good opinion of his own
capacity and his Prophet's all-sufficiency, but he never took me to
task about my faith or his own.
_Eugenius._ How wert thou mainly occupied?
_Filippo._ I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments
and of his character. He was going one evening to a country-house,
about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered me to accompany him. I
found there a spacious garden, overrun with wild flowers and most
luxuriant grass, in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the
humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped the lemon and
orange-trees; and the perennial pea sent forth here a pink blossom,
here a purple, here a white one, and after holding (as it were) a
short conversation with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old
cypress, played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. White
pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day, looked down on us
and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom they had
more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter boughs, or
alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A
few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could
take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and