CHAPTER IX. CHOULETTE FINDS A NEW FRIEND

She next day, as they were traversing the square where are planted, in

imitation of antique amphitheatres, two marble pillars, Madame Marmet

said to the Countess Martin:

“I think I see Monsieur Choulette.”

Seated in a shoemaker’s shop, his pipe in his hand, Choulette was making

rhythmic gestures, and appeared to be reciting verses. The Florentine

cobbler listened with a kind smile. He was a little, bald man, and

represented one of the types familiar to Flemish painters. On a table,

among wooden lasts, nails, leather, and wax, a basilic plant displayed

its round green head. A sparrow, lacking a leg, which had been replaced

by a match, hopped on the old man’s shoulder and head.

Madame Martin, amused by this spectacle, called Choulette from the

threshold. He was softly humming a tune, and she asked him why he had

not gone with her to visit the Spanish chapel.

He arose and replied:

“Madame, you are preoccupied by vain images; but I live in life and in

truth.”

He shook the cobbler’s hand and followed the two ladies.

“While going to church,” he said, “I saw this old man, who, bending over

his work, and pressing a last between his knees as in a vise, was sewing

coarse shoes. I felt that he was simple and kind. I said to him, in

Italian: ‘My father, will you drink with me a glass of Chianti?’ He

consented. He went for a flagon and some glasses, and I kept the shop.”

And Choulette pointed to two glasses and a flagon placed on a stove.

“When he came back we drank together; I said vague but kind things to

him, and I charmed him by the sweetness of sounds. I will go again

to his shop; I will learn from him how to make shoes, and how to live

without desire. After which, I shall not be sad again. For desire and

idleness alone make us sad.”

The Countess Martin smiled.

“Monsieur Choulette, I desire nothing, and, nevertheless, I am not

joyful. Must I make shoes, too?”

Choulette replied, gravely:

“It is not yet time for that.”

When they reached the gardens of the Oricellari, Madame Marmet sank on

a bench. She had examined at Santa Maria-Novella the frescoes of

Ghirlandajo, the stalls of the choir, the Virgin of Cimabue, the

paintings in the cloister. She had done this carefully, in memory of her

husband, who had greatly liked Italian art. She was tired. Choulette sat

by her and said:

“Madame, could you tell me whether it is true that the Pope’s gowns are

made by Worth?”

Madame Marmet thought not. Nevertheless, Choulette had heard people say

this in cafes. Madame Marmet was astonished that Choulette, a Catholic

and a socialist, should speak so disrespectfully of a pope friendly to

the republic. But he did not like Leo XIII.

“The wisdom of princes is shortsighted,” he said; “the salvation of the

Church must come from the Italian republic, as Leo XIII believes and

wishes; but the Church will not be saved in the manner which this pious

Machiavelli thinks. The revolution will make the Pope lose his last

sou, with the rest of his patrimony. And it will be salvation. The

Pope, destitute and poor, will then become powerful. He will agitate the

world. We shall see again Peter, Lin, Clet, Anaclet, and Clement; the

humble, the ignorant; men like the early saints will change the face

of the earth. If to-morrow, in the chair of Peter, came to sit a real

bishop, a real Christian, I would go to him, and say: ‘Do not be an

old man buried alive in a golden tomb; quit your noble guards and your

cardinals; quit your court and its similacrums of power. Take my arm and

come with me to beg for your bread among the nations. Covered with rags,

poor, ill, dying, go on the highways, showing in yourself the image of

Jesus. Say, “I am begging my bread for the condemnation of the wealthy.”

Go into the cities, and shout from door to door, with a sublime

stupidity, “Be humble, be gentle, be poor!” Announce peace and charity

to the cities, to the dens, and to the barracks. You will be disdained;

the mob will throw stones at you. Policemen will drag you into prison.

You shall be for the humble as for the powerful, for the poor as for

the rich, a subject of laughter, an object of disgust and of pity. Your

priests will dethrone you, and elevate against you an anti-pope, or will

say that you are crazy. And it is necessary that they should tell the

truth; it is necessary that you should be crazy; the lunatics have

saved the world. Men will give to you the crown of thorns and the reed

sceptre, and they will spit in your face, and it is by that sign that

you will appear as Christ and true king; and it is by such means that

you will establish Christian socialism, which is the kingdom of God on

earth.’”

Having spoken in this way, Choulette lighted one of those long and

tortuous Italian cigars, which are pierced with a straw. He drew from it

several puffs of infectious vapor, then he continued, tranquilly:

“And it would be practical. You may refuse to acknowledge any quality in

me except my clear view of situations. Ah, Madame Marmet, you will

never know how true it is that the great works of this world were always

achieved by madmen. Do you think, Madame Martin, that if Saint Francis

of Assisi had been reasonable, he would have poured upon the earth,

for the refreshment of peoples, the living water of charity and all the

perfumes of love?”

“I do not know,” replied Madame Martin; “but reasonable people have

always seemed to me to be bores. I can say this to you, Monsieur

Choulette.”

They returned to Fiesole by the steam tramway which goes up the hill.

The rain fell. Madame Marmet went to sleep and Choulette complained. All

his ills came to attack him at once: the humidity in the air gave him

a pain in the knee, and he could not bend his leg; his carpet-bag, lost

the day before in the trip from the station to Fiesole, had not been

found, and it was an irreparable disaster; a Paris review had just

published one of his poems, with typographical errors as glaring as

Aphrodite’s shell.

He accused men and things of being hostile to him. He became puerile,

absurd, odious. Madame Martin, whom Choulette and the rain saddened,

thought the trip would never end. When she reached the house she found

Miss Bell in the drawing-room, copying with gold ink on a leaf of

parchment, in a handwriting formed after the Aldine italics, verses

which she had composed in the night. At her friend’s coming she raised

her little face, plain but illuminated by splendid eyes.

“Darling, permit me to introduce to you the Prince Albertinelli.”

The Prince possessed a certain youthful, godlike beauty, that his black

beard intensified. He bowed.

“Madame, you would make one love France, if that sentiment were not

already in our hearts.”

The Countess and Choulette asked Miss Bell to read to them the verses

she was writing. She excused herself from reciting her uncertain cadence

to the French poet, whom she liked best after Francois Villon. Then she

recited in her pretty, hissing, birdlike voice.

“That is very pretty,” said Choulette, “and bears the mark of Italy

softly veiled by the mists of Thule.”

“Yes,” said the Countess Martin, “that is pretty. But why, dear Vivian,

did your two beautiful innocents wish to die?”

“Oh, darling, because they felt as happy as possible, and desired

nothing more. It was discouraging, darling, discouraging. How is it that

you do not understand that?”

“And do you think that if we live the reason is that we hope?”

“Oh, yes. We live in the hope of what to-morrow, tomorrow, king of the

land of fairies, will bring in his black mantle studded with stars,

flowers, and tears. Oh, bright king, To-morrow!”