OF BOILS AND THE IDEAL
[Footnote: This appeared in the New Review
for December 1896, and is reproduced by leave of the
Publisher.]
(A Colloquy with Perugino)
“There,” said my Roman escort, as we forded
the Tiber near Torglano, “the haze is lifting:
behold august Perugia,” I looked out over the
misty plain, and saw the spiked ridge of a hill, serried
with towers and belfries as a port with ships’
masts; then the grey stone walls and escarpments warm
in the sun; finally a mouth to the city, which seemed
to engulph both the white road and the citizens walking
to and fro upon it like flies. But it was some
time yet before I could decipher the image on the
gonfalon streaming in the breeze above the Signiory.
It was actually, on a field vert, a griffin rampant
sable, langued gules. “So ho!” said
the guide when! had described it, “So ho! the
Mountain Cat is at home again.... And here comes
scouring one of the whelps,” he added in alarm.
A young man, black-avised, bare-headed, pressing a
lathered horse, bore down upon us. He seemed
to gain exultation with every new pulse of his strength:
the Genius of Brute Force, handsome as he was evil.
And yet not evil, unless a wild beast is evil; which
it probably is not. He soon reached us, pulled
up short with a clatter of hoofs, and hailed me in
a raw dialect, asking what I did, whence and who I
was, whither I went, what I would? As he spake—looking
at me with fierce eyes in which pride, suspicion,
and the shyness of youth struggled and rent each other—he
fooled with a straight sword, and seemed to put his
demands rather to provoke a quarrel than to get an
answer. I wished no quarrel with a boy, so, as
my custom is, I answered deliberately that I travelled,
and from Rome; that my name was Hewlett, at his service;
that I was going to Perugia; that I would be rid of
him. I saw him grow loutish before my adroit
impassivity; his fencing was not with such tools.
He sulked, and must know next what I wanted at Perugia.
I told him I had business with Pietro Vannucci, called
Il Perugino by those who admired him from a distance;
and he seemed relieved, withal a something of contempt
for my person fluttered on his pretty lip. At
any rate, he left fingering his steel toy. “Peter
the Pious!” he scoffed, “Are you of his
litter? Pots and Pans? Off with you; you’ll
find him hoarding his money or his wife. To the
wife you may send these from Semonetto.”
Whereat my young gentleman fell to kissing his hand
in the air. I rose in my stirrups and bowed elaborately,
and, taking off my hat in the act, put him to some
shame, for he was without that equipment. He
pulled a wry face at me, like any schoolboy, and cantered
off on his spent horse, arms akimbo, and his irons
rattling about him. My guide marked a furtive
cross on his breast and vowed, I am pretty sure, a
score candles to Santa Maria in Cosmedin if ever he
reached home. “God is good,” he said,
“God is very good. That was Simon Baglione.”
