Уильям Моэм - Then and Now

For a moment Machiavelli’s thoughts turned on that gross and stupid man. It was his fault really that all this had happened.

“If he’d looked after her properly,” said Machiavelli to himself, “it would never have occurred to me that there was anything doing and I wouldn’t have tried.”

Bartolomeo was to blame for the whole thing. But what a fool he’d been, he, Machiavelli, to send her that expensive scarf to excuse himself for not having kept the appointment; and he’d sent it round in the morning, by Piero of all people, when he was feeling like nothing on earth and his voice was a croak, so that she should get it before Bartolomeo’s return. How they must have sniggered. And did Piero take the opportunity to … They were a nice pair, he wouldn’t put anything past them.

And the exasperating thing was that he’d not only lavished presents upon her, he’d told his best stories to amuse her, he’d sung his best songs to charm her, he’d flattered her, in short he’d done everything a man can do to ingratiate himself with a woman; and then, then that wretched boy came along and just because he was eighteen and good–looking got for nothing what he’d spent a month’s time to get and much more money than he could afford. He would have liked to know how Piero had gone about it. Perhaps it was Monna Caterina, with her fear that Bartolomeo would adopt his nephews, who had suggested it. He invented her conversation.

“Well, what are we going to do about it? We can’t wait all night for him. It seems a pity to waste the opportunity. In your place, Aurelia, I wouldn’t hesitate. Look at him with his sweet face and his curly hair; he’s like the Adonis in that picture in the Town Hall. I know if I had to choose between him and that Messer Niccolò with his sallow skin and his long nose and those little beady eyes—well, there’s no comparison, my dear. And I daresay he can do what you want much better than that skinny Secretary.”

A bad woman. A wicked woman. And why she should prefer that boy to father her daughter’s son rather than an intelligent man of the world was something he would never understand.

But perhaps there had been small need for Monna Caterina to put her word in. It’s true the boy looked so innocent and seemed even a trifle shy, but appearances were deceptive. He had a pretty power of dissimulation, for never had he given the smallest indication that there was anything between him and Aurelia; and he was a cool, brazen liar; the only embarrassment he had shown was when Machiavelli had noticed the shirt; but how quickly he had recovered himself and with what effrontery met his master’s unspoken accusations. He was quite impudent enough just to have kissed Aurelia frankly on the mouth and when he found she did not object, slip his hand down her open bodice between her breasts. Anyone could guess what would happen then and Machiavelli’s angry imagination followed them into Bartolomeo’s bedchamber and into Bartolomeo’s bed.

“The ingratitude of the boy,” he muttered.

He had taken him on this trip from sheer good nature, he had done everything for him, he had introduced him to persons worth knowing, he had done his best to form him, to show him how to behave, to civilize him in short; he had not spared his wit and wisdom to teach him the ways of the world, how to make friends and influence people. And this was his reward, to have his girl snatched away from him under his very nose.

“Anyhow I put the fear of God into him.”

Machiavelli knew that when you have played a dirty trick on your benefactor half the savour of it is lost if you cannot tell your friends about it. He found some small comfort in that.

But all the anger he felt for Aurelia, Piero, Monna Caterina and Bartolomeo amounted to nothing compared with that which he felt for Fra Timoteo. That was the treacherous villain who had upset all his well–laid plans.

“Much chance he has now of preaching the Lenten sermons in Florence,” he hissed.

He had never had any intention of recommending the friar for that office, but it was a satisfaction to think that if he had had the intention he would now without hesitation discard it. The man was a rogue. No wonder Christianity was losing its hold on the people, and they were become wicked, licentious and corrupt, when there was no honesty, no sense of right and wrong in the religious by profession. Fooled, fooled, he’d been fooled by all of them, but by none so monstrously as by that rascally friar.

They stopped to eat at a wayside inn. The food was bad but the wine drinkable and Machiavelli drank a good deal of it, with the result that when he got into the saddle again to continue his journey the world looked a trifle less black to him. They passed peasants leading a cow or riding on the rump of a heavy–laden ass; they met travellers on foot or on horseback. For a while he pondered over the Duke’s participation in his disappointment; if it was a joke he had kept it to himself as he kept his designs to himself, and if it was part of a scheme to get him in his power, he knew by now that it had failed. Then his thoughts reverted to Aurelia. It was no good crying over spilt milk. Four months ago he had never seen her; it was silly to make such a fuss over a woman whom he had only seen half a dozen times and with whom he had only exchanged as many sentences. He wasn’t the first man whom a woman had led on only to let him down when it came to the point. That was the kind of thing a wise man took philosophically. Fortunately it was to the interest of the only people who knew the facts to say nothing about them. It was a humiliation certainly to have been made such a fool of, but anyone can put up with a humiliation that only he is aware of. The thing was to look at it from the outside as though it had happened to somebody else, and Machiavelli set himself deliberately to do this.

Suddenly with an exclamation he jerked his reins, and his horse, thinking he was meant to stop, pulled up so sharply that Machiavelli was thrown forward in his saddle. His servants rode up.

“Is something the matter, Messere?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

He rode on. Machiavelli’s exclamation and the instinctive movement had been caused by an idea that had flashed through his mind. At first he thought he was going to vomit and then he knew he’d had an inspiration: it had occurred to him that there was a play in the story. That was how he could revenge himself on those people who had mocked and robbed him; he would hold them up to contempt and ridicule. His ill–humour vanished and as he rode along, his imagination busy, his face beamed with malicious delight.

He would place the action in Florence, because he felt his invention would be more at home in those familiar streets. The characters were there and all he had to do was to emphasize their qualities a little in order to make them more effective on the stage. Bartolomeo, for instance, would have to be even sillier and more credulous than he was in fact and Aurelia more ingenuous and more docile. He had already cast Piero for the pimp who was to engineer the deception by means of which the hero would achieve his ends, and a pretty scamp he proposed to make him. For the general outlines of the play were clear in his mind. He would himself be the hero and the name he would give himself came to him at once—Callimaco. He was a Florentine, handsome, young and rich, who had spent some years in Paris—this would give Machiavelli the chance to say some sharp things about the French, whom he neither liked nor esteemed—and having come back to Florence had seen and fallen violently in love with Aurelia. What should he call her? Lucrezia. Machiavelli sniggered when he decided to give her the name of the Roman matron distinguished for her domestic virtues who had stabbed herself to death after having been outraged by Tarquinius. Of course the play would end happily and Callimaco would spend a night of love with the object of his desire.