Уильям Моэм - Then and Now

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

“Don’t let your own 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 of an amiable disposition; he might have gone further 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.

“Niccolò,” 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 learned 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 twelfth of March, there was a skirmish between his men and the Count’s. Caesar Borgia was still in his rooms when the alarm was sounded; he donned his armour, mounted his horse and flung himself into the fray. The rebels fled and he, without looking to see that he was followed, pursued, pursued the rebels down a deep ravine, and there, surrounded and alone, unhorsed, he fought fiercely, fought 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 intention he could not have conducted himself other 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 a good man. Who cares now that Alexander of Macedon 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 praised 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 Niccolò, 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, Niccolò, 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.”