Flaxius

The following story belongs to this book ‘in good faith of all sorts,’ be it salted, pickled or sugared; since it was originally the first ever recorded of the great and good Flaxius. But as it was of Florence, Florentiny, so, following the saying, ‘first come, first served,’ and being engaged on The Legends of Florence[4]—in which book the lovers of romance and the occult will find many a rare treat, showing how all Florence is a charmingly haunted city—therefore did I first introduce the sage in it to the world.

And in the introduction I said that the legend is of great antiquity, since there is a hint of it in an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi ben Mozel-toff, or the learned Rev Gedauler Chamar, besides being found in poetic form in my own great work The Music Lesson of Confucius; also in a marvellous cabalistic manuscript which I bought in sight of Santa Maria Novella, which describes how the Bathkol, or Daughter of the Voice, may be caused to be heard within our soul, and teach us all kinds of magic.

Money is the root of all evil, and Flaxius, who went to the root of everything, of course wanted it. How he often got it is set forth as follows:

Midnight was ringing from the cloister of San Miniato in Florence on the hill above, and Flaxius sat by the Arno down below, on the bank, by the square grey tower of other days, known as the Niccolò, or Torre della Trinità because there are in it three arches….

It was midnight in mid-winter and a full moon poured forth all its yellow light over Florence as if it would fain preserve it in oil—or amber—and over the olive groves till they looked in the distance like moss-agates in topaz.

‘Or I,’ quoth Flaxius, to carry out the simile, ‘like a fly in hock!’

Yes, it was a clear, cold Tuscan night, and as the last peal of bells went out into Eternity and faded in the Irrevocable, thousands of spirits of the departed began to appear, thronging like fire-flies in June, through the streets, visiting their ancient haunts and homes, shops and shades, greeting, gossiping or arranging their affairs just as the peasants do on Friday in the great place of the Signoria—as they have done for centuries.

Flaxius looked at the rolling river which went rushing by at his feet, and said:

‘Arno mio! you are in a tremendous hurry to get to the sea, and all the more because you have just had an accessit, a remittance, of rain from the mountain-banks. Buon pro vi faccia, much good may it do you! So every mortal fain would rise and run. So every shopman hurries to become a great merchant when he gets some money, and every farmer a signore, and every signore a great lord, and every great lord a ruler at court and over all the land—prorsum et sursum. And when they get there, or when you get to the sea, then ye are all swallowed up in greater lives, interests and actions; and so the rivers run for ever on—longer yet ever seeming less unto yourselves. And so—ad altiora tendunt omnes sic—all to the Higher ever doth aspire, the flower-edged torrent and the Florentine.’….

When he suddenly heard above his head a spirit-voice, clear, sweet and strange, singing not in words, or on the ear, but by tones of unearthly music, of which languages there are many among the unearthlies, each unto its ‘chaos,’ all being wordless songs or airs suggesting speech and yet conveying ideas more rapidly. It was the Goblin of the Tower to him of the tower next beyond on the further hill, and he said:

‘How many ghosts there are abroad to-night!’

‘Yes; it is a fine night for ghosting. Moonlight is mid-summer for them, poor souls! But I say, brother, who is yonder Frate, the dark monk-spectre, who always haunts your tower, lingering here and there about it? What is the spell upon that spirito?’

‘He is one to be pitied,’ replied the goblin of the Trinità. ‘He was a good fellow while he lived, but a little too fond of money. He was afflicted with what the doctors called in Rome, when I was young, the amor sceleratus, or sal aeratus habendi. So it came to pass that he died, leaving a treasure, mille aureos, or a thousand gold crowns, buried in my tower, unknown to any one, and for that he must walk the earth until some one living wins the money. For money is as life to all men, and he who destroys it is, in a way, a murderer.’

Flaxius pricked up his ears. He understood all that the goblins said, but they had no idea that the man in a scholar’s robe who sat below knew Goblinese.

‘What must a mortal do to get the gold?’ inquired the second goblin.

‘Truly he must do what is well-nigh impossible,’ replied the Elf of the Tower, ‘for he must, without the aid of magic—note that—bring to me here, in this month of January, a fresh, full-blown rose.’

The voices were silent; a cloud passed over the face of the moon; the river rushed and roared on; Flaxius sat in a Vandyke-brown study, thinking how he could obtain peace and repose for the ghostly monk, and also get the solatium or reward.

‘Here is,’ he thought, ‘aliquid laborare, something to be worked out. Now is the time, and here is the chance, ingirlandisi di lauro, to win the laurel wreath. A rose in January! What a pity it is not four hundred years later, when people will have green-houses, and blue-nosed vagabonds will be selling red roses all the winter long in the Tornabuoni! Faith! it is sometimes inconvenient to be behind, or in advance of the age!

‘Eureka! I have it!’ he at last exclaimed, ‘have it by the neck and tail! I will spogliar la tesoria, rob the treasury and spoil the Egyptian. Si non in errore versatus sum, unless I am stupendously mistaken, monk, thy weird will soon be dreed, thy penance prophesied will soon be o’er!’

Saying this he went into the city. And there the next day, going to a fair lady of his acquaintance who excelled all in Italy in ingenious needlework, he had made of silk a rose; and so deftly was it done, that had it been put on a bush you would have sworn that a nightingale would have sung to it, or a bee sought to ravish it.

Then going to a Venetian perfumer’s in the Via Vacchereccia close by the Signoria, the wise Flaxius had his flower well scented with best attar of roses from Constantinople, and when midnight struck he was at the tower once more, where he called to the goblin.

‘Che vuoi! What dost thou seek?’ cried the elf.

‘The treasure of the monk.’

‘Bene! Give me a rose?’

‘Ecco! There it is!’ replied Flaxius extending it.

‘Non facit—it won’t do,’ answered the goblin in Latin, thinking Flaxius to be a monk. ‘It is a sham rose of silk, artificially coloured—murice tincta est.’

‘Smell it,’ replied Flaxius calmly.

‘The smell is all right and sweet, I admit,’ answered the guardian of the gold. ‘The perfume is delicious’—here he sniffed at it seriously, being like all of his kind enraptured with perfume—‘and that much of it is, I grant, the real thing.’

‘Then tell me truly,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and swear by thy great ancestress Diana, the mother of the Spirits of the Night, and her sister-daughter Herodias, and her Nine Cats, by the Moon and her eternal shadow Endamone, and the word which Bergoia whispered into the ear of the Ox, and the Nails of Nortia, and the Lamia whom thou lovest!—what is it makes a man? Is it his soul or his body?’

‘Man of mystery and master of the old Etruscan hidden lore!’ replied the awe-struck goblin, ‘it is his soul.’

‘And is not the perfume of the rose its soul, that which breathes its life, in which it speaks to fairies or to men? Is not the voice in song or sweetened words the perfume of the spirit ever true? Is not——’

‘I give it up,’ replied the goblin. ‘The priest may turn in now for a long, long nap. Here, take his gold, and may you have a merry time with it; there is a great deal of good drinking in a thousand crowns, to say nothing of the eating! Do you ever play at dice, old man, ludere latrunculis? When you do, I promise you three sixes. By the way, I’ll just keep this rose to remember you by. Addio, a rivederla! Good-bye and au revoir!’

So the bedesman slept among his ashes cold, and Flaxius, who was a stout carl for the nonce, with a broad back and a great beard, returned, bearing a mighty sack of ancient gold, which stood him in good stead for many a day. And the goblin is still there in the tower.

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‘Hæc fabula docet,’ wrote Flaxius, as he revised the proof with a red pencil for which he had paid a penny at Ancora’s ancient stationery shop in the Via Condotti, ‘this tale teaches that in this life there is naught which hath not its ideal side or idol inner-soul, which may raise us to high reflection or great profit if we will but seek it.

‘The lower the man the less he sees, and the lower he looks, but it is all to his loss.

‘Now every chapter in this book, or in that of thy life, O my son, or daughter! may seem to thee to be only a rose of silk, yet do not stop at that, but try to find therein its perfume.

‘For thou art thyself, I doubt not, such a rose, even if thy threads, as in most of us, be somewhat worn or torn or faded; and yet thou hast a soul far better than many deem who see thee only from a distance. And this my book is written for the perfume, not the silk of my reader. And there is no person who is better in any way than what the world deems him or her to be who will not find in it comfort.’

But, friend, how was it that it came to pass that I found out this veritably and authentically ancient legend of the Tower of the Triple Arches, which, when I wrote, rose opposite my window over the Arno? My dear reader, it was written down for me by a witch, in very truth, who had learned it of her strange kind and with it many more, which you might have collected as well as I, if you could have kept such company and wandered in such paths as I did. And know that the Sleepy Hollow of the Hudson is not more haunted by marvellous spirits of a bygone age, or more strangely shaded with legends of goblins and fair, quaint mysteries of the golden time than is this city which is named from Flowers, or it may be from Flora, la belle Romaine, the beautiful sorceress who bewitched all with love. Villon asked what became of her:

‘Where is there left on earth a trace
Of Flora once the Roman fair?
Or Archipiada and Thais,
That bright and ever queenly pair?
Echo will fling the question back
O’er silent lake and streamlet lone,
All earthly beauty fades away,
Where have the snows of winter gone?’

Here the old Roman enchantress yet lives as much as she ever did in fact in Rome,—for she was there only a world-old Indian myth of pleasure and beauty,—in the city of the Lily. And here indeed there is, according to legend, a goblin by every bridge, an elf in every tower and old palazzo, a fairy of the ancient Roman kind in form, changed to a later hue in colour, a witch aura lingering in many a darkling corridor and chamber, a something between sweet perfume and the conjurer’s fumigations to raise spirits. I have learned that in my barber’s shop opposite the great column of Cosimo, San Zenobio once wrought a miracle, and in my café, a fair maid was bewitched into a cow.

‘All over doth this modern life
An ancient life enfold.’

These things you may read in full in many a story, as set forth in The (aforesaid) Legends of Florence, which grew out of the first draft of the sketch of Flaxius.

1. Legends of Florence, 2 vols.: London, D. Nutt. ↩