The Closed Book.
by William Le Queux.
CHAPTER ONE.
WHICH MAINLY CONCERNS A HUNCHBACK.
These strange facts would never have been placed on record, nor would this exciting chapter of an eventful life have been written, except for two reasons: first, because the discovery I made has been declared to be of considerable importance to scientists, bibliophiles, and the world at large; and, secondly, because it is my dear wife"s wish that in order to clear her in the eyes of both friends and foes nothing should be concealed, misrepresented, or withheld.
It was, indeed, a memorable day when I halted before the white, almost windowless house of the prior of San Sisto and knocked twice at its plain, green-painted door. The sun-blanched, time-mellowed city of Florence lay silent, glaring, and deserted in the blazing noon of a July day. The Florentines had fled to the mountains for air. The persiennes, or sun-shutters, were everywhere closed, the shops shut, the people slumbering, and the silence only broken by the heat-song of the chirping cicale in the scorched trees at the end of the Lung Arno.
Like many another Tuscan town, it stood with long rows of high, frescoed, and sculptured palaces facing the brown river, its magnificent Duomo and campanile, its quaint fourteenth-century streets, and its medieval Ponte Vecchio all forming a grim, imposing relic of long-past glory. In many places its aspect was little changed since the old quattrocento days, when it was the centre of all the arts and the powerful rival of Venice and Genoa, although its trade has decayed and its power departed. The Lion and Lily of Florence upon a flag is no longer feared, as it once was, even by the bloodthirsty corsairs, and the rich Florentine brocades, velvets, and finely tempered arms are no longer in requisition in the markets of the world.
Save for the influx of scrambling tourists, it is one of the dead towns of Europe. Modern trade pa.s.ses it by unnoticed; its very name would be forgotten were it not for those marvellous works of art in its galleries and in its very streets.
I had always loved the quaint old city, ever since a boy, when my father, a retired English naval officer, lived in that ancient house with the brown frescoes in the via di Pinti in the days before the shrieking steam trams ran to Prato or the splendid Palazzo Riccardi had been desecrated by the Government. At fourteen I left those quaint, quiet streets, with their cool loggias and silent, moss-grown courtyards, for the whirl of Paris, and subsequently lived and worked in London. Then, after an absence of nearly twenty years, I found myself living again in my beloved Tuscany by the Mediterranean, at Leghorn, forty miles distant from the medieval city of my childhood. Was it, therefore, surprising that the mood often seized me to go and revisit the old places I had known as a boy? I found them all unchanged-- indeed, nothing changes in "Firenza la Bella" save the fortunes of her ruined n.o.bility and the increase of garish hotels for the accommodation of the foreigner.
I was something of an antiquary, and through many years had been collecting medieval ma.n.u.scripts on vellum, ancient chapters, diplomas, notarial deeds, and such-like doc.u.ments, none being of later date than the fifteenth century. To decipher the work of the old scribes is, I admit, a dry-as-dust occupation; nevertheless, it is a work that grows on one, and the palaeographist is an enthusiast always. In one"s hobbies one should always join advantage to amus.e.m.e.nt, and seek to gather profit with pleasure.
My collection of musty-smelling parchments and rolls of folded vellum doc.u.ments, with their formidable seals of wax or lead; of heavy vellum books bound in oaken boards and bra.s.s bosses, or tiny illuminated books of hours, so minutely written that a microscope was almost necessary to read them, appeal to very few people. Most of my friends regarded them as so many old and undecipherable books and rolls, without interest and without value. They wondered that, being continually occupied at my desk writing novels, I should take up such an essentially dry study.
Yet it was this love of collecting that first brought me into contact with Francesco Graniani, a queer little old hunchback, who was a kind of itinerant dealer in antiques. Unshaven, very shabby, and not particularly clean, he dressed always in the same faded drab suit, and, summer or winter, wore the same battered, sun-browned straw hat through all the years I knew him.
Often this strange, rather tragic figure would meet me in the sun-baked streets of Leghorn, raise his battered hat respectfully, and, taking me aside, produce mysteriously from his pocket a parchment charter with its seal, some leaves from a medieval psalter, or perhaps an illuminated codex, or a book of hours with painted miniatures. Where le obtained such gems I have never to this day discovered. None knew who the old fellow was, or where he lived; he was a complete mystery.
One morning while crossing the great square I encountered him, and he informed me in his strange, mysterious manner of the existence of a very rare and interesting ma.n.u.script in the possession of the prior of the ancient church of San Sisto, at Florence.
"If the signore goes to Firenze, Father Landini will no doubt allow him to have sight of the parchment book," he said. "Tell him that Francesco Graniani wishes it."
"But what is the character of the ma.n.u.script?"
I inquired.
"I know nothing of it," he replied evasively, "except that I believe it once belonged to the Monastery of the Certosa. I heard of it only last night, and thought perhaps it might interest you."
It certainly did. Any discovery of that kind always attracted me--ever on the lookout as I was for a single folio of the original Dante.
With the object of inspecting the palaeographic treasure I next day took train to Florence, and an hour after my arrival knocked in some trepidation at the prior"s green door.
The long grey church, one of the oldest in that ancient city, stood in its little piazza off the via San Gallao, and adjoining it the prior"s house, a long, low, fourteenth-century building, with high, cross-barred windows, and a wonderful old-world garden in the rear.
In answer to my summons there appeared a thin, yellow-faced, sharp-tongued house-woman, and on inquiry for the father I was at once invited into a big stone hall, cool and dim after the sun-glare outside.
"Body of a thousand anchovies! Teresa, who has come to worry me now?"
I heard a man demand angrily from a door at the end of a darkened corridor. "Didn"t I tell you that I was not at home until after ma.s.s tomorrow? Plague you, Teresa?"
To the wizen-faced woman I stammered some apology, but at the same moment I saw a huge, almost gigantic figure in a long black ca.s.sock and biretta emerge from the room.
"Oh, signore?" he cried apologetically, the instant he caught sight of me. "Do pray excuse me. I have so many of my poor people here begging that I"m compelled to be out to them sometimes. Come in! Come in?"
Then he added reproachfully, turning to his housekeeper, "Teresa, what manners you have to leave this gentleman standing in the hall like a mendicant! I"m ashamed of you, Teresa! What must the signore think-- and a foreigner, too!"
In an instant the Very Reverand Bernardo Landini and I were friends. I saw that he was thoroughly genuine, a strange admixture of good-fellowship and piety. His proportions were Gargantuan. His clean-shaven face was perfectly round, fresh, and almost boyish in complexion, his dark eyes twinkled with merriment, his stomach was huge and spoke mutely of a healthy appet.i.te, his hand big and hearty in its shake, and in his speech he aspirated his "e"s," which showed him to be a born Florentine.
After I had explained that my name was Allan Kennedy, and that I was introduced by the _gobbo_ of Leghorn, he took out his great horn snuff-box, rapped it loudly, and offered me a pinch.
"Ah!" he remarked. "The signore is English, yet how well he speaks our Tuscan?"
I thanked him for his compliment, and went on to explain that I had pa.s.sed the years of my youth in Florence, and was at heart almost a Florentino.
This pleased him mightily, and from the moment I hinted at my antiquarian tastes he began to chatter as an enthusiast will.
The apartment wherein I sat, darkened by its closed sun-shutters, was certainly a strange one, small, and so crammed with antiques of every kind and description that one could scarcely move in it. Upon the old Empire writing-table at which he had seated himself stood a small bra.s.s crucifix of exquisite design, while all around hung ancient pictures of a religious character--saints, pietas, pictures of the Redeemer, and several great canvases reaching from floor to ceiling, evidently from church-altars. The very chairs were of the fifteenth century, heavy, ma.s.sive, and covered with stamped leather; the tables were of the Renaissance; and the perfect chaos of valuable objects of art stored there was to me, a collector absolutely bewildering.
And amid it all, seated at his table, was the ponderous, beaming cleric, mopping his brow with his big red handkerchief from time to time, and leaning back in his chair to laugh and talk with me.
Yet when I mentioned that I had been sent by the mysterious old hunchback of Leghorn his face instantly grew serious, and with a low sigh he said: "Ah, poor Francesco! poor fellow?"
"You know him well, _signor priore_," I said. "Tell me about him. I"m very anxious to know who and what he really is. To me he has always been a mystery."
But the stout prior shook his head, replying in a rather hard voice: "No, signore. I regret that my lips are closed."
His response was a strange one, and led me at once to suspect that my new friend was a party to some grave secret. Therefore, seeing that his manner was firm, I dropped the subject, although more than ever interested in the queer, deformed old fellow who had so long mystified me.
My friend the priest took me around his wonderful collection, and showed me a veritable confusion of valuable antiques: a Madonna by Andrea del Sarto, a Holy Family by Tintoretto, a tiny but exquisite specimen of that lost art of della Robbia, and a quant.i.ty of old tapestries, medieval ironwork, and old, carved furniture.
In a room beyond was stored a splendid collection of Florentine armour: helmets, breastplates, gauntlets, and lances, with a heap of ancient swords, rapiers, and poniards. I took up several to examine them, and found that they were without exception splendid specimens of the Spanish armourer"s work, mostly bearing upon the finely tempered blades the well-known marks of Blanco, Martinez, Ruiz, Tomas, and Pedro de Lezama.
Some of the work was wonderfully inlaid with bra.s.s and copper; and the collection appeared to be a representative one, ranging from the rusty crosshilts of the Etruscas down to the thin Spanish rapiers of the seventeenth century.
A third room, still beyond, was the priest"s bedchamber, and even this was so packed with curios and bric-a-brac that there was scarcely room to enter.
Above the narrow little bed was an antique bronze crucifix, mounted upon a carved wooden background covered with old purple brocade, while the whitewashed walls were almost hidden by the profusion of religious pictures. The red-brick floor was carpetless, as were all the other apartments; but the furniture was all old, and upon the chairs were heaped quant.i.ties of silks and velvets from the Genoese looms of the seventeenth century--truly an amazing profusion of relics of Italy"s past glory.
The prior smiled at my exclamations of surprise as I enthusiastically examined object after object with keen and critical eye. Then, when I remarked upon the value of the objects of art with which his unpretentious house was filled, he answered:
"I am delighted that you, signore, should feel so much interest in my few things. Like yourself, I am an enthusiast, and perhaps by my calling I am afforded unusual facilities for collecting. Here, in my poverty-stricken parish, are quant.i.ties of antiques stored in the cottages as well as in the palaces, and the _contadini_ from all the countryside, even beyond Pistoja, prefer to bring me their treasures in secret rather than to offer them openly to the p.a.w.nbroker."
"But Graniani told me that you have discovered a ma.n.u.script of remarkable character. I possess a small collection; therefore may I be permitted to examine it?" I asked, carefully approaching the subject.
"Most certainly," he replied, after a moment"s hesitation, it seemed.
"It is in the safe in my study. Let us return there." And I followed his ponderous form back to the small apartment wherein stood his writing-table with the crucifix and heavily bound Bible and missal upon it.
But as I walked behind him, unable to see his face, I was surprised at the tone of the remark he made as though speaking to himself:
"So Francesco told you of the book, did he? Ah!"
He spoke as though in suppressed anger that the queer old hunchback had betrayed his confidence.