The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (43 page)

‘Italy, the paradise of the earth and the epicure's heaven, how doth it form our young master? It makes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and play at heypass, repass come aloft,
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when he salutes a man. From thence he brings the art of atheism, the art of epicurising, the art of whoring, the art of poisoning, the art of sodomitry. The only probable good thing they have to keep us from utterly condemning it is that it maketh a man an excellent courtier, a curious carpet knight; which is, by interpretation, a fine close lecher, a glorious hypocrite. It is now a privy note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular mark or brand on a notorious villain, to say he hath been in Italy.

‘With the Dane and the Dutchman I will not encounter, for they are simple honest men, that, with Danaus' daughters,
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do nothing but fill bottomless tubs and will be drunk and snort in the midst of dinner. He hurts himself only that goes thither; he cannot lightly be damned, for the vintners, the brewers, the malt-men, the alewives pray for him. ‘Pitch and pay,
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they will pray all day; score and borrow, they
will wish him much sorrow.' But lightly a man is ne'er the better for their prayers, for they commit all deadly sin for the most part of them in mingling their drink, the vintners in the highest degree.

‘Why jest I in such a necessary persuasive discourse? I am a banished exile from my country, though near linked in consanguinity to the best: an earl born by birth, but a beggar now as thou seest. These many years in Italy have I lived an outlaw. Awhile I had a liberal pension of the Pope, but that lasted not, for he continued not; one succeeded him in his chair that cared neither for Englishmen nor his own countrymen. Then was I driven to pick up my crumbs among the cardinals, to implore the benevolence and charity of all the dukes of Italy, whereby I have since made a poor shift to live, but so live as I wish myself a thousand times dead.

Cum patriam amisi, tunc me periisse putato
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“When I was banished, think I caught my bane.”

The sea is the native soil to fishes; take fishes from the sea, they take no joy, nor thrive, but perish straight. So likewise the birds removed from the air, the abode whereto they were born, the beasts from the earth, and I from England. Can a lamb take delight to be suckled at the breasts of a she-wolf? I am a lamb nourished with the milk of wolves, one that, with the Ethiopians inhabiting over against Meroe, feed on nothing but scorpions. Use is another nature, yet ten times more contentive were nature, restored to her kingdom from whence she is excluded. Believe me, no air, no bread, no fire, no water doth a man any good out of his own country. Cold fruits never prosper in a hot soil, nor hot in a cold. Let no man for any transitory pleasure sell away the inheritance he hath of breathing in the place where he was born. Get thee home, my young lad; lay thy bones peaceably in the sepulchre of thy fathers; wax old in overlooking thy grounds; be at hand to close the eyes of thy
kindred. The devil and I am desperate, he of being restored to heaven, I of being recalled home.'

Here he held his peace and wept I, glad of any opportunity of a full point to part from him, told him I took his counsel in worth; what lay in me to requite in love should not be lacking. Some business that concerned me highly called me away very hastily, but another time I hoped we should meet. Very hardly he let me go, but I earnestly overpleading my occasions, at length he dismissed me, told me where his lodging was, and charged me to visit him without excuse very often.

Here's a stir, thought I to myself, after I was set at liberty, that is worse than an upbraiding lesson after a breeching. Certainly if I had bethought me like a rascal as I was, he should have had an Ave Marie of me for his cynic exhortation. God plagued me for deriding such a grave fatherly advertiser. List the worst throw of ill lucks. Tracing up and down the city to seek my courtesan till the evening began to grow very well in age, it thus fortuned. The element, as if it had drunk too much in the afternoon, poured down so profoundly that I was forced to creep like one afraid of the watch close under the pentices,
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where the cellar door of a Jew's house called Zadoch, over which in my direct way I did pass, being unbarred on the inside, over head and ears I fell into it, as a man falls in a ship from the orlop into the hold, or as in an earthquake the ground should open and a blind man come feeling pad pad over the open gulf with his staff, should tumble on a sudden into hell. Having worn out the anguish of my fall a little with wallowing up and down, I cast up mine eyes to see under what continent I was, and lo, oh destiny, I saw my courtesan kissing very lovingly with a prentice.

My back and my sides I had hurt with my fall, but now my head swelled and ached worse than both. I was even gathering wind to come upon her with a full blast of contumely, when the Jew, awaked with the noise of my fall, came hastily bustling down the stairs, and, raising his other
tenants, attached
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both the courtesan and me for breaking his house and conspiring with his prentice to rob him.

It was then the law in Rome that if any man had a felon fallen into his hands, either by breaking into his house or robbing him by the highway, he might choose whether he would make him his bondman or hang him. Zadoch, as all Jews are covetous, casting with himself he should have no benefit by casting me off the ladder, had another policy in his head. He went to one Doctor Zacherie, the Pope's physician, that was a Jew and his countryman likewise, and told him he had the finest bargain for him that might be. ‘It is not concealed from me,' saith he, ‘that the time of your accustomed yearly anatomy is at hand, which it behoves you under forfeiture of the foundation of your college very carefully to provide for. The infection is great and hardly will you get a sound body to deal upon: you are my countryman, therefore I come to you first. Be it known unto you, I have a young man at home fallen to me for my bondman, of the age of eighteen, of stature tall, straight-limbed, of as clear a complexion as any painter's fancy can imagine. Go to, you are an honest man and one of the scattered children of Abraham. You shall have him for five hundred crowns.' ‘Let me see him,' quoth Doctor Zacharie, ‘and I will give you as much as another.' Home he sent for me; pinioned and shackled, I was transported alongst the street, where, passing under Juliana's (the Marquis of Mantua's wife's) window, that was a lusty
bona roba
, one of the Pope's concubines, as she had her casement half open, she looked out and spied me. At the first sight she was enamoured with my age and beardless face, that had in it no ill sign of physiognomy fatal to fetters. After me she sent to know what I was, wherein I had offended, and whither I was going. My conducts resolved them all She having received this answer, with a lustful collachrimation lamenting my Jewish pre-munire,
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that body and goods I should light into the
hands of such a cursed generation, invented the means of my release.

But first I'll tell you what bedded me after I was brought to Doctor Zacharie's. The purblind Doctor put on his spectacles and looked upon me; and when he had throughly viewed my face, he caused me to be stripped naked, to feel and grope whether each limb were sound and my skin not infected. Then he pierced my arm to see how my blood ran; which essays and searchings ended, he gave Zadoch his full price and sent him away, then locked me up in a dark chamber till the day of anatomy.

Oh, the cold sweating cares which I conceived after I knew I should be cut like a French summer doublet! Me-thought already the blood began to gush out at my nose. If a flea on the arm had but bit me, I deemed the instrument had pricked me. Well, well, I may scoff at a shrewd turn, but there's no such ready way to make a man a true Christian as to persuade himself he is taken up for an anatomy. I'll depose I prayed then more than I did in seven year before. Not a drop of sweat trickled down my breast and my sides, but I dreamt it was a smooth-edged razor tenderly slicing down my breast and sides. If any knocked at door, I supposed it was the beadle of Surgeons' Hall come for me. In the night I dreamed of nothing but phlebotomy,
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bloody fluxes, incarnatives,
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running ulcers. I durst not let out a wheal
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for fear through it I should bleed to death. For meat in this distance I had plumporridge of purgations ministered me one after another to clarify my blood, that it should not lie doddered in the flesh. Nor did he it so much for clarifying physic as to save charges. Miserable is that mouse that lives in a physician's house. Tantalus lives not so hunger-starved in hell as she doth there. Not the very crumbs that fall from his table, but Zacharie sweeps together and of them moulds up a manna. Of the ashy parings of his bread, he would make conserve of chippings. Out
of bones, after the meat was eaten off, he would alchemize an oil that he sold for a shilling a dram. His snot and spittle a hundred times he hath put over to his apothecary for snow–water. Any spider he would temper to perfect Mithridate.
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His rheumatic eyes when he went in the wind, or rose early in a morning, dropped as cool alum water as you would request. He was Dame Niggardize' sole heir and executor. A number of old books had he, eaten with the moths and worms. Now all day would not he study a dodkin,
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but pick those worms and moths out of his library and of their mixture make a preservative against the plague. The liquor out of his shoes he would wring, to make a sacred balsamum against barrenness.

Spare we him a line or two, and look back to Juliana, who, conflicted in her thoughts about me very doubtfully, adventured to send a messenger to Doctor Zacharie in her name, very boldly to beg me of him, and if she might not beg me, to buy me with what sums of money soever he would ask. Zacharie jewishly and churlishly denied both her suits, and said if there were no more Christians on the earth, he would thrust his incision knife into his throat-bole immediately. Which reply she taking at his hands most despitefully, thought to cross him over the shins with as sore an overwhart
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blow ere a month to an end. The Pope (I know not whether at her entreaty or no) within two days after fell sick. Doctor Zacharie was sent for to minister unto him, who, seeing a little danger in his water, gave him a gentle comfortive for the stomach and desired those near about him to persuade his Holiness to take some rest and he doubted not but he would be forthwith well. Who should receive this mild physick of him but the concubine Juliana, his utter enemy! She, being not unprovided of strong poison, at that instant in the Pope's outward chamber so mingled it, that when his grand-sublimity-taster came to
relish it, he sank down stark dead on the pavement. Herewith the Pope called Juliana, and asked her what strong-concocted broth she had brought him. She kneeled down on her knees and said it was such as Zacharie the Jew had delivered her with his own hands, and therefore if it misliked his Holiness she craved pardon. The Pope, without further sifting into the matter, would have had Zacharie and all the Jews in Rome put to death, but she hung about his knees, and with crocodile tears desired him the sentence might be lenified, and they be all but banished at the most. ‘For Doctor Zacharie,' quoth she, ‘your ten-times ungrateful physician, since notwithstanding his treacherous intent, he hath much art and many sovereign simples, oils, gargarisms,
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and syrups in his closet and house that may stand your Mightiness in stead, I beg all his goods only for your Beatitude's reservation and good.' This request at the first was sealed with a kiss, and the Pope's edict without delay proclaimed throughout Rome, namely, that all foreskin clippers, whether male or female, belonging to the Old Jewry, should depart and avoid upon pain of hanging, within twenty days after the date thereof.

Juliana, two days before the proclamation came out, sent her servants to extend upon Zacharie's territories, his goods, his movables, his chattels and his servants; who performed their commission to the utmost tittle, and left him not so much as master of an old urinal-case or a candle-box. It was about six o'clock in the evening when those boot-halers entered. Into my chamber they rushed, when I sat leaning on my elbow and my left hand under my side, devising what a kind of death it might be, to be let blood till a man die. I called to mind the assertion of some philosophers, who said the soul was nothing but blood. Then, thought I, what a thing were this, if I should let my soul fall and break his neck into a basin. I had but a pimple rose with heat in that part of the vein where they use to prick, and I fearfully misdeemed it was my soul searching for passage. Fie upon it, a man's breath to be let out at a back door, what a villainy
it is! To die bleeding is all one as if a man should die pissing. Good drink makes good blood, so that piss is nothing but blood under age. Seneca and Lucan were lobcocks
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to choose that death of all other: a pig or a hog or any edible brute beast a cook or a butcher deals upon dies bleeding. To die with a prick, wherewith the faintest-hearted woman under heaven would not be killed, oh God, it is infamous.

In this meditation did they seize upon me. In my cloak they muffled me that no man might know me, nor I see which way I was carried. The first ground I touched after I was out of Zacharie's house was the Countess Juliana's chamber. Little did I surmise that fortune reserved me to so fair a death. I made no other reckoning all the while they had me on their shoulders, but that I was on horseback to heaven, and carried to church on a bier, excluded for ever from drinking any more ale or beer. Juliana scornfully questioned them thus, as if I had fallen into her hands beyond expectation: ‘What proper apple-squire
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is this you bring so suspiciously into my chamber? What hath he done? Or where had you him?' They answered likewise afar off, that in one of Zacharie's chambers they found him close prisoner, and thought themselves guilty of the breach of her Ladyship's commandment if they should have left him. ‘Oh,' quoth she, ‘ye love to be double-diligent, or thought peradventure that I, being a lone woman, stood in need of a love. Bring you me a princocks
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beardless boy (I know not whence he is, nor whither he would) to call my name in suspense? I tell you, you have abused me, and I can hardly brook it at your hands. You should have led him to the magistrate; no commission received you of me but for his goods and his servants.' They besought her to excuse their error, proceeding of duteous zeal, no negligent fault. ‘But why should not I conjecture the worst?' quoth she. ‘I tell you troth, I am half in a jealousy he is some fantastic youngster who hath hired you to dishonour me. It is a likely matter that such a man as Zacharie should make a prison of his house! By your
leave, sir gallant, under lock and key shall you stay with me till I have enquired farther of you. You shall be sifted throughly ere you and I part. Go, maid, show him to the farther chamber at the end of the gallery that looks into the garden. You, my trim panders, I pray guard him thither as you took pains to bring him hither. When you have so done, see the doors be made fast and come your way.' Here was a wily wench had her liripoop
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without book. She was not to seek in her knacks and shifts: such are all women, each of them hath a cloak for the rain and can bear her husband's eyes as she list.