Imaginary LIves by Marcel Schwob Read Free Book Online Page B

the Divine, for he wore a long black beard and a rough haircloth garment marked from collar to hem with a large red cross. The pelt of a wild beast was around his waist.
    In a loud, terrible voice he exclaimed: “ Laudato et benedetto et glorificato sio lo Patre, ” and all the children repeated his words. Then he cried “sia lo Fijo” and the children repeated that. When he chanted “ sia lo Spiritu Sancto ” they said the words after him. Together they ended with the cry: “ Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! ” and after a huge blast of his trumpet he began to preach. His words were harsh as mountain wine but they held Dolcino, most of all, when the man in haircloth thumped the drum. Admiration and envy filled Dolcino’s soul.
    This man was ignorant and violent – he knew no Latin (he pronounced the penitence “penitenza”) but he repeated sinister predictions of Merlin and Sibyl and Joachim of Floris, all in the Book of Figures. He prophesied the Anti-Christ in the person of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa whose ruin would be complete until the seven orders were taken from him according to the Writings. Dolcino followed the strange man all the way to Parma where the full understanding came to him.
    The announcer shall proceed the founder of the seven orders, Dolcino was given to know. So there at Parma, on the ancient stone from which the magistrates addressed the people, he proclaimed his new faith. Its followers must dress, he said, with little white capes over their shoulders like the apostles on the lamp shade in the refectory of the Franciscans. Baptism was not enough, he declared.
    True believers must return to the complete innocence of children. He made a cradle and got in it, calling for the breast of some pious woman who cried with pity. To test his chastity he persuaded a woman to have her daughter come naked to his bed.
    He begged a sack of money, distributing it among the poor, to thieves and to women of the streets.
    Work must cease, he cried, for all could live like the beasts of the fields. Robert, the convent cook, ran away to follow Dolcino, feeding his new leader out of a bowl stolen from the poor brethren. Folk believed the days of Gerardino Secarelli, the mad vagabond, and his Chevaliers of Jesus, had come back out of the past. Blissfully they followed Dolcino, murmuring: “Father, father, father!”
    The monks of Parma finally drove him out of the city. Margherita, a girl of noble family, ran down the road after him, joining him on his march to Plaisance. He caught up a sack marked with the red cross and threw it over her and took her with him.
    Swineherds and drovers saw them sleeping in the fields. Many left their flocks to follow. Captive women whom the men of Cremona had cruelly mutilated by cutting off their noses, implored them and came with them, hiding their faces behind white shrouds. Margherita instructed them in the new faith. On a wooded mountain not far from Novara they established themselves for a communal life, though Dolcino set up neither rule nor order: according to his doctrines all would be found in charity. Those who wished fed on berries and herbs. Others begged in the towns and some stole cattle.
    The life of Dolcino and Margherita was free under the sky, but the people of Novara could not understand. When the peasants complained of thieving and scandal, soldiery was sent to clear the mountain and the apostles were driven away. As for Dolcino and Margherita, they were tied to the back of an ass, facing tailward, and led into Novara where they were burned in the market place,b o t h on the same pyre by order of the law. Dolcino made only one request. He asked that they should not be stripped, but burned in their white mantles, like the apostles on the lamp shade in the refectory of the Franciscans.
     
     

CECCO ANGIOLIERI
    Poet of Hate
     
    Cecco Angiolieri was born hateful. His birth at Sienna coincided to the very day with the birth of Dante Alaghieri at Florence.