Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned by Gretschen Schultz

Author:Gretschen Schultz [Schultz, Gretschen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691161655
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2016-07-15T05:00:00+00:00

Figure 7: Plague Doctor

The noble Count Sébastiani had dreamt up this farcical disguise because he was young and whimsical, as well as quite shrewd. His getup was outrageous, but it isolated him from the rest of humanity and protected him from any hazards of contagion. Part necromancer, part buffoon, he lived according to secret manuscripts that he owed to an Eastern inheritance. Moreover, he had a skeptical disposition and made fun of doctors by imitating their chief idiocies. He claimed that the mere sight of his masquerade could frighten off death.

In truth, he had immured his father and mother behind the palace chapel wearing this profane outfit and had buried his favorite, the lovely Angelo, at the bottom of the gardens in front of a statue of Diana, whose amber-colored buttocks brightened stormy nights, this without the accursed plague bringing him down.

All his people, with the exception of those servants too black to blacken further, had fallen. The skeleton of his greyhound Lazar, lying curled up on the step of the staircase that descended toward the Arno, waited in vain for the return of his caresses. As for his mistresses and fiancées, they were carbonizing somewhere in town, buried hastily under the flagstones of their oratories or thrown pell-mell into public fires.

This now mattered little to Sébastiani Ceccaldo, because he was dying of hunger. The two slaves had stopped supplying him with bread made of crushed bones and spoiled meat. And, for some time, the water in the oubliettes gave off a putrid smell that was absolutely intolerable.

He had eaten candied fruit discovered in the palace attic, where gluttonous servant girls had once secreted them, now reduced to something resembling splintered wood; figs that had been gnawed on by vermin; bitter orange peels; and flattened watermelons with seeds as hard as rosary beads. He did not dare roast rats, which were few in number and quite sick, since all other animals perished before they would consume such dubious prey. The birds were occupied in town: funereal crows and solemn magpies rarely alighted on rooftops and, seen from afar, looked like a confraternal procession of theologians wearing black doublets with white arm slits.

Sébastiani Ceccaldo made his way, pruning ivy and cutting back liana with his sword as he went, to the amber-bottomed nymph that reputedly shone on stormy nights, and knelt piously by the tomb of his favorite, the page Angelo. As he arose he noticed that the marvelous statue’s two arms had been broken by two branches of an acacia tree. So distressed was he upon seeing the mutilation of this chef d’oeuvre that he forgot to visit his parents’ tomb.

So he wandered aimlessly, in search of scraps to eat.

From high balconies the view of the city was panoramic, the beautiful city abandoned under thick veils of flowers. It was the picture of a great banner, embroidered with dazzling jewels, of an enchantress’s dalmatic robe, laméd with every metal and encrusted with all kinds of gems. The contemplation of this paradise produced a mysterious drunkenness that stirred one’s imagination.

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