The Gadfly, E. L. Voynich [best books to read for self development .txt] 📗
- Author: E. L. Voynich
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labourer to find out the meaning by the light of
the ignorance and stupidity that are in him! That
doesn’t sound very practicable.”
“Martini, what do you think?” asked the professor,
turning to a broad-shouldered man with
a great brown beard, who was sitting beside him.
“I think that I will reserve my opinion till I
have more facts to go upon. It’s a question of
trying experiments and seeing what comes of them.”
“And you, Sacconi?”
“I should like to hear what Signora Bolla has
to say. Her suggestions are always valuable.”
Everyone turned to the only woman in the
room, who had been sitting on the sofa, resting
her chin on one hand and listening in silence to
the discussion. She had deep, serious black eyes,
but as she raised them now there was an unmistakable
gleam of amusement in them.
“I am afraid,” she said; “that I disagree with
everybody.”
“You always do, and the worst of it is that you
are always right,” Riccardo put in.
“I think it is quite true that we must fight the
Jesuits somehow; and if we can’t do it with one
weapon we must with another. But mere defiance
is a feeble weapon and evasion a cumbersome
one. As for petitioning, that is a child’s toy.”
“I hope, signora,” Grassini interposed, with
a solemn face; “that you are not suggesting such
methods as—assassination?”
Martini tugged at his big moustache and Galli
sniggered outright. Even the grave young
woman could not repress a smile.
“Believe me,” she said, “that if I were ferocious
enough to think of such things I should not be
childish enough to talk about them. But the
deadliest weapon I know is ridicule. If you can
once succeed in rendering the Jesuits ludicrous,
in making people laugh at them and their claims,
you have conquered them without bloodshed.”
“I believe you are right, as far as that goes,”
Fabrizi said; “but I don’t see how you are going
to carry the thing through.”
“Why should we not be able to carry it
through?” asked Martini. “A satirical thing has
a better chance of getting over the censorship
difficulty than a serious one; and, if it must be
cloaked, the average reader is more likely to find
out the double meaning of an apparently silly joke
than of a scientific or economic treatise.”
“Then is your suggestion, signora, that we
should issue satirical pamphlets, or attempt to run
a comic paper? That last, I am sure, the censorship
would never allow.”
“I don’t mean exactly either. I believe a series
of small satirical leaflets, in verse or prose, to be
sold cheap or distributed free about the streets,
would be very useful. If we could find a clever
artist who would enter into the spirit of the thing,
we might have them illustrated.”
“It’s a capital idea, if only one could carry it
out; but if the thing is to be done at all it must
be well done. We should want a first-class satirist;
and where are we to get him?”
“You see,” added Lega, “most of us are
serious writers; and, with all respect to the company,
I am afraid that a general attempt to be
humorous would present the spectacle of an elephant
trying to dance the tarantella.”
“I never suggested that we should all rush into
work for which we are unfitted. My idea was
that we should try to find a really gifted satirist—
there must be one to be got somewhere in Italy,
surely—and offer to provide the necessary funds.
Of course we should have to know something of
the man and make sure that he would work on
lines with which we could agree.”
“But where are you going to find him? I can
count up the satirists of any real talent on the
fingers of one hand; and none of them are available.
Giusti wouldn’t accept; he is fully occupied
as it is. There are one or two good men in
Lombardy, but they write only in the Milanese
dialect–-”
“And moreover,” said Grassini, “the Tuscan
people can be influenced in better ways than this.
I am sure that it would be felt as, to say the least,
a want of political savoir faire if we were to treat
this solemn question of civil and religious liberty
as a subject for trifling. Florence is not a mere
wilderness of factories and money-getting like
London, nor a haunt of idle luxury like Paris. It
is a city with a great history––”
“So was Athens,” she interrupted, smiling;
“but it was ‘rather sluggish from its size and
needed a gadfly to rouse it’–-”
Riccardo struck his hand upon the table.
“Why, we never thought of the Gadfly! The very man!”
“Who is that?”
“The Gadfly—Felice Rivarez. Don’t you remember
him? One of Muratori’s band that came
down from the Apennines three years ago?”
“Oh, you knew that set, didn’t you? I remember
your travelling with them when they went on
to Paris.”
“Yes; I went as far as Leghorn to see Rivarez
off for Marseilles. He wouldn’t stop in Tuscany;
he said there was nothing left to do but laugh,
once the insurrection had failed, and so he had
better go to Paris. No doubt he agreed with
Signor Grassini that Tuscany is the wrong place
to laugh in. But I am nearly sure he would come
back if we asked him, now that there is a chance
of doing something in Italy.”
“What name did you say?”
“Rivarez. He’s a Brazilian, I think. At any
rate, I know he has lived out there. He is one of
the wittiest men I ever came across. Heaven
knows we had nothing to be merry over, that week
in Leghorn; it was enough to break one’s heart to
look at poor Lambertini; but there was no keeping
one’s countenance when Rivarez was in the
room; it was one perpetual fire of absurdities. He
had a nasty sabre-cut across the face, too; I
remember sewing it up. He’s an odd creature;
but I believe he and his nonsense kept some of
those poor lads from breaking down altogether.”
“Is that the man who writes political skits
in the French papers under the name of ‘Le Taon’?”
“Yes; short paragraphs mostly, and comic
feuilletons. The smugglers up in the Apennines
called him ‘the Gadfly’ because of his tongue;
and he took the nickname to sign his work
with.”
“I know something about this gentleman,”
said Grassini, breaking in upon the conversation
in his slow and stately manner; “and I cannot say
that what I have heard is much to his credit. He
undoubtedly possesses a certain showy, superficial
cleverness, though I think his abilities have been
exaggerated; and possibly he is not lacking in
physical courage; but his reputation in Paris and
Vienna is, I believe, very far from spotless. He
appears to be a gentleman of—a—a—many adventures
and unknown antecedents. It is said that he
was picked up out of charity by Duprez’s expedition
somewhere in the wilds of tropical South
America, in a state of inconceivable savagery and
degradation. I believe he has never satisfactorily
explained how he came to be in such a condition.
As for the rising in the Apennines, I fear it is no
101
secret that persons of all characters took part in
that unfortunate affair. The men who were executed
in Bologna are known to have been nothing
but common malefactors; and the character of
many who escaped will hardly bear description.
Without doubt, SOME of the participators were
men of high character–-”
“Some of them were the intimate friends of
several persons in this room!” Riccardo interrupted,
with an angry ring in his voice. “It’s all
very well to be particular and exclusive, Grassini;
but these ‘common malefactors’ died for their
belief, which is more than you or I have done as
yet.”
“And another time when people tell you the
stale gossip of Paris,” added Galli, “you can tell
them from me that they are mistaken about the
Duprez expedition. I know Duprez’s adjutant,
Martel, personally, and have heard the whole story
from him. It’s true that they found Rivarez
stranded out there. He had been taken prisoner
in the war, fighting for the Argentine Republic,
and had escaped. He was wandering about the
country in various disguises, trying to get back
to Buenos Ayres. But the story of their taking
him on out of charity is a pure fabrication. Their
interpreter had fallen ill and been obliged to turn
back; and not one of the Frenchmen could speak
the native languages; so they offered him the post,
and he spent the whole three years with them,
exploring the tributaries of the Amazon. Martel
told me he believed they never would have got
through the expedition at all if it had not been
for Rivarez.”
“Whatever he may be,” said Fabrizi; “there
must be something remarkable about a man who
could lay his ‘come hither’ on two old campaigners
like Martel and Duprez as he seems to have
done. What do you think, signora?”
“I know nothing about the matter; I was in
England when the fugitives passed through Tuscany.
But I should think that if the companions
who were with a man on a three years’ expedition
in savage countries, and the comrades who were
with him through an insurrection, think well of
him, that is recommendation enough to counterbalance
a good deal of boulevard gossip.”
“There is no question about the opinion his
comrades had of him,” said Riccardo. “From
Muratori and Zambeccari down to the roughest
mountaineers they were all devoted to him.
Moreover, he is a personal friend of Orsini. It’s
quite true, on the other hand, that there are endless
cock-and-bull stories of a not very pleasant
kind going about concerning him in Paris; but if
a man doesn’t want to make enemies he shouldn’t
become a political satirist.”
“I’m not quite sure,” interposed Lega; “but
it seems to me that I saw him once when
the refugees were here. Was he not hunchbacked,
or crooked, or something of that kind?”
The professor had opened a drawer in his writing-table
and was turning over a heap of papers.
“I think I have his police description somewhere
here,” he said. “You remember when they escaped
and hid in the mountain passes their personal
appearance was posted up everywhere, and
that Cardinal—what’s the scoundrel’s name?—
Spinola, offered a reward for their heads.”
“There was a splendid story about Rivarez and
that police paper, by the way. He put on a
soldier’s old uniform and tramped across country
as a carabineer wounded in the discharge of his
duty and trying to find his company. He actually
got Spinola’s search-party to give him a lift, and
rode the whole day in one of their waggons,
telling them harrowing stories of how he had been
taken captive by the rebels and dragged off into
their haunts in the mountains, and of the fearful
tortures that he had suffered at their hands. They
showed him the description paper, and he told
them all the rubbish he could think of about ‘the
fiend they call the Gadfly.’ Then at night, when
they were asleep, he poured a bucketful of water
into their powder and decamped, with his pockets
full of provisions and ammunition––”
“Ah, here’s the paper,” Fabrizi broke in: “‘Felice
Rivarez, called: The Gadfly. Age, about 30;
birthplace and parentage, unknown, probably
South American; profession, journalist. Short;
black hair; black beard; dark skin; eyes, blue;
forehead, broad and square; nose, mouth, chin––’
Yes, here it is: ‘Special marks: right foot lame;
left arm
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