Imaginary LIves by Marcel Schwob

Cecco’s father was a rich wool merchant whose sympathies inclined toward the empire. From his earliest childhood the boy muttered scornful, jealous things against his sire. In those days many of the nobles had reached a point where they were no longer willing to serve the Pope, the Ghibellines having already rebelled while even the Guelphes were divided into factions designated as the Whites and the Blacks. Imperial intervention was not distasteful to the Whites, but the Blacks remained staunchly loyal to Rome and the Holy See. Cecco felt instinctively Black, perhaps because his father was a White.
    He hated his father almost from the first breath he drew. When he was fifteen he called for his share of the family fortune just as if old Angiolieri were dead. At the refusal of this request he left the paternal house in a furious wrath, complaining of his wrongs to high heaven and all the world, as he walked the roads to Florence where the Whites were again in power after routing the Ghibellines. Cecco begged bread, told of his father’s cruelty, and settled down finally in a cobbler’s hut.
    The cobbler had a daughter named Becchina with whom Cecco at once considered himself in love.
    He was a simple man, this cobbler, a constant worshipper of the Virgin, whose image he always wore, persuaded that his devotion gave him the right to mend boots with bad leather. Evenings before bedtime, he would sit with Cecco in the candlelight, chatting about the saints and their goodness while Becchina washed the dishes, her hair in an everlasting tangle as she made fun of Cecco for the crooked mouth he had.
    About that time all Florence began to talk of Dante’s wild love for Beatrice, daughter of Folco Ricovero de Portinari, lettered folk having discovered the secret in the songs the poet wrote to his lady. Cecco heard these songs and scoffed at them.
    “Oh, Cecco,” said Becchina, “you mock Dante but you cannot write such pretty verses for me.”
    “We shall see,” replied young Angiolieri with a sneer. First he set about composing a sonnet in which he criticized the measure and the sentiment of Dante’s songs. Then he wrote his verses to Becchina. She could not read a word of them, but she shrieked with laughter at the amorous contortions of his mouth when he read them to her.
    Poor and bare as a stone in a church, Cecco loved the Mother of God with a true fervor that won the cobbler’s heart. Together they yearned for shabby sacred relics peddled by the bankrupt Blacks. Fired as he was with ardent devotion, Cecco looked like a promising customer at first, but he had no money. And in spite of Cecco’s admirable piety the cobbler betrothed his daughter to a fat neighbour named Barberino, a vender of oils. “Holy oils, perhaps,” explained the cobbler by way of excuse to Cecco. The wedding took place about the same time Beatrice married Simone de Bardi, and Cecco imitated Dante’s woe.
    But Becchina did not pine away and die. On June the ninth, 1291, Dante sat idly tracing a picture on a tablet. It was the first anniversary of the death of Beatrice. Gazing at the tablet the poet saw he had drawn the figure of an angel whose face resembled his beloved. On June the twentieth, eleven days later (Barberino being busy among his vats), Cecco Angiolieri obtained from Becchina the favor of a kiss on the mouth and wrote a burning sonnet.
    Hatred sat undiminished in his heart, for now he wanted money with his love and he could not get it from the money lenders. Hoping to wheedle some from his father, he departed for Sienna. Old Angiolieri refused him even so much as a glass of sour wine, leaving him perched on the road in front of the house.
    While in his father’s rooms Cecco had seen a sack full of new-struck florins, revenue from their estates in Montegiovi and Arcidosso. Here was he, perishing of thirst and hunger, his clothes in tatters, his shirt dripping! Back he tramped to Florence, arriving so completely worn and disreputable