The essential writings of Machiavelli (61 page)

26.
Principally Pope Julius II, Louis XII of France, and Ferdinand II of Aragon, but also Mantua and Ferrara.

T
O
L
UIGI
G
UICCIARDINI

V
ERONA
, 8 D
ECEMBER
1509

Luigi Guicciardini was the older brother of Francesco Guicciardini, Renaissance Italy’s foremost historian. Luigi Guicciardini had written Machiavelli a letter describing a wonderful amorous adventure and how he yearned to encounter the lady again, to which Machiavelli sent the following scabrously satirical reply
.

—

Well, I’ll be hanged, Luigi! It is amazing how in the same situation Fortune can lead men to such different results! You fucked that girl you met and are ready for another go. I, on the other hand, having been here for a few days and driven mad by the lack of matrimonial bliss, happened to run into the old woman who has been washing my shirts. She lives in a hovel, really more of a cellar; the only light that enters it comes through the door. So there I was, walking past one day, when she recognized me and made quite a fuss. She asked if I wouldn’t mind stepping inside, as she wanted to show me some nice shirts that I might like to buy. Innocent dupe that I am, I fell for her ruse. I followed her inside and saw a woman cowering in the dim light, covering her face with a towel in a great show of modesty. The old bawd took me by the hand, led me over to her, and said: “Here is the shirt I am selling. Wouldn’t you like to try it on before you buy?” Timid man that I am, fear gripped me. But to cut a long story short, as I found myself alone with the girl in the dark (the old woman having quickly left, shutting the door behind her), I went ahead and fucked her. Her thighs were flabby, her cunt soggy, and her breath somewhat ripe, but as my lust was rampant I did the deed. Having had my way with her, I thought that I might as well view the merchandise, and so took a burning ember from the hearth and lit the lamp that was hanging above it. No sooner was it lit than it nearly fell from my hands. Woe and strife! The woman was so ugly that I was almost struck dead. The first thing I saw was a clump of hair wavering between white and black—in other words, gray—and, though she was hairless on top, her baldness revealing a procession of lice marching over her scalp, the few strands of hair she did have were tangled with whiskers sprouting all the way to her eyebrows. On top of her small wrinkled head was a burn scar that gave her the air of having been branded at the market. Her eyebrows were a clump of bristles filled with louse eggs; one eye pointed up, the other down—one eye very much larger than the other, her eyelids mangy. Though her nose hung low, it managed to curl upward, one nostril open and clogged with snot. Her mouth bore a great resemblance to that of Lorenzo de’ Medici—but it was twisted to one side, and slobber was bubbling out of it, since she had no teeth that might keep the saliva in. Her upper lip had a long but sparse mustache, and her chin jutted out sharply with a slight upward twist, folds of skin dangling from it to the base of her neck. I stood before this monster dumbfounded. Noticing my bewilderment she attempted to say “What is the matter, Signore?” but she could not because of her stammer. But the moment she opened her mouth, a surge of putrid breath hit my nose and mouth, the gateways to my two most offended senses. The surge assaulted my stomach and I, unable to fend off the attack, heaved and gagged and retched all over her. Having paid her with the coin she deserved, I went on my way.

And by the Heaven I hope will one day receive me, I do not believe that my lust will return while I am here in Lombardy. But you must thank God that you have the hope of having more such pleasure, as I thank God that I have lost the fear of ever again experiencing such displeasure.

I am hoping that I will have some money from this journey and I would like to do some business once I am back in Florence. I’ve been thinking of setting up a small poultry farm, but I would have to find a man to manage it for me. I hear Piero di Martino might be good. I’d like you to sound him out. If he’s interested in the job, let me know, because if he is not, I’ll try to dig up someone else.

Giovanni will fill you in on any other news from here. Greetings to Jacopo and give my best to him, and do not forget Marco.

In Verona, on the eighth day of December 1509.

I am awaiting a reply from Gualtieri about my bit of doggerel.

Niccolò Machiavelli

T
O
F
RANCESCO
V
ETTORI

F
LORENCE
, 13 M
ARCH
1513

Machiavelli’s high position in Florentine politics came to an abrupt end in IS 12, when the Gonfalonier, Piero Soderini, was deposed and the Medici returned to power in Florence. Not only did Machiavelli find himself stripped of his office and forbidden to set foot in the Signoria, Florence’s executive council, but in early 1513 his name appeared on a list drawn up by anti-Medici conspirators. He was thrown into prison, maintaining his innocence despite rigorous torture. Through the intercession of Francesco Vettori, Florence’s ambassador to the newly elected Medici pope, Leo X, Machiavelli was pardoned. The day after his release, Machiavelli wrote the following letter to Francesco Vettori
.

—

Honored Sir. As you will have heard from your brother Pagolo, I have been released from prison amid universal rejoicing in the city
²⁷
I did indeed have every hope of being freed through your and Pagolo’s kind intervention, and am extremely grateful for it. I will not repeat the long story of my humiliation, but will only say that Fate has done its utmost to harm me. I thank God, however, that all this is over, and I have every hope that I shall not meet with such reversals again. I will be more careful henceforth, and the times are bound to be more liberal and not so replete with suspicion.

You are aware of the plight of our Messer Totto,
²⁸
and I must turn to you and Pagolo for help. Messer Totto and I desire only one thing: that he be placed at the court of the pope, and so entered in the pontiff’s scroll and provided with official credentials. We beg you for this.

Remind His Holiness about me so that if possible I might prove useful to Him or His entourage, for I believe I could bring you much honor as well as much benefit to myself.

On the 13th day of March 1512 [1513]
Yours
,
Niccolò Machiavelli, in Florence
.

27.
The election of Pope Leo X, Giovanni de’ Medici (the older brother of Giuliano de’ Medici, who now held the first place in the Florentine Republic), unleashed euphoria and celebration in the streets of Florence. The populace was aware that with a Florentine Medici as the pope, Florence could expect unprecedented favors, benefits, and prominence in Italy and the world.

28.
Machiavelli’s brother.

T
O
F
RANCESCO
V
ETTORI

F
LORENCE
, 10 D
ECEMBER
, 1513

This letter begins with Machiavelli’s witty response to Vettori’s description of his elegant and world-weary life as Florence’s ambassador to the pope’s court. Vettori wrote of getting up late in the morning, of sauntering over to the pope’s palace every other day “to speak twenty words with the pope, ten with Cardinal de’ Medici, and six with Giuliano the Magnificent,” of stylish card games, Roman gardens, and horseback riding. Machiavelli counters with a witty description of an inelegant rural existence in exile: “I have been catching thrushes with my bare hands. I would get up before daybreak, prepare the bird lime, and set off with a stack of cages loaded on my back.” Vettori interacts with the foremost men of the day, while Machiavelli’s companions are cantankerous woodcutters, “a butcher, a miller, and two kiln tenders.”

This is one of Machiavelli’s most celebrated letters, containing a lyrical passage in which he describes his discourse with the ancient philosophers and working on
The Prince.

—

Most honored Ambassador. “Divine favors were never late.”
²⁹
I say this because it seemed to me that I had not lost your favor but merely mislaid laid it, for when you had not written to me for such a long time and I wondered what the cause might be, I paid little heed to all the reasons that filled my mind except for the one that made me believe you might have refrained from writing because someone had informed you that I was not a good custodian of your letters.
³⁰
I knew that I had not shown them to anyone except Filippo [Casavecchia] and Pagolo [Vettori]. But your recent letter of the 23rd of last month reassured me: I am very pleased to see how calmly and methodically you are exercising your public duties. I encourage you to continue in this fashion, because he who abandons his advantages for those of others only loses his own without receiving anyone’s gratitude. As Fortune insists on doing everything, she also insists that we leave her to her own devices and not interfere, biding our time until she allows us to do something: That is the moment for one to exert oneself and keep a closer eye on matters, and the moment for me to leave my farm and say: “Here I am!”

In the meantime, as I would like to repay you in kind, I want to tell you in this letter only what my life is like, and should you decide you would like to trade your life for mine, I will be happy to oblige.

I am on my farm, and since my recent problems I have not been twenty days in Florence.
³¹
I have been catching thrushes with my bare hands. I would get up before daybreak, prepare the bird lime, and set off with a bundle of cages stacked on my back, much like Geta returning from the harbor laden with the books of Amphitrion.
³²
I’d catch at least two thrushes, at most six. I spent the whole of November in this way. Then to my regret this little amusement, though irksome and strange, came to an end. I shall tell you what my life is. I rise in the morning with the sun and head over to some woods I am having cut down, where I stay two hours surveying the work done the day before and to spend some time with the woodcutters, who are always in the middle of some dispute, either among themselves or with their neighbors. I could tell you a thousand amusing things about these woods that have happened to me, with Frosino da Panzano and others who wanted the timber. Frosino in particular. He sent for some stacks of wood without telling me anything, and when it came time to pay he wanted to withhold ten lire that he says I owe him from a card game at Antonio Guicciardini’s some four years back. I raised hell. I was about to accuse the carter who came to collect the timber of being a thief. But Giovanni Machiavelli finally stepped in and made us reach an agreement. Batista Guicciardini, Filippo Ginori, Tommaso del Bene, and certain other citizens each ordered a stack of wood from me when the north wind was blowing.
³³
I promised to send them all. I sent one stack to Tommaso, which turned up in Florence half its original size, because he brought along his wife, the children, and his sons to lash the logs—they looked like Gaburra on Thursdays when he and his men cudgel an ox.
³⁴
So, seeing who was profiting, I told the others I didn’t have any more timber, and they were all angry, especially Batista, who includes this among other disasters of Prato.
³⁵

Leaving the woods I go to a spring, and from there to one of my bird traps. I have a book under my arm, either Dante, Petrarch, or one of the minor poets, Tibullus, Ovid, or the like. I read of their amorous passions and their loves, remember mine, and take pleasure for a while in these thoughts. Then I walk down the road to the tavern, speak to passersby ask them news of their villages, learn various things, and note various tastes and thoughts of man. Meanwhile it is lunchtime, and with my family I eat the food that this poor farm and paltry patrimony bring. Having eaten, I return to the inn, where I find the innkeeper, and usually a butcher, a miller, and two kiln tenders. With these men I dawdle all day playing cards and backgammon, which results in a thousand quarrels with streams of spiteful and wounding words. Most of the time we battle over brass coins, and can be heard shouting all the way to San Casciano. Immersed among these lice I wipe from my mind all the mold and vent the malignity of Fate, happy to be trampled on in this way to see if Fate will be ashamed for what she has done to me.

When evening comes I return home and go into my study. At the door I take off my everyday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and don garments of court and palace. Now garbed fittingly I step into the ancient courts of men of antiquity, where, received kindly, I partake of food that is for me alone and for which I was born, where I am not ashamed to converse with them and ask them the reasons for their actions. And they in their full humanity answer me. For four hours I feel no tedium and forget every anguish, not afraid of poverty, not terrified by death. I lose myself in them entirely. And because Dante says, “Having heard without retaining is not knowledge,”
³⁶
I have noted down how I have profited from their conversation and composed
De principatibus
, a little study in which I probe as deeply as I can into deliberations on this subject, exploring what a principality is, its genus, how it is acquired, how it is maintained, and why it is lost. If you have liked any of my previous caprices, then I am certain you will not dislike this one. It ought to be received with pleasure by a prince, particularly a new prince. Therefore I am dedicating it to His Magnificence Giuliano [de’ Medici]. Filippo da Casavecchia has looked at it and will be able to fill you in on the work and its context, and of the discussions he and I have had, though I am still filling it out and filing it down.

Most Honored Ambassador, you wish me to abandon my life here and come to enjoy yours with you. I shall definitely do so, but am kept here by matters that I will have settled within six weeks. What makes me hesitate is that the Soderini are in Rome,
³⁷
and if I came I would be pressed to visit and converse with them. I am also afraid that on my return from Rome I would not dismount at home but at the Bargello prison, because even though the current government has very strong foundations and great security, it is also new, and therefore suspicious, nor is there a lack of arrogant men, who, like Pagolo Bertini, would make others pay but still leave me with the bill. I beg you to relieve me of this fear, and then I shall definitely come at the said time to visit you.

I have discussed with Filippo whether it would be a good idea for me to present this little study [to Giuliano] or if that would not be such a good idea, and if I am to present it, whether it would be good to do so in person, or have it presented to him by you. What argues against presenting it to Giuliano are my doubts that he will even read it and that that fellow Ardinghelli
³⁸
will take the credit for this most recent of my efforts. What argues for it is the neediness that is hounding me, because I am wasting away and cannot remain like this much longer without becoming contemptible in my poverty, not to mention my desire that the Medici princes begin putting me to use, even if at first only to roll a stone.
³⁹
If I could not win them over then, I would have only myself to blame. As for
De principatibus
, anyone who reads it will clearly see that in the fifteen years during which I applied myself to the study of government, I was neither nodding off nor wasting time, and I would think that anyone would be keen to put to use someone so replete with experience at the expense of others.
⁴⁰
My loyalty should be beyond doubt, because as I have always been most loyal, I would hardly now learn to change my ways, for whoever has been loyal for a good forty-three years—which I have been—is not able to change his nature. And my poverty stands witness to my loyalty and goodness.

I would be grateful if you wrote me your thoughts on this matter. I put myself in your hands. I wish you happiness.

On the tenth day of December 1513.

Niccolò Machiavelli, in Florence

29.
A slightly altered quotation from Petrarch’s poem “Triumph of Eternity” (line 13):
Ma tarde non fur mai grazie divine
(But divine favors were never too late). Machiavelli writes:
Tarde non furan mai grazie divine
.

30.
In the sense of having shown them to the wrong people.

31.
Machiavelli is referring to his falling out of grace with the new government of the Medici, and his imprisonment and torture in March of that year.

32.
A reference to
Geta e Birria
, a Renaissance adaptation of the twelfth-century Latin elegiac comedy of Vitale di Blois.

33.
Some scholars believe this is a veiled reference to political matters concerning the Medici and the opposition to them, others that Machiavelli is simply describing friends ordering timber from him.

34.
It is thought that Gaburra must have been a well-known butcher in Florence.

35.
Batista Guicciardini (b. 1468) had been the chief magistrate of Prato when it was sacked just before the Medici’s takeover of Florence. Machiavelli is saying that Batista lists Machiavelli’s refusal of timber among the disasters of Prato.

36.
A quote from Dante’s
Paradiso
, Canto V, lines 41–42.

37.
Piero Soderini, the former Gonfalonier of Florence for whom Machiavelli had worked and who had been ousted by the Medici, had subsequently been brought to Rome by Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici), who employed him as an adviser. Cardinal Francesco Soderini, his brother, was also in Rome.

38.
Piero Ardinghelli was a courtier close to the Medici who was hostile to Machiavelli.

39.
A reference to Sisyphus, who was punished in Hades by constantly having to roll a huge stone up a hill, only to have the stone roll down again once he reached the top.

40.
Having gathered so much experience at the service of the previous government.