Free Doctor Copernicus by John Banville Page B

bushes in earthenware pots; a fountain plashed, playing a faint cool music. The guests were gathered on the terrace, lolling elegantly
on couches and dainty cane chairs, sipping white wine from long-stemmed goblets of Murano crystal and lazily conversing. Nicolas was reminded of those cages of pampered quail that were to be seen
hanging from the porticoes of the better houses of the city. Diffident, ill at ease, acutely aware of his raw-boned Prussian gracelessness, he stood mute and nervously smiling as the Professor
introduced him. Novara was very much the patrician here, with his fine town house behind him. He affected a scissors-shaped lorgnon with which he made much play. This article, together with the
brilliant light, the pools of violet shadow on the terrace, the sparkling glass, the watermusic and the perfume of the orange bushes, contrived to create an air of theatre. Elbing. Elbing? Nicolas
wondered vaguely why he should suddenly have thought of that far northern town.
    How did he like Italy? The climate, ah yes. And what subjects was he studying here? Indeed? There was a silence, and someone coughed behind gloved fingers. Their duty done, they turned back to
the conversation that evidently his arrival had interrupted. Celio Calcagnini, a willowy person no longer in the first flower of youth, said languidly:
    “The question, then, is what can be achieved? Bologna is not Firenze, and I think we all agree that our Don John Bentivoglio is not, and never could be, a Magnifico.” All softly
laughed and shook their heads; the jibe against the Duke of Bologna seemed to be a familiar one. “And yet, my friends,” the poet continued, “we must work with the material to
hand, however poor it is. The wise man knows that compromise is sometimes the only course—this is an excellent vintage, Domenico, by the way. I envy your cellar.”
    Novara, leaning at ease against a white pillar, lifted his glass and bowed sardonically. A sleek black hound, which Nicolas with a start noticed now for the first time, lay at the
Professor’s feet, sphinxlike, panting, with a fanged ferocious grin. Jacob Ziegler, astronomer of some repute and author of a recent much-admired work on Pliny, was a dark and brooding lean
young blade with a pale long face and flashing eyes and a pencil-line moustache. He was exquisitely if a trifle foppishly attired in rubious silk and calfskin; a wide-brimmed velvet hat lay beside
him like a great soft black exotic bird. The cane chair on which he sat crackled angrily as he leaned forward and cried:
    “Compromise! Caution! I tell you we must act! Times do not change of themselves, but are changed by the actions of men. Bologna is not Firenze, just so; but what is Firenze? A town
of fat shopkeepers besotted by soft living.” He glanced darkly at Calcagnini, who raised his eyebrows mildly and toyed with the stem of his wineglass. “They gobble up art and science as
they would sugared marchpane, and congratulate themselves on their culture and liberality. Culture? Pah! And their artists and their scientists are no better. A gang of panders, theirs is the task
of supplying the pretty baubles to mask the running sores of the poxed courtesan that is their city. Why, I should a thousand times rather we were the outcasts that we are than be as they, pampered
adorners of decadence!”
    “Decadence,” Novara softly echoed, gingerly tasting the word. Calcagnini looked up.
    “A pretty speech, Jacob,” he said, smiling, “but I think I resent your imputations. Compromise likes me no better than it does you, yet I know that there is a time for
everything, for caution and for action. If we move now we can only make our state worse than it already is. And come to that, what, pray, would you have us do? The Bentivoglio rule in this city is
unshakeable. There is peace here, while all Italy is in turmoil—O I know, I know you would not call it peace, but besottedness. Yet call it what you will, our