ABSTRACT
On the eve of Machiavelli’s departure on the Pisan commission on the 10th of May, his father had died. 1 His mother died four years earlier on the 11th of October 1496. His sisters were married, one to Francesco Vernaccia, the other to Bernardo Minerbetti. He was therefore alone with his brother Totto, who had chosen or was about to chose a career in the Church, and Machiavelli must have felt more than commonly the loss of his father, and heavier the seal that such a loss sets on the earlier and easier portion of our life. Messer Bernardo and his son, besides being fond of one another, got on very well together. Their cheerful and companionable natures formed an almost brotherly bond between them, and they often teased one another verbally or in writing, in prose or in verse. After his father’s death, as he sorted out old papers and the well-loved books of his childhood studies, Machiavelli found, among other similar things, a sonnet written by him to messer Bernardo on the occasion of his father’s having sent in from the country the gift of a fat goose, because he worried about his busy son’s city diet (if we can believe him) of dried meat and dried fruit or even just ‘bread and the taste of the knife’. Costor vissuti sono un mese e piue a noci, a fichi, a fave, a carne secca; tal ch’ella fia malizia e non cilecca el far sì lunga stanza costà sue. Come ’l bue fiesolan guarda a l’ingiue Arno, assetato, e’ mocci se ne lecca, così fanno ei de l’uova ch’ha la trecca e, col beccaio del castrone, e del bue. Al fin del giuoco poi, messer Bernardo mio, voi comprerete paperi ed oche e non ne mangerete. 2 [They have lived a month and more on nuts, figs, beans and dried meat, till it’s no joke to stay here all this time. Just as the Fiesolan ox looks down at the Arno thirstily and licks his nose, so they at the eggs of the market-woman and at the butcher’s mutton and beef. … In the end you, messer Bernardo, will be buying ducks and geese and not eating any yourself.]
