"Courage, Girolamo, for you
will long be remembered; death is bitter, but fame eternal!" cried
Girolamo Olgiati, the disciple of Cola Montano and the murderer,
together with his fellow-conspirators Lampugnani and Visconti, of
Galeazzo Sforza, tyrant of Milan. And there are some who covet even the
gallows for the sake of acquiring fame, even though it be an infamous
fame: _avidus malae famae_, as Tacitus says.
And this erostratism, what is it at bottom but the longing for
immortality, if not for substantial and concrete immortality, at any
rate for the shadowy immortality of the name?
And in this there are degrees. If a man despises the applause of the
crowd of to-day, it is because he seeks to survive in renewed minorities
for generations. "Posterity is an accumulation of minorities," said
Gounod. He wishes to prolong himself in time rather than in space. The
crowd soon overthrows its own idols and the statue lies broken at the
foot of the pedestal without anyone heeding it; but those who win the
hearts of the elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship in
some shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but capable of preserving them
from the flood of oblivion. The artist sacrifices the extensiveness of
his fame to its duration; he is anxious rather to endure for ever in
some little corner than to occupy a brilliant second place in the whole
universe; he prefers to be an atom, eternal and conscious of himself,
rather than to be for a brief moment the consciousness of the whole
universe; he sacrifices infinitude to eternity.
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