The baby crowed and bubbled, Vanna nested her arm closer in his ribs, and the trio went into the house.

A keen shot from one eye sufficed to assure the old fellow that as well as a little beauty he had a domestic treasure to wife. The house was as fresh as her cheeks, as trim as her shape. "Now the saints be good to this city of Verona," said he, "as to me they have proved not amiss." This was great praise from Baldassare; his generosity gave it point. From his pack came a pair of earrings—wagging, tinkling affairs of silver and coral; next some portentous pins, shining globes like prickly pears; a coral and bells for Master Niccola, and a scaldino of pierced brass for the adornment of the house. "Thank you, Baldassare," said Vanna to her blinking old master; then she kissed him. Before she knew where she was, before she could say, "Gia!" he put his arm round her and whispered in her ear. Then she clung to him, sobbing, laughing, breathing quick; and the rest it were profanation to report.

Verona rubbed its eyes as it came out yawning to its daily work. There was the open shop, ever the first in the street; there the padrone; there, by the manger of Bethlehem, were the padrona and the baby, whom they had last seen huddling from their stones. Vanna wore her colours that morning; she was rosy like the dawn, she was smiling, she had very bright eyes. But there was a happy greeting for man or wife who looked her way; and when La Testolina came peeping to behold the discomfiture of Baldassare, Vanna's gay looks found her out, and "Buon' giorno, La Testolina," came more cheerfully from her than it had come from her husband on the bridge. All the little woman could do was to squat upon the threshold at her friend's feet and pretend that she was troubled with spasms.

The crowning proof remains to be told. As La Testolina (who blazed the story abroad) is reported to have said, you might have drummed the guard out with her heart-beats. Vanna, by way of weaning her baby, it seems, was tempting him with gobbets of peach from a wine-glass. She bit a corner from the peach and tendered it in her lips to the youngster on her lap. The baby (a vigorous child) made a snap at it like a trout at a fly, and a gulp so soon as he had it. The peach was hard, the morsel had many corners,—went down bristling, as it were. Cola had his first stomach-ache, was hurt, was miserable, prepared to howl. At that moment La Testolina happened to look at him: she stared, she gasped, she reeled against the door-post.

"Hey, Mother of Jesus!" she cried; "look at the baby!"

"It was a corner-piece, I'm afraid," said Vanna, with great calmness; "but the natural juices will thaw it."

"No, no, no! It is not that, woman," her friend went on feverishly—"it is not that! Look at his face, look at his face!"

Vanna looked. "Well," she asked, "what of his face?"

The bambino, to express his agony, was grinning from ear to ear.

This was the last miracle wrought by Madonna of the Peach-Tree.



IPPOLITA IN THE HILLS



I

THE GLORIOUS IPPOLITA

Almighty God, that supreme Architect, Who, alone among craftsmen, knows when to give and when to stay the rein, has chosen the Plain of Emilia to be, as it were, the garden of Italy, a garden set apart betwixt Alp and Apennine to be adorned within a garden; has filled it with every sort of fruit and herb and flowering tree; has watered it abundantly with noble rivers; neither stinted it of deep shade nor removed it too far from the timely stroke of the sun; has caused it, finally, to be graced here and enriched there with divers great and grave cities. Man, who has it not in him to be thrifty in so prodigal a midst, has here also thought it lawful to go free. Out of that lake of rustling leaves rise, like the masts of ships crowding a port, church towers, the belfries of pious convents, the domes and turrets of great buildings walled into cities. Among which, prized as they all are and honourably additioned,—Vicenza, Treviso, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara,—there is none more considerable than Padua, root of learning and grey cupolas, chosen to be the last resting-place of Antenor, King Priam's brother, and the first of Titus Livy.

It is of Padua that I am now called upon to report certain matters which may seem strange to one who does not know her well: to the others, verbum satis. Whether it is their University (too famous, perhaps, for so quiet a place) or the suspiration of their greatest citizen which has kindled their wits; whether that cauldron of brick, the Santo, bubbling with silver domes, is the stem or flower of their exaltation; whether their seat at the head of a sun-steeped marsh (at whose mouth is Venice) hath itself unseated them; whether Petrarch set boiling what Saint Antony could not allay; what it was, how it was, who gave them the wrench, I know not—but the fact is that the people of Padua have been as freakish a race as any in Italy; at the mercy of any head but the aggregate's, pack-mules of a notion, galley-slaves of a whim, driven hither and thither in a herd, like those restless leaves (souls once) whose nearer sight first made Dante pitiful. Not that they, for their part, asked for pity or got it. Mostly they paid their tavern bills when the last cup had been drained and the last chorus led. When Ezzelin was master of the revels they paid in blood: that tower of his by the river is dark with it yet. Petrarch from his mountain-vineyard at Arqua tipped them a brighter stave: they broke their hearts for pretty women and had every one the comfort of a swanlike end, since sonnets are a knack. With Antony they flagellated, with Carrara defended walls, with Gattemelata knocked them down. Then Venice took what Padua could never keep; the Euganeans hailed on either side the Lion of Saint Mark; the Arts flourished; Squarcione cut out small-clothes and taught anatomy none the worse; Mantegna dreamed of Julius Caesar, smouldering while he dreamed; and Ippolita, the stone-mason's daughter, from too much courting fled in breeches to the hills. She, like all the Padovani, paid her score without flinching. It may have been run up without leave asked, but it was run up in her name. The rule in Padua was so; I never heard that she repined. Maybe that she had her money's worth; but of that you will be able to judge as well as I.

Padua is a city set in meadows full of light; it is well spaced, plentifully watered, arcaded, green with gardens. The streets are like cloister-walks; as in Lucca, the plane is the sacred tree, and next to that flag of green on a silver staff, the poplar shows the city blushful in the spring and thrilling all a summer with the memory. It is a place of brick and marble, painted orange, brown, yellow, and warm white, where every cornerstone and every twig is printed sharply on a sky of morning blue.

"Quivi le mura son fatte con arte, Che parlano, e rispondono a i parlanti."

A tale of Padua should have the edge of a cut gem. So let Ippolita's be told.

In her day—that day when, at sixteen years old or so, the sun briefly lit upon her golden head and showed her for the lovely girl she was—Padua was passing through a time of peace. Novello was dead at last, poor heroic gentleman, Verona was shaken off; Venice was supreme—easy, but unquestionably mistress of the Emilia. There was time to make madrigals, to make eyes, to make love, to imagine portraits. Mantegna was painting giants in the Eremitani and Bellini picking his brains, but not as yet a quarrel. The classics, the ingenuous arts, lovely woman—always interwoven when times are happiest—flourished in that sunny place: it was not really wonderful that Ippolita the stone-cutter's daughter, classically fair, indisputably a beauty, should win all seeing eyes and be the despair of all rhymers. Given the vision to the visionary (and both came in their time), she might be trusted with the rest; for she was remarkable by contrast; there were none like her. The Paduan girls are all charming, and mostly pretty. Ippolita was neither: she was beautiful, and when you came to know her face, lovely. They are brown, she was fair; they are little, she was very tall. They have eyes like a dove's, glossed brown; hers were deeply blue, the colour of the Adriatic when a fleeting cloud spreads a curtain of hyacinth over the sheeted turquoise bed. Beautifully hued in mingled red and white, delicately shaped, pliant, supple, and shy, such as she was (an honest, good girl, Heaven knows!) she might have lived and died in her alley—sweetheart of some half dozen decent fellows, wife of the most masterful, mother of a dozen brats, unnoticed save for her qualities of cheerful drudge and brood-mare; beautiful as a spring leaf till twenty, ripe as a peach on the wall till thirty, keen-faced and wise, mother and grandmother, at forty; and so on—such she might have lived and died, and been none the worse for her reclusion, had she not leaned more than half out of her window in the Vicolo one bright April morning of her sixteenth year, to exchange lively banter with a friend below, and been seen by Messer Alessandro del Dardo, who within the cuirass of Sub-Prefect of Padua nourished the heart of an approved Poet; been seen of him for the miracle of young beauty she really was. Chance sparks kindle chance tinder; and so here. I am far from alleging the heart of Messer Alessandro to be dry tow; but I do repeat it, Padua was a freakish cityful, Ippolita lovely exceedingly, amorous poetry in the air.

He, then, passing by, saw her stoop flushed and sparkling from above him; the sun caught her shining hair; a loose white smock revealed so much of her neck as to picture him the snowy rest. Snow and rosebuds—O ye little gods! As he stood in ecstasy she saw him at the end of the lane, and blushing drew back with a finger in her mouth, to thrill and giggle at ease. She saw a great gentleman stare; he saw a rosy goddess stoop and laugh, then blush and hide. Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe! Away he went, his heart leaping like a wood-fire, to report to Meleagro de' Martiri and Stazio Orsini, to Donna Euforbia, Donna Clarice, and Donna Simpatica—friends and poets alike—that he had had a most rare vision.

"To me it seems," he said, "that that fair-haired daughter of the Greeks, Madonna Elena, the slim, the rosy-fingered disturber of the repose of cities, hath appeared to distract this our city of Padua. Me at least she hath distraught. Fair friends, sister and brother poets, you shall understand that henceforth I devote myself to this lady and her praise. More, I vow a vow, and call upon you to register it in the Golden Book of the Amorous Gests of Padua, that I will never cut my nails again until I have enthroned her sovereign lady of me, and of you all, and of this our humane Commonwealth. By golden Venus and her son, by Mars armipotent powerless in such toils, and by Vulcan in chains too cunning for his pincers; by Saints Ovid and Sappho, the Chian, the Mantuan, and the Veronese, I swear this oath."

"It is well done, Alessandro," assented the listening company.

That evening in his fellowship, Meleagro and Stazio, cloaked and lurking under the arcades, saw Ippolita walk down the Via Pozzo Depinto arm in arm with two shawled friends, transparently in the ranks of the popol basso, but as obviously not of them. Her golden head was bare; also by a head she sailed above them. They followed her by the Via Zitelle, over the Ponte della Morte, further yet, between garden walls topped with lilac, into the Prato della Valle. There the three unconscious girls mingled with the concourse of those who took the air under the still trees. Ippolita, that slim, tall marvel, seemed not to be remarked by any; Alessandro, swooning on his friend's arms, could scarcely believe it.

"Edge up, Alessandro, edge up—accost, accost!" said Meleagro; but—

"Do you think I would profane the aura of her by my abhorred presence?" cried the lover. "Ah, God of Love, I would die sooner! I feel, indeed, my Daemon at work. Let me sit upon this bench—my tablets, ha!" He sat. Finely disordered verse, rime sciolte, resulted; but Ippolita was so far unperturbed.

Gradually, however, it came to her notice that she was watched. There was singing under her windows at night; the day brought parties of noble youths into the Vicolo scarlet-capped, feathered, slashed, and booted youths; ladies were with them as often as not; garlanded ladies with square-cut bodices showing half their bosoms; flowers came, verses, platters of Urbino, Gubbio, Faenza. She was saluted in the street, followed to the church door, waited for at the coming out from mass. It came, more or less, to this, that whenever she went abroad by ways where the honourable might pass, her going resembled that of the processional Host rather than of a respectable young woman. Her friends were no protection: the girls thought it fun, courted it, found stuff in it for giggling and peering with the eyes into dark corners; the lads of her station shrugged at it, then sulked, and at last fairly fought shy of such a conspicuous mate.

Ippolita herself tried to laugh it off, but failed absurdly. She became plaintive.

"What do these signori mean by their my-ladying?" she cried to Annina, her bosom friend. "Why do they send me these things? Platters! What use are platters to the likes of us, who as often as not have nothing to put on them?"

Annina looked demurely. "It is easy to see what they want of thee, dearest. What does a gentleman always want of a poor girl that takes his fancy?"

Ippolita tossed her high head.

"Eh!" she snapped. "They may fill the house with crockery at that rate. I'm not rubbish!"

She was not; but she wronged her adorers, who neither thought it nor hoped it of her. Messer Alessandro was not growing his nails for that sort of ware; nor could he have treated the Pope with more respect. He had never ventured to speak, though he had never failed to salute her. What he wrote was chiefly in verse, and as Ippolita could not read, it really did not much matter what his letters contained. Meleagro had opened his mouth to pay her a compliment: he won a frightened look out of her blue eyes, a fine blush, and lived upon them for a week. The ladies were bolder. Some of them had walked with her once in the Prato. There was very little to say, except that they loved her and thought her like a goddess. Ippolita was rather scared, laughed nervously, and said, "Chi lo sa?" Donna Euforbia then told her the story of the original Ippolita, the Scythian queen; of King Theseus, and the child born to them in sea-washed Acharnae. The Paduan Ippolita said "Gia!" several times, and asked if her namesake was a good Catholic. Finding she was not, she took no further interest in her fortunes than to suppose her deep in hell for her pains. The ladies asked her to come and be their queen; she said she couldn't leave her father. They offered her jewels for her hair, neck, fingers, wrists, ankles; she laughed, and said that they were not for the likes of her. They spoke of Alessandro, the Poet. She asked if he were any relation to the Signor Sotto-Prefetto. He was that same, said they.

"Dio buono!" cried Ippolita. "Is he the gentleman who wants to undo me?"

They were shocked. "He asks no more than to sit at your feet, Ippolita, and read the secrets of your beautiful eyes. It is your soul he loves; he asks nothing of your body." "They never do, Madonna," said Ippolita; "but I am a poor girl, so please you, who have to look every way at once, as the saying is. Domeneddio is the only Signore I ever heard tell of who could get on with people's souls. Men want more of us than that."

Protests were wasted, and Alessandro, watchful of his nails, went mad in numbers. This it was to be tall out of common, this to lift up in dark-browed Padua a brave golden head; this to carry the bosom of an Oread beneath the smock of a girl in her teens; this, merciful Heaven, to be a vortex when poets are swirling down the stream of Time.



II

MESSER ALESSANDRO THINKS TO CUT HIS NAILS

Not to weary you, it is clear that Ippolita was the fashion. The poets, the courtiers, the painters, of whom in that age of peace Padua was full, were wild about this glowing girl, this sumptuous nymph of the Via Agnus Dei; they were melodiously, caperingly, symphonically wild, according to their bents. She saw herself on plates of faience, where the involutions of a ribbon revealed "Ippolita Bella" to the patient eye; she found herself (or they found her) an inordinate tri-syllable for a canzone, saw her colours of necessity reproduced on her lover's legs and shoulders as colours of election. One by one she could appraise her own possessions, and those they fabled of her. Her hair was Demeter's crown of ripe corn—she knew nothing of the lady, but hoped for the best. Her eyes were dark blue lakes in a field of snow—this she thought very fine. Her lips were the amorous petals of a rose that needs must kiss each other; kissing, they made a folded flower—ah!

"La virtu della bocca, Che sana cio che tocca,"

sighed the poets. But, bless her good innocence! that sweet mouth had touched nothing more mannish than her father's forehead or the feet of the Crucified. Her cheeks, said they, were apple-blossoms budded, her neck the stem of a chalice, her breast—but I spare your blushes, though they never spared hers. There is a book, "Gli Ornamenti delle Donne," which will tell you what that bastion of a fair girl should be; and what it should be those Paduan lyrists will more than assure you Ippolita's was. Thus passionately they fingered every part, dwelling here, touching there, with no word that was not a caress. What she had not, too, they gave her—the attributes she sowed in them. She was "vagha," since they longed; "lontana," since she kept them at a distance; "nascosa," since they drove her to it; cold, since she dared not be warm.

The painters, not to be behind, expressed what the others hinted. She saw herself, first, as Daphne behind a laurel-bush—the artist, kneeling in the open, offered his heart smoking upon a dish; second, as Luna, standing in shrouded white on a crescent moon—the artist, as Endymion, asleep in a rocky landscape, waiting to be kissed; third, as Leda, naked in reeds beside her pair of eggs—the plumed artist near by, ruffling and flapping his wings. Luckily, their allusiveness escaped her; she knew nothing of the diversions of the ancient gods.

But of all the vantage she gave them, none equalled that for which her gossips should have answered, her most commendable name of Ippolita. The verses she received on that theme would have made a Theseid, those she had to hear would have kept the rhapsodists for a twelve-month, those she saw the very Sala del Consiglio could not have contained. Ippolita at war with the Athenian, or leading her Amazons afield; Ippolita turning her unmaimed side to an adoring warrior (the painter) and you, or suckling Ippolita (with the artist's strongly marked features) in an ivied ruin with peacocks about it; Ippolita in a colonnade at Athens on the right hand of the king—thus she saw herself daily; thus the old palace walls of Padua, if they could yield up their tinged secrets through the coats of lime, would show her rosy limbs and crowned head. Mantegna has her armoured, with greaves to the knee and spiked cups on her breastplate. Gian Bellini carried her to Venice, to lead Scythians in trousers against Theseus in plate-armour and a blazoned shield. Giorgione set her burning in the shade, trying to cool her golden flank in deep mosses by a well.

All this, and much more, Ippolita endured because she was a good as well as a beautiful girl. Sometimes she wept in a friend's arms, sometimes (really frightened) she sought her parish priest; mostly it was the wonder-working Virgin in Sant' Antonio or, at the greatest stress, the Saint's own black sarcophagus in the lighted chapel, to lay upon it a feverish palm or hot, indignant cheek. By some such aids as these she preserved entire her head, her heart, all her precious store, so that no flattery ever tarnished the clear glass of her mind, no assaults, however fierce, could bruise the root of modesty within her.

Her father, vexed man, at first felt the glory of his daughter, shone by her reflected light, guessed (and had reasonable grounds for guessing) the profit it might be; but lastly, seeing the suitors sought not to marry her, and she would do no less, he grew disgusted with so windy a business, beat her for what was no fault of hers, and bade her be sold or begone. Ippolita, who began her day's processioning with music and flowers, ended it mostly in tears and stripes. There seemed no escape. If she went to draw water at the well the courtiers jostled for her first salutation; if she went to mass in the grey of the morning, so, blinking, did they. The priest who confessed her paid her compliments, the blind beggar at the church door looked at her out of one eye. She was incredibly the fashion; and the women, far from being jealous, were as wild about her as the men. She could have had a Court of Virgins, or gone like Artemis, buskined through the thickets, with a hundred high-girdled nymphs behind her, all for her sake locked in chastity. They also made her presents, which her father sold, until (learning to fear the Greeks, their brothers), she gently forbore them. Whereupon, the honest stone-mason had fresh cause for chastisement of so incalculably calculating a child.

The hunted fair at last came to a point where she must stand or deliver. From three desperate lovers there seemed no sure road. All that was possible she did. She consulted her priest; he patted her cheek. A very old woman of her intimacy advised her to look in the glass; she did, and blushed at her own distressful face. A friar of the order of Saint Francis plumply told her to choose the most solid of her pursuers and make the most of him. "Such roses as yours, my daughter," said he, "should be early to market. You are sixteen now; but remember that by the mercy of Heaven you may live to be six and sixty. That's the time when the pot wants lining. If you have not the experience, pray how are you to direct the young in the way they should go? Yet that is the trade for an old lady whose life has been an easy one. For my part, I regret that the rules of our convent do not allow me to open the gate."

She pouted, and went out into the sun again, to find her way to the Santo barred. The three poets, with three lutes, were singing a madrigal in her honour. They were understood to say that her going was over the tired bodies of lovers, that she went girdled with red hearts, that her breast was cold ivory, and her own heart carved in ice. Nymph rhymed with lymph and Ippolita with insolita; the whole, ingenious as it was, was not ad rem; and as for the poor subject of it all, her heart (far from being ice) was hot with mutiny. She knew herself for a simpleton—just a poor girl; she knew herself made ridiculous by this parade; could see herself as she was. Her crisping hair was over her ears and knotted behind her neck, without garland or fillet or so much as a brass pin; her green dress, though it was low in the neck, was tightly drawn over her bust; for what were glorious to be shown in a great lady, in her had been an immodesty. When she lifted her skirt out of the gutter you could see some inches of bare leg. Her hands were brown with work, though her neck was like warm marble in the sun. Eh, she knew herself through and through just a low-born wench; and "O Gesu Re!" her heart cried within her, "why can they not leave me alone!"

The three poets—Stazio Orsini in white and yellow, Alessandro del Dardo in white and green, and Meleagro de' Martiri in a plum-coloured cloak—accompanied her down the Via Pozzo Depinto to her poor house in the quarter of Santa Caterina; she lived in the Vicolo Agnus Dei. To their florid exercises in the language of courts she replied in monosyllables—"Sissignore," "Grazie, Signore," or "Servo suo"; the humble words were as much her daily use as Padre nostro or Ave Maria. At the door she must have her hand kissed three times in face of the nudging neighbours; and to each salute her honesty prompted a fresh "Grazie, Signore," a curtsy, and a profound blush. Meleagro beat his forehead to see her so lovely and so unapproachable; Orsini bit his lip; but Alessandro, mindful of his nails, and not to be Sub-Prefect for nothing, went away to find the girl's father.

This worthy bowed to the earth before his visitor. In what way could His Excellency be served? By the acceptance, on Matteo's part, of twenty ducats? Benissimo, e tante grazie!

"Matteo," said the Sub-Prefect when this little transfer was accomplished, "your daughter is the most beautiful lady in all this city of Padua."

"She is a choice thing, I own it," said the good Matteo; "and how dear to her old father your honour hath no notion."

"I can very well imagine it," returned Messer Alessandro; "and, indeed, I remember that you are twenty ducats in hand."

"Oh, va bene, va bene!" cried Matteo. "I am your Excellency's humble servant. You shall take her when you like and as you like."

"All will be done scrupulously," Alessandro said with fervour. "We shall crown her Queen of our College of the Muses; she shall be priestess, sacred image, and oracle; and most honourably served."

"Honour of course," said Matteo, "comes into the game. I have played it myself, and know what I am talking about. There was Beppina, that fat Venetian hussy—to see her eat! But she always had her whack. Eh, I have been a blade in my day!"

To this testimony the Sub-Prefect had no comments ready. He returned to the object of his thought.

"We shall in turn contemplate her excellence," he explained, "and derive inspirations in turn. A fine body of devotional rhyme should be the result of this."

"The result," Matteo broke in, "will be a fine one, I warrant your Excellency, if such things as that are in your mind—and call it what you will, she's as healthy as ever her mother was. And she had seventeen of 'em, one way with another, before I buried her."

"She shall be crowned with stars, rest upon beds of roses, walk in flowery meadows, hide from the heat in thickets where water is—" Alessandro went lilting on. "We will sing to her all day, and of her all night. The saloon of the Villa Venusta shall depict the story of her glorious arising."

"Pretty, pretty!" cried Matteo, "I see that your honour knows the rules of play. Now when shall the game begin?"

"My honest friend, the litter will be at your door come daybreak," said Alessandro. "Three noble ladies will attend Madonna to bathe and dress her. After that, you shall leave her safely in our keeping."

Matteo bowed. "Excellency, I am your servant. Everything shall be as you wish."

He did not add, though he might well have added, that it was more than himself had dared to hope for.

At time of sunset home he came, but not to beat his beautiful daughter. On the contrary, he made much of her. Fuddled he was, but not drunk. He took her incontinent upon his knee and began to deal in rather liberal innuendo. Divining him darkly, she went to work with such arts as she had to wheedle the worst out of him.

"Carissimo padre,"—so she coaxed him, with hands interwoven about his scrubby face,—"tell me more of this gallantry of young blades."

"Chuck, chuck, chuck," he babbled, oozing wine, "come and feed out of my hand. Bill me, sweeting, and I bill thee. Ho, ho! Two doves on a branch! What, turtle? Wilt thou mope for ever?"

She trembled. "Nay, nay, I'll mope no more, father," says she. "But do thou tell me who my mate is to be."

Slyly he looked at her burning face and slyly kissed it. Then he began to sing—

"Quell' drudo, Messer Amore, Ha scelto un Dardo per cuore! Dardo acerbo, ardente, Che fa gridare le genti— Ohime! Dolce dolore!"

She had been a fool indeed to miss such a rebus. So the peril was worse than her dread! The lees of twenty ducats shabby in his fist told her how near the peril was.

Going to bed, he folded her in his arms, making her prop while he mumbled comfort.

"It is all for the best, my beauty-bright," he hiccoughed, "all clearly for the best. Messer Alessandro is a lover in ten thousand. I shall be as good as a father-in-law any day of the week. Why, it's 'My honest friend' that he hails me already! That is what a man may call climbing up, I hope, when a poetical roaring blade cuts out your 'servo suo' in that fashion. And he's Sotto-Prefetto, remember. That means all Padua yours for the asking. Sleep sound, my pretty bird, Ippolita bella! After this night you shall sleep by day." So he found, by good luck, his bed, and she a time for tears.



III

THE JEW IN THE VIA DELLA GATTA

If there is not much to be said for the Via della Gatta in these days, there was even less when Ippolita was the reigning toast. It was cloistered (as now), it was cobbled, shabby-white, secret, blind; it echoed silence, was a place for slippering crones, for furtive cats, and the smell of garlic and charcoal fires. Of nights, by the same token, it was not the place to choose for an after-supper walk. The watch used to go through it with swords before and daggers behind. Lanterns were little use save to reveal the cut-throat blackness all about.

Now, on the very night when Matteo was fuddled, Ippolita in tears, Alessandro in a fever, and the more reputable Padovani turning down their beds, the watch came rattling at the Sub-Prefect's door to report a dead Jew in the Via della Gatta. Of all nights in the year, this, the eve of the Glorious Ippolita's home-bringing, to be vexed by a dead Jew! Messer Alessandro was exceedingly annoyed.

"Take your accursed Jew," he said to the lieutenant, "and stuff him underground. I am busy, I am absorbed in work. When I have leisure I will attend to him. You can dig him up again. And I take this opportunity to tell you, Lieutenant, that your visit is most inopportune. For six months you have brought me nothing of the sort, and to-night, for example, you plump a Jew on my doorstep. Bury your beastly Jew and leave me in peace."

"But, Excellency," stammered the Lieutenant, "your Excellency will see that I have no control over the assassins of Padua. This Jew has not died happily. There is a great hole under his ribs. He is scarcely cold yet."

"That is soon remedied," said Alessandro; "put him in the ground."

"But, Excellency, a murdered Jew, a Jew in holes—"

"The Jews have been damned from the beginning of our dispensation," cried the Sub-Prefect in a rage. "Well, I add my malediction. I say, Damn your Jew!" And he shut the door in the face of the watch.

The Lieutenant was hungry. If his chief could damn the Jews, so could he.

"Corporal," says he, "I am going to supper. Do what you like with the Jew, so long as you put him decently away when you have finished. Good night."

The Corporal conferred with his men. Here was the Jew—what should they do with him? One of the archers suggested a source of profit. He might be shown in the wine-shops at a quattrino a head. Agreed. Off they set.

They showed him at the Codalunga—there were some low-browed hovels there, as was usual about the gates: the Jew did well. Thence they skirted the walls by the Riviera Santa Sofia, tried him at the outer gate of the Carmine, worked their way from tavern to tavern, till they came to the Vicolo Agnus Dei. It was a thousand pities Matteo was drunk in his bed; he had quattrini enough and would not have missed the treat for the world. Ippolita, whimpering in hers, wondered what the buzzing and sliding of shoes in the street below could be about. She had troubles of her own, poor girl, but she could not stand this. Up she got: a single glance out of window was enough. She shuffled on a shift and a petticoat, snatched a shawl, and tiptoed out. Annina, her bosom friend, had no troubles. She was half undressed, but she too slipped a shawl over her head and went peering into the alley. There she met Ippolita, and joined hands. Flaring torches, a swarm of eager black heads, whispers, grunting, the archers' plumed helmets—"Madonna! What's all this?" cried the two girls together in a stew of curiosity. A dead Jew? A murdered Jew? O Gesu! They borrowed a quattrino apiece from a neighbour and were richly rewarded. Ah, the blood, the staring, his grey old fingers! There was a something, if you like, to talk about at the house door; and a something to dream of, per Bacco! I believe the Jew engulfed all her annoyances of the past and all her fret over the immediate future.

When they had done with him, came the question of his interment. It was the small hours, very near the time to relieve guard. The Jew's hosts found themselves out by the Porta Santa Croce—an empty quarter of the town, abounding in gardens.

"Over the wall with him," said the Corporal; "we'll plant him here." It was done. The Jew, who, by the look of him, had earned more money an hour after death than in all the years of his life, was put a foot and a half underground among the pumpkins in a garden of the Via di Vanzo. Padua went to sleep.



IV

IPPOLITA LIFTS UP HER EYES TO THE HILLS

Waking from a late troubled sleep, Ippolita found her little room possessed by three noble ladies—Emilia Malaspina, Euforbia di Ponterotto, and Domenica di Campodarsego—dressed all in saffron and white (her sacred colours, they told her), who announced themselves, with much kneeling and folding of arms over breasts, as her handmaids. "Sagro cuor di Gesu!" thought poor Ippolita, "what a way to undo me!" But aloud she only murmured, "Tante grazie, gentildonne," and got out of bed.

They had prepared for her a scented bath, into which, in her dazed condition, she entered without overmuch persuasion. True, she thought to find her death in so much water, and crossed herself vehemently when first it touched her back; but there might be worse deaths (she supposed) than drowning for a poor girl bought and sold, and not so very long ago a Jew had been baptized in Santa Giustina in water up to his neck. Nothing, however, would induce her to sit down. They dressed her then in silk, tied and garlanded her hair, put a gold chain round her neck, silken shoes on her feet—talking in quick whispers to each other all the time; and so announced with curtsies that she might enter the litter as soon as she would. She was at the disposition of these ladies, was her faltered reply. Emilia waved her hand out of the little window; chords of music sounded from the street; the voices of men and ladies rose upon a madrigal—

"Fior' di Maggio—Soave, pio e saggio—Salve, Ippolita!"—the work of Alessandro's muse upon that night of discord from the Jew. So she went downstairs.

The Vicolo Agnus Dei—a blind alley of low jutting houses over arcades, full of squalor, pink wash, children, and cats—was on this early morning ablaze with colour and music. From wall to wall (and eight feet will measure that) it seemed packed with the nobility. Tousled heads from above looked down curiously on heads elaborately frizzed, on scarlet caps, on plumes, on garlands, on jewelled necks. Poverty and riches touch at their extremes, like houses in the South. The shoulders of the ladies at play were no barer than those of the slatterns who gaped at them playing; but for Ippolita, who had always been a decent girl, let us hope her blushes were a cloak. She felt naked. And the bath, remember, had unnerved her.

What these neighbours of hers may have thought is no concern of ours, since the actors in the play took no concern in it. Twenty pieces of silver had bought an incomparable peg for their conceits. They were rescuing, they said to each other, a lily from the gutter, taking a jewel from a dirty finger, glorifying the glories—a pious act which could not fail of returning honour to those who took honour in doing it. The people! Sacks to be filled with garlic and black wine, liver and blood-puddings—grunting hogs, let them keep their sty. Let them not dare (and in truth it never occurred to them to dare) interfere with the diversions of the great. Yet as the veiled sacrifice went to mount the litter, one brown-eyed rascal from an upper window, holding a towel over her neck, shrilled out in homely patois, "A vederti, 'Polita mia!" and Ippolita turned her lovely head and showed for a moment her shining wet eyes to those who watched. She smiled tenderly at the send-off, but "Addio, Annina, addio!" she said softly, and turned bowing to her bowing gaolers.

As the swaying litter of gold and white went out into the Pozzo Depinto and turned up towards the Pontecorbo Gate; as the music and chanting—"Candida Ippolita, premio d'Amore! Grazia insolita del sommo Fattore!"—died away to a murmurous underflow of sound, perhaps a tongue or two was thrust into a cheek or two, perhaps a bare shoulder shrugged or one shock-head wagged to another. The air was sharp, beds still warm—whose business was it? The street was left to the rats and snuffing dogs again.

But Annina had sparks of fire in her brown eyes, and panted as she tugged at her staylaces. It was not long before she clattered downstairs on her clacking heels, and went to mark the cage they had gilded for her dear Ippolita.

Those hierophants, that Collegio d'Amore (as the new style ran), bearing in their midst the garlanded victim—Goddess at once and Sacrifice—awoke the echoes of the streets without comment. The city gates were open, it is true; in some churches the doors stood wide for the first mass; they passed a priest or so just up, a friar or so, furtive truants from their beds; then, at the edge of the Piazza del Santo, Ippolita peeping through her curtains saw a little company of goatherds, blanketted, brown-legged, shabby rogues, their feet white with country dust, new in from the hills with their flocks. They blinked to see the gay procession; but wistfully, longingly, she looked after them from her cage. They were not so much market-stuff, per Dio! They walked at large over bright hillsides, singing to the sky and the winds. They were not pestered with love or fine buzzing ladies or capering signori, who larded poor girls with compliments, and showed their teeth most when they meant least. Ah, if she could run away! If she could hide with them, lie on the hillsides while the goats cropped about her; lie on her back, her hands a pillow, and sing to the sky and the winds because she was so happy! The thought possessed her; she ached for freedom; felt the water of desire hot in her mouth. The sleepy shepherds huddled in their rags watched her go by; they little knew what a craving the sight of their dusty ease had stirred in a heart whose covering was fine silk and strung pearls. Her wrongs came back upon her like heaped waters of a flood. That shameful bath—ah, Soul of Christ, to strip one naked, and let souse in hot water, like a pig whose bristles must come off! More than songs which she did not understand, more than compliments which made her feel foolish and pictures which made her look so, was this refined indignity. Seethed in water like a dead pig—ah, Madonna! She arrived sulky—if so humble-minded a girl could be sulky; defiant, suspicious, at least.

The place chosen for the new Collegio d'Amore was the Villa Venusta, whose shady garden can still be seen from the Riviera Businello. This garden is full of trees, myrtle, wisteria, lilac, acacia—flowering trees—with a complement of firs and shining laurel to give a setting to so much golden-green and white. It has a canal on two sides, is a deep, leafy place, where nightingales sing day and night; it abounds in grass lawns, flowers, weeping trees, and marble hermae. The villa itself is very stately, a three-storied house in the Venetian style, from whose upper windows you can command a fine stretch of country; below you on either hand the Piazza del Santo, the Prato della Valle, with their enormous churches, pink and grey; beyond these the city walls, the green plain; lastly, the ragged outline of the far distant hills. It has a courtyard with lemon trees, long, dim rooms empty of all but coolness, shuttered against the glare of noon; above, a great saloon coffered in the ceiling, frescoed on the walls, with a dais and a throne; an open loggia full of flowers; above all this again, raftered bedrooms smelling of lavender. A roomy, stately place for those whose lives move easily in such surroundings; for Ippolita, the girl of the people, happy in her dark tenement in the Vicolo, gossip of the upper windows, shy beckoner to the street, burnisher of doorposts at sundown—for Ippolita this windy great house was a prison, neither more nor less.

It was a prison, at least, conducted according to the best rules of gallantry then obtaining. They bowed her up the staircase to the refectory: they sat her down and plied her on their knees with fruit and cups of wine. They led her to the throne room, where, high above them all, she was to sit, and (being crowned) hear them contend in verse and prose for the privilege of her love for the day. It was all arranged. She was to have a favourite every day, man or maid. Favour was to go by merit among her slaves. The theme was always to be her incomparable virtues—her beauty, discretion, wit (poor dumb fish!), her shining chastity, power of binding and loosing by one soft blue ray from her eyes, etc. They displayed her emblems on the walls—the peacock, because her beauty was her pride, her pride her beauty; doves, because they were Aphrodite's birds; rabbits, because the artist understood rabbits; the beaver, that glorious witness of virtue, who makes himself less certainly a beaver that he may be more safely a saint; the beaver, I say, in white on a green field. Other symbols—the lily of her candour, the rose of her glowing cheeks, the crocus of her hair, the pink anemones which were her toes, the almond for her fingers: she saw herself articulated; her fauna, her flora, her moral and physical attributes cried at her from the four walls.

Ippolita sat very scared on her throne, and endured what she could by catching firmly to the knobs of it and blinking her eyes. One by one they came creeping, these silken ladies, these slashed and curled young lords, to kiss her hand. "Dio mio!" thought she. "What is all this about? And are maids courted this way among the great?" She knew very little about it, yet was quite sure they were not. She wondered when Alessandro's business was going to begin. As a matter of fact, it had begun. He was now removing several inches of superfluous finger-nail with a sword.

For the first day that same Alessandro del Dardo won her to himself by his descant upon the theme, "How a gentleman may dismember himself without dishonour for a lady's love; and how not."

"Now he has me," thought poor Ippolita, and set her teeth. But he lay at her feet most of the day, and though at night he led her into the garden, if you will believe me, he never even kissed her hand.

"Who is mad?" thought she to herself, staring from her bed into the shadowy angles of the room. "Am I mad? Are these signori all mad? Is this a mad-house? Dio! it soon should be at this rate." She cried herself to sleep at last.

Next day it was Meleagro who won her by a careful consideration of the question, "Whether or no, when a gentleman has served a lady for ten years, and she falls sick of the small-pox, he is ipso facto absolved of his vow?" Meleagro decided that he was not, and was accepted by Ippolita, not because she admired his reasoning but because she thought it part of the game.

Next came the turn of Donna Emilia, a very burning poetess, for a Sapphic ode; and so on and so on. After three days Ippolita found herself yawning her head off; the longing for freedom returned, for the open country, the hills, the goatherds. Not for her home in the Vicolo: this everlasting love-making with its aftertaste of stale sugar had turned her sick of Padua. The whole city, to her mind, reeked of bergamot; she guessed a fawning lover at every street corner, a pryer at every window—basta, basta, la citta!

No: it was to the hills she lifted up her eyes, to the hills and the swart goatherds free of their mystery. That riviera across the canal, where the budding planes made a mist of brown and rose, was a favourite haunt of theirs. There they assembled and milked their goats, thence set out homewards at night. Sitting in the pleached arbours, with two adoring ladies at her feet and a little cluster of youths behind and beside her, she used to peer long and earnestly through the branches to see them collect their flocks and start for the hills at dusk. Lithe, brown, sinewy lads they were! What long legs they had, with what bravery wore their ragged cloaks! One carried a great bulging skin under his arm—bagpipes! She was sure they made good music to each other in the green country places. Very early in the morning she heard them come in; they were known by their bells. She jumped out of her luxurious bed at the first tinkle, and was at the shutter watching for them before ever they rounded the angle of the Ponte della Morte. There they came! colour of dust, with the straggling goats following after in a cloud of it. Her impulse was to fling wide the casement, hold out both her arms, call to them with all her might, "Ha! help, in the name of the Trinity! Take me with you to the green hills. I am weary of life in this place!" Then, knowing she could not, she would hold herself back by main force, stare about her, run back, throw herself on the bed, lie there sobbing wildly, and so be found by her ladies who came to put her in that detestable bath. She was sure her skin was being rotted by so much water; she used to feel her arms and thighs secretly to see if they were palpably more flabby. It stood to reason that the water must soak in—where else could it go to! She thought that she walked like a bladder, supposing a bladder were to take itself legs. The whole affair was clean abominable; but she saw no way out.

The way came.



V

ANNINA AS DEMIURGE

They held a tournament in the courtyard of the villa; quite a concourse thronged the painted lists. Ippolita, a miracle of rose and gold, in a white gauzy robe, her hair crowned with daisies, was Queen of Love and Beauty, fanned by ladies in red. Del Dardo tilted with Vittore Marzipane, Gottardo de' Brancacci with Giacomo Feo, a young lion from the Romagna. Messer Meleagro very nearly fell off his horse. They were all in gilt armour, their steeds blazoned with peacocks; but there was no dust, for the ground had been wetted with rosewater; no bones were broken and no blood drawn. The gallants of the Quattrocento could not abide what gave the salt to their grandfathers' feasts. They had other ways of deciding issues which appeared satisfactory; and when at the end the conquering champion went down on his two knees before the throne, when Ippolita, with deprecating hands and downcast eyes rose timidly to crown him, the silver trumpets pealed as shatteringly as ever over a blood-fray, and the company cried aloud to the witnessing sky, "Evviva Ippolita bella!" They could have done no more for a sheaf of broken necks.

This was a great day; but at the close of it its glorious Occasion locked herself into her chamber with breathless care, and sat tearful by the window, with crisping hands and heaving bosom, watchful of the happy idlers she could see afar off in the broad green Prato. Under the shimmering trees there walked mothers, whose children dragged at their skirts to make them look; handfasted lovers were there; a lad teased a lass; a girl hunched her shoulder to provoke more teasing. An old priest paused with a finger in his breviary to smile upon a heap of ragged urchins tumbling in the dust. The air breathed benevolence, the peace of afternoon, the end of toil. Round about, so still and easeful after the day's labour, were the white houses, green-shuttered, half hidden in the trees, the minarets, the domes, the coursing swallows: over them the golden haze of afternoon, a sky yellowing at the edge, beams of dusty sunlight coming slantwise, broad pools of shadow; further still, the far purple shoulders of the hills. Ah, those velvet-sided, blue-bathing, bird-haunted, wind-kissed hills!

But what was that? The jangle of little bells—the goatherds were going out of the city! This poor prisoner then, this watched and weary beauty, whispered to herself of her despair. "Oh, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna," she fretted, "let me go!"

As by miracle they announced a visitor: one Annina, a girl of the town. Would her Majesty see her?

Ah, Heaven! but her Majesty would! In came, staring and breathing hard, a brown-eyed girl with a shawl over her head, below it a blue stuff gown, below all a pair of sturdy bare legs. "Corpaccio! that's a lady; that's never my 'Polita," she stammered when she saw the white silk wonder of the room, the jewels in her neck, the chains of gold, the bosom.

"Oh, Annina! Annina! it is, it is your poor Ippolita," panted the beauty, and fell into the red arms of her friend.

"Sakes! dear sakes! Thou'lt spoil thy glory, my lovely dear," cried the other; "but there then, but there then, there's nothing to wail about. Tell me the trouble, tell thy good Nannina!" So she petted her, like a mother her child.

Donna Euforbia stood confused, but dutiful ever. "Has her Majesty any further commands?"

"Grazie, grazie," said her kissing Majesty, "niente!" and so was left alone with all that she held true in Padua.

"Oh, come, Nannina, come and sit with me; come to the window—let us have the air." She led her there. "O lasso!" said she then, and sighed; "how good it is to see thee, child!"

Before the other could let out a "Madonna!" she began her plaint. "They give me no rest, Nannina, no rest at all. Day long, night long, they are at their postures. I am dressed, undressed, put to bed, taken out, fed, watered, like a pet dog. They put me in a bath, they do my hair out every day: to get me up in the morning according to their fancies is an hour and a half's work for three ladies. Figure it!"

"Christian souls!" cried Nannina, "what's the meaning of this? A bath? What, water."

"Full to the brim with water, on the faith of a Catholic. Of course, if this continues I must die."

"Oh, sicuro, sicurissimo!" she agreed. "This is very serious, Ippolita. Eh, let me feel you. Are you ever dry, my poor child?"

"Dry to the touch, Nannina, dry to the touch. But it is within my body I fear it. I must be sodden, dearest."

"Send for a priest, Ippolita, that is the only chance. But, remember, when they have washed you, they put clothes upon you like these. Ah, but it is worth a girl's while to have silk upon her, and these chains, and these pearls. Corpaccio! there is no Madonna in Padua with such stones as these, nor any bishop either, upon my faith!"

Ippolita shook her beautiful head. "They are not worth the price of all that smelling water," she complained. "Try it, Nannina, before you speak. Seriously, I am very unhappy. Let me tell you something."

"Well?"

"No—come nearer. I'll whisper."

The two heads were very close together. Nannina's eyes became a study—attention, suspicion, justified prophecy, hopefulness; then saucerfuls of sheer surprise to smother every other emotion.

"Ma! Impossibile! And they have never—?"

"Never so much as a finger."

"But what? Are they—? Don't they—?"

Ippolita shrugged, pouting. "Chi lo sa? I tell you, Nannina, I shall go mad in this place."

"And why not?" cried the other, with a snort. "You have examples enough about you, my conscience! What is all their singing and stuff about?"

"I think it is about me, Nannina."

"And their disputing?"

"It is about me."

"And the rhymes?"

"They are about me."

"And you have never—?"

"Never, never, never!"

"What, not in the garden even?"

"No, never, I tell you. Only my hand."

"Your hand—pouf! The nightingales sing there, I suppose."

"All night."

"And there is moonlight?"

"Floods of moonlight."

"Dio! Dio santissimo!" cried Nannina, striking her friend on the knee, "you must be out of this, Ippolita! This is unwholesome: I like not the smell of this. Faugh, fungus! Mawkish! I will see your father this very night."

Ippolita shook her head again. "My father is paid by these signori."

"Then the priest must do it. Father Corrado must do it."

"He dare not."

"A convent—?"

"No, never! That is worse than this. But—oh, Nannina! if I dared I would do such a thing."

"Well, let me hear. If it can be done it shall be done."

"Ah," sighed Ippolita, with a hand on her heart, "ah, but it cannot be done!"

"Then why speak of it?"

"Because I want so much to do it. Listen."

Then Ippolita, clinging to her friend's neck, whispered her darling thought. The goatherds on the hills! There was freedom—clean, untrammelled freedom! No philandering, for no one would know she was a girl; no ceremony, no grimacing, no stiff clothes; no hair-tiring—she must cut off her hair—no bathing, ah, Heaven! If she might go for a few months, a few weeks, until the hue and cry was over, until the signori had thought of a new game; then she would come back, and her father would be so glad of her that he would not beat her more than she could fairly stand. It was a great scheme; indeed it was the only way. But how to do? How to do?

"I suppose it is a dream of mine," sighed she, knotting her fingers in and out of the gold chains.

Annina said nothing, but frowned a good deal. "I see that you are not safe in Padua," she said in the end. "You are really too handsome, my child. You couldn't show your nose without being known and reported. You must go outside if you are to be in peace."

"But I can't go, Nannina; you know it as well as I do."

"I am not so sure. Do you mean what you say, Ippolita?"

"Ah, Nannina!"

"Then you shall go. It so happens that I know one of those goatherds—a rough lout of a fellow called Petruccio. I could tell him that a youngster had got into trouble in the city and wanted to lie quiet for a week or two. I can do it, Ippolita."

"Oh! And will you, will you?"

"Corpaccio! If you mean business."

"I mean nothing else."

"Then it is done."

They clung together and kissed. Annina was to return the next evening at the same hour.

That night it was remarked on all sides that Ippolita's beauty had never been so disastrous, her eyes so starry bright, her colour so fire-flushed. Messer Alessandro, who loved her like a maniac, went shivering out alone into the moonlit garden to expostulate with Nature. "Thou hast formed, most cruel Mother," cried he, "an image of thy fatal self, whose eyes are sharp swords, and her breath poison of ineffable sweetness; whose consummate shape killeth by mere splendour; to whose tint of bright fire every arm must stretch as moth to flame, and by it be blasted. All this thou hast done, and not yet content, hast set this glory so low that all may reach for it, and yet so remote that none can touch. Burning-pure is my Beloved, at whose approach I faint. What hard miracle is this of thine, Goddess, that all must love and none be found worthy?" Thus we may reflect, as Alessandro beat his resounding forehead, to what a pass poetry may bring a youth, who buys for twenty ducats what twenty thousand cannot give him the use of. Pygmalion made a woman one day, moulding all her gracious curves as his experience taught him. There went his twenty ducats. But not he could warm that image into glowing flesh, however much he sang to it and hymned. That was another's affair. So here.

Annina came on the morrow full of secrecy and other things more equivocal still in appearance. Her burden proved, however, to be a bundle of rags which, she assured Ippolita, represented all that was necessary to the perfect goatherd.

"We will do what we can here, child," said she, "in the way of staining your skin, cutting off your hair, and such like. Then you shall veil and come into the garden with me; but whereas you shall come in as the Madonna of these heathens, you shall leave, per Dio, as Silvestro, who murdered the Jew in the Via della Gatta and has to hide in the hills. Do you remember him, Ippolita?"

"Of course I do," said Ippolita. "Have I killed that Jew, Annina?"

"It is to be understood, my dear. Now come, there is everything to arrange."

There was indeed. Del Dardo would have swooned to see how Annina handled his Unapproachable. Her burnished hair was off with a clip or two of the great shears; a mixture of soot and walnut-juice hid up her roses, and transformed her ivory limbs to the similitude of a tanner's. Ippolita did not know herself. Veiled up close, she crept into the garden with her confidante, and in a bower by the canal completed her transformation. Not Daphne suffered a ruder change. A pair of ragged breeches, swathes of cloth on her legs, an old shirt, a cloak of patched clouts, shapeless hat of felt, sandals for her feet, shod staff for her hand—behold the peerless Ippolita, idol of half Padua, turned into a sheepish overgrown boy in tatters, whose bathing could only have been in sweat, and the scent of his garments the rankness of goats. On the floor in a shining heap lay the silk robes, the chains and jewels, only witness with Annina of what had been done. That same Annina clasped in her arms the tall boy.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she said, half sobbing, "if any ill should come of this I shall kill myself."

"No ill will come, Nannina, believe me," replied Ippolita, quite calm. "You are sure they expect me?"

"I see them on the riviera now. Slip into the boat. I will put you across."

On the other bank, Ippolita was received by the herd-boys, all agog to see the champion who had killed the Jew.

"Addio, Silvestro," said Annina, keeping up the play.

"Addio, Nannina," said Silvestro, with a chuckle.

"Are we ready, boys?" Petruccio called out, turning about him. "We must be careful what we're doing."

"Hist, Silvestro," whispered one, with a nudge; "did he bleed much?"

"Cosa terribile—a flood!" Silvestro spread out his hands.

"Cristo! The glory of it!"

"Valentino, I scrag you, my man, if you speak of the Jew till we are out of the Porta San Zuan," growled Petruccio, the leader: "Avanti!" And the drab-coloured crew moved off towards the sunset.



VI

SILVESTRO

The guard at the Porta San Zuan let them go unheeded; one ragamuffin more or less made no odds. The heart of the new-born Silvestro gave a great bound as they cleared the gate, and she saw before her the straight white road with its border of silver stems and the spreading tent-roof of golden green. These stems were so obviously like the pillars of a church that Silvestro ventured to remark as much to her neighbour—a broad-faced, thick fellow, not quite her own height, but twice as big in the girth. His mouth was large, his eyes were small and rather hot. He blinked a good deal, was very sulky, and met her advances with a grunt. "Chi lo sa?" was as far as he would go along with her in the matter of tree-trunks.

It was annoying. Every one had seemed friendly at first. But being free, she could not feel daunted long; and at the second bend of the road the hills sailed into full vision—the solemn hills in a long line of peak and hollow, velvety, dark, and brooding sleep, like a bank of cloud edging the pale sky. The frogs were singing vespers in the ditches, the sharp chorus of the cicalas shrilled on all sides. At the sight of this enormous calm Silvestro forgot rebuffs. For a murderer he was in a very cheerful humour; he began to sing; soon he had all the boys (except that blinker) rapt to attention. Andrea slewed round his bag and pipes and began upon a winding air; they all sang, going at a trot. The goats pricked up their ears; they too began to amble; it became a stampede. The sun went down behind Monte Venda, the bats came flickering out, the great droning cockchafers dropped on the road like splashes of rain. The night found them still far from Abano, but still talking and nearly all friends. Silvestro was hand in hand with Petruccio and another boy, called Mastino because he was heavy-jowled and underhung. Their tongues wagged against each other about nothing at all. Silvestro strengthened his position by hints and shrewd winks, but it was decided that the Jew should be kept for the night fire. That was too choice a morsel to be eaten on the road; that must be rolled on the palate, to get the flavours. It was a pity, certainly, about the pig-eyed boy, who snorted whenever the exploit was mentioned—but "Never mind him," thought Silvestro; "I have all the others."

They passed through Abano; Monte Ortone was ahead, a spur of the great body of the hills.

"There's the hermit's candle," said Petruccio. A twinkling light showed deep in the trees. "There was a most excellent miracle there—the Blessed Virgin in a tree. Two girls saw her and thought she was a kite entangled. But they fetched a priest from Abano, and he knew better. So then they built an oracle or some such place, and paid a hermit to pray there. And now, whoever has ague, or is with child, or hath bandy-legged children, or witch-crossed cows, always goes there; and the hermit cures them. That was money well laid out, I suppose."

"Per Bacco!" cried Andrea, "I'll tell you some more. Did you ever hear of Monna Betta's short leg?"

Petruccio cuffed him well. "A palsy on her leg, and a palsy strike thee," he thundered, "if with thy old women's tales we miss the path! Go drive the goats in, thick-chops, and stay that clapper of thine till they ask for a crow-keeper. Move now, be off!"

"'Tis a hard thing, Petruccio," blubbered Andrea, "if one may not tell the honour of his own land to a stranger."

But Petruccio sent him flying with grit in his ear.

By a brambly path they climbed Monte Ortone—Petruccio first, the others after him, the newcomer as best might be, then musically the goats. That round-faced, blinking boy, whom they called Castracane, was behind Silvestro now, much diverted by her panting efforts to go up without panting what he could rise on with closed mouth and scarcely any sharper whistling at the nose.

"Hey, comrade," said he, grinning, "one sees that the Jew's stair was easier going for thee than Ortone." And he prodded her with his staff.

This was not friendly. Ippolita did her best to humour him. "I go up as well as I can, Castracane," she said. "But do you go first, if you will."

"Nay, nay," he replied, with a chuckle; "I make very good practice in the rear." So saying he caught her ankle in the crook of his staff, and brought her down into the bushes like a running ram.

Silvestro was hurt in his feelings; all the rest laughed; his late-won empire seemed slipping. And it was very strange treatment for the Queen of the Collegio d'Amore, if wholesome. She arrived wet and breathless at the top, feeling moreover that she must by all means make a friend of this ugly fellow.

The fire was made, the pot put on, the pot boiled. Then for a time, though jaws worked like mill-clappers, it was to better purpose than words. But when the last shred of garlic or last gobbet of pork had been fished up, when the wine-skin was flabby, the last crust's memory faded from the toothpick, Petruccio slapped Silvestro on the knee.

"Now, comrade," cried he, "we'll have the Jew for dessert."

"The Jew, the Jew! Now for the Jew!" went the chorus.

Silvestro coloured. "The Jew? Eh, well, I killed him—ecco!"

The flaming logs lit up a ring of tense, pale faces—not one of which, Silvestro saw, would rest content with that. The interrogatories began, a dropping fire of them.

"How did you do it?"

"With my knife, of course."

"Where did you strike?"

"Under the ribs. I took him by his great goat's beard, the old dog, and jerked up his head—so. Then I drove in between his ribs—ping!"

Surely that would do? Not at all.

"The left ribs?"

"Ah!"

"Did he gurgle?"

"Didn't he!"

"Blood choked him—eh?"

"Per Bacco!"

"You stabbed him on the stair?"

"Gia!"

"Did he roll down?"

"No, no; he just lay where he fell."

"Why did you kill him?" said Castracane, suddenly—bolt upright.

This was awkward. Silvestro fenced. "Eh, corpo di Bacco, why does one kill the Jews?"

The others at first took the same side. Why, indeed? The question seemed absurd. Did they not crucify young children, and eat them afterwards? Did they not kill Gesu Cristo? Everybody knows that they did; and, as for proof, look at them with a dish of pork. Ugh!

But Castracane blinked his small eyes, and held to it.

"Did you kill him because of Gesu Cristo?" he asked.

Silvestro shrugged. "It was partly that, of course."

"What else?"

Silvestro grew hot—desperate. Why, after all, would one kill a Jew? Something must be urged, something solid.

"There was Annina, you know," said Silvestro, at his wit's end.

"Annina—that girl you were with? What of her?" Castracane licked his lips.

"Well, this Jew, you must understand, was a limber young fellow—"

"Young!" shouted the other. "You told me he had a great grey beard like a goat."

"It wasn't very grey—not so grey as a goat's. Well, he was always following Annina about, making her presents, cadging for favours. Accidente! I couldn't stand it, you must know. So, thinking of Annina, and of Gesu Cristo, and one thing and another, I decided to follow him back to the Via Gatta—and so I did."

Andrea leaned forward, hoarsely whispering (blessed diversion!)—

"Say, Silvestro, what colour was the Jew's blood?"

Silvestro opened wide those blue eyes, which had wrought such havoc among the Paduan nobility.

"Black, Andrea!" he whispered again; "black as pig's blood!"

Andrea crossed himself. "Pio Cristo," he prayed, "let me kill a Jew some day!"

Even then Castracane, the sceptic, was not satisfied. "All I know is," said he, "that I saw a Jew cutting bread at the Albero Verde last Martinmas, and he slipped into his own thumb, and came off as red as a dog's tongue. Bah!"

"Damn the Jew," said Petruccio, yawning; "let's go to sleep, boys."



VII

CASTRACANE

She woke early, with the full light of day in her eyes. She felt tired, but not inert, languid and luxurious, rather, and explored to the full the happiness of stretching. Round about her were huddled the drowsy boys; on the slopes of the steep place where she lay she could see the goats browsing on lentisk and juniper, acanthus, bramble, mountain-ash. Misty on the blue plain lay Padua, a sleeping city, white and violet—remote now and in every sense below her and her concerns. The sky was without cloud, very pale still, glowing white at the edge; the sun not yet out of the sea. The freshness of the air fanned her deliciously; larks were climbing the sky singing their prick-song, scores of finches crossed the slopes, dipping from bush to bush. Ippolita clasped her hands behind her head, and looked lazily at all this early glory. The freedom of her heart seemed explicit in that of her limbs. What she could do with her legs, for instance! How she could sprawl at ease! She was just like all the others—as ragged, as dirty, at least; and soon she would be as brown. Dio buono, the splendid life of a goatherd!

Then she found that Castracane was watching her out of one wicked eye. He had rolled over on to his belly, his face lay sideways on his hands; one eye was shrewdly on her. She considered him, rather scared, out of the corner of hers. Decidedly he was a sulky boy—you might say an enemy. As unconcernedly as she could she got up, stretched herself with elaborate ease, and strolled off along the edge of the hill. Castracane followed her; she affected not to know it; but her heart began to quicken, and when he was close beside her she found that she had to look at him.

"Good morning, Castracane," says Silvestro.

He grunted. "Look here, Silvestro," he began, "about that Jew—"

The accursed Jew, who, so far from denying the resurrection of the dead, seemed a standing proof of it! Was she never to have done with the Jew?

"Well, what about him?"

"Did you kill him or not? That's what about him."

"I told you last night."

"Yes, but I don't believe it."

"What!"

"I don't believe it. Now then?"

Silvestro looked about for help: they were out of sight of the others, and there lay Padua, slumbrous in the plain. It seemed as if Castracane meant quarrelling. Well, what must be, must be.

"I don't care whether you believe it or not. Now then?" The blue eyes were steady enough on the black by this time.

"Look here," said Castracane after a pause, "I'll fight you if you like. That'll settle it."

Silvestro laughed nervously. "Why should we fight, Castracane? Besides, we have no knives. How can we fight?"

"Like this," said the other between his teeth. His left arm whipped out, like a lizard's tongue, and Silvestro lay flat on his back among the cistus flowers, seeing ink and scarlet clouds.

"Stick a Jew indeed!" cried Castracane. "Stick a grandmother! Why, you're as soft as cheese!"

Silvestro's shoulders told a tale. He had turned on his face, but his shoulders were enough. Lord, Lord, look at that! Scorn in his conqueror gave way to amazement, amazement to disgust, disgust to contempt. Last came pity. Who'd have thought such a leggy lad such a green one? He was crying like a girl. Castracane had no malice in him: he was sorry for those sobbing shoulders. He stooped over the wreck he had made, and tried to put it together again.

"Come, Silvestro," he said gruffly, "I never meant to hurt you."

The wet face was up in a moment—red and wet and angry.

"It's not that! It's not that! I never killed the Jew—there! But I was a stranger, and I tried to be friendly, and you hated me. I hate being hated. Why should you hate me? What have I done?"

This was too subtle for the youth. "The trouble was," he said, "that I hit you in the right place. That's the knock-out blow, that one. Morte di Ercole, and down you went! Well, I'm sorry; will that do?"

"Yes, yes—I want no more. Let us be friends, Castracane."

"Benissimo."

He helped his late enemy up; they kissed each other, then sat together on the grass—admirable friends.

"So you didn't kill the Jew?" Castracane began. "I knew it! But what did you do to run away?"

"Ah, you mustn't ask. Indeed, I can't tell you. It was rather bad."

Castracane looked keenly at his new friend. "Was it a girl?" he said.

Silvestro blushed. "Yes, it was a girl."

"Ah, ah! Then I say no more. I like girls myself. But they get you into trouble quicker than anything. You would rather not tell me any more—quite sure?"

"No, I can't indeed. Let's talk of something else. How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"I'm not sixteen yet. Is Castracane your real name?"

Castracane looked pleased.

"I'm glad you asked. No; they call me that among ourselves, because of a little knack I have; but my name is Pilade."

"That's a very nice name," said Silvestro.

"I believe you—it's a splendid name. There's no better. It's the name of a Roman—Emperor of Rome and Sultan of Padua he was—who killed a giant called Oreste, having first caused him to become a Christian."

"But why did he kill him when he had made a Christian of him?" asked Silvestro, greatly interested; "or why did he make him a Christian, if he was going to kill him?"

"Pouf! What questions!" cried Castracane. "He made him a Christian because he was a good Catholic himself, and killed him for being a giant, of course. Or take it this way. If he hadn't been a Christian, how could he have made a good death? He couldn't, naturally. So the Emperor christened him first and killed him afterwards—ecco! It's always done like that, they tell me."

"I see it now," said Silvestro; "it was very fine. I like your name of Pilade best. I shall always call you that, if you will let me."

"Call me what you like," says Pilade. "Let's go and wake the others. I'm as hungry as the devil with all this talking."

The result of this was that Silvestro became Pilade's foot-boy, his slave. The lout was in clover; nothing could have suited him so well. No more goats to herd in the heat of the day—Silvestro would do it; no share of foraging for him; no more milk to carry into the valley; no more fires to make up; nor strays to follow; nor kids to carry to new pastures—Silvestro would do it. The luxurious rascal lay out the daylight stretched on his back with his hat over his eyes; he woke only for his meals. He would not be at the pains even to swathe his own legs or strap his own sandals. Silvestro, bathed in sweat, his fair skin burnt and blistered, his delicate hands and smooth legs scratched by brambles, his slender neck bowed beneath the weights he carried on shoulders stretched to cracking point—Silvestro worked from dawn to dusk, rejoicing in the thankless office. Thankless it was, since Master Pilade took no sort of notice; yet Silvestro gave thanks. Pilade allowed the other to stoop to his shoe-ties, to wind the swathes about his sturdy calves, to carry his very cloak and staff, while he slouched along with hands deep in breeches pockets, and his hat pulled down to his nose. Silvestro would proudly have carried him, too, had that been possible. Most unmanly of Silvestro, all this; but the rogue he petted was too snug to consider it. At the falling-in of night, having his belly full of meat and drink (which Silvestro had prepared and served him with), he might, if the mood took him, pull out his reed pipe.

"Silvestro," he might say, "you have been useful to-day; perhaps I'll play you something."

And the beautiful Silvestro (tanned counterpart of the Glorious Ippolita) would hang upon the melancholy noise, and observe with adoring interest every twitch and distension of the fat-cheeked hero; and at the end sigh his content, saying—

"Ah, thank you, Pilade; you have been very kind to me."

"The truth is," Pilade would allow, "I am a good-natured devil if you take me the right way. I'll tell you what, Silvestro; you have pleased me to-day. You may sleep at my feet if you like: it will keep them warm, to begin with, and you'll be near me, don't you see?"

"Thank you, thank you, dear Pilade," cried the enraptured Silvestro.

The world is a very odd one, and it is most true that the man who is for taming hearts should pursue, ostensibly, any other calling. Not that Pilade had that in view. He only sought to be comfortable, good lad.



VIII

RESURRECTION OF THE JEW

This idyllic state of things might have lasted no one knows how long, with Ippolita-Silvestro finding joy in unreasonable service, and Pilade both ease and reason. Where either partner was so admirably suited it might have been interesting to see what would have happened: whether Ippolita would have betrayed herself or Pilade found her out. She was over head and ears in love, but he was vastly well served; and there is nothing like content for drugging the wits.

Things, however, fell out otherwise. The Jew, to begin with, fell out of the grave to which he had been hastily recommended, and most insecurely at that. He made himself felt in a variety of ways, was discovered by the gardener in the Via di Vanzo, and stuck into a gutter in the Via Man di Ferro. He was discovered again by some one who had either less to do among Christians or more among Jews than the generality in Padua; and this time he was carried to the Guard House. Being reported (reporting himself, indeed) to the watch, he was reported on to the Capitano, by him to the Prefect. The Prefect put the Sub-Prefect, who had met him before, upon the look-out.

"The Most Serene Republic," said that authority, "cannot have unburied Jews adrift in the city without finding out why the cemetery does not hold them and why the gutter does. Inquire, Alessandro mio, inquire! There was a wound in the man's ribs big enough for a nest of rats."

Alessandro bowed, but raised his fine eyebrows. He was at that hour most happily unhappy over the late disappearance of his Glorious Lady. The peerless beauty of Padua, the incomparable Ippolita, was gone. His business was to devise dirges, monodies, laments, descortz in the Provencal manner; to cry "Heigho!" and "Well-a-day!" not "Ban!" or "Out, haro!" To have these high frenzies, these straining states of the soul, disturbed by the unclaimed remains of a resolving Jew, was a cruel test. Yet, he reflected within himself, if his piercing love survived this inquiry, it was founded on rock. And, indeed, Alessandro believed that his heart was slowly turning to stone. He felt a curious chill there when he got up in the morning, a dead weight, a mass to lift with every choked beat. Perhaps the Jew would end what Ippolita had begun. If so, well. But, ah, Ippolita, Ippolita bella, Ippolita crudel! Ah, ohime!

Habit set him to work. He instructed his officers, he visited the gates, questioned, took notes, inspected the gutter in the Via Man di Ferro, even inspected the Jew. He went to the Via della Gatta, to the fatal staircase; he bullied two or three landlords of two or three low taverns; went to the stews, to the Ghetto; talked very loud, flourished his sword, drove his men this way and that—in fine, did everything that becomes a young official of spirit. The result of his labours was that the Jew got posthumous fame out of all proportion to his merits. The city fairly hummed with him; nobody talked of anything but the dead Jew.

The goatherds, coming in by the Porta San Zuan a day later, were shrewdly scrutinised by the Guard. They were numbered off, their names taken; they were pulled about and flustered, asked questions, contradicted before they had time to answer, and then called prevaricators because they said nothing; they were, in fact, brought to that state of breathless hurry in which a boy will say anything you choose. This, as everybody knows, is the only way of getting at the truth.

"There were more of you fellows the other night," said the Corporal of the Guard. "Where are the rest of you? Come now, out with it; no lies here!"

Petruccio, who had some sense, shammed to have none; but Andrea, less happy, was a real fool. At this invitation he looked wise.

"Castracane is not here—true, but it wasn't Castracane," he muttered, and found his neck in a vice.

"Who was it then, son of a pig? Who was it?"

"Mercy, mercy, my lord! I will tell the truth!" he whined as he twisted.

"Gesu morto! Tell anything else and I cut thy liver out, hound!" swore the man who held him.

"Ah, Dio! I will! I will! It was Silvestro who killed the Jew!"

"You shall come with me to the Signor Sotto-Prefetto," said his holder. "There's a ducat for me in this affair." The poor little company were driven into the gatehouse and there pent; but Andrea went off between two archers to be examined at greater length by Messer Alessandro, and to give blubbering confirmation of the fact. All the unfortunate particulars wrung out of Silvestro on his first night of Monte Ortone—the stab under the ribs, the Jew's beard, his black blood, etc., etc.—were now screwed out of Andrea and went to prove his story.

"By the twenty-four ears of the Twelve Apostles," swore the Corporal, "we've got him at last, Messere."

The Sub-Prefect felt that he must act upon this news. So much insistence had been laid upon the affair by his chief, he dared not send his lieutenant: he must go himself. This is what comes of neglecting new-killed Jews! he might have thought. He little knew what was to come of it.

Two mounted men, Andrea with a rope round his neck, himself very splendidly booted and cuirassed, made up a sufficient cavalcade to fetch home one snivelling goatherd. It was four by the time they were off, seven before they were at Abano, eight when they reached the foot of Monte Ortone and faced the deep chestnut woods in which that precipice dips his flanks. But though it was getting dusk there were eyes sharp enough on the top of the mountain to watch for what sharp ears had heard—a most unaccustomed sound in those leafy solitudes—trotting horses and jingling steel. Castracane from the summit saw it all; and what is more, guessed at once what Andrea in a halter meant.



IX

PYLADES FINDS HIS ORESTES

"Silvestro," he called softly, without moving from his ambush or turning his eyes from those he watched, "Silvestro, come here!"

The obedient stripling came eagerly, and knelt as close to his master as he dared—just so as to touch him.

"Eccomi, Pilade," says he.

"Get back over the brow as fast as you can," said his friend, "and hide in the cave. Wait there till I come. Go now; do as I bid you."

Silvestro went at once.

Castracane squared his jaw and waited. Every now and then he muttered to himself, with lazy lifted eyebrows. It was too much trouble to shrug. "Poor little devil—it would be a shame! And I knocked him down for nothing. And he loves me, per Bacco! Certainly, I have never been loved before—by a man, I mean—except by my big old mother out yonder, and she is a woman. She'll be sorry—she's old—eh, she's horribly old! Accursed, most rotten ass, Andrea! The whole story out of him—and a lie at that. Cospetto! I can't let the poor lad swing. And I did knock him down—and he cried like a girl; but not because I grassed him. By my soul, I'll do it—there, then!" Then he mortised his chin in his brown hands and blinked while he waited.

He had not so very long; but you might have given him an hour, it would have made no difference to Castracane then. The guard came reeking to the brow of the hill; Andrea, haltered, was with them. Alessandro, mopping his head and cursing the flies, came last.

"Look yonder, Marco," said one. The other said "Ha!" and pounced upon his treasure. He had him by the ear and was pricking him with his sabre in the fleshy parts.

"Easy, friend," said Castracane; "I'm not running away."

He went like a sheep to the Sub-Prefect. Andrea watched him twittering.

"What is your name, fellow?" said that heated officer.

Andrea's eyes yearned for his mate's. Castracane gave him a terrible look.

"Silvestro is my name, Signore," says he; and Andrea knew his game.

"We have found our bird, I think," said Alessandro, turning to his men.

"Yes, Excellency, this is the lad we want. There was another of them—Castracane they call him."

"Ah, yes. Where is Castracane, fellow?"

"He is over Venda. Gone to Noventa, to his mother," replied Castracane.

"Well, we don't want him so far as I know. Now, attend to me. You are suspected of that business in the Via della Gatta."

Castracane shrugged. "Chi lo sa?" says he.

"We shall see about that. Meantime, what have you to urge?"

Castracane scratched his head. "What would you have me say, Messere? I am a poor lad. You are many, and I am one."

Alessandro turned to his archers. "Bring him down to the hermitage," he said. "I am going to eat something. Tie him up and wait for me there. You can let the other go. This is the lad, fast enough. Avanti!"

So the shackles were taken off Andrea's raw wrists, and transferred to Castracane's; the neck halter was shifted; Castracane was bond, Andrea free. Then Messer Alessandro went down the hill to what supper the hermit could afford.

In about half an hour Silvestro, who had been fidgeting in the cave, came out, restless to have stayed so long beyond sight or hearing of his Pilade. His reception by Andrea was shocking. The gaping boy sprang forward with his arms out.

"Ha! Here is a terrible affair," he wailed.

"Our Castracane is taken, and for your fault; he will be hanged, and for you! Make your supper of it, you Jew-jerker. What sacrifice, Dio mio! There has been nothing like it, I suppose, since Giulio Cesare kissed Brutus, or Judas Gesu Cristo. You kissed him this morning; you know you did! You always do, you blush-faced sneak! And for that kiss he has taken your sins upon him, and is to be hanged. Fie, Judas, fie! Oh, Madonna Maria, the terrible affair!"

So ending as he began, he danced about the hill-top, wringing his hands.

But Silvestro, very pale, came quickly up, and laid hold of him.

"Tell me all, Andrea," says he; "for I know nothing except that I love Castracane and will save him. Who has taken him?"

"It is a lord—the Sotto-Prefetto—the hook-nosed gentleman with thin eyebrows; him they call Messer Alessandro. Castracane is tied like a netted calf—his hands behind him, and them to his neck. What's the good of his strength? He is as strong as the town bull; but if he writhes his hands he strangles, and if he thrusts his neck he chokes. Ecco!"

Silvestro was staring down into the valley. "Where is Messer Alessandro, Andrea? Tell me quickly, for I can save Castracane."

"He is eating with the hermit in the wood. But what can you do?"

"You stay here," said Silvestro with decision; "that's what you can do. I'll go down."

The sound of breaking through undergrowth was followed by rapping at the hermit's door.

"What do you want, boy?" said the pious man to the ragged figure in the dark.

"Messer Alessandro, my reverend—Messer Alessandro at once."

"Are you come about the Jew? He will bear no more. He is eating. He tells me he knows more about the Jew than he does about our holy religion—which is a dangerous state of things, except that he is sick to death of him."

"It is not about the Jew, father," said Silvestro, out of breath. "Tell him it is about—Ippolita."

"Va bene," said the hermit. "Stay where you are."

Messer Alessandro dropped his tools with a clatter, wiped his mouth, beat his breast, and began to walk up and down the cell.

"Send him in, hermit, send him in! Forty ducats if he has any news, ten ducats in any case for bringing my thoughts from Jews on earth to Ippolita in Paradise. Despatch, despatch, send me the goatherd."

The pale apparition of a fair-haired boy, timid in rags, cloaked in rusty black, with bandaged legs, and his old felt hat crushed against his breast, stood in the doorway.

"Oh, boy!" cried Alessandro, gesticulating with one hand, "may you be my Hermes, my swiftfoot messenger. Tell me what you know of the divine Ippolita."