"I know where she is, Signor Sotto-Prefetto," says Silvestro huskily.

"Tell me, by Venus and all her doves!"

For answer the blushing boy looked appealingly at Alessandro, with eyes so deeply, limpidly, searchingly blue, with lips so tenderly parted, with a smile fluttering so timidly, and limbs so drooping under their disguise, yet so quickly transformed from frightened lad's to bashful beauty's, that—

"Saints of the Heavenly Court—ah, God of Love!" cried Alessandro; and the Sub-Prefect fell upon his knees before the goatherd.

Later you might have seen that same goatherd enthroned in the hermit's armchair, his hands locked in his lap, his legs modestly disposed, his head gracefully bowed, a blush on his burnt cheeks, his long lashes casting a shade, his breath coming and going with a pretty haste—and at his feet a splendid gentleman, booted and cuirassed, who poured out voluble assurances of eternal respect, of love undying, of the sovranty of Venus Urania, and the communion of beautiful minds.

"I will see you again; yes, I will certainly see you again, since you so desire it," said Silvestro, after a good deal of this. "And I will give you what you ask, if it is in my power. But you must trust me so far: you must go away from here, and wait till I send word. I shall owe you every gratitude, every reward I can give you. Now, however, you must let me go; and I must take with me the goatherd, who is as innocent of the Jew's death as I am."

"Ah, I will do all that you wish," sighed Alessandro. "Sacred lady, I will do it. But surely you will have pity upon a humble slave who has served you long and faithfully, and now is putting himself in peril for your pleasure. Pay me my poor fee, lady. Enrich me boundlessly with what costs you so little."

So he urged, until—

"Well," says Silvestro, "I will do it. Rise up, Messere; take what you will."

Messer Alessandro shut his eyes, and slowly rose to his feet. Having kissed the goatherd's hand, he very delicately kissed the goatherd's proffered cheek. "I am paid immeasurably, most holy one," he said. "Lead now; I will do what you desire."

Out sped Silvestro into the wood, the Sub-Prefect bareheaded behind him. In a glade not far from the hermitage sat the two archers. The horses were tethered to one tree, Castracane to another. Seeing their chief, the men sprang to attention; their astonishment at what followed was no greater than Castracane's. Silvestro (that timid slave), now as bold as brass, walked straight to him, the Sub-Prefect tiptoeing behind.

"Loose him, Signore," says Silvestro.

The Sub-Prefect with a knife cut his bonds. "Your will is done."

"Thank you, Signor Alessandro: God be with you. Come, Pilade."

Silvestro took Castracane by the hand, but not before the gentleman had kissed his own with profound respect. Then Silvestro led his friend away through the trees, and the Sub-Prefect was understood to say—

"We have been on the wrong scent, men. Mount. To the city—Avanti!"

"What's all this? Whither now?" stammered Castracane.

Silvestro squeezed his hand. "Oh, dearest, let us go to the cave—let us go to the cave on the hill!"

Castracane felt his friend trembling. Trembling is infectious; he began to tremble too.

"Yes, yes, we will go to our cave," he agreed in a quick whisper.



X

CYMON FINDS HIS IPHIGENIA

They struggled upwards through the bushwood and starry flowers. It was a scented night, the air heavy with the burden of midsummer. The fireflies spread a jewelled web before their faces, great white moths flapped and droned about them. On they pushed, their hands locked through all hazards of brake or briar: neither would let go for a whole world, but Silvestro was always in front, leading Castracane for this once. One knew the way as well as another; but Silvestro led it. They rounded the hill-top.

"Here we are at last," said Silvestro. "Let us sit here, and look at the splendour of the night. Oh, Pilade! Oh, dear friend! How couldst thou do so much for me?"

"What else could I do?" said he gruffly. "You never killed the pig-Jew."

"Nor did you, Pilade. Tell me why you gave yourself up."

"Because you didn't do it, of course."

"But you didn't do it either?"

"Well, but I knocked you down."

"Did you do it because of that; or because—because you like me?"

Pilade grunted. "Suppose I did?"

Silvestro sighed, and leaned his head on his friend's shoulder.

"O wondrous night!" said he, whispering. "Look, the stars are like moons."

It was certainly a wonderful night—a night of enormous silence, of great steady stars, of gold-dusted air, of a sky like a purple dome encrusted with jewelled lights. The two boys sat together, blinking at so much speechless glory. Castracane's arm was round his fellow's shoulder; that fellow's lips parted, and his breath came soft and eager—yet too quickly for ease. It was certainly a night of wonder.

Castracane's arm slipped down to Silvestro's waist; Silvestro sighed, and snuggled into the haven it made.

"O holy night!" said he. "Now might miracles happen, and we be by."

"Ah," said Castracane, "the miracle of choice would be an angel with a basket of bread and cheese—or a beautiful maiden to come and lie in one's arms."

Silvestro thrilled. Castracane gave a responsive squeeze, and went on.

"I am not too sure, you must know, that one has not happened already. To see you lead that signore by the nose! You came swimming among the tree-stems like an angel. You might have knocked me down with a feather. And how he kissed your hand! Miracles! Why, if you had been the maiden I dream about, he couldn't have been more respectful. If you want miracles, for example!"

"I do want them, Pilade. I want them very much." Silvestro sighed again, and leaned his cheek till it touched his friend's.

A shock transfused Castracane; he was caught by the starry influences. Suddenly he turned his mouth towards that blushing flower, and kissed Silvestro. Silvestro thrilled but lay close.

"Buon' Dio, ecco miracolo!" said Castracane hoarsely, and kissed again.

Again his nestling companion gave no sign but a quiver.

Castracane surveyed the stars. "A miracle has certainly happened," he said. "I feel very queer. My head swims, fingers and toes tingle; I seem to have hot lead in my legs. It may be that I am empty. I think it is a miracle; but as yet I see no angel."

Some quicker thrill of what he held made him look at Silvestro. At the same moment Silvestro slowly turned his head, and looked at him. What each saw in the other's face beyond a white moon-shape, what shining of truth in the eye, what expectancy, what revelation in the lips, I know not. Two pair of lips, at least, met and stayed together.

"O Dio!"

"Oh, Pilade! Oh, carissimo!" She abandoned herself to joy.

"You are the angel, the miracle! You are—"

"No, no, I am not an angel; but oh, I love you, dearly!"

"Ah, la Madonna!"

"I am Ippolita! I love you!"

"You love me? You are mine then—come."

"Andrea," said Castracane next morning, "I think the others will be back before noon. You must wait here till they come. I am going to take Silvestro over La Venda to see my mother, and confess to our curate. It is good for the soul."

"Silvestro looks well this morning," said Andrea, with his mouth full of bread. "What a colour of dawn! What shining eyes! He would make a proper Madonna for a Mystery—eh?"

"He would," said Castracane laconically; "a most proper Madonna. With a Bambino on his lap—eh, Silvestro."

Silvestro blushed; Castracane pinched his cheek, which made matters worse.

They took the road together through the deep hedges of the valley. Monte Venda rose before them, dark with woods. Castracane's arm was round Silvestro's waist: every twenty yards they stopped.

"To think of it!" cried Castracane, on one of these breathless halts. "You to be like any one of us—breeched, clouted, swathed—and a lovely lass within your shirt—Madonna!"

"Do you think me lovely?" asked Ippolita devoutly. "I have heard that till I have been sick to death of it; but from you I shall never be tired of knowing it."

"Blessed Angel!"

"Oh, Pilade, my love!"

They loitered on.

"You see that I am not what you thought me," said Ippolita, with an arch look. "You thought I had killed a Jew."

"Never, per Bacco!" cried Castracane. "That I'll swear to."

"You thought I was a boy, even last night, dearest."

But that he denied. "Santissimo! Did I treat you like a boy, I ask you?"

"You knocked me down once, Pilade."

"Every honest man knocks his wife down once," said Pilade gravely.

"And then you kissed me."

"I can kiss you again," said Pilade; and did.

I repeat, Padua is a freakish city. The Sub-Prefect writes madrigals in vain. Castracane, the goatherd, sends Silvestro sprawling, and wins the golden Ippolita for a willing bride. What are we to make of it? Deus nobis haec otia fecit.



THE DUCHESS OF NONA

"L'Anima semplicetta, che sa nulla, Salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore, Volentier torna a cio che la trastulla." —Purg. xvi. 88.



I

BOCCA BACIATA

"Not unprosperous is your Erasmus in England," wrote that man of wiles to one Faustus, a poet; and then—"To touch upon one among many delights, there are girls in this land divinely fair—soft, easy, and more wooing than any of your Muses. Moreover, they have a custom which cannot be too much honoured. Wheresoever you go a-visiting, the girls all kiss you. With kisses you come in, with kisses depart; returning, they kiss you again. Cometh one to you, the kisses fly between; doth she go away, with kisses you are torn asunder; meeting in any place, kisses abound. Go where you will, it is all kisses. Indeed, my Faustus, had you but once tasted of lips so fragrant and so soft, not for a time only, but to your end of days, you would choose to be a pilgrim in this England." By no means the only stranger to be charmed by our welcoming girls was Erasmus. Amilcare Passavente, of a darker blood, found such kisses sweet: those of one at least he vowed to call his own. What he made of them, what they of him, what other diverting matter appertains to the kisser and the kissed, you shall understand who care to read.

Mary was her name in our Lord, Lovel that of her father in the flesh, a respectable wharfinger of Bankside. Molly, Mawkin, Moll Lovel, "Long Moll Lovel," and other things similar she was to her kinsfolk and acquaintance, who had seen her handsome body outstrip her simple mind. Good girl that she was, she carried her looks as easily as a packet of groceries about the muddy ways of Wapping, went to church, went to market, gossiped out the dusk at the garden gate, or on the old wharf, after the 'prentices had gone, linked herself waist to waist with maiden friends. Up river or down, she trafficked in a wherry, and took the waterman's tender glances as part receipt for his hire. In a word, this winsome, rosy creature, grown hardy in a kind soil, adventured herself at ease among them that might have been her poets, adorers, or raveners, nor thought to be cheapened by the liberty she employed. She was rather shy with strangers, conscious of her height, awkward under observation, blushing to know she blushed; but simple as the day, pleased with flattery, pleased with other trifles,—trinkets, snatched kisses, notes slipped into the prayer-book, etc. She told her mother everything before she went to bed, sat on her father's knee when she was too old and much too tall for it, dreamed of lovers, hid trembling when they came, had palpitations, never told a fib or refused a sweetmeat; she was, in fact, just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets flushed after midday dinner, and would sooner miss church than the postman any day in the year. Such was Molly Lovel at nineteen, honestly handsome and honestly a fool, whom in Bankside they knew as Long-legged Moll.

To Amilcare Passavente, the young merchant-adventurer from Leghorn, ravished as he was by the spell of her cool lips, she became at once "La divina Maria," or shorter, "La Diva"; and in a very light space of time, when his acquaintance with her and hers with his tongue had ripened, she had quite a nosegay of names: Madonna Collebianca (my Lady Whitethroat), Donna Fiordispina, La Bella Rosseggiante, were three among three dozen flowers of speech, picked from a highly scented garden of such for her adorning. Amilcare translated them in his hoarse, eager voice, helped on by his hands (which were rapid) and his beseeching eyes (which had the flattery of deference), not only to Molly apart, but to all or any of her acquaintance who could listen without giggling. Molly pressed her bosom; her friends, as they loitered home, said in each other's ears, "Blessed Lord, what will become of Gregory Drax?" Gregory Drax was the broad-girthed young master of a trading-smack which coasted between London and Berwick, and was even at that hour in Kirkley Roads, standing off Yarmouth.

All a summer this endured, but went no further while Amilcare, new to the blunt ways of the English, was unable to stomach their cropped speech any better than their sour beer. Those who heard his florid paraphrase took it gravely, yet held by their "Moll Lovel." They wished that Gregory Drax might have a fair wind home; they wondered what Master Lovel was about; trusted that the black-eyed rascal (whose speech was too glib, surely, to be honest) would not make a fool of the girl. He very soon showed them that, whatever else he did, he intended to make a woman of her. Let them hold, said he (for once expressing his contempt), to their "Molly Lovel"—the name was the Shadow. He would hold, as at that moment he was very devoutly holding, Molly herself—aha! the blessed Substance. And when the young Molly let herself go whither her soft desires had long since fled; when she felt the heart of Amilcare jumping against hers, his cheek, his lips, his soft syllabling, her own breathless replies—then at last Amilcare, quite enraptured, finding everything about her wonder and delight, made shift to catch up some waft of her very tongue, closer savour of her very home, and called her on high his adorable, his unending, his altogether soul-devastating, destroying mistress, "Madonna Mollavella." Good Master Lovel the wharfinger neither knew his daughter nor his father's name in this long-drawn compound of liquids; he was troubled, very doubtful, anxious for Gregory Drax; but all Lombardy and the Emilian March came to know it in time. Amilcare rode down opposition. Eloquence! Were ever such cries to great Heaven, such invitations to Olympus, slappings of the forehead, punchings of ribs, in Wapping before? Molly in tears on her mother's breast, Amilcare on his knees, the neighbours at the door: Master Lovel, good man, abominated such scenes. Father Pounce married them at St. Saviour's in Southwark; money abounded, the dowry passed from hand to hand. On a gusty November morning there sailed out of the London river the barque Santa Fina of Leghorn, having on board Amilcare Passavente and Donna Maria his wife, bound (as all believed) for that port, and thence by long roads to their country of adoption—not Pisa, nor Lucca, nor any place Tuscan; but Nona in the March of Emilia. No; Erasmus was not the only traveller whirled about by English kisses, nor Molly Lovel the only simple witch in turn bewitched.



II

AMILCARE: COMMERCE AND THE AFFECTIONS

Molly was a handsome fool: let there be no doubt about that. There was no romance in her, though sentiment enough. She lacked the historic sense; and if she thought of Rome at all, supposed it a collocation of warehouses, jetties, and a church or two—an unfamiliar Wapping upon a river with a long name. Her sensations on the voyage were those of sea-sickness, on the golden-hazy Campagna those of home-sickness unaffected. Affectation of any sort was far from her. If she was happy she showed her white teeth, if wretched she either pouted or cried; if she liked you there were kisses, if she distrusted you she grew red. But she distrusted no one. Why should she? Since every act of hers was, in seeming, a caress of personal intention, every one loved her. As for her husband, when he was not sacramentally engaged, he mutely raved to the stars, protesting by his dimmed eyes, moving lips, and strained-out arms how every breath she took was to him also an inspiration. Her frankness, the truth lucent in her eyes, her abounding receptivity,—for she believed everything she was told and objected to nothing,—her sweet long body, the tired grace with which she carried her lovely head, her tender, stroking ways, the evenness of her temper (which only that of her teeth could surpass),—all this threatened to make of Amilcare a poet or a saint, something totally disparate to his immediate proposals. His nature saved him for the game which his nature had taught him.

In that great game he had to play Molly (though he loved her dearly) must be, he saw, his prime counter. Coming to England to negotiate bills of exchange, he had Molly thrown in. She would do more for him than rose-nobles. He ecstatised over his adorable capture; but saw no reason in that why he should not lay it out to advantage. It would not cheapen in the chaffer; on the contrary, give him the usufruct for a few years, and he would be not only the happiest but the most considerable of men. Triumphant Bacchus! (so he mused to himself) what had he not gained? A year's pay for his men, the confidence of the "Signori" of Nona, the acclamations of the Piazza and the Council Chamber at once—and Molly Lovel. Hey! that was best of all. For her sake, and by her means, he would be Capitano del Popolo. What else? That would do for a beginning. If Molly could turn his head, she could turn other heads, he supposed. A turned head meant a disponable body, a bending back, an obsequious knee, even a carcase at a quick hand's discretion; votes in Council, delirium in the Piazza, Te Deum in the Church. Amilcare knew his countrymen: he that knows them half as well will have no trouble in conceiving how these trade-calculations can consist with a great deal of true love. And what was Amilcare's trade? His trade was politics, the stock whereof was the people of Nona, the shifty, chattering, light-weight spawn of one of those little burnt-brick and white cities of the Lombard Plain—set deep in trees, domed, belfried, full of gardens and fountains and public places—which owed their independence to being too near a pair of rival states to be worth either's conquering. There were some score of these strewn over Southern Emilia and Romagna in those days, and the time was almost at hand, and with it the man, to sweep them all into one common net of wretchedness. But Amilcare had no clear thought of that. For the moment Nona was as peaceful as Forli, or Rimini, or Pesaro, or Faenza, thanks to him and his "Centaurs"—that famous band of free riders he had levied from the Tuscan hills. Very much at his mercy, safe under the eye of his trusted Secretary, awaiting his return, he fully intended that peace to continue when she fell huddling to him. It would, indeed, be his care; for it was a maxim of Italian politics that no man willingly stirs after dinner.

The situation was still pretty delicate; he had done little more than win foothold. In the late struggles with Parma he had intrigued with great address; sold himself and his Centaurs to Farnese, brought that thick-necked hero up to the very walls of Nona, then (in the nick of time) resold himself at double the price to the city he was besieging, and routed his yesterday's master by an attack in flank just as the Nonesi were carrying the trenches in front. In the excitement of that wonderful hour—Farnese in full flight, himself borne on men's shoulders round the Piazza, thanksgiving in the cathedral, clouds of incense, clashing bells, wine running in the Fontana delle Grazie—he had for a moment been tempted to believe the times ripe for a proclamation: "Amilcar, Dei Gratia, Nonarum Dux," etc. He had his treble wages in his pocket, the hearts of the whole city throbbing at his feet. He was a young man: tempted he certainly was. But Grifone (the Secretary) touched his elbow and showed a straightened lip. He would not risk it. He contented himself with a footing, the Palazzo Bagnacavallo rent-free, and the title of "Gonfalonerius Populorum Libertatis," which looked passably well about a broad seal. "Pater Patriae," "Nonarum Dux," the control of the bread-tax,—all should be added to him in time, if only the Borgia could be fed elsewhere. At the thought of that hearty eater stalled in the Vatican, he felt that he might indeed thank God for his lovely Molly. With her for decoy even that game-bird might be lured. Lying on the poop of the Santa Fina, his dark eyes questing over her face, her hands among his curls, he seemed to Molly the wonder of the world. So of her world he was; but he meant to be that of his own—a very different world.

He was a lithe, various creature, this Amilcare Passavente, his own paradox. Quick as a bird of prey he was, and at times as inert; dark as night, eagle-faced, flat-browed, stiff and small in the head, clean-featured, with decisive lips. A very fluent speaker, hoarse in voice, but cunning in the vibrations he could lend it, he was in action as light and fierce as a flame; at rest as massive as a block of stone, impervious to threats or prayers or tears. Women loved him easily, men followed him blindly, and both for the same reason—that they believed him ruthless to all but themselves. Ruthless, indeed, he had been, and was to all and sundry. Molly was the one apparent exception, and in her eyes he was perfect. For her immediate comfort this may have been true of him. He was a brave lover.

He taught her to falter endearments in his own tongue: he was carino, caro amico, anima mia, sovrano del mio cuor, and many other things yet more intimate. In return he gave her a homage which was not without a certain depth because it was done with foresight. He taught her to be his slave by professing himself hers, and so touching her generosity as well as her humility. At all this she was very apt. There was a fund of deep affection in the girl, the makings of an excellent wife, a devoted mother—far more stuff than should go to serve as toy for a man's idle hours. Also she was very demonstrative, by no means averse (quite the contrary, indeed) to demonstrations on his part. She loved to walk belted by his arm, loved to put her head on his shoulder, or have her chin lifted that eyes or lips might be kissed. These favours, which his nation was accustomed to keep at home, she wore without self-consciousness abroad. It enchanted Amilcare, not only as a thing beautiful in itself, but as a clear source of profit in his schemes. He pictured the havoc she would work in a hall full of the signori—keen men all—when she sailed through the rooms offering her lips to whoso would greet them "English fashion." Why, the whole city would be her slave—eh, and more than the city! Bentivoglio of Bologna, Il Moro of Milan, Ordelaffi, Manfredi, Farnese, the Borgia, the Gonzaga, D'Este of Ferrara, Riario, Montefeltro, Orsini—by the Saint of Padua, he would face them each with his beautiful wife; charm them, turn their heads, and then—ping! Let the neatest wrist win the odd trick. Very pleasant schemes of witchery and silent murder did he make as the Santa Fina drove him through the dark blue waters on his honeymoon, and at last brought him up to point out to his adoring instrument a low golden shore, a darker line of purple shadow beyond, and in the midst a white tower which gleamed like snow. "Civitavecchia, my queen among ladies! Rome beyond it; beyond that Nona—Nona and glorious life for thee and me!" he cried, as he waved her towards these splendid things.

But Molly snuggled closer to him and sighed.

He, very sensitive to alien moods, was conscious of the jar. "You are sad, beloved?" he asked her softly. "You are thinking of your own land?"

"No, no, dearest; not that now. I was thinking only—but it is foolishness of a fool," said Molly, hiding her face.

"You cannot be a fool, blessed one, since you are not so much as human as I see you now," he whispered, holding her close. "You are a rosy god at this moment, my treasure. You are all colour of dawn, auroral, colour of tender fires. Tell me your thought, my holy one."

She whispered it back. "It was—that you will be full of business at Nona, Amilcare. You will have no time to love your poor Molly."

The rogue was fishing for protestations, and got them.

"Love you!" he cried. "Ah, tell me how long I have to live, and I will tell you the hours of my love, O my soul!"

"But you will be abroad, a-horseback, with your captains, in the tents—"

"Why, yes, that must be so," he owned. "But I shall love you the more for that, Molletta."

She pretended to pout, fidgeted in his arm, arched her neck.

"But how shall I know it, Amilcare, if I am not there?"

"By what I do to you when I return, dearest love," cried he; and thereafter, speaking by signs, was better understood.



III

MARKET COVERT

They made Rome a day or two after that little tender and exchange of vows, having disembarked amid a crowd of clamorous Amilcares in rags—she could see some dear trait of him in each; trailed across the bleached marches (with the Sabine Hills like a blue hem beyond); caught the sun at Cervetri, and entered the dusty town by the Porta Cavalleggieri on one of those beaten white noons when the shadows look to be cut out of ebony, and the wicked old walls forbidden to keep still. The very dust seems alive, quivering and restless under heat. St. Peter's church, smothered in rush mats, was a-building, the marble blocks had the vivid force of lightning; two or three heretic friars were being hailed by the Ponte Sant' Angelo to a burning in the Vatican; Molly was almost blind, had a headache, a back-ache, and a heart-ache. Amilcare, who had fallen in with a party of lancers by the way, had ridden for a league or two in vehement converse with their lieutenant. To him there seemed more to say than ever to her. She felt hurt and wanted to cry.

At their inn they learned the news—that is, Amilcare learned it, for Molly was languishing upon a bed, forgotten and mercifully forgetting. Pretty news it was. Don Cesare, it appeared, had stabbed the Duke of Gandia, his brother, three nights ago, and thrown him into the Tiber. The body had only been fished out yesterday; it had nine wounds in it, including one in the throat big enough to put your fist in. It was a sieve, not a body: perforated! His Holiness? Ah, he could be heard even here, howling in the Vatican, like a bitch in an empty house. Don Cesare was in hiding, reported at Foligno. To-morrow there was to be a Holy Conclave—all the Cardinals. God knew what Alexander had or had not in his mind, the conscience-stricken old dog. It was known what he had not in his house, at least. Vannozza had been thrice refused admission; so also La Bella Lucrezia. Think of it!

This was very grave news to Amilcare's private ear. Cesare was his deadly enemy, the one man he honestly feared; the one man, consequently, he wanted to meet. He was still brooding over it when the broad-backed butcher they call Il Drudo slammed him on the back.

"Fortune is with you, Passavente—the slut! She gives you time to breathe. The Borgia had a sinking of the stomach; he hankered after a filling of Lombard sausage a little while since. Gandia cut in, and Cesare cut in, per Bacco! But mark my words, Amilcare, the appetite will return. You will have the Duke in your March before many days. Therefore my advice to you is—Avoid Foligno; fortify Nona."

Amilcare looked his man in the face. "And my advice to myself, Galeotto, is—Seek Foligno, and so fortify Nona. Addio." He went out like a man who has found his way.

"Now, what the devil did the fellow mean by that?" cried Il Drudo, with his thick fingers out.

"Devilry expresses it," said a sly secretary in black.

Molly in dreams, soft as a child and glossy with sleep, looked too beautiful for a disturbing hand to dare anything that night. It would have been the act of a brute, not Amilcare's act. In small things he was all gentleness. He crept into bed like a cat, fearful of waking her, and next morning contrived, by a fit of coughing, to waken her no more than half. The rest he did by methods equally adroit, until by imperceptible degrees she learned that Rome might give no ease to her feet. He had her in the saddle and all the baggage-mules away an hour after the sun.

Arrived at Foligno, he found that his great enemy was at sanctuary in the Convent of Olivet, biting his nails in a red fume there. Hidden behind spires of cypress, Olivet stood outside the walls, a sun-dyed white building deep under brown eaves. Cesare, it was reported, was quite alone with his moods, now consumed by fidgety remorse for what he might have lost in his brother's blood, now confident and inclined to blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion was upon him. So he now seemed; for being told who waited upon him, he refused point-blank to see anybody. Amilcare, at the door, heard his "Vattene, vattene! Non seccami!" ("Out, out! Don't pester me!") rocking down the dim passages of the house; and Molly, whom this sudden new expedition had bereft of what wit she had, turned pale to hear the roaring beast.

"Ah, love, love, love, let us run away! I like not this empty place," whimpered the girl, holding her husband's arm; but he gently removed her hand, kissed it, and held it.

"Courage, dear one; I shall be by thy side. Much depends upon this adventure," he urged in fervent whispers, knowing how much to a tittle.

To the monk who came out, distended with Cesare's explosives, he addressed himself in a vernacular too fluid for Molly to catch up.

"I pray you, reverend brother, recommend me yet once more to the feet of his Resplendency, saying that not I alone supplicate his favours. Add that I have with me, to present, my most beautiful wife, that she may assure him with her own lips how very much she is his slave."

The pantomime of piteous beseeching hands, of eyebrows exquisitely arched, told more than his words. They showed to a hair's breadth how far he expected, how far was prepared, to tempt his customer. No pedlar before a doorful of girls' sidelong heads could more deftly have marketed his wares. The monk, too, sidled his head; he pursed his mouth, furrowed with a finger in his dewlap, tried to appraise the wares. But to allow this would have been to forestall the market.

"Ah, for love of the saints, go, my brother!" he was entreated, with gentle persistence; and so worked upon, he waddled away.

Amilcare let fall a hearty sigh, and considered Molly with anxiety. He had not dared to say a word to her of what her entertainer was, or what her part should be. Premeditation might throw her out of balance, conscious art might exhibit her a scheming courtesan; just in her artlessness lay all her magic. No, no; he trusted her. She was still adorably English—witness her on the ship! He could see how she would do, how the sight would ravish him, lover as he was; for the rest, he must trust to his early calculations. Yes! he was ready to stake everything upon this move. The Borgia would be at her feet: so at his feet also. Oh, wise, wise Amilcare!

"His Eminence the Duke will receive your Lordship," said the returning monk, and turned once more to lead the way.

"My saint, my lamb, my meek burnished dove!" breathed Amilcare in a glow, and pressed her to his heart behind the frate's broad back.

Cesare, magnificently tawny in black velvet, was in a window, raking with a white hand at his beard, a prey evidently to cross-tides of fever. When his visitors were announced he looked sharply round; but Molly was hooded, her face deep in the shade. Of Passavente he had not the slightest concern. That hero was prostrate, bowing and chattering, and explaining with his hands.

Molly stayed twittering by the door, wonderful because she saw her King of Men cringing like a footboy before a shorter than himself. True, it was case of a duke; but she had not known such dealings in Wapping. There men doffed caps to my Lord or his Grace; they gave and took their due, but did not writhe on the floor. And then this particular duke's blockish inattention to what her lord was saying filled her with concern. There he leaned, and there he looked out of window at the twinkling acacias, and there he picked his beard. Amilcare's tact must have deserted him, since he could let this simple slave turn critic. But the part, in any case, was difficult. Presently the Duke threw him a hasty phrase, a sort of pish, man! which cut him off in the midst of a period, and walked towards Molly in the doorway. Amilcare flew before on tenterhooks. Cesare came graciously on—it was curious to see how his face had cleared. Molly dropped a curtsy, covering herself closer with a hand at the hood's tie. Cesare showed his teeth, held out both his hands. Passavente, with a displaying air full of alacrity and deference, unveiled his wife, and she went forward to greet his Grace.

She had been uncovered as by a dealer, but even so thrilled to feel his touch upon her shoulders, and showed herself blushing with the emotion, lovelier for love. Cesare was really startled to see how vividly beautiful she was; but, with more command of himself than the other trafficker, was careful not to show it. He smiled yet more sunnily; his words were some pleasant, friendly compliment. Molly, guessing it so, came nearer, took his open hands, and put up her face for his kiss. Caesar Borgia took a deep breath before he accepted of the rest. Then he did kiss her, twice. He was ridiculously pleased, very much in confusion for a little while. Since he could say nothing and she had nothing to say, the pair of them stood hand-clasped, smiling, dim-eyed and red in the face, like two glad children—Amilcare, anxious mothering hen, clucking about them. The Duke, having recovered himself, murmured some courtesy, and led his captive to a seat in the window. His half-dozen English words and her six Italian, his readiness, her simplicity, put matters on a friendly footing: very soon Molly was chattering like a school-girl. Cesare was enchanted; he recovered his gaiety, forgot his bloody hands, his anxieties, schemes, fret at inaction. He ordered a meal to be served at once, kept Molly close to his side, heaped her plate, pledged her in wine. He went so far as to forget all common precautions and eat whatsoever was put before him.

Be sure Amilcare missed nothing. He saw all, perhaps more than all: he was used to deal with men. Thought he to himself, "Hey! If this was my house of Nona, amico, and the time six months hence, you would sleep where you supped." But Cesare had no thought of Amilcare until the end. Then he clapped him on the shoulder.

"My Passavente," he cried, "you have gone far on your pearl-fishing and dived deeper than most of us, but by our hope of salvation you have found a jewel of price! And ah, Madonna," he said, with his burning eyes on the girl, "you have brought the sun into Italy. You shall be called Principessa della Pace, who heal all sorrow and strife by the light of your face."

"I humbly thank your Grace," said Molly, very grateful; but Amilcare dropped upon one knee.

"Splendour," says he, "deign to visit our poor house in Nona, if you would learn what willing service is."

"My friend, be sure of me," said the Borgia, and meant it. "Do you bid me come, Princess?" His looks ate her up.

Molly hung her head. "I shall in all things serve your Grace," said she, with a curtsy. She kissed him again, and then Amilcare took her away.

The Borgia wrote sonnets that night.

"Mollavella, pearl of ladies," whispered her ardent husband, when they were on the North Road and in the thick of the violet Roman night, "never have I felt such joy in you as this day." He looked up at the massed company of the stars. "Fiery in all that galaxy, yonder I see my own star!" he cried in a transport. "Behold, it points us dead to the North. O Star, lit by a star! 'Tis you have set it burning clear, my glorious Princess."

"Dearest heart, I shall die of love," sighed swooning Molly, out of herself at such praise. "But indeed I have done little enough for you as yet."

"More than you think, or can dream," he answered, and spoke truly; for the girl saw nothing in their late visit but a civility done to a great lord.

"If the Duke comes to Nona, Amilcare, I will try to put him at his ease," she said after a little.

"Try, try, dear soul; it is all that I wish."

"He seemed not so to me when first we went to him, Amilcare."

Amilcare shrugged. "Eh, per la Madonna—!" he began, as who should say, "Being known for his brother's butcher, how should he be?" But he stayed in time. "He has many enemies," he added quietly.



IV

MARKET OVERT

Nona, little city of domes and belfries and square loggias, all in a cluster behind brown walls; with gates of Roman masonry, stolid Lombard church, a piazza of colonnades and restless poplar trees; of a splayed fountain where the Three Graces, back to back, spurt water from their breasts of bronze—Nona, in our time, is not to be discerned from the railway, although you may see its ranked mulberry-trees and fields of maize, and guess its pleasant seat in the plain well enough. It is about the size of Parma, a cheerful, leisurely place, abounding in shade and deep doorways and cafes, having some thirty churches (mostly baroque), a fine Palazzo della Ragione in the principal square, and the remains of a cathedral of the ninth century glooming behind a monstrous facade of the seventeenth, all whitewash, cornucopias, and sprawling Apostles. Thus it seems now to the strayed traveller who, breaking his journey at Castel Bolognese, simmers for four hours in an omnibus along with priests, flies, fleas, and old women. The cortege from Papal territory saw a vastly different city of it when it approached the gates in the early spring of 1494. The young leafage shimmered like a veil of golden gauze, the poplar buds were pink and brown, the chestnuts had all their candles afire; larks by dozens were abroad in the clear sky. Below the old Rocca del Capitan Vecchio—a grizzled and blind block of masonry on a spur of limestone, which held not a few of Ezzelin's secrets—two miles from Nona, stood a company of boys and girls in white garments, their laps full of flowers. Their shrill song of welcome hailed the riders, and to the same hopeful music they went on. The towers were all standing in those days, the battlements intact; at every gate stood a guard. The Cathedral of the Santi Apostoli had no Apostles; its great front was a cube of unfinished brick; but colonnades ran in all the streets, row after row of beautifully ordered arches; over them were jutting cornices enriched with dancing children, sea monsters, tritons, dolphins, nymphs blowing conches, Nereus, Thetis, and all their sleek familiars, moulded in red clay. The fountain shone, the displayed Graces jetted their crystal store; from every window hung carpets, on every tower a gonfalon, from every church belfry came the riot of bells. The people were massed at the gates, at the windows, on roofs and loggias and balconies—a motley of orange and blue, crimson and green. Soldiers lined the ways, priests with banners were on the steps of their churches. "Evviva, Amilcare! Evviva, Madonna Inglese!" ran like a river of sound from the gates about the streets, until, in the Piazza Grande, where the Signoria waited in the solemn estate of brocade and ermine, the volume of it had the throbbing roll of breakers on a cliff. Thud upon thud came "Evviva!" each with a shock which made pale Molly catch her breath; more than once or twice her eyes swam, and she felt herself wag helpless in the saddle. But Amilcare, snuffing wine, was in his glory, idol of a crowd he despised and meant to rule. Proud he looked and very greatly a ruler, firm-lipped, with a high head, and a flush on his dark cheeks.

At the steps of the Palazzo della Ragione he halted, cap in hand. The trumpeters shrilled for silence, the Secretary of the Republic read a Latin speech; everybody applauded what nobody understood. Amilcare, at the end of it, swung off his horse and ran up the steps. He embraced the orator, embraced the signori one after another; greetings flashed about, tears, laughter, clappings on the back. But he kept his head throughout: it was seen that he wished to present his wife. Present her! Enthusiasm grew frenzied; he had to battle his way down the steps to regain her side. He lifted her lightly down; hand in hand they went up the steps again. Molly excelled herself, was the wonder of the whole city. How she curtsied to their lordships—what a figure she had for that grace—how tall, how supple, and how slim! When she gave her rosy cheek to each in turn, there was a kind of caught sob audible in the crowd. The simplicity of the act brought tears to tender eyes: men laughed or looked haggard, according as the trouble took them; women, more at home with tears, clung to each other as they cried. A marvel all believed her—an angel clean from heaven; the kiss of peace, la bocca della Carita! A young Dominican became inspired; he showed the whites of his eyes, he spumed at the lips, began to mutter, with gurglings in the throat. At last his words broke strangling from him—"O mouth of singular favour! O lips of heavenly dew!" he stuttered, with a finger on high seesawing to the rhythm: "O starry eyes conversant with the aspect of angels!" He dropped down plump in a fit, barely heard at the palace door; but all the square surged with his cry—"O mouth of singular favour! O starry eyes! Evviva Madonna!"

Men and women all told, Molly must have been forty times kissed. Twice forty times would not have sufficed for the candidates who jostled, strained, and prayed between the soldiers' pikes below the steps. It would be difficult to say which sex her pretty artlessness pleased the more: she made the women cry, the old men prophesy, the young men dream dreams. Certainly, there was nobody who thought ill of her for a performance so glaringly counter to Italian ways, whose men kiss each other while they keep their women at home. The thing was so transparent, done in such pure good faith, there was no room for judgment in it. She went among that people as, in these days, a child still might go. To those bullet-headed captains, grim and shaven close; to those painted great ladies, whose bare necks looked the more naked for their jewels; to those cruddled, be-robed old men; to the dapper sons of them; to their stiff-laced daughters—Molly went blushing, smiling, shy, and glad, and to each she gave her fresh cheek and the balm of her English lips. O mouth of singular favour! O starry eyes! She bereft them of compliments by her speechless welcome, overcame policy by having none, led captivity captive. Amilcare might hover behind her with plots, a delighted and forgotten shade: Molly Lovel of Bankside was Duchess of Nona, and might have been Queen of Italy, if all Italy had stood in the Piazza Grande. She was throned at a banquet, escorted home by the Signoria bareheaded; she was serenaded all night by relays of citizens, by straining poets, by all kinds of music. She had not a wink of sleep till morning, nor the faintest idea what it was all about.

There was no withstanding the popular voice; the Nonesi went mad to be a Duchy, with Molly for Duchess. Amilcare might be thrown in. They besieged the Bagnacavallo Cortile; they wrote sonnets and madrigals, and sang them day in, day out. Amilcare, acting with admirable discretion, kept very much to himself; he sent his beautiful wife on to the balcony twice a day to be saluted, and (more sparingly) let her work for him among the higher sort with her lips, her blushes, and her friendly grey eyes. He was humble in the Council, sober beneath the heaped-up honours of the popular voice, stern only with his mercenaries. A fortnight of this swept him to the top of his hopes. A deputation, with a laurel crown and the title of Dux in a casket, waited upon him. He had expected it for a week, and carefully dragooned his Molly.

"I must refuse the thing," he told her, "for your dear sake, my angel. The fatigues, the affairs of a Ruler of State are incredible. I will never let you bear them. The signori may pluck their beards out by the roots. I am resolved." Molly wept to hear him.

When the great morning came—a luminous April day of showers and warm wind—he was as good as his word. Molly, shining with pride in him (herself wearing the day's "uncertain glory"), saw him fold his arms in face of the pompous line of men his seniors, compress his mouth, shake his cropped head. The deputation was much taken aback, the crowd drove hither and thither; she saw head turned to head, guessed at wounds which certainly any one there was incapable of feeling. She, however, felt them, rose up from her chair, laid a hand upon her lord's arm: they saw her plead with him. Oh, lovely sight! with her they too began to plead: "Pieta di Nona, Signore! Pieta di noi, Madonna!" She was their graceful choragus; or rather, she, like some slim daughter of the Greeks—Iphigenia or another—voiced the protagonist's part; and they wailed after her, a chorus of elders. Finally, she knelt to him, wound her arms about his hips, put up her entreating face. The comedy was played out. Amilcare showed himself shaken; he stooped to her, lifted her in his arms, embraced her. "O mouth of singular favour!" etc. The convocation broke up in sobs, psalmody, and kisses on the cheek. Amilcare and his wife were led to the broad window and out on to the loggia. There stood Molly in all the glow of her happy toil, quick-breathing, enraptured, laughing and afire. The crown was on her head, by her side her sceptred lord; and below the people cheered and howled. "Udite, citt adini, il vostro Capitano!" cried the heralds. "Duca! duca! Evviva Amilcare, Duca!" cried the throng. Then Amilcare pointed to the crowned girl. "Evviva la Madonna di Nona!" he brayed like a tube of brass. So as Madonna di Nona they knew her to the end. Amilcare was crowned with his laurel wreath in the Santi Apostoli; Te Deum was sung. Nona started on her new career—benevolent despotism tempered by a girl's kisses.



V

GRIFONE—AMATEUR OF SENSE

Grifone must now be lifted into the piece, Grifone the grey-eyed, self-contained little Secretary, whose brain seemed quicksilver, whose acts those of a deliberate cat, whose inches were few, whose years only tender. One of Amilcare's rare acts of unpremeditated humanity had been to snatch him, a naked urchin of nine, from Barga, when (after a night surprise) he was raining fire and sword and the pains of hell upon that serried stronghold of the hills.

"Eh, Signore, Signore!" had whined the half-famished imp, padding by the condottiere's stirrup.

"Va via, vattene al diavolo!" a musketeer growled at him, and tried to club him down.

Amilcare looked, as one might idly glance at a shrew-mouse in the path. He saw a brown body pitifully lean, a shock black head, a pair of piercing grey eyes. Further, he saw that the child had not on a stitch of clothing, and that he was splashed to the knees with drying blood.

"What now, Baby?" he asked.

"Lift me into the saddle, Signore," said the boy, with a propitiating grin; "I am getting my feet wet."

The little dog had a humorous twist to his eyebrow, and it was true enough that the kennels were running red.

"Whose blood is that on your legs, my lad?" Passavente stayed his charger.

Grifone shrugged. "Misericordia! Who knows? My father's perhaps; my mother's more certainly, since my father ran away. My mother would have run too, but she had no time. Eh, take me up, Signore! I cannot swim."

Amilcare swung him up by the hand, so saved his life. Next day Grifone saved his.

They burnt a monastery in the plain and ransacked a chestful of correspondence.

"Death of Christ!" swore Passavente, "I can't read this Latin. Go and fetch me a monk and a rope."

The monk, a plausible rogue, began to read: little Grifone stood by the table. At a certain point he broke into the recital with an emphatic word: "Liar!"

"What the deuce does this mean?" fumed Amilcare in a rage.

"The monk is deceiving your Lordship," said Grifone; "the sense is the opposite of what he reports."

It seemed that the boy knew Latin—at any rate enough to hang a few monks. Hanged the poor devils were, and after that very much was made of Grifone. Amilcare took him through all his campaigns, had him well taught, gave confidence for confidence, and found by the time he was at Nona, making his "Gran Tradimento" of Farnese, that he could not get on without him. The accepted remedy for such a state of the case was to kill the youth at once. Amilcare did not do that, and at first was able to bless himself for his second forbearance. Grifone was privy to all his master's hopes and safeguards; Grifone wrought upon the Signoria, cajoled the clergy, bamboozled the popolani, descended even to the ragamuffins in the gutters, and taught them how to shout "Duca! Duca!" when his master went proudly a-horseback, or to scribble his effigy in great chalk circles on the city walls. Though it may be true that Molly's graces brought Amilcare the crown of Nona, it must be added that neither Molly nor her Duke could have got in at all if Grifone had not been there to oil the hinges of the gates.

He had the soft purring ways of a cat, the tact of a Jesuit, the penetration of a money-lender, the sensibility of a musical amateur, and the morals of a maid-of-honour. He had extraordinary command over himself; he seemed able to do everything, and wishful to win nothing. There never was a young man (as a matter of fact) who wanted so much or asked so little. It was the very boundlessness of his desires which reined him in. The appetite of the Caesars would not have represented his, all the gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather than handsome, had quiet watchful eyes, a smiling mouth, very little hands and feet. He seldom dressed out of black velvet, and if he wanted a man assassinated had the thing done at so many removes that it was always entered "private quarrel" or "love affair" in the reports of the City Watch. He generally chose friars for business of the sort, because they could be about at night without suspicion, and their hanging sleeves gave them such a pull. For cup or fruit work he found ladies the only possible agents. No one in Nona would dream of taking wine from a man; and as for presents of figs, Grifone was maturely of opinion that the last and present Pontiffs had exhausted that pretty artifice. Finally, you can easily understand how useful Duke Amilcare found a demure lad of this kind in the matter of moulding his new State.

When his master brought him a mistress he gave her great attention. Like all clever fellows, he was at first disposed to set down her simplicity to her credit; but after watching her for some time, he decided that here was actually a soul clear as glass—thing of inestimable value in a country where lying was an axiom of politics—and his respect for her quickened into something more. If she had been only beautiful she would never have attracted him as she did. There were plenty of women in Italy handsome enough for his needs (the flower of whose amours were mostly for the mind); but simpletons were rarer. This tall wistful girl told the truth—but told it incredibly! Think of this. Shortly after the coronation, Bentivoglio, the chalk-faced tyrant of Bologna, came with an army on his way to Forli. He had an old grudge against Nona. Finding himself within a league of its walls, his men lusty and well-fed, his artillery in great train, Nona (as he judged it) in ferment—he blockaded the place, and in due time summoned it to surrender. Amilcare laughed at him, told his wife (in secret) that he would attack on the morrow, and went to the Council. While he was there came a new summons from Bentivoglio, a messenger with a white flag. Word was sent to the Duke; the Duke could not be found. "Oh," said one, "seek Madonna for answer." This was done.

"Tell the Lord of Bologna," says Molly, "that we attack to-morrow."

The man bowed himself away. You should have seen Amilcare's face when this was reported to him; he rated his lovely Molly like a fish-fag. Then he had an interview with Grifone; told him the whole story.

Grifone stared. "Ebbene, Monsignore," said he, "your Grace will do well to attack."

"Attack, man? when the fellow knows we are coming! Are you mad?"

"Not so, my lord," replied the Secretary. "Bentivoglio does not know you are coming. What he knows is that you have said you are coming."

Well, at last Amilcare saw what Grifone had seen from the first, the mad results which might be won by a truth-telling Duchess. The Nonesi did attack. Bentivoglio, of course, not expecting them, was scattered over the maize fields, and never collected his force again until his own territory was reached. That was why he could not help the Lady of Forli. "Per Bacco," said Grifone to himself, "truth in Italy is soused in the mud at the well's bottom; in England it seems to lie in a pan. This pretty creature is as shallow as a crystal cup, where you may study Truth, like a blue jewel, in an inch of water." He went about thoughtfully the rest of that day. This new-discovered quality of Molly's was a thing very beautiful in his eyes. The conclusion he came to was that he was about to fall in love with the lady. "And that, after all," was his comment, "might not be a bad thing, if (as is probable) it become necessary to make her my consort." Then he went happily to sleep.

Grifone's proposals to himself were still very simple. Shortly, they were to get a throne for his master in order that he might the more easily acquire one for himself. "My legs," he said frankly, "are too short to get up without a footstool." Amilcare was to have been the footstool. But then Molly came into play. At first she seemed to make the simple thing simpler. Amilcare was a strong man, but stiff. Grifone was sure he would bungle in his handling of Molly; this truth-telling beauty, this flawless jewel in a cup, would baffle him; he would neither see it the fine nor the delicate tool it was. He worked best with a bludgeon which, as it did brute's work, might be brutishly handled. So far well—he might trust Amilcare to wreck himself. Unfortunately, it seemed only too likely he might involve Molly in the mess. That danger was looming; already he set her to decoy-work which the girl herself (Grifone could see) did not relish. The ladies of Nona were gay and free—too free. Molly recoiled visibly, more than once. The men were worse. Incredible as it seemed to Grifone, they actually ravaged this tender honeysuckle spray to drench themselves with the scent. Molly, beautifully patient, courteous, meek as she was, cast a scared, paling face about the assembly now and again: some of the talk, too, cut her very deep. Grifone was already too much interested in her to stomach this. He decided to make discreet love to his Duchess by a way of his own. The Nonesi (gluttons!) abused her favours; he would refuse them. He would fast where Nona feasted, and be the only unkissed guest at her receptions.



VI

GRIFONE ENTERS THE MARKET

The first opportunity he had he took. The Palazzo Bagnacavallo was thrown open to all worthy citizens, the rooms (since no one in those courting days was held unworthy) were crowded. Ladies, soldiers, churchmen, humanists in brocade, poets in velvet, a Cardinal, a cross-eyed Greek who had forsaken usury at Trebizond for moral philosophy at Nona; Madonna Diamante, too receptive wife of the Count of Cornuto; Madonna Smeralda, her discreet friend; Madonna Saphira; Madonna Rubina; frizzed young nobles in parti-coloured hose; humble abbates, uncured and incurable; a monk crowned with laurel for a sonnet; and a Knight of the Holy Ghost in retirement;—these were some of the company among whom Duchess Molly was paraded by her discerning lord, to carry her smiles of welcome and her pretty ways. Grifone, grave, attentive, in black, was there, be sure, waiting his turn. It came, and with it Molly, blushing and overwrought, new from the very kindly salutations of the Greek. To Grifone she proffered a greeting which was no less kind because her heart was troubled. Her well of trust in mankind was not yet dry. Grifone took her hand and bent over it; it was as much as he did to brush it with his lips. Molly wondered at him.

"You should be Messer Grifone, my Lord's secretary," she said, faltering.

"Alas, I have that misfortune," replied the youth, with averted eyes.

"Why, I know you very well," said Molly, "but see now that I have offended you. What is my injury, Signore? What have I done?"

"Madonna," said Grifone (but so low that no other could hear him), "believe me that the offence is none of your wilful making. It is, however, irremediable. Nothing but misfortune could overcome such misfortune as mine; and that I pray Heaven to keep far from you."

"Alack! good Grifone, what sayings are these for a day that should be happy?" urged the warm-hearted girl, with eyes ready to fill.

"Madonna, let me endure the thought of them alone, I entreat your Grace."

"Never, while I live, Grifone. You make me most unhappy. Will you not kiss me?"

"Never, while I live, Madonna, if I am to live honest."

Molly went white and red, and stood hesitating, uncertain whether to cry or be angry. Either might have been a vent for her distress, which was real. Commanding herself with pains—

"I will require you to speak with me after supper," she said, after a pause for the struggle.

Grifone bowed his head and backed away from her. She, being boundless in capacity for the affections of her kind, spent the interval with an aching heart.

Directly supper was done she hunted for the Secretary. The affair had by now throbbed itself into a question of her physical ease. Her heartstrings were at a dangerous stretch, she quivering at the point of tears. Master Grifone, for his part, had taken very good care that the Duke of Nona should be occupied, and himself not hard to find. Molly came upon him in a gallery of arras; caught him crouching there with his face hidden in his hands. She went to him at once, full of the trouble he showed her, sat by him, put her arm round his neck, and tried to draw his head up. Grifone turned her a white, miserable face.

"Ah!" he said, husky with reproach, "ah! you have come with the ardours of an angel leaping in you; yet no cruelty could in truth be sharper."

"Cruel? Cruel? Oh, Grifone, nobody has ever said this of me before!" whimpered poor Molly. She was swirling in wilder water than she knew.

"The cruelty is unconscious, yet none the less bitter for that," he complained; and then, all at once, he turned fiercely to rend her. "What! When I throb for your footfall, or when I lean swooning to the wall for the scent of your hair as you pass; when I urge against your chamber door that I may feed upon the sound of your breath, or hunt for broken bread under your table that I may grow drunk on what your fingers have touched! When I go raving at night, weeping by day, with a knife in my heart, tears that scald my eyes! When with these pains to endure, these perils to skirt, heights to fly, you will speak, touch me, breathe upon me, tempt me to greet you with kissing of the lips—ah, heaven and hell! it is over-much. I would be an honest man, look you. I have a master to serve, I bid you remember. It is true enough that I love you out of all measure; there is no sin in that which I cannot help; but misery there is, by our Saviour. The sin is gaping all about me, itching here, aching there, gnawing and groping without cease, or stint, or allay. Yes, yes, I know this is true—God help me! I love you deplorably; but I will not touch you. You are the ever-blessed thing to me; but I will make you the ever-abhorred thing, anathema maranatha. I love you, I worship you, I adore you; you are my saint, my church, my altar, my soul's peculiar food; you shall be my devil, his hell, his cauldron, my venomous offence. And all this you shall be that I may love you yet more, yet incomprehensibly more, and (withal) live honest. I will hate you because I adore you. Ah! and I will prove whether by hating you most of all I cannot drown myself in love." He threw himself out of her reach, and rocked with hidden face.

Here was pretty hearing for a pretty bride. Molly, with heaving bosom, stood abashed and dumb, and troubled profoundly. Not only had she never tried to stem so fierce a torrent of love, nor ever shuddered under such dry heat in men's words—she had never yet dreamed of so much passion in men created. And glorious passion, too, it seemed, so stern and repressed—a passion which hugged a fetter, a splendid misery of denial. Of course she had nothing to say; she never had anything to say; yet she longed to say or do something. Her interest in all these fine things was painful, if delicious; and it never occurred to her for a moment that it could be a sin to listen where it was evidently such a virtue to declare. She was conscious of no disloyalty to Amilcare in so listening, in being so troubled, in displaying her trouble so unaffectedly. Poor, poor, good Grifone! So very noble, so white and miserable; Heaven knows she would have satisfied him if she could. With her, to feel was to touch (if I may so put it); quite instinctively she stretched out her arms to draw him home; the good fool would have kissed his tears away if he had had any, giving him for comfort what he had screamed upon as a torment. But that was a talent denied to Grifone: he could not cry. All the same, she was at the point to kiss him, when he once more prevented her—this time without violence.

"Ah, my lady, my lady," he said, with a smile whimsically sad, "have a little pity on a torturing wretch!"

Molly now covered her face and freely sobbed. The scene was heartrending, and Grifone judged that he might give the finishing stroke. He stood over her where she was flung (the poor humble soul), and laid his fingers lightly on her silken shoulder.

"Love makes a good reader of a man," he said slowly, drawling his words. "Long ago I discerned the clear stream of truth which is the issue of your love. Henceforward there is a secret pact between us two, a secret wholly honourable, since I have only told it that you might be won over not to dare me too far. Being honourable, you (who are the fountain of honour) will keep it. We go our two ways, we look not on each other, we greet not, neither speak what either knows. Chance will throw us much together; yet this law we will punctually observe. To me the hour will say—'Guard thee, Grifone, thy sweet enemy draws near.' To you—'Now goodness be thy guide, Molly, lest thou art a cause of stumbling to thy brother.' So let it always be."

He left her then, knowing very well that he had sworn the good girl to faith inviolable, and given her the subject of perennial thought.

And so he had. Molly kept his secret, honoured it, honoured him. She came by tortuous ways of her hoodblind heart to glory and exult in both; nor had she the wit to discern how or by what stealthy degrees the pain and longing she pitied in him grew to be more pitiable in herself. She watched him wonderfully in those crowded days of court life which followed, and when she was blinded by her tears, held him as a martyr who, for her sake, lay quivering under the knife. It shows the length of her road, that she was never aware how much more in her sight he was than Amilcare, the man of her election. Amilcare, it is true, was greatly occupied: one cannot be a duke for nothing. Not home affairs only (though discontent was never far off) called him from home: the times were full of the shock of alarms; thrones toppled; there were rumours of moving hosts beyond the Alps. Cesare, the flame-coloured Borgia, was still meditating his kingdom in Romagna; already the Lady of Forli was flogging her sulky lieges into some sort of action for her defence. Now, Nona lay dead in the Borgia's way, and unless the Borgia could be hoodwinked again as he had been hoodwinked before, Nona need not cease to be a Duchy, but Amilcare would cease to be a Duke. No wonder the man was a lacklove just now. He intended to play Molly for his great stake; meantime he must be more of a duke than he was, recognised as such by other powers, by dukes firmly rooted, by grudging republics, or tyrants in thin veils.

And while he was consolidating his throne—ruffling here, fawning there—Grifone was always before Molly's eye; always plucking at her poor heartstrings; always holding up his grave patience, his bleeding, his most eloquent refusals, for her wonder. Wonder, indeed, she did, and much more than that. The thought sat upon her like a brooding evil spirit, frayed her nerves to waste. He used to move her so much by this policy of negation that she found herself panting as she sat among her women; or when from her throned seat at table she saw his pale profile burn like a silver coin in the dusk, the pain of her heart's beating well-nigh made her suffocate. Her troubles came to be day-long; he haunted her by night. When she began to ask the Virgin Mary how long she could endure, it was the signal to herself that she could endure no more. She sent for him then, and implored him brokenly—sobbing, kneeling before him—that he would leave her. Grifone bowed his head.

Next day Amilcare (or some other) told her that the Secretary was to be absent for some months arranging alliances abroad. He went without seeing her or bidding any farewells. She was prostrate for three or four days, could hardly drag herself to church, or away from it when she had once gained its cool sanctuary aisles. After that she got better and more her old self. The relief was as delicious as the grief had been; she was really happy. Then she found that she was beginning to dread his return. This was exactly what he had desired: he was a most astute young man.



VII

A PEDLAR'S ROUND

Grifone's tour of negotiation lasted very nearly six months—months of comparative ease for Molly, neglected by husband and shadowing lover alike. During this time the latter visited every important court in Italy, except Naples, whither he cared not, and Parma, whither he dared not venture—the object of his journey being, of course, to secure his master's acknowledgment by a better title than the throats of a marketed crowd. It would be as interesting as it was surprising to see the little craftsman at work, the ingenuity with which he plied his handful of tools, the proud patience with which he endured snub after snub, his bland passivity and extraordinary rebound. First of all, he went to Rome, ever the pivot of danger to an Italian diplomat. Molly's portrait, done in his best manner by Dosso of Ferrara, was presented to Duke Caesar of Valentinois.

In this, the lady with loose hair and a still looser robe (spangled with stars it was, and slipped off one white shoulder) was sitting in a green wilderness feeding lions with confetti. On a cedar near by, were several parrots and a pale owl, and from a low-swinging branch a great speckled snake stooped downward to embrace Molly's waist in a dry fold, and with his head writhed forward to lick her chin. It was a pleasing piece; Don Cesare was ravished. The seed planted in him at Foligno germinated, produced a bud, before long a triumphant flower. Not only would he come to Nona, and that soon, but the Holy Father sent the Golden Rose to "his dearest daughter in Jesus Christ, Maria, by the same grace Duchess of Nona." O mouth of singular favour!

With the scent of this rare blossom, Grifone went off to tickle the nostrils of the North. But he must not delay us. Bologna he dared to visit: thither the ducal pair must needs go anon. Milan received him to some purpose; Venice received him to none at all. Barbarigo was not Doge for nothing. Ferrara was busy with thoughts of piety, the whole court barefoot, howling "Fac me plagis" between the garden walls. In other places he cried his wares, and reached Nona again in the heats of July.

He found his lovely mistress in a shaking fever, languid under the breathless heat of the plain, yet never at rest. He found her large-eyed and bodeful, horribly nervous of him. She had been longing to see him, yet every day made vehement prayer that she might never look on him again. When she knew that he was indeed in the palace, she shut herself into her chamber with a crucifix, and spent the whole day at the window peeping from behind a curtain. Grifone saw the shape of her in it, saw her hand at the selvage.

"Courage, Grifone, mio caro," he assured himself; "she is afraid of thee." He resumed his state of armed respect, Molly her tossing nights and pacing days. Affairs were something awry within the Duchy, yet Grifone assured his Lord they were likely to be much more awry out of it. Madonna Duchessa must certainly be shown about—otherwise, an avalanche. Preparations were pushed on. By October the Duke and Duchess, with a great train set out—actually for Bologna, but nominally for Milanese territory. Lodovico, of that great principality, would have been mortally affronted if he believed Bentivoglio to have been considered first. Therefore the visit to Bologna was to be a dead secret, performed by the principals almost unattended. Meantime Grifone (who loved mystification) prepared litters with a dummy Duke and Duchess to go under escort to Borgo San Donnino. He and his wagging escort duly entered that city: excuses to the Podesta secured him a covered passage to the palace. Once there, unfortunately, the populace clamoured for a view, insisted upon their Graces' appearance. Grifone had to set his dolls at a window. There they stared, embraced, while three Ciceronian orations were delivered from the piazza, and all the merchant-guilds marched round it with banners and torches. Next morning he got them off safely by some stroke of good luck; but his joke got wind in time, came round to Cesare Borgia's ears, and at last was repeated against Nona. For no other reason could this absurd incident claim your ears.

At Bologna, also, all had gone well with the real adventurers—up to a certain point Bentivoglio the tyrant (whose name is surely the grimmest of his pleasantries) having seen the lovely Molly, was disposed to forgive her that disastrous veracity which (you remember) had prevented him before. He was so favourably impressed that Amilcare (who never missed a chance) left him alone with her for two hours in the garden after supper. At the end of that time Molly came to him, stumbling over her dress in her haste, flushed and in tears. They must leave Bologna at once, she declared; she would die else, or never look her husband in the face. The man had insulted her, was horrible, most wicked. Amilcare, her dear lord, must go and avenge her, etc., etc.

Here was a pother. What could be done? Grifone, of course, had he been there, would have drawn his master's sword for him, dragged him out of the room, and sent him back in half an hour's time with a bloody testimony of nothing on the blade. Molly would have been pacified, Bentivoglio snug abed, the sword none the worse for a little pig's blood. But Grifone was at Borgo jigging his dolls and listening to Cicero, and Amilcare lost his head. He pooh-poohed the whole affair; Molly grew pale, stopped crying. Amilcare began to feel himself—come, come, she was reasonable after all. He condescended to explain the fine uses of Italian statecraft, the wife's part, the husband's part. He was most explicit; Molly grew white, ended by fainting. Amilcare carried her to bed; she refused to sleep with him. He raged; she cared nothing. She was wild with terror, shame, discovery of her lover's worth, and of her love's. He had to beg her pardon on his knees, made an enemy of Bentivoglio, a fool of himself, and left next morning in a tearing passion.

Grifone, who met his master at Cremona, lost no time in seeing that something had gone counter, and very little in finding out what it was.

"Leave it to me, my good lord," he said comfortably; "I will explain it to Madonna in another way."

Before they went to bed he had a little guarded talk with his Duchess, half excusation of his absence which might have aggravated her alarms, half condemnation of Amilcare; the whole, consequently, a veiled eulogy of himself.

Molly was very quiet at first, subdued and miserable, but sincerely grateful. To express this, she fell into her natural way, a way of little timid tendernesses, little touchings of the arm, urgings of the cheek. Grifone received them rigidly; she was reduced to tears. Thereupon he kissed her ardently, twice, and fled. She remained a long while in the dark, breathless, limp, awed, and absurdly happy. Next morning he was as distant as the Alps and quite as frosty. At dusk they reached Milan.

Whatever Duke Ludovic (titular of Bari, actual of Milan) may have intended to ensue, he gave them a proper reception. Cardinal Ascanio himself came to the city gate with clergy and the Council; cavalry, a parti-coloured array, pennoned and feathered, escorted them to the castle. There, on the steps within the great courtyard, the Moor himself, sumptuous in silver brocade, and Donna Beatrice his wife; there his tired sister, Duchess Bona, and her by no means tired daughter, Bianca Maria of the green eyes, stood panoplied to await them. Trumpets announced the greetings that passed; yet another fanfare the greetings that were to come when within the hall, at the foot of the broad staircase, they found and kissed the hands of the anxious little Duke Galeazzo Gian and his pretty wife—pair of doomed children, even then in the cold shadow of their fate.

Half-hearted, fainting Molly went through her little part with the accustomed success. Her pretty English-Italian, her English lips, again her eager hands, so anxious to search friends out, found their sure way to one at least. Bianca Maria, affianced of the Roman King, delighted to kiss and be kissed, announced herself the shy girl's lover. Pleasure broke over her face, broke the glaze of her bottomless eyes with a gleam like the sun's when in still water it betrays deep green paths of light.

She was an enigmatic rogue, so clever that to most she seemed of unplumbed stupidity. Those blank green eyes of hers, that waxen face, that scarlet impenetrable mouth, her even gait and look of ruminating, look of a dolt—who knew Bianca Maria? Not Maximilian the mild-mannered King; not Duke Ludovic (that creased traitor) who schemed her marriage; not altogether Lionardo, who painted half her portrait and taught her much of his wisdom; certainly not poor Molly of Nona. All Milanese were her lovers, and here was another heart, Molly's, to wit, laid open and soothed by the little witch's quick hand-stroke. Bianca Maria had all her secrets with all her love in the first hour of their embracery.

The two girls sat clasped in one chair in that pretty time of dressing when half is undone and half's to do. Molly, feeling a fool but loving to have it so, sat in the lap of the younger, who mothered her.

After many days Lionardo, who forgot nothing and never her whom he thus happened on, glorified her as the Virgin Mary on the knees of Saint Anne. The indefinite smile, the innocent consciousness, the tender maiden ways! Wife, mother, handmaid of high God, he thought of her as of Molly in apotheosis; dutiful for love's sake, yet incurably a child, made for the petting place.

"Grifone the Secretary is your lover, my Molly," said Bianca Maria the wise.

Molly admitted the sobering truth, and the other pinched her lip.

"Take care of him, my dear. He is more perilous than that stiff husband you now have. The husband is a trading fool. He uses you as a carrot to induce donkeys. The other is more curious, and has no use for donkeys. He will use you otherwise."

"Why, how will he use me then?" said open-eyed Molly. She was vaguely ill at ease; but the other shammed stupid. All she could be brought to add was—

"I will take care of you if I can. You will never do here, nor should ever have come—a lamb among our Lombard wolves. Had you no English lover, to kill Amilcare and prevent it?"

Molly thought of Gregory Drax, who had been upon the North seas at the time. Gregory Drax used to lean over the garden gate chewing straws. This he did by the hour together, to the perfect satisfaction of himself and understanding of the neighbours. Molly could not think that it would have led to the slaying of Amilcare.

"What was he like, this Gregorio?" asked Bianca Maria, suddenly alert when she had got his name smoothly.

Molly did her best—ruddy, blue-eyed, always blushing and laughing, fair-haired, very long arms. He was a marinajo.

"He sounds to be so," said Bianca Maria. Then she clapped her hands and summoned Lionardo.

The great man had no sooner appeared (noiselessly in the doorway, the inscrutable grey-beard) than she kissed her friend and bade her go with her women to the appointed quarters of the Nonesi. Lionardo gravely saluted her as she went rosy out. He had seen the Virgin in the lap of Saint Anne and cared no more for the poor original.

"Dear Lionardo," said the girl in the chair to the most learned man of her day, "you shall do me the favour to write a letter in Latin to a certain English lord, Messer Gregorio Dras, Marinajo, Londra."

"Principessa," said the great man, "I am ready. Recite your letter."

"To her very singular good lord," the letter began—the only one, so far as I know, written by the Empress Bianca Maria to England; certainly the only one she ever wrote to Wapping. The conceit of it was as follows: That the lovely Lady Molly was at Nona on the confines of Emilia and Romagna, wife of a man who would shortly be murdered in order that she might become the mate of the assassin; that a very great lord, son of the Holy Father, was intending for those parts, and would probably take the same means to secure himself the position of her third husband. The writer proposed that the Lord Gregorius, whose virtue and celerity of judgment were well known throughout Italy, should journey out to Nona with all reasonable despatch and repossess himself of the lady. "Thus your lordship," it concluded, "may happily become fourth husband of a lady, whose charms are of a sort so noble and perdurable that they are unlikely to suffer from the arduous duties their excellence involves. Yet such haste as is compatible with your worshipful degree in the realm of England may be recommended. From Milan, etc., in the year of our thankful Redemption 1494."

"How shall we send our letter speediest, my Merlin?" His enchantress laid her emerald spell over him—O incomparable witch! Such sorcery exalted him always. He lifted her question upon one of his towering flights.

"The wings of birds, if we could use them, were admirable for the purpose, Princess," he replied. "But, for the moment, the difficulty of instructing such messengers is insuperable. And not only so, but it is probable that the Lord Gregorio, seeing such an envoy to his hand, might put a bolt into it, and itself into the pot, without interrogatories delivered or answers made. So messenger and message would alike be boiled. Another way occurs to me, which arises out of this consideration. We stand, each bather of us, in a lake of air. A lake? Rather, an illimitable ocean of it spread over land and sea, in which the very mountain-tops do blink. Should not, then, the pulsing of our thought, as it rings outward from us, be discernible in the ripples about the Lord Gregorio's ears? Obviously it should. But the reading of such ripples would be a nice matter; and again we lack means, and again the time, to instruct his lordship. Once more—"

"Ah, you dream your subtleties, and my letter gets cold," said Bianca Maria, pouting. "You are now just as you sit watchfully when you should be painting my picture."

"It is then that I am painting my hardest, Princess Saint Anne," he returned. "But leave with me your letter. It shall go in a man's bosom to-morrow morning."

High affairs of State are not settled in a week, nor dukes so apt at billing as a pair of girls. Duke Ludovic would not declare himself to every adventurer; Duke Amilcare was too patently adventurous to disclose all his hand. Then came Grifone, with a game of his own. Blind each of one eye, they set to dealing their cards for beggar-my-neighbour.

Now Ludovic feared one man in all Italy, and so did Amilcare. That was the one man in all Italy whom Grifone respected, on whom he thought he could honestly rely. Thought he to himself, "Can their Serenities be leagued against this man in my service? Can they not, by our risen Lord?" He fancied that they might.

To this end he proposed to his master, very shortly, the assassination of Borgia by means of the lovely Molly. Let her, at a private banquet, inveigle him to drink a cup.

"Suggest this to the Duke of Bari," he said. "I think your lordship will not be disappointed. Substantial pledges must be exacted, of course; he must tread in deep enough to leave a footmark or two visible 'twixt Milan and Nona."

Amilcare thought well of this advice and followed it. Ludovic, incredulous at first and breathless, took a fortnight to ponder. He consulted Cardinal Ascanio, consulted his astrologers, took the test of the opening Virgil. His eye lighted upon the portentous words: "Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem." Who would have twittered after those? He sought his guest and told him roundly that if the thing went well he would send an envoy to the court at Nona, and support the new Duchy with moral force.

Amilcare did not believe him, naturally, nor did he greatly care for moral forces. He stipulated for an envoy at once, an invitation for himself and his wife to Bianca Maria's wedding, and for a loan of twenty thousand ducats in specie.

Ludovic boggled horribly at this; but they accorded at last. The envoy was to go then and there, the invitation should be sent when the Borgia had agreed to visit Nona, and the money when he was within a day's ride of that city. Reduced to cipher-writing, this treaty was placed below the visible Host on the high altar of Sant' Eustorgio; the allies received the Communion, and after another week's festivities the Duke and Duchess of Nona went home.

At parting, the two girls clung together.

"We shall never meet again, child," cried the chosen Empress. "I am sure of it."

Molly kissed her. "Are we not to come to your marriage, dear Bianca?"

"My marriage?" cried the other. "You will as likely see me there as that shadow of a name which will be my bridegroom. You will see my simulacrum, a plastered effigy of me. I shall be stiff with gold-dust and diamonds; a doll marrying a doll's bed-gown. Why should I be there if his ever-august Majesty is represented by a puff of silly breath? Pray, never look for Bianca Maria in the Queen of the Romans. The Queen of the Romans is a doll, windy ruler of the name of a people; Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of thieves, has been your friend, as you will see. She has provided for your third husband an honest man. Now kiss me for the last time and, by Heaven, go quickly, or I shall keep you here for my soul's health."

The fierce little hungry creature threw her arms round Molly's neck and kissed her like a lover.

Molly was melted into tears. "Oh, Bianca, you bewilder, you terrify me! What is this of husbands and your soul?"

"Ah, my soul!" cried she. "Do you think so highly of it as to suppose it will survive this marriage, or so lightly as not to care? My soul, poor child, is in the case with your lovely body. It is the tied bird of all these fowlers."

"Alas, alas! But I cannot understand," Molly wailed; but the other caught her the closer.

"That you do not understand, Carina, is your salvation. It proves you immortal. Now go. No! kiss me, kiss me!"

They were parted at last; and though they did meet again, they kissed no more.



VIII

PRIVATE TREATY

To a most elaborately penned invitation the Borgia responded by half a dozen words scrawled by his secretary. He would be in the March at such and such a time, and would spend such and such a day in Nona.

He had heard from Amilcare; he replied to Molly. The insult was glaring, even to her.

"Is this tolerable, my lord?" said the meek beauty, incensed at last.

Amilcare shrugged. "It may not have to be borne very long," said he. "For my part I am accustomed to reckon a gift by its use to me, not by the sacking round about it." He was now beyond his wife's depth: she neither followed nor tried to follow him.

In these days she saw but little of her lord, and could have wished it less. He, who in action was as cheerful a soul as you could wish to serve, was harassed by the long expectances of diplomacy, and in the routine work of governing most grim. The Nonesi had come to hate him a good deal, but to fear him more. Expenses were incalculable, the taxes grew; there were riots. Savage snaps of speech in the Council did harm; imprisonments followed, then some unaccountable sudden deaths. High and low alike, none knew where the blow might fall, but all flinched at it.

In these distresses Molly served him well, for she at least was universally loved. If the Duke had a man stabbed, the Duchess took such sweet consolation to the widow that none could murmur long. To watch her warm tears flow was in itself a solace; to feel her arms, to win her kissing mouth, quickened those doubtful poor souls.

Furtively also, Grifone was on her side; a neat phrase here and there made her position plain to the most infidel in the city. It is true that while he helped her there he tortured her otherwhere inexpressibly. He hardly ever left her now, and her heart bled to see him go in fear of her; she prayed night and day that he might have strength to shake off this biting, cruel love. It never entered her head that she could console him by perfidy to a perfidious husband; it had entered Grifone's head a hundred times, but he always put it out. He could afford to wait for what, after all, he only valued as a concession to vulgar opinion. In thought she had been his for a year; and in the mind he lived most deliciously. It was, no doubt, his full intent to make her his in all the grossness of the fact, but not until he had got rid of Amilcare, or induced Amilcare to get rid of himself. This was what the stiffnecked Condottiere was now doing as fast as his best enemies could have wished. His people hated him so bitterly that he would certainly have worn mail—had not Molly been his mail. They spared him because they loved her, and believed that he still had her heart. "Amilcar, uxoris gratia, Dux," was now the fact. Grifone could have destroyed belief and him together by a lift of the eyebrow; but he wanted more than that, so waited on.

The little fellow was really extraordinary. Luxurious as he was to the root, and effeminate; hating as he did cold water, cold food, the cold shoulder; one and all of these shuddering things he had schooled himself to bear without a blink. He grew even to take a stern pleasure in the bitterness they cost him, as he turned them to his uses and reckoned up his balance at the bank. Amilcare snarled at him, cut his words out of his mouth, struck him, kicked him once like a yard-dog. Grifone added it all to his store.

But as the day for Duke Cesare's visit drew near, Molly began to be much again in her husband's thoughts—how far she would go in this maturer time. She had charmed the man once before, at Foligno; she had charmed everybody. But then she had been charmed herself. Subsequently she had charmed Bentivoglio, not so happily but that she endangered her own spell. That was the present trouble, for hitherto her charm had lain precisely in herself, in the little everyday acts which were her own nature. Bentivoglio had reasonably wanted more: so would Borgia want very much more. Could Molly be brought, not to surrender all he wanted, but to make him want? Amilcare, growing tense between his difficulties, felt that explanations must be given and received, felt also that they must come from himself—in fact, Grifone had declined them—and felt that he was not strong in such work. Direction he could give, but not explanation. However, he must try.

On a vivid morning of early summer, when the lemon-trees in the cortile looked as if they had been cut out of metal, and the planes and very poplars were unwinking in the thick blue air, Amilcare came into his wife's room. She had not expected him; he found her lying dishevelled and unbusked, with all her glossy hair tumbled loose. Very much a maiden still, notwithstanding her year and a half of troublous marriage, she jumped up directly she saw him, and, blushful, covered her neck. Amilcare, finding her and the act adorable together, took her in his arms and kissed her; then he led her back by the hand to the window-cushions and made her sit upon his knee. He began to play with her hair.

"What a silken mesh, my Molly! What a snare for a man in this lovely cloud! How fragrant of roses! Ah, most beautiful wife, you could lead all Italy by a strand of this miraculous hair."

She was pleased with his praises, touched and grateful; she kissed him for them. So they grew more friendly than they had been ever since the Bentivoglio had shocked her modesty and faith in him at once. Amilcare rattled on; love-talk comes easily to the Italian tongue, whose very vocables are caresses.

Gradually he drew in and in to the Borgia, centre of all his spinning thought.

"There is a lover of yours, for instance!" he said, comically aghast; and Molly laughed.

"Why, Amilcare, you make all the world to be my lover, all the world to look at me through your eyes. Believe it, they see me truer than you do. I am a very simple person."

Amilcare began to count upon his fingers, one hand meeting the other round Molly's caught waist.

"The Borgia, the Count of Cavalcalupo, Oreste Colonna, Negroponte, three Bishops at Sesto, Bianca Maria, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Ordelaffi, Benti——"

She stopped him there with a hand on his mouth. "Pah, the horrible man!"

Amilcare gaily struggled for vent, and—"voglio!" he concluded the word. "You may not relish the trophy, my wife; but him you undoubtedly charmed. And now Don Cesare is coming. Him also it will be as needful as easy to please."

Molly turned in her husband's arms to consider him. Something in his tone (rather than the words he had used) struck bodefully upon her. Amilcare was kissing her hair and would not give over: she cast down her eyes unsatisfied.

"I hope I may always please my lord's friends," she said in a low voice.

Amilcare settled himself yet more luxuriously in his cushions, and looked at the ceiling.

"You must charm him, my soul," he said intensely; "you must charm him. I am in his hands, in his way; he has sought my ruin and I believe still seeks it. Twice he has tried to poison me, once to have me stabbed; if he tries again he will succeed. Nothing can turn Don Cesare from his path but a woman. Therefore, you must charm him, ravish his eyes. You know very well how to do that."

Molly stared, grew red, began to stammer. "But how can I—? Oh, Amilcare, what do you ask of me?"

Then he looked at her, severely but without malice. She noticed for the first time the cold-steel hue in his eyes, the complete absence of friendliness—a tinge which his men knew very well, and other men's men even better.

"I ask of you, my Molly, that the man be put at his ease," he said deliberately (happy in ordering at last); "more, that his direction be turned. He must be made high-hearted, full of glorious hope, not counting cost, keen in pursuit. He must blow off the cobwebs of his doubt; rather, these must shred from him as he flies in chase. I cannot afford his distrust. I can do nothing without you. Light of Heaven! am I asking too much? Or do you suppose that my safety with the Borgia is not yours also?" He shrugged his intolerable indignation and threw back his head. Thus he avoided to look at his wife.

She still sat upon his knee, but like an alien, bolt upright, reasoning out her misery with wide tearless eyes, and a hand to press her bosom down. Shocks were no more for her—she had learned too much; but these things seemed like hard fingers on a familiar wound, which opened the old sore and set it aching. The part he now put to her had only to be named to be shown for horrible; was yet too horrible to be named; yet had to be named.