"You ask of me to charm your enemy," she said in a still, fascinated voice (as if she were forced by a spell to speak obscenity): "to beguile your enemy—to make him—make him—seek me? Him, the man who tried to murder you? Charm him? Charm him? Lead him to pursue?"

She could hardly drag the words out of her, but Lord! what a fool she was. At least, Amilcare thought so. The plainest duty, the easiest; this childish woman's game! He jumped up, quivering with nerves on edge, and the sympathy between the pair lacked even touch. Molly found her feet, stood brooding before him, all her hair about her lowered face.

To see her thus, a mute, a block, maddened Amilcare. He clenched his fists. "Yes, Madam"—his words bit the air—"you shall charm this enemy of mine, if you please; this assassin, this ravener of other men's goods. You shall charm him in the way you best know—you and your nation. Bentivoglio I excused you: he was not worth your pains. Borgia I shall not excuse you. I showed you to him with this only view; I asked him here, I speak to you now, with this only view. You are adorable in every part, if you choose to be. Italy has no woman like you, so winning, so much the sumptuous child: such tall buds shoot only in the North. To it, then! Charm him as you charmed me. Teach him—Santo Dio!—teach him to die for a smile. At least afford him the smile or the provocation of it: the rest shall be my affair. Soul of Christ! am I to miss this astounding opportunity? Never in the world. I bid you by all you hold sacred to do your duty. Am I plain enough?"

He was. She had grown as grey as a cloth, could say nothing, only motion with her dry lips. But she bent her head to him, and stretched out her hands in token of obedience to law.

"Good," said Amilcare; "my wife understands me." And he went out then and there to his Council. His conviction of her submissiveness (and of other things about her to modify it) may be gauged by the fact that he never saw her again (except ceremonially) until a certain moment after the dinner with Borgia.

Grifone saw her all the more for that. What he saw satisfied him that she was in terrible trouble. She slunk about, to his view, as if beaten down by shame. He had seen young girls in that strait very often, when the first step had been taken, the first flush faded from the venture, the first after-knowledge come. They always went as though they were watched. More than that, he discerned that she was nearly broken for want of a counsellor: he caught her long gaze fixed upon him sometimes. She seemed to be peering through him, spoke to herself (he thought) as she sat vacantly upon her throne, or at table among the quick wits, with all her spying ladies to fence her in. If any one addressed the word to her she flushed suddenly and began to catch after her breath. He could see how shortly that breath came, and how it seemed to hurt her. If she answered at all, it was stupidly and beside the purpose; then she would look conscious of her dulness, grow uncomfortably red, be at the point to cry. All this, while it could not but gratify him, made him a little sorry too.

One night, at a very brilliant assembly given by the notorious Donna Smeralda Buonaccorso, he saw her standing forlorn on the terrace, like a lonely rock in the sea—the most beautiful woman in Nona and the most splendidly attired, absolutely alone in all that chattering, grimacing crowd. The Duchess of Nona! This consideration alone moved him to real pity—for to be great and unfortunate has a freakish way of touching your heart—it moved him quietly towards her, to whisper in her ear—

"Madonna"—(and Heaven! how she started), "Madonna, what you need now is the courage of your race. But courage, I well know, comes only by confidence, and confidence is what I can give you. Trust for trust; will you hear me?"

But she looked piteously at him, as if she had been found out, and put her hands to her ears.

"I dare not hear you! I dare not! How can you speak to me when I have never asked—never thought? Ah, leave me, Grifone. I have not heard you yet: ask me not—but go!"

It was she that went, that hurried from him, stumbling in her haste, like a hunted thing. He could see no more of her that night, so with a shrug turned to his quiet amusement. There were women there pleasant enough. It was true that he wanted but one woman superlatively; but it was eminently Grifone's maxim that, failing that which you need, you should take that which you can get.

The last stage in the education of Molly, Amilcare found must positively be left to the Secretary.

On the night before Duke Cesare's arrival, when every other preparation had been made, Grifone came into his master's room, late. He said nothing, nor got any greeting; but he placed a little phial on the table, and waited. Amilcare looked at it, did not touch it. It was a very small phial, half full of a clear liquid.

"You prepared it yourself, Grifone?"

Grifone nodded pleasantly.

"Then I may rest assured—?"

"You may, my lord."

"I will ask you to make all arrangements, Grifone. When the time comes you will take the cup to Madonna Duchessa, with a hint of so much as may be necessary to provide against mischances. Will this be done?"

"Punctually and surely, Excellence." The Secretary retired with his bottle.

Amilcare sat on with a tight smile which neither waxed nor waned, but seemed frozen on his face. He may thus have sat for two or three hours, his eyes fixed on a point at the table's edge. That point, whatever it was, a speck of dust, may be, seemed to grow and grow till it was monstrous and a burden intolerable to endure. Amilcare, with an effort, stretched out his hand and cuffed at it. He knocked a book off the table by this means, then started, then swore at himself. Twice after this he spoke, smiling all the while. "Is it now indeed?" he asked, raising one eyebrow; "is it now indeed?" Then he got up, stretched himself noisily, and lay down as he was on the sofa, to sleep in a moment.

Molly lay with a young maid of hers that night and never had a wink.



IX

THE LAST BIDDING

That golden Duke of Valentinois had a pompous reception from his august ally at Nona. Amilcare, riding like Castor, at one with his horse, went out at the head of his court to meet him. The Centaurs lined the way with a hedge of steel. Hat in hand, the Duke of Nona rode back with his guest to the garlanded gates. There, a fluttered choir, all virgins and all white, strewed flowers; from that point to the Piazza Grande one song came leaping on the heels of another. On the steps of the Duomo were the clergy in brocade, a mitred bishop half smothered under his cope in their midst. The two Dukes dismounted, and hand in hand entered the church; the organ pealed; the choir burst out with the chant, Ecce, Rex tuus venit; and then (seeing Cesare had once been a Cardinal), Ecce Sacerdos magnus. The smoke of incense went rolling to the roof, Te Deum spired between the rifts; an Archbishop intoned the Mass of the Holy Ghost. Cesare, in white satin, golden-headed, red-gold in the beard, cloaked and collared with the Golden Fleece, knelt in the middle of the dome; beside him the hawk-faced Amilcare, splendid in silver armour, knelt also—but stiffly; whereas the Borgia (graceful in all that he did) drooped easily forward on his prie-dieu, like the Archangel Gabriel who brought the great tidings to Madonna Maria. Amilcare, at that rate, was like Michael, his more trenchant colleague, that "bird of God."

The Bishop, who knew perfectly well why the Duke had come to Nona, and why Nona's Duke wanted him there, preached a sermon which the saving Italian virtue of urbanity prevented from being either monstrous or ridiculous. Before the altar the two lords kissed each other. One of them had tried and the other was about to try murder as a political expedient; but that was no reason why good manners should not prevail. Decent ceremony was always a virtue of the race.

Half an hour before dinner Grifone (who had not been to church) stood before his mistress, who had not been suffered to go. He had a flagon in his hands, of silver gilt, like the calyx of a great flower whose stem was sheathed in the clustered wings of angels, whose base was their feet. He held it in both hands as if it were a chalice.

Molly, beaten out and white, looked at it dully, but did not seem to see it.

"Madonna mia," said the youth, "this is the loving-cup which I am to hand to you after dinner, and which you are to hand to Duke Cesare."

He hardly heard her answer, but judged by the shaping of her lips that it was, "Well, Grifone?"

"Duke Cesare will ask you to sip of it first, Madonna."

His looks were piercing; yet she was too far gone to be disturbed by such as those. She even smiled faintly at his emphasis.

"Well, Grifone?" she asked again, in that same dry whisper. "How shall that be harm to him if I do it?"

Grifone blew out his lips. "Harm, per Dio! None at all, but common prudence on his part. No harm to him, lady; but to you obeying him, destruction, death!"

Molly stared. Her breath came hollow from her mouth.

"Death, Grifone?" she faltered, and then pored over his face again.

He nodded his words into her.

"Death, Madonnina."

The girl tottered to her feet—had to balance like a rope-dancer to keep upon them.

"But then—but then—O Saviour!"

She threw her arms up. He thought she would fall, so put one of his round her waist. He felt her heart knocking like a drum, pressed her closer, drew her in and kissed her, with a coaxing word or two. She tried to collect herself—alas! her wits were scattered wide. Her head drooped to his shoulder.

After that there began the most pitiful business. She was pleading with him in a whining, wheedling, silly voice, which would have broken down an Englishman. Grifone himself was pricked. It was like a child, frightened into slyness, coaxing its mother.

"Dear Grifone, dear Grifone! You will not hand me the cup. Oh, please, please, please!"

Grifone kissed her. "Why, what can I do?" he said. "My lord has ordered it so, dear one."

She took no notice of his familiarities; indeed, the tone they lent his voice may have soothed the poor affectionate wretch. But she only wrung her hands at his news.

"No, no, no! 'Tis impossible! No, no, he could never do it!"

"I can repeat his words," said the inexorable Grifone; "he said—"

Then she sprang away from him as if he had whipped her, and crouched in a corner, at bay. She began to rave, seemingly in a high delirium, pointed at him, wagged her arm at him, mowing the air.

"Never repeat them, never repeat them. I shall die if you do!"

Grifone set down his cup, ran forward and embraced her. "My lovely lady, my adorable Molly!" he murmured, in a passion of admiration for her transformed, unearthly beauty.

She noticed nothing of him or his doings, lay lax in his arms. She stared, gulping down horror; she looked like some shocked Addolorata come upon the body of her dead Son. And so, perhaps (since all good women mother their lovers or lords), she was face to face with her dead. Tears came to blot out her misery; she could not stay their fall. They anointed also the burning cheeks of young Grifone, and drove him outside himself with love. He kissed her softly again, with reverence, and whispered—

"Courage, sweet lady; I shall be with you. I have it all in hand. The end for you and me shall be happiness undreamed of yet. The Duke comes in a quarter of an hour." Then he left her alone.

"The affair will go by clockwork," he assured himself. "Neither fast nor slow, but by clockwork." He had an ingenious mind, and loved mechanics.



X

WITH ALL FAULTS

At the coming out from church the two Dukes (mentally at least) separated; their paths coincided, but not their thoughts, nor their behaviour. By common consent, as it appeared, Amilcare at once resumed the obsequious, Cesare the overbearing part. Amilcare talked profusively, smirked, grimaced, pranced by the other's side, writhed his hands, in copious explanation of nothing at all. Cesare shrugged. The amount of disdain an Italian can throw into a pair of dull eyes or an irritable shoulder, the amount of it another will take without swallowing, can still be studied whenever a young lieutenant of the line sits down to breakfast in a tavern, and the waiter slaves for his penny fee. Yet, depend upon it, the cringer has balanced to a nicety the sweets and sours of boot-blacking against the buona mano; the rest is pure commerce. So now, the deliberate insolence of the flushed Borgia towards his host was a thing to be dumb at; yet Passavente redoubled his volubility.

Going up the steps of the Palazzo Bagnacavallo, the guest plumply told his entertainer to bring out the woman and go to the devil with his cackling. Amilcare laughed all over his face at the best joke in the world, and bowed to the earth. Thus humoured they went in to dinner.

Molly, in fold over fold of silk gauze which let every lovely limb be seen as glorified in a rosy mist, met them in the ante-room, and thenceforth the Borgia had eyes for nothing but the beauty of her. The moment he saw her, he drew, as once before, a sharp breath; she greeted him in her fashion; he was moved to a fit of trembling.

From that time forth Amilcare was as though he were not. The Roman waited for no invitation and disregarded those he got. Would his Grace be pleased to dine? His Grace went on pouring out his talk to the wonderful rose-coloured lady. Amilcare, patient to excess, watched. Presently Cesare said, "Madama, shall we go to dinner?" and to dinner they went, Amilcare rubbing his hands behind them.

They found the table prepared—a very low one; divans to sit upon; none but Grifone, pale and respectful, in the little painted chamber.

All this had been carefully provided. The Duke's suite dined in another wing of the palace; the choir of minstrels, who held the passage between them, had mail under their cassocks, and two-edged swords made for thrusting. They were fifty strong. Every page-in-waiting in the hall and long cool passages was a "Centaur" armed to the teeth. Don Cesare, it seems, had walked into a steel trap at last. Do you wonder that Amilcare could afford a supple back?

But as the delicate meats succeeded each other—each duly tasted by Grifone before a morsel went to plate—there was one, in the surge of her terrors, struck dumb with what was, rather, wonder. The magnificent Cesare went his road over the feelings of his host; the host bowed and waved his hands. Why should he not? Never one word of answer, never a gleam of attention did he win from the Roman. Why should he care? His wife was doing her duty, his enemy was webbed: what else could matter? The Italian shrug goes deeper than the shoulders; sometimes it strokes the heart of a man. The very indignities heaped upon the adventurer made his revenge the sweeter nursling.

But Molly, the tall English girl, burning in her shameful robe, saw it vastly otherwise. That a man could bend so low! That she should ever have loved a man with such a stooping back! To think of that made (for the moment) every other degradation light. Her part as yet was one of sufferance: to look handsome, languid with the excess of her burden of beauty; to smile slowly, to keep her eyes on her lap. Pure passivity all this, under which the miserable soul could torture in secret. As she often had a back-ache, it was easy to wilt among her cushions; as she was always mute before flattery, to smile was as simple as to frown and meant no more; as she was ashamed of herself and her husband, she could hardly hope to lift her honest eyes, or temper her furious blushing.

It would be untrue to say that the Borgia's eager under-current of love-language stirred her not at all. Even to her the man's fame made his homage a tribute; something it was, beyond doubt, to be courted by the greatest prince in Italy. And he had not touched her yet. Amilcare, whose desperate grinning made his jaws ache, noticed so much as he watched her, fidgeting in his place. His nails were for ever at his teeth: when the fruit should come in he was to slip out, and Grifone to crown the work. Meanwhile, the flagrant unconcern for his whereabouts shown by the victim might have stung a blind worm to bite, or excused any treachery. Amilcare had no rage at all and felt the need of no excuse. All his anxiety was that Cesare should enmesh himself deep enough; and then—! The thought of what should happen then set his head singing a song as mad as Judith's.

The still Grifone stood behind his mistress and saw Cesare's golden head sink near and yet nearer to her shoulder. He watched his arm over the back of her seat, and how his other hand crept towards the lady's idle pair. The room held those four, and them not long. In his time Amilcare muttered some excuse and tiptoed out.

Cesare was saying, "Ah, give me love—love only—else I must die!"

Molly answered nothing with her lips, but in her bosom prayed ceaselessly for pity.

"Love me, pledge me with your lips, let me drink of you, O my soul!" sighed the Duke.

"Ecco, Madonna," said Grifone, and handed her the cup.

"The chalice of love!" cried Cesare, straining towards the white girl. "Drink to me, my heart, and I will drink from thee!"

Molly still held the cup, though the liquor curved brimming at the lip. Her eyes were sightless, her head shaking with palsy.

"Drink, drink, my soul!"

"Yes, my lord, yes, yes; I must drink very deep," she said, and raised the cup.

"Pshutt!" said Grifone.

She turned like a caught beast, wild and blanched with horror. She rose suddenly, swaying on her feet, entangled one of them in her long robe and stumbled forward to stay herself by the table. She looked like some spurred Bacchante, lurching over the board with the great flagon a-nod in her hand. Cesare made to catch her in his arms, and reached for the cup; but then she screamed with all her might and threw the accursed thing crash upon the pavement.

"Treachery! Treachery!" Molly shrieked; and again, "Treachery! O God, he has made me a devil!" She threw her head up, herself tumbled back upon the cushions; knew nothing of Grifone's "Go, go, go, my lord; the house is quick with murder!" and when she opened her eyes at last saw Amilcare standing grim and grey before her.

Who can say what shall best reveal a man, whether love or hate or fear? Or how to know which of these three passions stripped her this Amilcare naked? Naked he was now, and she found that she had never known him. The colour of his face was that of old white wax; his mouth seemed stretched to cracking point, neither turned up at the corners nor down, but a bleak slit jagged across his face. He fastened her with his hard eyes, which seemed smaller than usual, and had a scared look, as if he was positively disconcerted at what he read as they glimmered over his wife. In one of his hands (never still) he had a long knife, very lean in the blade.

"Ah, what do you want of me more, Amilcare?" It was Molly spoke first, in a whisper.

He croaked his reply. "I am going to kill you."

"Oh! oh! You are going to kill me, my lord?"

"You have sold me to my enemy. He is your lover."

"No, no! I have no lover, Amilcare; I have never had a lover."

"Liar!" he thundered. "If he had not been your lover you would not have spared his life. There can be no other reason. I am not a fool."

To Grifone that was just what he appeared. To her some ray of her own soul's honest logic showed at the last.

"Amilcare!" she cried out, on her knees, "Amilcare, listen, I pray you. I have done you no wrong; I implore you not to hurt me; I have done you honour. It was because I loved you that I saved his life. I speak the truth, my lord, I speak the truth."

"I have never thought you to speak otherwise; but I have been wrong, it appears. The excuse is monstrous. I am going to kill you."

The miserable girl turned him a pinched face. She searched for any shred of what she had known in him, but all the deadly mask of him she saw told her nothing. She began to be witless again, to wring her hands, to whimper and whine.

Amilcare looked fixedly at her, every muscle in his face rigid as stone. So, as he ruminated, some whisp of his racing thought caught light from his inner rage, flared blood-bright before him, and convulsing him drove him to his work.

"Gross trull!" He sprang at her with his knife in the air. Molly shrieked for mercy; and before he could be on her Grifone whipped out his dagger and stabbed his master under the stabbing arm.

Amilcare jerked in mid-career, constricted and turned half. But the blow had gone too deep and too true. He fell horribly, and Molly knew no more.



XI

FROM AN AMATEUR'S CABINET

Grifone received his swooning lady into his arms and held her there to his great content, triumphing in her beauty and successful capture. Truly the adventure had gone by clockwork: he might say (he thought) that there was not one step in it but had been schemed to an eighth of an inch; and when you have to bring temperamental differences into account, the chances of Italian politics, the influence of climate, the panic alarms of a ridden mob—and still succeed, why, then you may lawfully be happy. Happy he was, but Molly was tall and he a light-weight. Moreover, he wanted to wipe his blade and be off. He judged it prudent, therefore, to bring her to herself again, and so did by sousing her liberally with cold water.

Molly, as soon as she could see, was aware of him kneeling by her side and of his arms about her. Before she had done gasping he began to kiss her.

"My heart of hearts, my lovely soul, my lady Moll! Mine altogether by the act of my arm!" were some of his fiery words.

There were others yet more explicit, which left no doubt of his passion, nor any ray of doubt of his intentions. Grifone took everything for granted, as he had from the beginning.

"My charmer," he said, "I have saved you from ignominious death; but I have saved myself also from a death by no means agreeable to me. It was impossible that our love could have held us much longer at a distance from each other, impossible that we could have still suffered a third person to usurp our privileges. If that stabbed stabber under the table had not misunderstood you so grotesquely—the gross-witted hog!—he would have lived, and I died of jealousy. A far from pleasant death, you will allow; worse in that it would have involved your own. For I should have had to kill you too, my dearest joy: so much would have been owing to my self-respect. Things, you see, could not have turned out more fortunately; the fellow trapped himself. We may be happy—we will be wildly happy—you shall see!"

It may be doubted whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument. Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable—but no more. The cold cheek, the clay-cold lips, the long, lax limbs of the poor doll were at his service. She saw nothing through her dim eyes, made no motion with her lips, sobbed rather than breathed, endured tearlessly rather than lived awake her misery. Misery is not the word: she had been sent down to hell and had come back dumb to earth, neither knowing why such torment was hers, nor thinking how to fly a second questioning. Had she been capable of a wish, a prayer, or of begging a favour, who can doubt what it would have been? Death, oh, death!

Grifone's face was so near to hers, that not to kiss her would have been an affectation; but when he began to make plans, he released her, sat up, and spoke as though he were discussing theory.

"There is very much to do, my love," said he, "but I think I see my way clear. It is instant flight, to begin with, for one of the household may be here any moment, or Don Cesare return. Such an one would have but to open the window and cry, 'Treason, ho!' to secure our being torn to pieces—not for any love the Nonesi bear that carrion; but because not one of them could resist the chance of kicking his benefactors. It is reasonable, after all. Instant flight, my dear, if you please. But whither? you will ask. Luckily I can take you to a pretty safe place, of which I have the key and custode's goodwill in my pocket. You know the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio outside the Latin Gate? We go there for our terrestrial paradise. Shawl your lovely head, therefore, stoop your glorious shoulders, and obey me exactly."

He got up as he made an end of speech, drew her gently to her feet, and showed her how to muffle herself in the hood of a man's cloak. He bound the rest of the garment about her waist with his belt, pinned up her skirt and petticoat as high as her knees, and gave her his own stockings and shoes. Then he helped himself to his dead master's pair, to his sword and velvet gown; and—

"Now," he said, "we may start by the privy garden."

He led the way. It was a golden afternoon of late summer; the shadows were lengthening as the air grew tired and cool, all the place was full of that vast peace in which a day of strenuous heat sinks to rest. The faint breeze in the myrtles was like a sleeper's sigh:—

"Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae—" murmured Grifone to himself, as he slipped among the cypresses over the grass. Molly followed him with faltering knees, nearly spent. As always, she was at the mercy of a clear head, never masterless when a man was near her. Morally, nervously, she seemed to be dead; so she followed her new lord as meekly as she had followed her old—that one to Nona across the seas, this one by gloomy, pent ways through the stale-smelling streets of the city to the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio.

Meekly enough she went, yet not so far nor so meekly but that she gave Grifone a genuine surprise. It seems that the air, the exercise, precautions, what-not, had cried back her escaped wits: certain it is that, once in the storm-bitten old fortress, she thanked her leader and rescuer with a tremulous sweetness all her own, and then—by Heaven and Earth!—urged him gently to go back, "lest her honour should be breathed upon."

Her honour! Grifone, the romancer, turned sick with amazement. He was dumbfounded, could not believe his ears, nor yet his eyes; that there before him should stand that drooping, flagged, pitiful beauty, always at his discretion, now wholly at his mercy within nine-foot walls, and talk to him with wet eyes and pleading lips of the Cardinal Virtues.

As soon as he could collect himself he put this before her in a whirl of words.

Santo Dio! Timidity, prejudice, after what had passed! In what possible way or by what possible quibble of a priest could anything stay them now from the harvest of a sown love—two years' sowing, by the Redeemer, two years' torture; and now—a solid square fortress on a naked rock, deemed impregnable by anything but black treachery! Let him make assurance incredibly secure: say the word, and he would go and silence the old custode for ever. It was done in a moment—what more could he do?

So he prayed; but Molly was a rock at last. She ignored everything but the fact that she could never survive the night if he stayed in the fortress-tower. Such, she assured him, was the fixed habit of her extraordinary race. She made no pretence of mourning her dead husband; indeed, her horror of him set her shuddering at his mere name; nor did she affect to deny that she loved Grifone. It made no difference. She was luminously mild, used her hands like a Madonna in a picture, was more lovely and winning in the motions of her little head, the wistful deeps and darks of her eyes, the pathetic curve of her mouth, than any Madonna short of Leonardo's. Grifone threw up his arms; such a pass confounded him; he had no tools to pick this sort of lock. Oh, but the thing was impossible! Two years' longing, the husband dead—why, they might marry, even, if she would. Perhaps that was what she needed? If so, he would risk his life in the city again to find a priest. But, think of it, formalities at this hour!

Molly smiled and blushed; she was sorry for her friend and would have consoled him if she could; but the thing was so obvious. Did not Grifone see?

Grifone did not see; he tore his hair, he threatened, prayed, raved, commanded, coaxed, swore by God and the Devil, clung to her knees—useless!

"Dear friend," she said, and stroked his hot hair, "you have served me well. Never serve me now so ill."

She beat him. From that moment, when love was dead, he began to hate her. She was safe from what she feared. Everything he might have waived but that, a clean blow at his own conceit. The end was near.

Their colloquy, so frenzied on his part, so staid and generous at once on hers, was barely over before the hum of many voices crept upon them, a slow, murmurous advance, out of which, as the hordes drew near, one or two sharp cries—"Seek, seek!" "Death to the traitor!"—threw up like the hastier wave-crests in a racing tide. Again they heard (and now more clearly), "Evviva Madonna! La Madonna di Nona!" and then (more ominous than all) a cry for Cesare Borgia: "Chiesa! Chiesa!"

At this last Grifone, who had been biting his fingers shrewdly, wrung a nail apart till the blood came. His was the desperate caught face of a stoat in a trap.

"What is this crying without?" said Molly in a hush.

"Pest! I must find out," said Grifone.

He climbed to a high window and looked down into the moonlight. "The Nonesi in force. Cesare Borgia and the troops. Hist! He is going to speak to them; they are holding him up." He strained to listen—and it seems that he heard.

"Citizens," said the Borgia, in fact, "I pledge you my sacred word that the Duchess shall be delivered to you whole and in honour. She shall be in the Palace within an hour. The Secretary who has her there, who stabbed his master and (as I learn from Milan) hatched all the plot, must be left to me. Madonna Maria saved my life at the peril of her own. She has no more devoted servant than I am. Trust me to prove it."

"Chiesa! Chiesa! Madonna! Heed the Duke!" cried the mob. And then, "Let the Duke go up and win us our lady."

"That he shall never do," said Grifone, and came down from the window.

Molly, seeing the cunning in his eyes, backed to the wall.

Time does not serve, and pity forbids, that I should dwell upon this misery. What she may have wailed, what he withstood who loved her once, I have no care to set down at large. He strangled her with cruel, vivacious hands, and then (since time had pressed, and all his passion not been pent in one wicked place) fell to kissing the flouted clay. Getting up from this tribute, he was faced by Cesare Borgia and his men; by Cesare who, used to such stratagems as this of late, had had the whole story out of Ludovic at Milan, and forestalled Nona by buying up the troop of "Centaurs" before ever he entered the city. Thus had Amilcare been sold by his own purchase, and thus Grifone griped in his own springe. Cesare found him, I say, and Grifone knew in the first crossing of their eyes that his hour had come.

He bore it without a wink, and lucky he might think it that for Cesare also the time was short. He was sooner dead than he dared to hope, and died cursing the name of Borgia. But that was a seasoned name.

"The populace is on fire, Highness," reported a breathed captain. "It clamours for the Duchess of Nona. We can hardly hold them much longer, strong as we are. We must show her, though I perceive that her Excellency has fainted."

"She is dead, man," said Cesare shortly, wiping his pair of daggers.

"It is a pity, Highness. Ma——!" He shrugged the end to his period.

Cesare looked at the girl and shrugged in his turn.

"Luckily it is dark. We must play them that trick they played on Borgo San Domino. She must be put in a litter, and at the palace see to it that the lights are behind her before ever you set her up in the window. Do what you can for us, Ercole."

They worked their best to compose that pitiful dead. She had suffered much, and showed it. Her wide eyes were horrible. And there was little time for more than to order her dress and neck-jewels, and to smooth out her brown hair.

"H'm," said Cesare, "you have made little of it; but at a distance it may serve our turn until the troops arrive. Is the litter below? Good. Avanti!"

The church bells rang all night, and all night the Piazza Grande was alive, a flickering field of torches and passing and repassing throngs. "Evviva Madonna! Hail, Duchess of Nona!" were the cries they gave. And above, at an arched window, haloed by candle-light, the staring lady of the land, stiffened and relaxed, played out the last functions of her generous body, in return for the people's acclamation.

Bianca Maria, Queen of the Romans by virtue of proxy and the Sacrament, spurred into the city of Nona next noon at the head of a plumed escort. There, at the fatal window, she saw the whole truth in a flash.

"O lasso! Her third husband was her last, I see," she said, and bit her lip to sting the tears back.

"Majesty," said Cesare, hat in hand at her stirrup, "it is not quite so. Grifone was not quick enough for the other fellow. Messer Death is actually her second husband."

"Now I have something for which to thank our Lord God," said Bianca Maria. "Let her be decently buried, but not here."

It was, however, explained that for reasons of policy the Duchess of Nona must share tombs with the Duke. Serviceable in death as in life, there where she was marketed lies her fragrant dust; fragrant now, I hope, since all the passion is out.

I almost despair of winning your applause for poor Molly Lovel, yet will add this finally in her justification. Women are most loved when they are lovely, most lovely when they are meek. This is not to say that they will be worthily loved or loyally: there are two sides to a bargain. Yet this one thing more: they are neither meek nor lovely unless they love. And since Molly Lovel, on my showing, was both in a superlative degree, it follows that she must have loved much. She was ill repaid while she lived; let now that measure be meted her which was accorded another Molly whose surname was Magdalene.



MESSER CINO AND THE LIVE COAL



I

It is not generally known that the learned Aristotle once spent the night in a basket dangled midway betwixt attic and basement of a castle; nor that, having suffered himself to be saddled for the business, he went on all-fours, ambling round the terrace-walk with a lady on his back, a lady who, it is said, plied the whip with more heartiness than humanity. But there seems no doubt of the fact. The name of the lady (she was Countess of Cyprus), the time of the escapade, which was upon the sage's return from India in the train of the triumphant Alexander—these and many other particulars are at hand. The story does not lack of detail, though it is noteworthy that Petrarch, in his "Trionfo d'Amore," decently veils the victim in a periphrasis. "Quell' el gran Greco"—there is the great Grecian, says he, and leaves you to choose between the Stagyrite, Philip of Macedon, and Theseus. The painters, however, have had no mercy upon him. I remember him in a pageant at Siena, in a straw hat, with his mouth full of grass; the lady rides him in the mannish way. In pictures he is always doting, humbled to the dust or cradled in his basket, when he is not showing his paces on the lawn. By all accounts it was a bad case of green-sickness, as such late cases are. You are to understand that he refused all nourishment, took delight in no manner of books, could not be stayed by the nicest problems of Physical Science—such as whether the beaver does indeed catch fish with his tail, the truth concerning the eyesight of the lynxes of Boeotia, or what gave the partridge such a reputation for heedless gallantry. But it would be unprofitable to inquire into all this; Aristotle was not the first enamoured sage in history, nor was he the last. And where he bowed his laborious front it was to be hoped that Messer Cino of Pistoja might do the like. It is of him that I am to speak. The story is of Selvaggia Vergiolesi, the beautiful romp, and of Messer Guittoncino de' Sigibuldi, that most eminent jurist, familiarly known as Cino da Pistoja in the affectionate phrasing of his native town.

Love-making was the mode in his day (which was also Dante's), but Master Cino had been all for the Civil Law. The Digest, the Pandects, the Institutes of Gaius and what not, had given him a bent back before his time, so that he walked among the Pistolese beauties with his eyes on the ground and his hands knotted behind his decent robe. Love might have made him fatter, yet he throve upon his arid food; he sat in an important chair in his University; he had lectured at Bologna (hive of sucking Archdeacons), at Siena, at Perugia. Should he prosper, he looked to Florence for his next jump. As little as he could contrive was he for Pope or Emperor, Black or White, Farinata or Cerchi; banishment came that road. His friend Dante was footsore with exile, halfway over Apennine by this time; Cino knew that for him also the treading was very delicate. Constitutionally he was Ghibelline with his friend Dante, and such politics went well in Pistoja for the moment. But who could tell? The next turn of the wheel might bring the Pope round; Pistoja might go Black (as indeed she did in more senses than one), and pray where would be his Assessorship of Civil Causes, where his solemn chair, where his title to doffing of caps and a chief seat at feasts? Cino, meditating these things over his morning sop and wine, rubbed his chin sore and determined to take a wife. His family was respectable, but Ghibelline; his means were happy; his abilities known to others as well as to himself. Good! He would marry a sober Guelphish virgin, and establish a position to face both the windy quarters. It was when his negotiations to this end had reached maturity, when the contract for his espousals with the honourable lady, Monna Margherita degli Ughi, had actually been signed, that Messer Cino of Pistoja was late for his class, got cold feet, and turned poet.



II

It was a strange hour when Love leaped the heart of Cino, that staid jurisconsult, to send him reeling up the sunny side of the piazza heedless of his friends or his enemies. To his dying day he could not have told you how it came upon him. Being a man of slow utterance and of a mind necessarily bent towards the concrete, all he could confess to himself throughout the terrible business was, that there had been a cataclysm. He remembered the coldness of his feet; cold feet in mid April—something like a cataclysm! As he turned it over and over in his mind a lady recurred with the persistence of a refrain in a ballad; and words, quite unaccustomed words, tripped over his tongue to meet her. What a lovely vision she had made!—"Una donzella non con uman' volto (a gentle lady not of human look)." Well, what next? Ah, something about "Amor, che ha la mia virtu tolto (Love that has reft me of my manly will)." Then should come amore, and of course cuore, and disio, and anch' io! This was very new; it was also very strange what a fascination he found in his phrenetic exercises. Rhyme, now: he had called it often enough a jingle of endings; it were more true to say that it was a jingle of mendings, for it certainly soothed him. He was making a goddess in his own image; poetry—Santa Cecilia! he was a poet, like his friend Dante, like that supercilious young tomb-walker Guido Cavalcanti. A poet he undoubtedly became; and if his feet were cold his heart was on fire.

What happened was this, so far as I am informed. At the north angle of the church of San Giovanni fuori Civitas there is a narrow lane, so dark that at very noon no sunlight comes in but upon blue bars of dust slant-wise overhead. This lay upon Cino's daily beat from his lodgings to the Podesta;[1] and here it was that he met Selvaggia Vergiolesi.

She was one of three young girls walking hand in hand up the alley on their way from early mass, the tallest where all were tall, and, as it seemed to him when he dreamed of it, astonishingly beautiful. Though they were very young, they were ladies of rank; their heads were high and crowned, their gowns of figured brocade; they had chains round their necks, and each a jewel on her forehead; by chains also swung their little mass-books in silver covers. Cino knew them well enough by sight. Their names were Selvaggia di Filippo Vergiolesi, Guglielmotta Aspramonte, Nicoletta della Torre. So at least he had always believed; but now, but now! A beam of gold dust shot down upon the central head. This was Aglaia, fairest of the three Graces; and the other two were Euphrosyne and Thaleia, her handmaids. Thus it struck Cino, heart and head, at this sublime moment of his drab-coloured life.

Selvaggia's hair was brown, gold-shot of its own virtue. In and out of it was threaded a fine gold chain; behind, it was of course plaited in a long twist, plaited and bound up in cloth of gold till it looked as hard as a bull's tail. Her dress was all of formal brocade, green and white, to her feet. It was cut square at the neck; and from that square her throat, dazzlingly white, shot up as stiff as a stalk which should find in her face its delicate flower. She was not very rosy, save about the lips; her eyes were grey, inclined to be green, the lashes black. As for her shape, sumptuous as her dress was, stiff and straight and severe, I ask you to believe that she had grace to fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they were as nothing to Cino.

The lane was so narrow that only three could pass abreast; it was abreast these three were coming, as Cino saw. On a sudden his heart began to knock at his ribs; that was when the light fell aslant upon the maid. He could no more have taken his eyes off Selvaggia than he could have climbed up the dusty wall to avoid her. Lo, here is one stronger than I! At the next moment the three young rogues were about him, their knitted hands a fence,—but the eyes of Selvaggia! Terrible twin-fires, he thought, such as men light in the desert to scare the beasts away while they sleep, or (as he afterwards improved it for his need) like the flaming sword of the Archangel, which declared and yet forbade Eden to Adam and his wife.

Selvaggia, in truth, though she had fourteen years behind her, was a romp when no one was looking. There were three brothers at home, but no mother; she was half a boy for all her straight gown. To embarrass this demure professor, to presume upon her sex while discarding it, was a great joke after a tediously droned mass at San Jacopo. Nicoletta would have made room, even the hardier Guglielmotta drew back; but the wicked Selvaggia pinched their fingers so that they could not escape. All this time Messer Cino had his eyes rooted in Selvaggia's, reading her as if she were a portent. She endured very well what she took to be the vacancy of confusion in a shy recluse.

"Well, Messer Cino, what will you do?" said she, bubbling with mischief.

"Oh, Madonna, can you ask?" he replied, and clasped his hands.

"But you see that I do ask."

"I would stop here all the day if I might," said Messer Cino, with a look by no means vacant. Whereupon she let him through that minute and ran away blushing. More than once or twice she encountered him there, but she never tried to pen him back again.

Little Monna Selvaggia learned that you cannot always put out the fire which you have kindled. The fire set blazing by those lit green swords of hers was in the heart of an Assessor of Civil Causes, a brazier with only too good a draught. For love in love-learned Tuscany was then a roaring wind; it came rhythmically and set the glowing mass beating like the sestett of a sonnet. One lived in numbers in those days; numbers always came. You sonnetteered upon the battlefield, in the pulpit, on the Bench, at the Bar. Throughout the moil of his day's work at the Podesta those clinging long words, in themselves inspiration, disio, piacere, vaghezza, gentilezza, diletto, affetto, beautiful twins that go ever embraced, wailed in poor Cino's ears, and insensibly shaped themselves coherent. He thought they were like mirrors, so placed that each gave a look of Selvaggia. Before the end of the day he had the whole of her in a sonnet which, if it were as good as it was comfortable, should needs (he thought) be excellent. The thrill which marked achievement sent the blood to his head; this time he gloried in cold feet. He wrote his sonnet out fair upon vellum in a hand no scribe at the Papal Court could have bettered, rolled it, tied it with green and white silk (her colours, colours of the hawthorn hedge!), and went out into the streets at the falling-in of the day to deliver it.

The Palazzo Vergiolesi lay over by the church of San Francesco al Prato, just where the Via San Prospero debouches into that green place. Like all Tuscan palaces it was more fortress than house, a dark square box of masonry with a machicollated lid; and separate from it, but appurtenant, had a most grim tower with a slit or two halfway up for all its windows. Here, under the great escutcheon of the Vergiolesi, Cino delivered his missive. The porter took it with a bow so gracious that the poet was bold to ask whether the Lady Selvaggia was actually within.

"Yes, surely, Messere," said the man, "and moreover in the kitchen with the cookmaids. For there is a cake-making on hand, and she is never far away from that business."

Cino was ravished by this instance of divine humiliation; so might Apollo have bowed in the house of Admetus, so Israel have kept sheep for Rachel's sake. He walked away in most exalted mood, his feet no longer cold. This was a great day for him, when he could see a new heaven and a new earth.

"Now I too have been in Arcady!" he thought to himself, with tears in his eyes. "I will send a copy of my sonnet to Dante Alighieri by a sure hand. He should be at Bologna by this." And he did.

Madonna Selvaggia, her sleeves rolled up, a great bib all about her pretty person, and her mouth in a fine mess of sugar and crumbs, received her tribute sitting on the long kitchen-table. It should have touched, it might have tickled, but it simply confused her. The maids peeped over her shoulder as she read, in ecstasy that Madonna should have a lover and a poet of her own. Selvaggia filched another handful of sugar and crumbs, and twiddled her sonnet while she wondered what on earth she should do with it. Her fine brows met each other over the puzzle, so clearly case for a confidence. Gianbattista, her youngest brother, was her bosom friend; but he was away, she knew, riding to Pisa with their father. Next to him ranked Nicoletta; she would be at mass to-morrow—that would do. Meantime the cook produced a most triumphal cake hot and hot, and the transports of poor Messer Cino were forgotten.

Dante's reply to his copy was so characteristic that I must anticipate a little to speak of it. He confined himself almost entirely to technicalities, strongly objecting to the sestett with its three rhymes in the middle, upon which Cino had prided himself in no small degree. The only thing he seemed to care for was the tenth line, "A dolce morte sotto dolce inganno," which you may render, if you like, "To a sweet death under so sweet deceit"; but he said there were too many "o's" in it. "As to the subject of your poem," he wrote in a postscript, "love is a thing of so terrible a nature that not lightly is it to be entered, since it cannot be lightly left; and, seeing the latter affair is much out of a man's power, he should be wary with the former, wherein at present he would appear to have some discretion, though not very much." This was chilly comfort; but by the time it reached him Cino was beyond the assault of chills.

Equally interesting should it be to record the conversation of Monna Selvaggia with her discreet friend Nicoletta; yet I cannot record everything. Nicoletta had a lover of her own, a most proper poet, who had got far beyond the mere accidence of the science where Cino was fumbling now; you might say that he was at theory. Nicoletta, moreover, was sixteen years old, a marriageable age, an age indeed at which not to have a lover would have been a disgrace. She had had sonnets and canzoni addressed to her since she was twelve; but then she had two elder sisters and only one brother—a monk! This made a vast difference. The upshot was that when Cino met the two ladies at the charmed spot of yesterday's encounter he uncovered before them and stood with folded hands, as if at his prayers. Consequently he missed the very pretty air of consciousness with which Selvaggia passed him by, the heightened colour of her, the lowered eyes and restless fingers, Also he missed Nicoletta's demure shot askance, demure but critical, as became an expert. A sonnet and a bunch of red anemones went to the Palazzo Vergiolesi that evening; thenceforth it rained sonnets till poor little Selvaggia ran near losing her five wits. It rained sonnets, I say, until the Cancellieri brought out the black Guelphs in a swarm. Then it rained blood, and the Vergiolesi fled one cloudy night to Pitecchio, their stronghold in the Apennine. For Messer Cino, it behoved him also to advise seriously about his position. To sonnetteer is very well, but a lover, to say nothing of a jurisconsult, must live; he cannot have his throat cut if there is a way out.

There was a very simple way out, which he took. He went down to Lucca in the plain and married his Margherita degli Ughi. With her Guelph connections he felt himself safer. He bestowed his wife in the keeping of her people for the time, bought himself a horse, and rode up to Pitecchio among the green maize, the olive-yards, and sprouting vines to claim asylum from Filippo, and to see once more the beautiful young Selvaggia.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] So the Pistolesi described at once their government and the seat of it.



III

There is hardly a sonnet, there are certainly neither ballate, canzoni, nor capitoli which do not contain some reference to Monna Selvaggia's fine eyes, and always to the same tune. They scorch him, they beacon him, they flash out upon him in the dark, so that he falls prone as Saul (who got up with a new name and an honourable addition); they are lodestones, swords, lamps, torches, fires, fixed and ambulatory stars, the sun, the moon, candles. They hold lurking a thief to prey upon the vitals of Cino; they are traitors, cruel lances; they kill him by stabbing day after day. You can picture the high-spirited young lady from his book—her noble bearing, her proud head, her unflinching regard, again the sparks in her grey-green eyes, and so on. He plays upon her forte nome, her dreadful name of Selvaggia; so she comes to be Ferezza itself. "Tanto e altiera," he says, so haughtily she goes that love sets him shaking; but, kind or cruel, it is all one to the enamoured Master Cino; for even if she "un pochettin sorride (light him a little smile)," it melts him as sun melts snow. In any case, therefore, he must go, like Dante's cranes, trailing his woes. It appears that she had very little mercy upon him; for all that in one place he records that she was "of all sweet sport and solace amorous," in many more than one he complains of her bringing him to "death and derision," of her being in a royal rage with her poet. At last he cries out for Pity to become incarnate and vest his lady in her own robe. It may be that he loved his misery; he is always on the point of dying, but, like the swan, he was careful to set it to music first. Selvaggia, in fact, laughed at him (he turned once to call her a Jew for that) egged on as she was by her brother and her own vivacious habit. She had no Nicoletta at Pitecchio, no mother anywhere, and a scheming father too busy to be anything but shrugging towards poets. She accepted his rhymes (she would probably have been scared if they ceased), his services, his lowered looks, his bent knee; and then she tripped away with an arm round Gianbattista's neck to laugh at all these praiseworthy attentions. As for Cino, Selvaggia was become his religion, and his rhyming her reasonable service. His goddess may have been as thirsty as the Scythian Artemis; may be that she asked blood and stripes of her devotees. All this may well be; for, by the Lord, did she not have them?

Ridolfo and Ugolino Vergiolesi, the two elder brothers of Selvaggia, had stayed behind in Pistoja to share the fighting in the streets. They had plenty of it, given and received. Ridolfo had his head cut open, Ugolino went near to losing his sword arm; but in spite of these heroic sufferances the detested Cancellieri became masters of the city, and the chequer-board flag floated over the Podesta. Pistoja was now no place for a Ghibelline. So the two young men rode up to the hill-fortress, battered, but in high spirits. Selvaggia flew down the cypress-walk to meet them; they were brought in like wounded heroes. That was a bad day's work for Messer Cino the amorist; Apollo and the Muses limped in rags, and Mars was the only God worth thinking about, except on Sundays.

Ridolfo, with his broken head-piece, was a bluff youth, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, a great eater, grimly silent for the most part. Ugolino had a trenchant humour of the Italian sort. What this may be is best exampled by our harlequinades, in which very much of Boccaccio's bent still survives. You must have a man drubbed if you want to laugh, and do your rogueries with a pleasant grin if you are inclined to heroism. Ridolfo, reading Selvaggia's sheaf of rhymes that night, was for running Master Cino through the body, jurist or no jurist; but Ugolino saw his way to a jest of the most excellent quality, and prevailed. He was much struck by the poet's preoccupation with his sister's eyes.

"Candles, are they," he chuckled, "torches, fires, suns, moons, and stars? You seem to have scorched this rhymester, Vaggia."

"He has frequently told me so, indeed," said Selvaggia.

"It reminds me of Messer San Giovanni Vangelista," Ugolino continued, "who was made to sing rarely by the touching of a hot cinder."

Selvaggia snatched the scrolls out of her brother's hand. "Nay, nay, but wait," she cried, with a gulp of laughter; "I have done that to Messer Cino, or can if I choose." She turned over the delicate pen-work in a hurry. "Here," she said eagerly, "read this!"

Ugolino scampered through a couple of quatrains. "There's nothing out of common here," said he.

"Go on, go on," said the girl, and nudged him to attend.

Ugolino read the sestett:—

"'His book is but the vesture of her spirit; So too thy poet, that feels the living coal Flame on his lips and leap to song, shall know, To whom the glory, whose the unending merit; Nor faltering shall his utterance be, nor slow The mute confession of his inmost soul.'"

Reading, he became absorbed in this fantastic, but not unhandsome piece; even Selvaggia pondered it with wide eyes and lips half parted. It was certainly very wonderful that a man could say such things, she thought. Were they true? Could they be true of any one in the world—even of Beatrice Portinari, that wonderful dead lady? She had never, she remembered, shown this particular sonnet to Nicoletta. What would Nicoletta have said? Pooh, what nonsense it was, what arrant nonsense in a man who could carry a sword, if he chose, and kill his enemies, or, better still, with his head outwit them—that he should turn to pens and ink and to fogging a poor girl! So Selvaggia, not so Ugolino. He got up and whispered to the scowling Ridolfo; Ridolfo nodded, and the pair of them went off presently together.

Oblique looks on Cino were the immediate outcome. He knew the young men disliked him, but cared little for that so long as they left him free to his devotions. A brisk little passage, a rally of words, with a bite in some of them, should have warned him; but no, the stage he had reached was out of range of the longest shots.

Said Ugolino at supper: "Messer Giurisconsulto, will you have a red pepper?"

"Thank you, Messere," replied Cino, "it is over hot for my tongue."

The huge Ridolfo threw his head back to laugh. "Does a burnt man dread the fire, or is he only to be fired one way? Why, man alive, my sister has set a flaming coal to your lips, and I am told you burst out singing instead of singeing."

Cino coloured at this lunge; yet his respect for the lady of his mind was such that he could not evade it.

"You take the language of metaphor, Messere," said he, rather stiffly, "to serve your occasions. You are of course within your rights. However, I will beg leave to be excused the red pepper of Messer Ugolino."

"You prefer coals?" cried Ugolino, starting up. "Good! you shall have them."

That was all; but the malign smile upon the dark youth's face gave a ring to the words, and an omen.

Late that night Cino was in his chamber writing a ballata. His little oil-lamp was by his side; the words flowed freely from his pen; tears hot and honest were in his eyes as he felt rather than thought his exquisite griefs. Despised and rejected of men was he—and why? For the love of a beautiful lady. Eh, Mother of God, but that was worth the pain! She had barely lifted her eyes upon him all that day, and while her brothers gibed had been at no concern to keep straight her scornful lip. Patience, he was learning his craft! The words flowed like blood from a vein.

"Love struck me in the side, And from the wound my soul took wing and flew To Heaven, and all my pride Fell, and I knew There was no balm could stay that wound so wide."

At this moment came a rapping at his door. He went to open it, dreaming no harm. There stood Ridolfo and Ugolino with swords in their right hands; in his left Ugolino carried a brazier.

"Gentlemen," said Cino, "what is the meaning of this? Will you break in upon the repose of your father's guest? And do you come armed against an unarmed man?"

The pair of them, however, came into the room, and Ridolfo locked the door behind him. "Look you, Cino," said he, "our father's guests are not our guests, for our way is to choose our own. There is a vast difference between us, and it lies in this, that you and the like of you are word-mongers, phrasers, heart-strokers; whereas we, Master Cino, are, in Scripture language, doers of the word, rounding our phrases with iron, and putting in full-stops with the point when they are needed. And we do not stroke girls' hearts, Cino, but as often as not break men's heads."

Cino, for all his dismay, could not forbear a glance at the speaker's own damaged pate. "And, after all, Messer Ridolfo, in that you do but as you are done by, and who will blame you?"

"Hark'ee, Master Giurista," broke in Ugolino, "we have come to prove some of these fine words of yours. It will be well for you to answer questions instead of bandying them. Now did you, or did you not report that my sister Selvaggia touched your lips with a coal and set you off singing?"

Cino, with folded arms, bent his head in assent: "I have said it, Messere."

"Good! Now, such singing, though it is not to her taste, might be very much to ours. In fact we have come to hear it, and that you might be robbed of all excuse, we have brought the key with us. Brother, pray blow up the brazier."

Ridolfo, with his great cheeks like bladders, blew the coals to a white heat. "Now then," he said, grinning to Ugolino, "now then, the concert may begin."

Cino, who by this time had seen what was in the wind, saw also what his course must be. Whatever happened he could not allow a poet to be made ridiculous. It was ridiculous to struggle with two armed men, and unseemly; but suffering was never ridiculous. Patience, therefore! He anticipated the burly Ridolfo, who, having done his bellows-work, was now about to pin his victim from behind.

"Pray do not give yourself the pain to hold me, Messere," said he; "I am not the man to deny you your amusement. Do what you will, I shall not budge from here."

He stood where he was with his arms crossed, and he kept his word. The red cinder hissed upon his lips; he shut his eyes, he ground his teeth together, the sweat beaded his forehead and glistened in his hair. Once he reeled over, and would have fallen if Ridolfo had not been there to catch him; but he did not sing the tune they had expected, and presently they let him alone. So much for Italian humour, which, you will see, does not lack flavour. It was only the insensate obtuseness of the gull which prevented Ugolino dying of laughter. Ridolfo was annoyed.

"Give me cold iron to play with another time," he growled; "I am sick of your monkey-tricks." This hurt Ugolino a good deal, for it made him feel a fool.

Will it be believed that the infatuate Master Cino spent the rest of the night in a rapture of poetry? It was not voiced poetry, could never have been written down; rather, it was a torrent of feeling upon which he floated out to heaven, in which he bathed. It thrilled through every fibre of his body till he felt the wings of his soul fluttering madly to be free. This was the very ecstasy of love, to suffer the extreme torment for the beloved! Ah, he was smitten deep enough at last; if poetry were to be won through bloody sweat, the pains of the rack, the crawling anguish of the fire, was not poetry his own? Yes, indeed; what Dante had gained through exile and the death of Monna Beatrice was his for another price, the price of his own blood. He forgot the physical agony of his scorched mouth, forgot the insult, forgot everything but this ineffable achievement, this desperate essay, this triumph, this anointing. Cino, Cino, martyr for Love! Hail, Cino, crowned with thy pain! He could have held up his bleeding heart and worshipped it. Surely this was the greatest hour of his life.

Before he left Pitecchio, and that was before the dawn came upon it, he wrote this letter to his mistress.

"To his unending Lady, the image of all lovely delight, the Lady Selvaggia, Cino the poet, martyr for love, wisheth health and honour with kissing of feet. Madonna, if sin it be to lift over high the eyes, I have sinned very grievously; and if to have great joy be assurance of forgiveness, then am I twice absolved. Such bliss as I have had in the contemplation of your excellence cometh not to many men, yet that which hath befallen me this night (concerning which your honourable brothers shall inform you if you ask them)—this indeed is to be blessed of love so high, so rarely, that it were hard to believe myself the recipient, but for certain bodily testimony which, I doubt not, I shall carry about me to my last hour. I leave this house within a little while and go to the hermitage of Santa Marcella Pistoiese, there to pray Almighty God to make me worthy of my dignities and to contemplate the divine image of you wherewith my heart is sealed. So fare you well!—The most abject of your slaves, "CINO."

His reason for giving the name of his new refuge was an honourable one, and would appeal to a duellist. His flight, though necessary, should be robbed of all appearance of flight; if they wanted him they could find him. Other results it had—results which he could never have anticipated, and which to have foreseen would have made him choose any other form of disgrace. But this was out of the question; nothing known to Cino or his philosophy could have told him the future of his conduct. He placed his letter in an infallible place and left Pitecchio just as the western sky was throbbing with warm light.

For the present I leave him on his way.



IV

The third act of the comedy should open on Selvaggia in her bed reading the letter. Beautiful as she may have looked, flushed and loose-haired at that time, it is better to leave her alone with her puzzle, and choose rather the hour of her enlightenment. Ridolfo and Ugolino were booted and spurred, their hooded hawks were on their wrists when she got speech of them. They were not very willing witnesses in a cause which now seemed to tell against themselves. Selvaggia's cheeks burned as with poor Cino's live coal when she could piece together all the shameful truth; tears brimmed at her eyes, and these too were scalding hot. Selvaggia, you must understand, was a very good girl, her only sin being none of her accomplishment; she was a child who looked like a young woman. Certainly she could not help that, though all the practice of her race were against her. She had never sought love, never felt to need it, nor cared to harbour it when it came. Love knocked at her heart, asking an entry; her heart was not an inn, she thought, let the wayfarer go on. But the knocking had continued till her ears had grown to be soothed by the gentle sound; and now it had stopped for ever, and, Pitiful Mother, for what good reason? Oh, the thing was horrible, shameful, unutterable! She was crying with rage; but as that spent itself a great warm flood of genuine sorrow tided over her, floated her away: she cried as though her heart was breaking; and now she cried for pity, and at last she cried for very love. A pale ethereal Cino, finger on lip, rose before her; a halo burned about his head; he seemed a saint, he should be hers! Ugolino and Ridolfo, helpless and ashamed before her outburst, went out bickering to their sport; and Selvaggia, wild as her name, untaught, with none to tutor her, dared her utmost—dared, poor girl, beyond her strength.

Late in the afternoon of that day Cino, in the oratory of his hermitage, getting what comfort he could out of an angular Madonna frescoed there, heard a light step brush the threshold. The sun, already far gone in the west, cast on the white wall a shadow whose sight set his head spinning. He turned hastily round. There at the door stood Selvaggia in a crimson cloak; for the rest, a picture of the Tragic Muse, so woebegone, so white, so ringed with dark she was.

Cino, on his feet, muttered a prayer to himself. He covered his scarred mouth, but not before the girl had caught sight of it. She set to wringing her hands, and began a low wailing cry.

"Ah, terrible—ah, terrible! That I should have done it to one who was always so gentle with me and so patient! Oh, Cino"—and she held out her hands towards him—"oh, Cino, will you not forgive me? Will you not? I, only, did it; it was through me that they knew what you had said. Shameful girl that I am!" She covered her face and stood sobbing before him. But confronted with this toppled Madonna, Cino was speechless, wholly unprepared by jurisprudence or the less exact science of love for such a pass. As he knew himself, he could have written eloquently and done justice to the piercing theme; but love, as he and his fellows understood it, had no spoken language. I do not see, however, that Selvaggia is to be blamed for being ignorant of this.

Yet he had to say something, since there stood the weeping girl, all abandoned to her trouble. "I beseech you, Madonna," he was beginning, when she suddenly bared her face, her woe, and her beauty to his astonished eyes, looking passionately at him in a way which even he could not misinterpret.

"Cino," she said brokenly, "I am a wilful girl, but not wicked, ah, no! not hard-hearted. I think I did not understand you; I heard, but would not hear; it was wantonness, not evil in me, Cino. You have never wearied of telling me your devotion; is it too late to be thankful? Now I am come to tell you what I should have said long before, that I am grateful, proud of such love, that I receive it if still I may, that—that"—her voice fell to a thrilled whisper—"that I love you, Cino." Ah, but she had no more courage; she hid her blushes in her hands and felt that now she should by rights sink into the earth.

Judge you, who know the theory of the matter, if this were terrible hearing for Messer Cino. Terrible? It was unprecedented hearing; it was a thing which, so far as he knew, had never happened to a lover before. That love should go smooth, the lady smile, the lady love, the lady woo? Monstrous! The lady was never kind. Where was anguish? Where martyrdom? Where poetry and sore eyes? Yet stay, was not such a thing in itself a torment, to be cut off your martyrdom?

Cino gasped for breath. "You love me, Madonna?" he said. "You love me?"

Selvaggia nodded her head in her hands; she felt that she was blushing all over her body.

Cino, at this new stab, struck his forehead a resounding smack. "This is terrible indeed!" he cried out in his distress; whereupon Selvaggia forgot to be ashamed any more, she was so taken by surprise.

"What do you mean, Cino?" she began to falter. "I don't understand you."

Cino plunged into the icy pool of explanation, and splashed there at large. "I mean, I mean"—he waved his hands in the air—"it is most difficult to explain. We must apprehend Love aright—if we can. He is a grim and dreadful lord, it appears, working out the salvation of the souls of poets, and other men, by great sufferings. There is no other way, as the books teach us. Such love is always towards ladies; the suffering is from them, the love for them. They deal the darts, and receive the more devotion. It is not to be otherwise—could not be—there can be no poetry without pain; and how can there be pain if the lady loves the poet? Ah, no, it is impossible! Anciently, very long ago, in the times of Troy, maybe, it was different. I know not what to say; I had never expected, never looked, nor even asked—ah, Madonna," he suddenly cried, and found himself upon his knees, "what am I to say to you for this speech of yours?"

Selvaggia, white enough now, froze hard. "Do you mean," she said slowly, in words that fell one by one, like cuts from a deliberate whip, "do you mean that you do not love me, Messer Cino, after all?"

"You are a light to my eyes and a lantern to my feet," Cino murmured: but she did not seem to hear.

"Do you mean," she went on, "that you are not prepared to be—to be my—my betrothed?"

It was done: now let the heavens fall! She could not ask the man to marry her, but it came to the same thing; she had practically committed that unpardonable sin; she had approached love to wedlock, a mystery to a bargain, the rapt converse of souls in heaven to a wrangle over the heeltaps in a tavern parlour. She was a heretic whom any Court of Love must excommunicate. The thing was so serious that it brought Cino to his feet, severe, formal, an Assessor of Civil Causes. He spread out his hands as if to wave aside words he should never have heard. He had found his tongue, for he was now contemplating the Abstract.

"Be very sure, most sacred Lady," said he, "that no bodily torment could drive me to such sacrilege as your noble humility leads you to contemplate. No indeed! Wretchedly unworthy as I am to live in the light of your eyes, I am not yet fallen so far. There are yet seeds of grace within me—of your planting, Madonna, of your planting!" She paid no heed to his compliments; her eyes were fixed. On he hurried. "So far, indeed, as those worldly concerns go, whereof you hint, I am provided for. My wife is at Lucca in her father's house—but of such things it is not fitting we should speak. Rather we should reason together of the high philosophy of love, which—"

But Selvaggia was gone before he could invite her on such a lofty flight; the wife at Lucca sent her fleeting down the mossy slopes like a hare. It was too dark for men to see her face when she tiptoed into Pitecchio and slipped up to her chamber. Safe at last there, she shivered and drowsed the night away; but waking or sleeping she did not cease her dreary moan.

Cino, after a night of consternation, could endure the hermitage no more; the problem, he was free to confess, beat him. Next day, therefore, he took horse and rode over the mountains to Bologna, intent upon finding Dante there; but Dante had gone to Verona with half of his "Inferno" in his saddlebag. Thither Cino pursued and there found him in the church of St. Helen, disputing with the doctors upon the Question of the Land and the Water. What passed between the great poet and the less I cannot certainly report, nor is it material. I think that the tinge of philosophy set here and there in Cino's verses, to say nothing of a couplet or two which give more than a hint of the "Vita Nova," may safely be ascribed to that time. I know at least that he did not cease to love his beautiful and wild Selvaggia, so far as he understood that delicate state of the soul which she, perverse child, had so signally misapprehended. The truth may well be that he was tolerably happy at Verona, able to contemplate at his ease the divine image of his lady without any interference from the disturbing original. He was, it is said, meditating an ambitious work, the history of the Roman Polity from Numa to Justinian, an epic in five and twenty books, wherein Selvaggia would have played a fine part, that of the Genius of Natural Law. The scheme might have ripened but for one small circumstance; this was the death of Selvaggia.

That healthy, laughing girl, Genius of Nature or not, paid the penalty of her incurable childishness by catching a malaria, whereof she died, as it is said, in a high delirium of some eight hours. So it seems that she was really unteachable, for first she had spoiled Cino's martyrdom, and next, by the same token, robbed the world of an epic in twenty-five books. Cino heard of it some time afterwards, and in due season was shown her tomb at Monte della Sambuca high on the Apennine, a grey stone solitary in a grey waste of shale. There he pondered the science of which, while she was so strangely ignorant, he had now become an adept; there, or thereabouts, he composed the most beautiful of all his rhymes, the canzone which may stand for an elegy of the Lady Selvaggia.

"Ay me, alas! the beautiful bright hair,—"

Ay me, indeed! And thus he ends:

"Ay me, sharp Death! till what I ask is done And my whole life is ended utterly,— Answer,—must I weep on Even thus, and never cease to moan ay me?"[2]

He might well ask. It should be accorded him that he was worthy of the occasion: the poem is very fine. But I think the good man did well enough after this; I know that if he was sad he was most melodiously sad. He throve; he became a professor; his wife bore him five children. His native city has done him what honour she could, ousted his surname in favour of her own, set up a pompous monument in the Cathedral Church (where little Selvaggia heard her dull mass), and dubbed him once and for all, L'amoroso Messer Cino da Pistoja. That should suffice him. As for the young Selvaggia, I suppose her bones are dust of the Apennine.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The translation is Rossetti's.



THE JUDGMENT OF BORSO

"Unde proverbii loco etiamnunc usurpatur, praeteriisse Borsii tempora."—Este Chronicle.



I

THE ADVENTURERS

It is happily as unnecessary as it would be unwise to inquire into the ancestry of Bellaroba, a meek-eyed girl of Venice, with whom I have here some concern. Her mother was La Fragiletta, of the Old Ghetto, and her father may have been of the Council of Ten, or possibly a Doge. No one could deny it, for no one knew his name. It is certain that his daughter was not christened as she was called, equally certain that the nickname fitted her. Bella roba, a pretty thing, she always had been for her mother's many friends; bella roba in truth she looked, as La Fragiletta fastened her dark red dress, stuck a bunch of carnations in the bosom of it, and pulled up the laces round her slim neck, on a certain May morning in or about the year 1469. "The shape you are, child," said that industrious woman, "I can do nothing for you in Venice. It is as timid as a nun's. Ferrara is the place of all the world for you. I look forward to your speedy establishment in a city where a girl may be like a flagstaff and yet not thought amiss."

Bellaroba looked humbly at herself in the glass; though she could see that she was pretty, it was not to be denied that she was thin. Ah, no; she did not take after her mother. Here she sighed to remember that her bosom friend, Olimpia Castaneve, took after hers only too well, and was to accompany her fortune-hunting in Ferrara for precisely opposite reasons. Was this fair? she wondered. She, Bellaroba, was to go because she was of a piece with the Ferrarese; Olimpia, because she could furnish a provoking contrast. She was an affectionate, docile creature, this shrinking Bellaroba, absurdly young, absurdly your servant; but tears smarted in her eyes as she stood adorned for sacrifice—in her tight crimson dress, lace at her neck and wrists, a jewel on her forehead, a chain in her hair, and a cold block of lead dragging at her heart. She had never denied any one anything, and certainly not her mother. Her tears glistened as she blinked, her lip was shaky; she was kissed a good-bye none the less, and went down the steps to join Olimpia huddled in the gondola.

"Good-bye, my child," cried Madam Fragiletta from the doorway. "Be wise; remember what I have told you. Never see a priest the wrong side of the grille, and obey Monna Nanna in everything. I shall have a mass for you at San Zan to-morrow, and another on your birthday, which I shall never forget."

The morning was misty and sharp, Madam Fragiletta was very much undressed, and loved her bed. She waved her hand gallantly to Bellaroba, who still stood up wistful in the gondola; she did not wait for it to shoot the bridge or round the square corner of the rio, but turned shrugging to the house. There was no reasonable probability that these two would ever meet again. Short outlooks govern La Fragiletta's trade, and Providence, it seems, has little to do with it.

Olimpia Castaneve, the muffled brooder in the poop, was cold, cross, and still. Bellaroba snivelled, but she was scornful under her cloak, and no word passed between the pair until they were in the great blunt-nosed barge, heading against a crisping tide for Chioggia. Then, as the sun shot through the mist and revealed the lagoon, one broad sheet of silver and blue, the shawls were opened, limbs went luxuriously at the stretch; you could see and hear chatter the couple of adventurers if you cared. Bellaroba you have seen already—very gentle, very simple, very unformed without and within. She had pretty ways, coaxing and appealing ways. When she asked a question it was with lifted eyebrows and a head on one side. She would take your hand without art, and let you hold it without afterthought. It was the easiest thing in the world to kiss her, for she suffered it gladly and quite innocently; it came as naturally as to a cat to rub his cheek on your chair or swinging foot. Yet the girl was as modest as a Clare. If you had presumed on your licence to make love to her, it would not have been her scorn (for she had none), but her distress that would have set you back in your place. God knows what La Fragiletta might have taught her. It is certain she was all unlettered in love up to that hour. Bellaroba was not only modest by instinct, but that better thing, innocent by preoccupation.

In all this she was a dead contrast to her handsome friend Olimpia Castaneve, who was really a beauty of the true Venetian mould. As sleek and sumptuous as a cat, as splendidly coloured as a sunburnt nectarine, crowned with a mass of red-gold hair, as stupid as she was sly, and as rich as she was spendthrift, the lovely Olimpia had been sent adventuring to the bees of Ferrara, not as lacking honey for Venice, but as being too great a treasure for her mother's house. Her mother was La Farfalla—a swollen butterfly in these days—and frankly said that she could not afford such a daughter. Olimpia had no instructions; in fact, needed none. She went cheerfully out to what Monna Nanna and the Blessed Virgin should prepare for her, without kisses (which she garnered against the lean years) and without reserves. She neither condemned her mother nor approved. Perhaps she had not the wit; assuredly she lacked the energy. She was remarkably handsome in her hot Venetian way, richly coloured, brown-eyed, crimson-lipped, bosomed like a goddess and shaped like a Caryatid. She half closed her eyes, half opened her lips, smiled and drowsed and waited. You would have thought her melting with love; she was ciphering a price, but being slow at figures, she hid herself (spiderwise) in a golden mesh. Olimpia was nearly always complaisant, had no reticences, no conscience, few brains. She was luxury itself, fond of the fire, fond of her bed, fond of her dinner. Admittedly self-absorbed, she was accustomed to say that she knew far too much about love to fall into it. It was a reflection as serious as she could make it; but Love is very apt to take such sayings amiss. Olimpia out of love might make men miserable; in it, what might she not do? I am about to tell you.

At Chioggia they were to await a shipload of merchants and pack-mules expected from Ancona; but the wind proved counter when their barge had weathered Malamocco, and that which dis-served them befriended the northering freight. They found the train of beasts awaiting them, saddled and loaded, restless to be off. Chioggia to Ferrara, by the road they would go, is a handsome fifty miles.

In that company, as they neared, they observed a calm-eyed youth with a delicate, girlish face, and wonderful shock of light gold hair all about it. He stood alone on the mole, one knee bent, a hand to his hip, and soberly surveyed the group on the barge. He made a charming little picture there—seemed indeed posed for some such thing; he was charmingly pretty himself, but for all that, he had a tragic touch upon him, a droop of the lip, or the eyelid, perhaps. One could hardly say, yet never miss it. Even Olimpia noticed the shadow across him. As they touched—"Look, look, Bellaroba," she whispered, and nudged her friend—"that boy! Did you ever see such a lovely child?"

Bellaroba drew a long breath. "I think he is as lovely as an angel," she replied, her eyes fascinated. And her saying was equally true. He was such a demure boy-angel, bright-haired, long and shapely in the limb, as the painters and carvers loved to set in Madonna's court, careful about her throne, or below the dais fiddling, or strumming lutes to charm away her listlessness. Moreover, Angioletto was the name he went by, though he had been christened Dominick. And he came from Borgo San Sepolcro—far cry from windy Chioggia—a place among the brown Tuscan hills, just where they melt into Umbria; and he was by trade a minstrel, and going to Ferrara. Of so much, with many bows, he informed the two girls, being questioned by Olimpia. But he looked at Bellaroba as he spoke, and she listened the harder and looked the longer of the two.

Everything about him seemed to her altogether gracious, from the silky floss of his gold hair to his proper legs, sheathed in scarlet to the thighs. He was as soft and daintily coloured as a girl, had long curved lashes to his grey eyes, a pathetic droop to his lip, the bloom as of a peach on his cheeks. But you could never mistake him for a girl. His eyes had a critical blink, he looked to have the discretion of a man. A fop he might be; he had a wiry mind. A fop, in fact, he was. He had a little scarlet cap on his head, scarlet stockings, peaked scarlet shoes: for the rest he was in green cloth with a blue leather belt about his waist. He had fine lace ruffles at his wrists, a fine line of white at his throat, and in his ears (if you could have seen them) gold rings. Just the pampered young minion of any Tuscan court, a precocious wrappage of wit, good manners, and sensibility, he looked what he spoke, the exquisite Florentine, to these broad-vowelled Venetian lasses; did not smile, but seemed never out of temper; and was certainly not timid. Self-possessed, reticent he was; but not timid. That was proved.

When the cavalcade was on the point to start, Angioletto stepped forward and took Bellaroba by the hand.

"Little lady," says he to his blushing captive, "I have a mule for the road which I am assured is a steady pacer. Will you be my pillion?"

"Oh, yes, Messere," said Bellaroba in a twitter, and dropped him a curtsy of her best.

"Excellent!" he cried gaily. "I can see that we are to be friends." So she was led away.

He helped her on to the mule in no time, showed her how she must hold him round the middle, how closely and how constantly; he explained how little there was to fear, for all that such a manner of going was as venturesome to her as a steamer would have seemed to Ulysses, that great captain. It was then that Olimpia (watching all this) proved Angioletto not timid, for she saw him conclude his precepts to her friend by kissing her cheek in the easiest manner. "H'm," thought the wise Olimpia, "I pray that Bellaroba may be careful."

She herself accepted the services and part of the horse of a lean Ravennese, a Captain of Lances—two yards of sinew and brown leather—who told her that his name was Mosca, and his heart bleeding at her feet. Olimpia smiled beautifully upon him, but was careful; took a share of the courser, but gave in return nothing more than a hand on its master's belt. He wanted much more, and showed it. Olimpia, far from coy, hinted an exchange. She needed her bearings; did this apparent hero know Ferrara? The Mosca snorted, threw back his head at the word. Ferrara? cried he, did he know it! Saints and Angels, who could know it better? "Ferrara?" he went on to shout, appealing to gods and men, "the gayest court in all Italy—the cleanest air, the most laughing women, the—pest! It is a place of holy days and feasts—all music, loving, and delight! But you will see, my dear; I will see that you see." Olimpia must know more exactly than this, and so she told the Mosca. He could deny her nothing; so as they rode between the grey swamps of the lagoon, he poured out his understanding in his own fashion. His oaths made her gasp, but the facts atoned for that. By the bones of God, but he served a great lord of that city—Guarino Guarini by name, whose blade was the longest, the oftenest out, and the cleanest cutter, as himself was the lightest heart, and most trenchant carver of men in Borso's fief. The good captain carried his loyalty to the edge of his simplicity, and left it there for Olimpia to handle. "By the cheeks of the Virgin, my dear, I know what I know. My young master has an eye which, whether it say 'Come' or 'Go,' needs not say it twice. He is as fine and limber as a leopard on the King of England's shield, of a nature so frank and loving that I suppose there is hardly a lady in Ferrara could not testify to it—unless she were bound to the service of his Magnificence the Duke. Why! Yourself might make a shift to be my little friend, and never repent it, mind you—no, no, I may be battered, my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, my noble master."