Olimpia had a colour, and flew it now most becomingly in her cheeks. It was a wholesome, healthy, happy colour, born of her growing excitement; the Captain highly approved of it. She thus earned more information. Guarino Guarini, it appeared, though not of the reigning family, was very near the throne. He had married one of the d'Este ladies, Madama Lionella, legitimised daughter of Duke Borso, and was now ignoring the fact to his own and her entire satisfaction. Upon the Countess's score, Captain Mosca had not very much to say. "A great-hearted lady, amorous, generous, a great lover," he allowed; "a pretty taste for music and singing she has, is a friend of poets and such like. The antechamber is full of them; and there they are—on promotion, you understand. But though she has a wonderful free spirit, she is no beauty, you must know. Her mouth is too big, and her eyes are too small. It is a kissing mouth, as we say, my dear, and a speaking eye—and there you have Madama Lionella, who loves minstrels."

"Tell me," said Olimpia here, "who is that pretty gentleman with my friend? Is he not a minstrel?"

The Captain turned in his saddle and, when he had observed, snorted his disdain.

"That sprout, my deary?" said he. "Some such dapper little chamber-fellow, I'll warrant you. A lap-dog, a lady's toy, with a piping voice and an eye for mischief. Yes, he'll be for climbing by Madama Lionella's back-stair. He has the make of it—just the doll she loves to dandle." Which was all the Captain had to say for Angioletto.

Little as it was, it was more than Angioletto had to say for Mosca. He was, indeed, serenely indifferent to the lean brown man. From the moment of their setting out, he and Bellaroba had wagged tongues in concert, and before they had made a dozen miles each knew the other's story to the roots. Angioletto's was no great matter. The Capuchins at Borgo had taught him his rudiments, his voice had taken him into the choir, his manners into the sacristy. He had been Boy-Bishop twice, had become a favourite of the Warden's, learnt Latin, smelt at Greek, scribbled verses. Then, one Corpus Christi, he got his chance. There was to be a Pageant—"Triumph," he called it—a Triumph of Love and a Triumph of Chastity, wherein by the good offices of his friend the Warden he was chosen for the part of Love. It was to be assumed that he pleased, for Chastity (who was a great lady of the place) took him into her service; and there he stayed until, as he explained, she married again. She had been a widow, it seems, when she took part in the Triumphs.

Bellaroba was much interested.

"Was the lady kind to you, Angioletto?"

"Oh, very kind."

"But you had to go, you say?"

"Yes. It was judged better."

"But I don't quite see. If she was kind I wonder why you judged it better to go, or why she did."

"It did not rest wholly with us," said Angioletto.

Bellaroba did not pursue the subject. But after a short pause—

"And are you now from her house?" she asked.

Angioletto shook his head. "That was a very long time ago," said he; "two years at least. I am eighteen, you must know. When I left the Marchioness she gave me a handsome present. It sufficed to take me to Perugia—to the University there; it afforded me two years' study in the liberal arts, and my outfit for this present venture into the bargain."

"And do you know what you will do at Ferrara, Angioletto?"

"Yes, quite well."

"What will you do?"

"I will marry you, Bellaroba," the boy replied, as he turned suddenly, put his arms about her and took a long kiss.

Bellaroba, in a bath of love, made him free of her lips. For a while the mule had to do his pacing alone.

"Oh, Angioletto, Angioletto," whispered the girl, with a hidden face, "I have never been happy like this before."

"You will never be unhappy again, dearest, for I shall be with you."

For the time there was no more talk, since the broken murmurs of their joy and wonder cannot be so described. The billing of two doves on an elm was not more artless than their converse on the mule's back.

The girl brought prose in again, as became a daughter of Venice. What had led Angioletto to Ferrara?

"The Blessed Virgin," he promptly replied, and she sighed a happy acquiescence in so pious a retort.

"But what else?"

For answer Angioletto drew a silk-bound letter from his breast. "This epistle," he said, "promises me employment and fame almost as certainly as you promise me bliss. It is from a Cardinal of my acquaintance to a noble lady of Ferrara, by name Lionella, daughter of Duke Borso himself, and wife to one Messer Guarino Guarini, a very great lord. The lady is patroness of all poets and minstrels. Consider our fortunes made, my joy."

"They must be made since you believe it, Angioletto," said Bellaroba with faith. "I have never seen any one like you, so beautiful and so wise at once."

The compliment provoked kisses. Angioletto embraced her again; again conversation became ejaculatory, and again the mule tripped over the reins. He learned before the day was out to allow for this new hindrance to his way; he tripped no more. The lovers continued their rapt intercourse all that May-day journey through the rice-fields, until at Rovigo (half hidden in a mist of green) they halted for the night.



II

ARMS AND THE MANNIKIN

The hubbub of the inn-yard, where shouting merchants wrestled for porters, and donkeys brayed them down, the narrowed eyes of Olimpia, the sardonic grin of the gaunt Mosca, brought our lovers back into the real world. They faced their foes together with insensible meeting and holding of young hands. Angioletto did his best not to feel a detected schoolboy, and did succeed in meeting the Captain's terrific looks. Bellaroba made no attempt at heroism. Her blush was a thing to be seen.

"Bellaroba, come with me, my child," said Olimpia severely; but Angioletto kept her hand.

Captain Mosca fiddled at his sword-hilt.

"Would you like spitted lark for supper, Madonna?" he asked with meaning.

Olimpia burst into a shrill laugh, and Angioletto, who had the pluck of a little gamecock, turned to his partner in guilt.

"And you, Madonnetta," he said sweetly, "what do you say to boars head larded?"

Bellaroba giggled in spite of herself—for she was terribly frightened—but again Olimpia, the grand indifferent, pealed her delight. The Captain glared round about him over a tossing sea of bales and asses' ears; getting small joy of that, he scowled portentously at the little minstrel and took a stride forward.

"Look you, sprigling," said he, "you have to do with a man of deeds; a man, by Saint Hercules, of steel."

Angioletto was fired, cheek and eye. He never faltered.

"I wish I had to do with a man of sense," he said.

"If you do not drop that lady's hand, my lad—" growled the Mosca.

"What then, sir?"

"Then," the Captain roared, "by the ante-chambers of Paradise, she shall cling to carrion!"

Bellaroba with a little cry fell to her knees; Olimpia bit her finger; Angioletto shrugged.

"You have better lungs than manners, Captain," he said quietly. "These ladies of ours are fatigued with travel and tired of fasting. Moreover, I apprehend a bale of carpets on my back at every moment. We will, so please you, sup. If you and the lady whom you escort will do me the honour of sharing my table we can arrange other matters at our leisure. I have always understood that encounters before ladies are make-believe; but your experience should inform you how far that is true. By leave, Signor Capitano."

Whereupon he lifts up the praying Bellaroba, kisses her forehead, and hands her into the inn as bold as a Viscount. One or two tongues were in one or two cheeks; one hand at least clapped him on the shoulder for a "little assassin"—a compliment: the honours were his to that present. Olimpia followed after him, very much impressed with the thought that the sooner she could exchange Mosca for Mosca's master the better for her. In the rear of the procession stalked that gaping hero swearing rapidly under his breath to keep himself in some sort of countenance.

Angioletto's assurance, and with it his luck, held out the evening. Not otherwise could he have cleared himself of the mess. He fairly froze Mosca by the coolness of his assumptions.

"I will fight you as soon as you choose, and with your own weapons, after supper," said he, "but it is only fair to warn you that you will be killed."

"How so, by the King of Glory!" cried the Captain.

"The wagging finger of Fate, sir," replied Angioletto readily, "and the conjunctions of the stars. My horoscope was taken at Foligno with the utmost exactitude. Mars himself, for reasons of his own, seems to have presided over my begetting. More than that, though I have not the least desire to take your life—should not, indeed, know what to do with it—it will be impossible for me to avoid it. I am really very sorry. Your case is just on a parallel with that of the younger Altopasso who, on this very day a year ago, insisted upon fighting with me. It is true that I do not pretend to love or even to approve of you, Captain; I consider that your legs have outgrown your brains. But for all that, I should be sorry to think that for want of a little ordinary politeness, or for shanks out of due measure, an honest man had lost his life. However, I fear the affair has gone too far."

The Captain grew purple and green by turns. The room of full tables was all agog. He let out an oath which I omit.

"The affair has not gone so far as this blade shall go, turkey-poult," he thundered.

"Make yourself quite easy on that point, my good sir," said Angioletto, cracking a walnut; "your sword shall fly the length of the room. I have a pass that is irresistible. You cannot fight planets, Captain."

"I have never tried yet, by our Lord," the Captain admitted, "but no one has dared to doubt my valour, and, planet or no planet, I'll run you through."

Angioletto smiled at another walnut. "I find the conceit admirable," said he, "yet you will perish so sure as this city is Rovigo and a titular fief of my mistress's master."

"A straw for your mistress, little egg," cried the suffocating Captain.

"I will give it to Countess Lionella as your dying gift, Signor Capitano."

The name smacked him in the face; he shook his head like a worried bull, or as a dog shakes water from his pelt. Olimpia, too, was interested, and for the first time. With face fixed between her hands, she leaned both elbows on the table, watching.

"Is the Countess Lionella your mistress?" she asked. Angioletto made her a bow; the company applauded a popular name. Olimpia turned a glance upon her Captain, which said as plainly as she could have spoken, "Finish him for your master's sake." But it had no meaning for the champion, who possibly knew more about his master than he had been minded to declare.

Angioletto tapped the ground with his toe. "Come, Master Captain," he said, "before your blood cools."

"Have no fear, bantam," said a jolly Dominican in his ear, "that toad's blood was never hot." It certainly looked like it. The Captain scratched his head.

"Look ye now, youngster," he said at last, "I serve his worship Count Guarino Guarini, who is the husband of Madama Lionella; and lucky for you that service is. Otherwise, by the truly splintered Cross, it had gone hard with you this night."

"Oh, brava, brava!" cheered the dining-room, and then hooted the Captain to his bench.

Angioletto put up his little hanger with a curt nod in his enemy's direction. "For the Countess's sake I spare you to the Count, Captain Mosca; though what precisely your value may be to his Excellency I do not at present understand."

Thereupon he turned to his poor Bellaroba, took her in his arms before them all, kissed her eyes dry of tears, and ended by drawing a rueful smile from her lips. The dining-room found him admirable throughout; but Olimpia got up, yawning.

"Come, child, it is time for bed," she declared, "I suppose even this entertainment must have a term." There was no gainsaying it. The lovers were torn apart by the moral force of Olimpia's attendance; but not until it was demonstrated that, though good-night is a word of two syllables, it needs four lips, and is therefore capable of infinite extension.

"Well, my child, I hope you are satisfied with this little day's work," said Olimpia, half undressed.

For answer, Bellaroba, upon her friend's neck, dissolved in a flood of happy tears.



III

HOW THEY CAME TO FERRARA

That was a fair sight which greeted the travellers at the close of the next day—the towers of Ferrara rising stately out of a green thicket. The lovers trilled their happiness to each other: surely nothing but pleasure and a smooth life could come out of so treeful a place!

"In our Venice, you must know," said Bellaroba, "we set great store by green boughs, having so few of them. We think that harshness and clamour may hunt the canals, but that birds can sing in gardens of a world really joyful. What a cloud of green trees—look, look how near the sky comes to them! Oh, my Angioletto, we are going to be so happy!" And the young girl laid her hot cheek on her lover's shoulder.

He, though her premises were undeniable, had his doubts. Her words set him wondering what was to be the end of this light-hearted adventure.

"My dear," said he, "if trees get in a man's way of villainy or incommode his pleasures he will cut them down, depend upon it."

"Well, silly boy," she cried, and gave him a peck of a kiss, "and does not that prove what I say, that there are no villainies in Ferrara? For, see, the trees are as thick as a forest." She made him laugh again before many paces. His ringing tones caught the ears of Captain Mosca, and set that great man scowling.

"If I don't get a crumb down that yapping gullet, call me not Mosca," he grumbled.

"Speak a little louder, Signor Capitano," said his pillion.

"Your pardon, Madonna Olimpia," he answered, "but I believe I was breathing a prayer on account of the little love-boy yonder."

Olimpia laughed. "I love him as much as you do, I dare swear," said she; "but he may be very useful. Remember that I am but a poor gentlewoman with my fortune to make."

"Give me the making of it, my angel," cried the Captain, crushing his heart with his fist. "You shall have the most crowded cortile in Ferrara. May I give you a humble bit of advice?"

"Certainly you may."

"It will be this, then, that you hold off from Monna Nanna and keep yourself very much to yourself. Between us we can arrange a pretty future. I know Monna Nanna better than becomes me. Believe me, the acquaintance would become you still less. But with such talents as I have—and they are all yours—I can arrange for you a most proper dwelling-place which shall cost little and bring much in."

"But we cannot live there alone, Captain."

"Hey! I am beforehand. I parry with the head, my duchess," cried the delighted Mosca. "I have thought of all that. There is an old lady of my friendship in the city, by name Donna Matura. She is something decayed in estate o' these days, has fewer crusts than teeth, poor soul, but has mingled with the highest. She will be all that you could wish, and you more than she could hope for. Think of it, lady, think of it."

"I will," said Olimpia, who had already done so. There is no doubt that she and the Mosca understood each other.

They were now riding up the long lime-tree avenue which leads to the Sea-Gate of Ferrara; soon they entered Ferrara itself, that city of warm red brick, of broad eaves, of laughter, and, as it were, a fairy-tale, bowered in rustling green. The streets ran wide between garden walls and the massy fronts of great square houses; they were full of a traffic which seemed that of a prosperous people bent upon pleasure. Happy ladies rode by with hawks or leashed dogs, or crowns of flowers. Cavaliers, in white and yellow, ribboned, slashed, curled, and feathered, went in and out of the throng to keep an assignation, or to break one. The priests joked with the women, the very urchins coaxed for kisses. Every street corner had its lovers' tryst, never a garden walk without its loitering pair, never a lady came out of a church door but there stood a devout adorer to beg a touch of holy water from her finger-tip.

"How happy this people is," cried Bellaroba, flushed and sparkling, to her little lord. "Everybody loves everybody else."

"My dear, we have nothing to do with their loves; we are going to be married," replied Angioletto, looking straight before him.

"Yes, Angioletto," said she, as meek as a mouse.

Olimpia, who was not thinking of marriage, was highly entertained. There was a press of grooms and led horses, richly caparisoned, outside the open doors of a new and very spacious palace. Round about them crowded people of a meaner sort, and beggars not a few; but a lane was kept to the gateway by soldiers in red and yellow, who bore upon their breasts a quartered coat of eagles and lilies.

"Hist!" said Mosca, pulling up his horse. "This is the fine new palace of the Duke, which he calls his Schifanoia. He is evidently expected in from his hawking. The greatest falconer you ever knew, my life! I do assure you."

"That may very well be," said Olimpia, "for I have never known one at all."

"You shall know this one before I die, and another who is my most noble master," cried Mosca, "or I am your kennel-dog for nothing."

"Let us wait a little and see this hawking Duke of yours," Olimpia said, with a gentle pressure of her arms about the Captain's middle.

"Blood of blood," sighed the Mosca, "I am as wax in the candle of you, my soul."

Olimpia pulled down her hood. Her patience was rewarded in no long time by the sound of an approaching cavalcade; presently she saw the nodding plumes of riders and their beasts at the end of the street. Knights, squires, and ladies rode with their reigning prince: he himself with two young men, magnificently dressed, came in advance of the troop, and at a great pace.

Olimpia judged her time well. At the moment Duke Borso drew rein to turn into his gates she threw back her hood and looked him full in the face, as if to dower him with all the splendour of her beauty. The sly, humorous face of the old fox twitched as his eyes caught the girl's. He looked a prude with a touch of freakishness in him; his pursed mouth seemed always to be strangling a smile, the issue of the strife always in doubt. Now, for instance, though Olimpia said to herself that she was satisfied, she could never have denied that he disapproved of her, while nobody could have maintained it. Borso had shot upon her a piercing glance the minute in which he had turned his horse; Mosca had had the benefit of another; then he had acknowledged in military fashion the waving caps and kerchiefs at the gates and had passed into the courtyard.

"Oh, you may be satisfied, my soul," said the Mosca. "Borso will never forget us now: it is not his way. But look, look!" Another pair of eyes was at work, belonging to a very handsome, ruddy youth who had been at the Duke's left hand. Olimpia needed no nudge from the Captain to tell her who this noble rider might be. Guarino Guarini for a florin! And so it was.

"Yes," said Mosca, "that is my most intrepid master. The flaxen lad in silver brocade, who was on the other side, is Teofilo Calcagnini, of whom I know little more than that he is Duke Borso's shadow. You shall hardly see them apart. The other, my charmer, the other is our man. Leave me to deal with him. Come now to the inn. To-morrow you shall have your hired house, and the next day company for it more to your taste than lean old Mosca."

"I shall never forget you, my Captain," said the really grateful Olimpia; and said truer than she knew. "Come," she added, "we should seek out Bellaroba and her little sweetheart. There must be an end of that pretty gentleman, my friend."

"By the majesty of King Solomon, there shall be an end," Mosca swore, and pricked his horse.

Angioletto and his lady-love had been better exercised than to think of dukes. They had thought of religion.

They passed by the Schifanoia at a sober walk, regardless of the crowd.

"My heart," Angioletto said, "there is here what I suppose to be the most famous shrine in Romagna. I mean that of the Madonna degli Greci, a pompous image from Byzantium, which proceeded undoubtedly from the bottega of Saint Luke. If that Signore had been as indifferent a painter as he was great Saint (which is surely impossible), we should do well to visit his Madonna. Her holiness is past dispute; there are very few miracles which she could not perform if she chose. As well as burning a candle apiece before her face, we could lay our prayers and new love at her feet. Beyond question she will hear and bring us good luck. What do you think?"

"I think as you think, Angioletto," said Bellaroba, and held him closer.

"Let us go then. I know the way very well."

So they went to the tune which the young lad sang under his breath, and before long came to a piazza, not very broad, but flagged all over and set about with stately brick buildings, having on the left the stone front of a great church, tier upon tier of arches interlaced. The door of it was guarded by two stone lions, and above the porch was the figure of a buxom lady with a smile half saucy, half benevolent, to whom Angioletto doffed his cap.

"They call her Donna Ferrara," he explained. "This is the Duomo. Let us go in."

They dismounted; a lame boy held the mule; they entered the church.

It was very large, very dark, and nearly empty. Angioletto put his arm round Bellaroba's waist, and they began to pace the aisle in confidential talk.

"Where are you going to live in this place, Bellaroba?" he asked her.

"I don't know. Olimpia knows. There was a Monna Nanna we were to live with, I think. But Olimpia will decide. I must do as she wishes."

"But why?"

"She is older than I am—two years. Besides I always have. And my mother commanded it."

"Your last appears to me the only reason worth a thought. Do you not want to know what I think of it, Bellaroba?" He bent his head towards her. Her answer, the flutter of a quick little kiss, pleased him. "Well, I will tell you," said he. "I think we should be married at once—this very minute. I do indeed."

"Oh!" said Bellaroba, blushing beautifully.

"I can see that you are pleased at this, my dear," Angioletto said, looking at her. They were head for head level, these children. "But what would Olimpia say?"

Bellaroba paused for strength to tell the painful truth.

"She would say 'Fiddlesticks,' Angioletto."

Angioletto frowned. "Ah! what is to be done?" he asked.

Bellaroba looked down, plucked at her skirt, saw Angioletto's hand peeping round her waist. It seemed difficult to say, and yet what she did say was very simple: "We have not asked Olimpia, you know."

"No," Angioletto answered; "we have had no time yet. But we will, of course."

"Oh, of course," said she, who kept her eyes hidden, and spoke very low. "Oh, of course. But—"

"Well, dearest?"

"Could we not—would it not be wiser—of course you know best, Angioletto!—might we not ask her—afterwards?"

Angioletto kissed her.

"You are as wise as you are lovely, my little wife. Come, let us find the Madonna degli Greci." And he led her away by the hand.

They found her in the north transept, in a little fenced chapel all starry with tapers and gleaming gold and silver hearts. As it was the eve of Pentecost she was uncovered; they could see her dark outline with its wrought metal ring about the head. Half-way down was another metal ring; Bambino's head should be in there.

Both the hand-fasted pilgrims fell to their knees: Bellaroba crossed herself, and then hid her face with her left hand, Angioletto with his right. After a silence, about the space of two Hail Mary's, the youth looked resolutely up at Madonna, and began to speak to her.

"Holy and most glorious Virgin, Mother of God," said he, "we, thy children, have sought thee first in this famous city of Ferrara, because we are sure that thou wilt love us even more than we love each other, and wilt be glad to share our secret. We are going to marry each other at this moment, Madonna, and thou shalt be the priest. There can be none better, since thou hadst in thy womb for many months the great Priest of all Christians, our sublime Redeemer. Now, behold, Madonna, how I wed this my wife, Bellaroba. With this ring, which was given me by a very great lady," and he took a ring from his breast, "I wed my wife, placing it upon her finger in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. I do not endow her with my worldly goods, for thou knowest I have none. I do not worship her with my body at this moment, but in the meantime I worship her unfeignedly with my mind, just as I worship thee with my soul. It appears, therefore, that I have wedded her enough. It is useless, most sacred Lady, to ask her whether she will honour and obey me, because of course she will, seeing that she loves me with all her good heart. Such as we are—very young, quite poor, but much thy servants—thou knowest whether thou canst be happy in this mating. I believe that thou canst. Now, therefore, since she is mine, she shall say with me three Aves and a Paternoster, likewise the Credo, or so much of it as she can remember. And, O Madonna, trust me to cherish her, and do thou intercede for us. Per Christum Dominum nostrum—AMEN."

"Bellaroba, my wife, look at me," he said, and the girl looked up wondering. He took her happy face between his hands, and kissed her two eyes, her forehead, and her mouth. Then they said the appointed prayers, and rose to their feet to return; nor did they forget the candles, but purchased them at the door of an old lady, who had a basketful to sell.

Coming out of the church into the sun again, they encountered the scrutiny of Olimpia. Captain Mosca, slapping his booted leg, was holding the horse.

"Where have you two children been?" said Olimpia. "Mischief in a corner, eh? You have missed the sight of Duke Borso and a gilded company."

"We have been saying our prayers to Madonna of the Greeks," said Bellaroba meekly.

"There are red flames in your cheeks, child, and a ring on your finger. Did you find those in the church?"

"Madonna gave them to me, Olimpia."

"So, so, so! Do you begin by robbing a shrine, pray?"

"Ah, Madama Olimpia," said Angioletto, "we have only taken from the shrine what is our due."

Not the least of the minstrel's parts was that of speaking as though he had something weighty in reserve. Olimpia, though by nature dull, was also sly. She had a suspicion about Angioletto now; but a quick-shifting glance from one to the other of the pair before her revealed nothing but serenity in the boy, and little but soft happiness in the girl. She opened her lips to speak, snapped them to again, and turned to the Captain and affairs more urgent than the love-making of babies. It was the hour of supper; the question was of a lodging. Captain Mosca knew an inn—the "Golden Sword"—where decent entertainment could be had for the night. As no one could deny what nobody knew anything about, it was decided. They sought and found the "Golden Sword," and put up with it, and in it. The supper party was, at least, merry, for Angioletto led it. He sang, he joked, made love, spent money, was wise, unwise, heedless, heedful. He charmed a grin at last into the very Captain's long face. That warrior, indeed, went so far as to drink his health in wine of Verona. He and his Olimpia—unhesitatingly his in the gaiety of the moment—drank it out of the same glass. "Love and Ferrara!" cried Captain Mosca, with a foot on the table. "Love in Ferrara," said Angioletto, and stroked Bellaroba's hair. So everything was very friendly and full of hope. At a late hour, and for excellent reasons, Olimpia kissed Bellaroba good-night, was herself kissed by Angioletto, and withdrew. Captain Mosca prayed vehemently for further and better acquaintance with his friend "the divine poet," and his pretty mistress. So went Bellaroba's marriage supper.



IV

"WHY COME YE NAT TO COURTE?"

"Le donne e i cavalier, gli affanni e gli agi, Che ne invogliava araore e cortesia."

The little house—discreet affair of eaves modest as drooped eyelids, of latticed windows, of wistaria before and a bower of willows behind—was found and furnished out of the girls' store and the Captain's credit. Donna Matura, a brown old woman, hideous, toothless, and inclined to swooning, was installed as duenna. She was, indeed, owner of the house and furniture, for which Olimpia paid and the Captain promised to pay; but that did not appear until much later. There was a great charm, not without a certain deal of luxury, in the place. Of course there was a garden—a bright green nest of flowering trees and shrubs; in the middle was a grass-plat; in that, again, a bronze fountain, which had the form of three naked boys back to back, and an inscription to the effect that it had been set up by a certain Galeotto Moro, in the days of Marquess Lionel, "in honour of Saints Peter and Paul and of the Virgin Deipara," upon some special occasion of family thanksgiving. The weeping willows—themselves fountains of green—sprayed over a stone seat. The place bore signs of an honourable past; it was falling now gently to a comely decay; but it answered every purpose. All promised well. So much Captain Mosca was given to understand; yet it was hinted that his promises were not complete. "My life and soul," cried he on his knees in the garden, "the little affair is a matter of three minutes." It proved to be a matter of more than three months and was then accomplished in another way and with other results than had been looked for. Thus it was.

When Angioletto had been assured of the nesting of his mate, he dressed himself point-device and went to Court to deliver his credentials. He found the lady upon whom so much depended, at the Schifanoia. Madama Lionella d'Este, wife of the Count Guarino Guarini, was a fresh-coloured, lusty young woman of three and twenty, not at all in love with her husband, but very much in love with love. The Captain of Lances had said truly when he shrugged her off as no beauty. Large-limbed she was, the shape of a boy, with a long mouth and small eyes, full-lipped, big in foot and hand. Yet she was a very merry soul, frank if not free in her speech and gesture, and though liable to bursts of angry temper, for the most part as innocent of malice as a tiger cub. If you remember her an Este, you will forgive her much, excuse her everything, and rather like her.

Angioletto, who found her sitting on the grass among her ladies, advanced with great ceremony and many bows. Madama did not get up; no one did; so Angioletto had to step gingerly into a ring of roguish women to deliver his letter. Lionella scampered through it, reddening with pleasure; she beckoned him with smiles to sit beside her.

"We are making rose-garlands to adorn our pretty heads," she said, laughing. "Come and sit by me, Angioletto, and sing to us. Who knows but what, if you are good, we shall not crown you with one of them?"

It was a great merit of Angioletto's that he always took things and men (especially women) as he found them. Such as they were he could be for the time. He was by no means waxen; elastic rather. Down he plumped, accordingly, cross-legged by his new mistress, and warbled a canzone to the viola which enchanted the lady.

"More, more, more!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Oh, boy, I could have you a prince for less than that! What a throstle-pipe you have!"

It was, as he afterwards found out, of her habit to be for ever at extremes; but just now, not knowing how to take her, he sang on all the better for her praise; and he had her next wriggling in an ecstasy over a trifle he made up on the spur of the moment—a snatch wherein roses and a girl's face (Bellaroba's, be sure) took turns to be dominant. At the end of this pretty piece the Countess Lionella fairly took his own face between her hands, crumpled his lips into a bud and kissed them full. Angioletto coloured, though no one else did. It was evidently quite harmless, and afterwards he was ashamed of his shame.

As it was, a diversion of a different order broke in upon the next song which, so soon as he had picked up his nerve, he adventured. One of the Maids of Honour looked quickly over her shoulder, and "Hist, Madama! The Duke!" she said, with wide eyes and a blush.

The song ceased, the whole company, Lionella included, scrambled to their feet. Duke Borso, his portly body swaying like a carriage on springs, his hands behind him, and attended by a tall young man, very splendid and very blonde, came across the grass towards them. Angioletto could not decide whether to think him rogue or prude. His puckered face twitched, his eyes twitched, his pursed-up lips worked together; it was again as if he were struggling with a laugh. He wore his tall square cap well off his forehead, and looked what he really was—a strong man tired, but not yet tired out, of kindness. The benevolence seemed inborn, seemed fighting through every seam of the pompous face. "Madonna! his generous motions work him into creases, as if he were volcanic soil," thought Angioletto. Watching him narrowly as he came, he decided that this was a master to be loved if not admired, respected but not feared. "I should get the worst of a bout with him," thought he; "but I had rather it were with him than with Apollo." That title was just, as the reflection shrewd. Teofilo Calcagnini would have made a terrible tutor to Master Phaeton.

Duke Borso bowed shortly to the standing maids, and favoured Angioletto with a keen eye before he set a hand on his daughter's shoulder. She looked a pleased welcome as he began to stroke her hair. "Ah, they love the man," thought Angioletto; "good!"

"Why, chick," said Duke Borso, "you are like a cage of singing-birds scared by the cat."

"Your Grace shall judge whether we are too scared to sing," replied his laughing daughter. "Come," she added, turning to Angioletto, "tune your viol and pipe to it again, my little poet."

The Duke made a wry mouth. "Hey, I have no ear for music, my dear," said he.

Angioletto was ready for him. "If your Magnificence will permit," he said, "I will take care not to offend his honourable ear. I will say my piece, with no more music than will serve to tie word to word. May it be so, Magnificence? Have I liberty, Madam?" He bowed, smiling, from one to the other of the great people.

He was a very courtly and charming little person, this Tuscan youth. Above all he had a ready address. So bright and strong, and yet so deferential did he look, pleading his cause among them, Lionella could have kissed him again for nothing more than his dexterity.

"Ah, you shall do whatever you like, Angioletto!" she cried.

Borso's eyes twinkled, and he primmed his lips. "I do not go so far as Madama, Master Angioletto, but I shall be pleased to hear what you are pleased to give me." He fell into an attitude of profound attention.

Angioletto, having bowed once more, began.

It so happened that Lorenzo de' Medici, that monster of genius, had not long printed his Caccia col falcone. Angioletto had it by heart against his need; using it now he could never have made a better choice—as, indeed, he guessed. It was as good as a play to watch Borso's wary eyes at the commencement of this piece, and to see them drop their fence as the declamation went on. Lorenzo begins with a pretty description of the dawn on Tuscan hilltops—

"Era gia rosso tutto l'oriente, E le cime de' monti parien d'oro," etc.

Borso, neither approving nor disapproving, kept his head disposed for more. At

"Quando fui desto da certi rumori Di buon sonagli ed allettar di cani"

he began to blink; with the quick direction to the huntsman—

"Deh, vanne innanzi, presto Capellaio,"

he stifled a smile. But the calling of the hounds by their names broke down his guard. Angioletto shrilled them out in a high, boyish voice—

"Chiama Tamburo, Pezuolo e Martello, La Foglia, la Castagna e la Guerrina, Fagiano, Fagianin, Rocca e Capello, E Friza, e Biondo, Bamboccio e Rossina, Ghiotto, la Torta, Viola e Pestello, E Serchio e Fuse e'l mio Buontempo vecchio, Zambraco, Buratel, Scaccio e Pennecchio...."

Every muscle of the keen old hunter was now quivering; his eyes were bright, his smile open and that of a child. To the last word of the poem—and it has length—he followed without breath the checks, the false casts, the bickering of the huntsmen, the petty incidents of a breezy morning in the marshes, nodding at every point, missing nothing, cracking his fingers, cheering under his breath, with delight undisguised and interest unalloyed. The moment it was ended he seemed prime for a burst of heedless comment; but he stopped, shut his lips with a snap, and became the inscrutable ruler of a fief of the Empire once more. But Angioletto knew that he had pleased him, for all that he walked off as he had come, without word or sign.

He had pleased every one. Homing to his nest in the Borgo, he caught his little Bellaroba in his arms with a rapture none the less because it had been earned at a stretch. It was long before he could find time and breath to lead her into the garden and have the story out. Olimpia, coming down to look for them in the dusk, found that a seat for two would easily hold one more. It should be added of Angioletto that he suppressed the incident of the Countess Lionella's salute.

At supper there were evidences that, whatever had been Angioletto's fate, all had not gone so well with the Captain of Lances. Not that appetite failed him; indeed, he ate the more for his taciturnity. Yet not repletion made him sigh, for he sighed consumedly before he began and rather less when he had finished, as though the kindlier juices of our nature had got to work to disperse the melancholic. Angioletto rallied him upon his gloom, but to no purpose. The meal was a silent one; almost the only conversation was that of the minstrel's foot with Bellaroba's under the table.

The truth was, that of conversation the Captain had had enough before supper—a very short colloquy with his Olimpia. In it he was brought to confess that he had seen his patron that morning. "Well?" had been Olimpia's commentary—a shot which raked the Captain fore and aft. Well, he desperately admitted, there was nothing actually arranged: patienza! His most noble master had been greatly harassed with affairs—the Duke's approaching visit to Rome, the precise forms which must be observed, the punctilios, the hundred niceties of etiquette; "Ah, patienza!" urged the sweating Mosca.

Patience, she saw, was the only wear; but, per Bacco, he should learn it too! She was in a high rage. The Captain was given to know that Ferrara was a great city, with more houses in it than one; in fine, he was shown the door. Supper first was an extreme and contemptuous condescension of Olimpia's, urged by the thought that a fed Mosca might be a more desperate Mosca, while a lean one would be desperate only for a meal.

A true relation of what passed in the Palazzo Guarini may serve to show how just she had been. The Count had received news of his henchman's attendance with a nod, had kept him waiting two hours in the cortile, then remembered him and bid him upstairs.

"Well, dog," said the young lord, from his dressing-table, "and why the devil are you so late to report yourself?"

"Ah, Excellence, believe me—" began to stutter the Captain.

"That is exactly what I will not do, my man. Who was that wench at your back yesterday?"

The Captain rubbed his hands. "Excellence, a wench indeed! A golden Venetian—glorious! Dove-eyed, honey-tongued, and very much your lordship's servant, I do assure you."

"You are so completely and at such length a fool, Mosca," said Count Guarini, with a yawn, "and strive so desperately to be rascal in spite of it, that I am almost sorry for you. Tie me these points, my good fellow, get me my sword, and go to the devil with your golden Venetian."

That, believe me, had been all. Therefore Captain Mosca, as he slunk out into the dark after supper in obedience to his inexorable Olimpia, felt that he must be more ingenious than he had supposed. At the same time it is only fair to say that when he had spoken so hopefully of his affair to the lady on the pillion he had believed every word of his own story. A man puts on spectacles to suit his complexion: the Captain's was sanguine.



V

FORTUNE WITH THE DOUBLE BLADE

"Similemente agli splendor mondani Ordino general ministra e duca, Che permutasse a tempo li ben vani, Di gente in gente, e d'uno in altro sangue."—Inf. vii. 77.

Angioletto had cause to believe in that star of his, for it never wavered in the course it held. Borso's court found him much to its taste. The men, however tall, of looks however terrible, bent their height and unbent their scowls to him; he was the pet of all the women; the very Fool, saturnine as he was (with a bite in every jest), had no gibe to put him to the blush withal. He made money, or money's worth, as fast as friends. A gold chain with a peregrine in enamel and jewels came to him by the hands of the Chamberlain; nothing was said, but he knew it was from the Duke. Countess Lionella could not reward him enough—now a jewel, now a gold cup, at one time a purse, at another a crystal phial filled with Jordan water. And so it went, the star waxing ever. He could have maintained the discreet house by Porta Angeli out of his earnings, and he did; but you have to pay for your luck somehow, and it very soon happened that he could not maintain himself in it. He was only too popular. The Count Guarino wanted him at the Palazzo Guarini; the Countess insisted that he should remain in bond at the Schifanoia; the august couple wrangled publicly over his little body.

"What, Madam," cried the Count, "is it not enough that you absent yourself from my house? Must you keep my friends out of it also?"

"He was accredited to me, my lord," said the lady, "to me, therefore, he shall come."

"Good madam," returned Guarini, "I admire your taste as a man, but deplore it as a husband. I think the little poet will do better with me."

"Stuff!" cried the Countess, "I might be his mother."

Said the Count: "Madam, I need not deny it; yet it is very evident that you are not his mother." He spoke with some heat.

Lionella was mightily amused. "Jealousy, my lord?" She arched her fine brows.

"I don't know the word, Madam," he answered her, touched on a raw. Jealousy appeared to him as the most vulgar of the vices.

"Prove that to me!" the Countess pursued him. Guarini made her a bow.

"Perfectly, Contessa," said he. "You shall have your poet, and he shall be my friend." Wherein the Count showed that to be a gentleman it may sometimes be necessary to appear a fool.

The matter was thus settled, and Angioletto ravished from his nest.

His last night at home—a casa, as he loved to call it—need not be dwelt upon. Bitter-sweet it was, yet his courage made it more sweet than bitter. Bellaroba was tearful, clung to him, kissed and murmured incoherently because of sobbing. He loved her more than ever for that, but as became a prudent husband, thought to say a word in season.

"My dear," he said in her ear, as he held her close, "you are very young to be a wife, and too young to be properly left alone with such companions as your Olimpia, whom I distrust, and Monna Matura, whom I abhor. But what can I do? I must make our fortunes, and pray to God that your beauty do not mar them. Follow my advice, my injunctions even, and it will not. Keep much at home, go not abroad unattended or uncovered. Your hooded head makes you surpassingly beautiful; you need not fear to be a figure of fun. At the same time it shields most of your sacred person from profane eyes. The great shield of all, however, is to have business before you when you are from house. Go briskly about this—whether it be market, mass, or mischief—and no one will look at you twice. At home it should be the same. There may be visitors; if Monna Olimpia can contrive it, there will be a good many. You may judge of their quality by her anxiety to receive them. Be guarded then, my dear, and go by contraries. They will not find the pattern of the carpet so interesting as you should do. Give them prose for their poetry, vinegar for their sweet wine, bitter herbs when they look to you for cane of sugar. Keep your honeycomb for him who is trying to earn it. Think where I am going, my Bellaroba! To what temptations, blessed Lord! to what askings, to what suggestion of wanton dealing! Remember that in all this I shall have your honour to keep, as you have mine. Say a great many prayers, my little heart, for the welfare of my soul and of yours; lock your door at night; let Monna Matura go with you to mass and confession; and—and—oh! my wife, my little wife, but I love not the leaving of you!" And so these poor children cried on each other's breasts, and so fell to the unspoken tongue of Love's elect. Next morning he went early, leaving her kissed in bed.

He saw her once again, spent a most blissful two hours in her company, before the Countess Lionella took it into her head to shelter from the summer heats in a villa she had above Monselice. Thither Angioletto was forced to go in her train. He found it intolerable, went with a heart of lead; for so cheerful a soul he was what he looked, parched and wan. This lasted a week. Then came a paper, scrawled with brown ink marks, which, after much study, he took to imply—

"MY LOVE ANGILETO, I love you more every day. I cry a good deal for lack of you. I kiss you two hundred times, and will be good and happy, "Your dutiful BELAROBA."

This revived him amazingly: he went singing about the gardens which hung upon the side of the grey hill, and composed a pastoral comedy to be acted by the Countess's ladies in the Temple grove.

Lionella very openly and without afterthought made love to him. He was a charming little lad, it is true; but quite apart from that, he was the only male creature above servant rank in the household. I describe him so because I cannot bring myself to call him a man; but he was quite man enough for the lady's intent. It is a surprising instance of the tact there was innate in the youth that he checked every undue liberty on the part of his mistress without endangering her self-respect or his own high favour. Perhaps he allowed matters to go a little too far. His were times of artless Art and of franchise—immoral, yet mainly innocent. Children call each other pet names, hold hands, kiss, and no one is hurt. So it was in Ferrara when Borso ruled it. Praeteriere Borsii tempora! True enough. There were those who saw that tuneful time in the shaping; we, alas! look down on the splintered shards. But we know that if Assyrian balm was ever for the world's chaffer it was in the days of Borso, the good Duke.

Angioletto loved his Bellaroba with all his heart: no debonair Lionella could decoy him to be untrue. But he was debonair himself, of high courage, and mettlesome; and he may have gone a little too far. He was now become her confidant, secretary, bosom friend. Whence came the shock of crisis.

One morning Lionella called for him in a hurry. He found her, an amused frown on her broad brows, pacing the terrace walk, holding an open letter in her hand. The moment he came in sight the Countess ran towards him, drew his arm in hers, and began to speak very fast.

"My dear boy," she said, "I am in a fix. You shall advise me how to act, the more willingly I hope, as you are in a sense the contriver of all the mischief. You know the Count my husband well enough to agree with me that he is a man of gallantry. He has proved it, for it is plain that he would never have left me (to my great content) to go my own gait unless it had been worth his while. I do him perfect justice, I believe. He has never thwarted me, nor frowned, nor raised an eyebrow at an act or motion of mine. Never but once, and that was when I proposed to take you into my service. Don't blush, Angioletto, it is quite true. He then raised, not his eyebrows—at least I think not—but some little objections. I said that I was old enough to be your mother—no, no, that also is true, my dear! He answered, 'No doubt; but it is very evident that you are not his mother.' That again may be true, I suppose? However, the affair ended in great good-humour on both sides, and here you are, as you see! But now the Count sends me this letter, in which he says—let me see—ah! 'Your ladyship will remember my not ungenerous conduct in the matter of the little poet, Angioletto, on whose account you had certain benevolent dispositions to gratify'—neatly turned, is it not? 'I have now to propose to you, turn for turn, a like favour to myself, which is that you shall take into your service a young gentlewoman of Venice, who is but newly come to Ferrara'—What is the matter, Angioletto? You put me out. Where was I? Oh, yes—'She is respectably bred, very modest, very diligent, very pious, moderately handsome.'—My dear boy, if you want to sit down, by all means say so. We will sit together here.—'The name she goes by with those who know her is Bellaroba.'—Bellaroba, indeed! Well—'I am very sure that you will have no reason to regret my excellent choice on your behalf; and it is the more timely because I learn from Fazio that one of your women has fallen sick of the small-pox'—and so on. The Count is occasionally sublime. I like particularly the list of the young lady's qualifications and the reference to his own kindness to myself. Now, what am I to say? I see you are puzzled. Well, I will give you time."

What Angioletto himself was to say is more to the purpose. I think it much to his credit that his first ascertainable emotion after the buffet of assault was one of wildest exultation at the prospect. It shows that he had never for a moment distrusted the meek little partner of his fortunes. Whisps of such doubt did afterwards float across his pretty morning picture, but he put them away at once. Next came worldly wisdom. True Tuscan that he was, his instinct was to decline perilous rapture if waiting might bring it on easy terms. For a long time he weighed instant joy against policy. Finally, as he was more Italian than Tuscan, and more boy than either, he decided to jump the danger. The vision of Bellaroba shy in the rose-garden, of himself crowning her soft hair, bending over her, kissing her upturned face; of the Countess behind one thicket looking for him, and the Count behind another looking for Bellaroba—it was too much to resist!

"Madama," he said, "it is hardly for me to advise in such delicate matters. I should not, by right, dare say what I am about to say upon your invitation. Yet if I were his nobility, Count Guarino Guarini, not the least of my pleasant moments would be that in which I could say, 'I have a noble lady to wife, for she honours me as I have honoured her.'"

That was a very dextrous remark, vastly pleasing to the Countess. She kissed the speaker then and there, wrote her letter hot-head, talked about it all that day, and worked herself into such a fever of curiosity that she cut short her villeggiatura by six weeks, so as the sooner to see the girl who could inspire her with such admirable ideas of her own magnanimity. She even grew quite enthusiastic upon her husband's account, almost sentimental about him. This much the wily Angioletto (who did not study character for nothing) had allowed for in his calculations.

It is by no means certain that the Countess was as wise as her guide. The facts which induced the letter were these. Guarini had chanced upon an early mass at San Cristoforo and Bellaroba kneeling at her prayers. She, all unconscious of any presence but her own and her Saviour's, was looking up to the Mother who had made Him so, dim-eyed, and smiling rather tenderly. Her lips framed petitions for the coming home of Angioletto. She had hooded her head as he commanded, and it became her as he had foreseen. With her added cares of wifely duty this gave a sober look to her untameable childish bloom; she was almost a business-like beauty now. To Guarino the pathetic appealed more nearly; to him she seemed a pretty nun, a wood-bird caged. He never took his eyes off her—she caught him in a soft mood and ravished him. A little saint in bud, he swore; a wholesome, domestic little household goddess, meek and very pure, who would carry home her beauties unaware and oil the tousled heads of half a dozen brothers and sisters. Homeliness is neither Italian word nor virtue; but just as it describes Bellaroba, so an inkling of its charm thrilled the young lord who saw her. Could one cage such a gossamer thing? Fate had done it, why not he? At least he could not lose sight of her. He tracked her to the house under the wall, saw the door scrupulously shut upon her, wandered up and down the street for half an hour, returned a laggard to his palace—and yet had her full in vision. She possessed him until mass-time following: the same things happened. Guarino was hit hard; he took certain steps and got information which tallied with his better instincts. It guided also his subsequent efforts, for obviously the more direct remedies would not meet his case. Therefore, he wrote to the Countess, as you have seen. Her reply delighted him, and the rest was very easy. Borso signed the order of appointment, boggling only at her name. "Buonaroba I know," said he. "What am I to think of Bellaroba, Guarino?"

"Your Grace shall be pleased to think that his daughter has chosen her for her own person," said the Count.

"Hum," said Borso, and signed the parchment.

Then came another scrawl for "my love Angilotto," in which the miraculous news was told.

"Olimpia took it very ill," she wrote, "but the Signor Capitano talked her happier—at least, he stayed a long time. I hope you will think it all for the best. I am very good, and kiss you many times, "Your BELAROBBA."

Olimpia had indeed been very cross, as Captain Mosca would have testified. She had not, at any rate, talked him any happier: that he would have upheld with an oath. The experienced man knew the whip of sleet on his bare skin; but this was worse than any winter campaign; it left him dumb and without the little ease which shivering gives you. It had not been a question so much of talking as of keeping his feet. Olimpia, when the news came, had raged like a shrieking wind about the narrow house. "My dearest life! Soul of my soul!" was all the Captain had to fend the blast. It was no time for endearments—Olimpia raved herself still. Tears, floods of them, followed, whereat the Captain melted also and wept. He did foolishly. Demoniac gusts of laughing caught and flung him to the rafters, chill rages froze him where he fell. He lost his little store of wit, sagged like a broken sunflower, and was finally pelted from the door by a storm of Venetian curses, in which all his ancestors, himself, and any descendants he might dare to have, were heavily involved. Bellaroba, trembling in her bed, heard him go with a sinking heart. "Olimpia will come and murder me now," she said to herself.

But Olimpia slept long where she fell, and next morning decided to garner her rage.



VI

ENDS AND MEANS

"Amor che a null' amato amar perdona."

Bellaroba, who pleased the Countess, for the same reasons, no doubt, did not please the Count. It is possible to be too demure, and very little good to have domestic charm if you shut the door upon the amateur. Lionella had never had so much of her lord's society as during the month that followed her return to Ferrara. She did not complain of this; on the contrary, the more the maid held off and the man pursued, the more Lionella was entertained. Angioletto, invited to share her sport, proved dull. She confessed to more than one of her women (including Bellaroba) that if she had not been very much in love with the poet she would have thought him a fool. You see that she made no secret of her weakness. The fact is, she did not consider it a weakness; whereby you have this remarkable position of affairs at the Schifanoia, that Bellaroba was invited to be a student of her husband's amours, and he of hers. Considering the state of their secret hearts this might have led to matter of tragic concern; if they had loved less it would have done so. As it was, they were quite indifferent. Their hours were a series of breathless escapades—romance at fever heat. Stolen meetings before dawn among the dewy rose-bushes, chance touchings, chance kisses, embraces half tasted, and looks often crossed—of such were their days at the Schifanoia. Meantime a coiled ladder watched out the sun from a myrtle thicket, of which and its works came their happy nights. Then, as she lay in his arms, the Maid of Honour vanished in the child who was so lovely because she so loved; she could prattle, in the soft Venetian brogue, of boundless faith in her little lord, of her simple admiration of him and all he did, of her wonder and delight to be loved. She could tell him of what she could do, and of how much she could never do, to please him and pay him honour. And Angioletto would nod gravely at each point that she made, and kiss her now and then very softly to show her that he was perfectly satisfied. So soon as the first swallow twittered in the eaves, or the first pale line of light trembled at the casement, he had to fly. But he waited in the rosery till she came tiptoe out; and then the day's alarms and the day's delight began. Eh! It was a royal month, a honeymoon indeed!

But it could not last—barely saw its round of eight and twenty days. Lionella was a lady born, as it were, in the purple. Command sat lightly on her; she had never been disobeyed. She now grew querulous, exacting, suspicious, moody, sometimes petulant, sometimes beseeching. It gave Angioletto the deuce's own time now and then; but he might yet have weathered the rocks—for his tact was only equalled by his good temper—if the Countess had not precipitated matters. There came a day, and an hour of a day, when she spoke to him. She had spoken before; her ambitions had always been verbal—but now they were literal, all the "t's" were crossed. That was a moment for Angioletto to take with quick breath.

He took it so. Instead of hinting at his duty, or hers, he blundered out the fact that he did not love her.

"Dog," cried the Countess, "do you dare to tell me that?"

"Madama, I do indeed," he answered sadly, for he saw his house about his ears.

Lionella checked herself; she bit her lip, put her hands ostentatiously behind her back.

"You had better leave the house, Master Angioletto," said she drily, "before I go further and see to it."

He bowed himself out. Then he sought his poor Bellaroba, found her in the garden, drew her aside without trouble of a pretext, and told her the whole story.

"My lovely dear," he said, "I am a broken man. There has been a terrible scene with Madama, in which she got so much the worst of it that I was very triumphantly ruined. You behold me decked with the ashes of my scorched prosperity. What is to be done with you? For I must go."

"Oh, Angioletto," cried Bellaroba, trembling and catching at his breast, "won't you—can't you—ruin me too? Then we shall be happy again."

He pressed her to his heart. "Dearest dear," he said, half laughing, half sobbing, "you are quite ruined enough. Stay as you are. I will see you every night What! By the Mass, are you not my wife?"

"Of course I am, Angioletto. But nobody thinks so—not even any priest."

"Eh!" he cried, "but that is all the better. Only you and I and Madonna the Virgin of the Greeks know it. She never blabs secrets, and you dare not, and I can't. So you see it is well arranged."

She loved him most of all in this gay humour, and provoked him to new flights.

"But, you wild boy, how can you see me when you are ruined?" she asked, all her roses in flower at the fun of the thing. "How can you be in the Schifanoia if you are thrust out of it?"

Angioletto, with a mysterious air, kissed her for answer. "Leave that to me, my dear," he said. "Never have another of the maids to sleep with you, and lock your chamber door. Now I must go, because I am kicked out. Good-bye, my bride; I shall see you long before another dawn."

She let him go at last, and turned to her duties with less sighing than you would have supposed, and no tears at all. Her belief in the wisdom, audacity, and decision of her Angioletto was absolute. She had never known him to fail. Yet if she chanced to think of the towering Count Guarini plying her with flowers and sweatmeats, she shivered to remember her citadel naked of all defences. This made her feel homesick for her lover's arms. Like a sensible girl, therefore, she thought of the Count as little as possible; still less of another sinister apparition, that of the obsequious Captain Mosca, craning his lean neck round the corners of her vision, grinning from ear to ear.

Free of the Schifanoia (whose dust he was yet careful to keep upon his shoes for the sake of her it harboured), Angioletto walked briskly down the street, shaping his course for the Borgo. He had been rounding a plan even while he was announcing to Bellaroba that he had it cut and dried; and now he was to execute it. True, it was a little extravagant, depended too much, perhaps, upon other people's estimations of him tallying with his own; but you will have found out by this time that the youth was a realist. Ideas stood for things with him; and, as he said, if he could not make them stand so to his auditory he was no poet. This was a heresy he could not allow even supposititiously. The idea was excellent; the thing, therefore, no less. Therefore he concluded that he should not fail of his plan.

Beyond the Porta Angeli, in Borso's day, was to be found a huddle of tenements—fungus-growth upon the city wall—single-storied, single-roomed affairs, mostly the lodging of artificers in the lesser crafts. Among them all there was but one of two floors, a substantial red-brick little house with a most grandiloquent chimney-stack. And very rightly it was so, for it belonged to the Court chimney-sweep.

On this eventful noon Sor Beppo, the sweep, was sitting on his doorstep in the sun, eating an onion, one of many which reposed in a vinegar bath on his knees. He was quite black, save where a three-days beard lent a gleam of snow to chaps and chin; being toothless, he was an indifferent performer upon the onion. But his hearing was as keen as his eyesight. He caught Angioletto's vivacious heeltaps upon the flags, and peered from burly brows at the smart little gentleman, cloaked, feathered, and gaudy, who looked as suitable to his dusty surroundings as a red poppy to a rubbish heap.

Angioletto, stopping before him, took off his scarlet cap with a flourish.

"Well, young stabbing blade," said Beppo, "and who may you be?"

"Sir," replied the youth, "I am a poet." Beppo rubbed his shooting chin with a noise like the scraping of nutmegs.

"Well," said he, "I'll not deny that it's a trade, and a lawful trade; but for my part I sweep noblemen's chimneys and am proud of it. Shake hands, poet."

They shook hands, with great cordiality on the poet's part.

"Sit down, poet," said Beppo.

Angioletto sat on the doorstep beside him without a word.

"Will you have an onion, my friend?" the old fellow went on to ask.

"Thank you, Sor Beppo, but I have already dined. Let me rather talk to you while you finish your meal."

"It is not so much a meal as a relish," said the sweep. "But talk away—we'll never quarrel over terms."

"I hope not," Angioletto took him up; "because I have done with poetising and have a mind to try your trade."

Beppo, his mouth full of onion, paused in his bite to gape at this dapper page, who, all scarlet and white as he was, talked after such a fashion.

"How'll that be now?" he said. "You've never come all this way to crack a joke?"

"Ah, never in the world, my friend," cried Angioletto. "I am in earnest."

"You may be as earnest as a friar in the pulpit, and yet pretty bad at chimney-work, young master. What do you know of it, pray?"

"Nothing at all," replied Angioletto, as if that helped him.

"Look at that now," cried the triumphant Sor Beppo.

"Pardon me, Master Beppo," said the youth, "you cannot look at it yet, but you very soon shall. Have you a chimney to hand?"

"Ah, I might have that," the old man agreed, with a chuckle which ended as a snort. "There might be a chimney in my house that's not been swept for thirty year, having little time and less inclination to sweep 'em for nothing but glory. But, happen there were such a piece of work, what then?"

Angioletto pointed into the house. "Is that the chimney, Beppo?"

Beppo nodded. "That might be the chimney in question, my gentleman."

With a "By your leave, Sor Beppo," Angioletto stepped delicately into the room. He threw down cloak and cap, unstrapped girdle and hanger, stripped off his doublet, and stood up in shirt and breeches. Beppo watched him, all agape, too breathless to chew. Before he could interfere—

"By the Saints, but he's in!" he cried with arms thrown up. "Eh, master, come you back, come you back!"

"What do you want?" a muffled voice came from the chimney. Beppo sawed the air.

"Don't you play the fool up there, my boy, don't you do it! That's as foul as the grave, that chimney is. I'll have ye on my soul as long as I live, and I can ill afford it, for I've a queasy conscience in my black shell." He seemed to be treading on pins.

He was answered, "We will talk of your conscience and its shell when I come back. Take off my shoes, will you?"

A neat leg was pushed into the fireplace; then another. Beppo did the office, meek as an acolyte. Then he sighed, for the legs drew up the chimney and vanished in dust.

"There goes a lad of spirit to his gloomy end," murmured brokenly the sweep, as he looked at the little red shoes in his hand. "I would not have had that come to pass for twenty gold ducats. But, Lord! who'd 'a thought it of a Court spark, that he should be as good as his word? Not I, used to Courts as a man may be." He fell to scratching his head.

"Hey, hey!" he cried, as there was a prodigious scuffling up the chimney. "Now he strangles, now he strangles!" A shower of soot came down. Beppo flacked about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an awed whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the chimney were still very lively. "Eh, there he is again," said the old sweep. "What now?" Down came a rat, squeaking for its life, then three in succession, very silent because their necks were wrung. "This is better than a cat any day of the seven," said Sor Beppo. "What a diamond of a poet! He should be crowned with laurel-twigs if I were Duke Borso in all his glory. Being but Beppo the sweep, he shall be free of my mystery the moment he's free of my chimney-stack."

He could await Angioletto's coming now with equal mind. The lad had approved himself. I leave you to judge of the welcome he got when, breathless, scratched, and sable as the night, he showed his white teeth at the door. Beppo, in fact, fell weeping on his neck. By this simple device Angioletto was enabled to keep his word, and Bellaroba to find him black but comely.



VII

THE CAPTAIN'S TREADINGS

While Angioletto and his Bellaroba dwelt in a paradise, none the less glorious for being as sooty as the darkness which veiled it, the estate of Captain Mosca, that hungry swordsman, was most unhappy. Divorced from bed and board, cast off by his mistress, and not yet adopted by his master, the poor man felt dimly about for supports, conscious that his treadings had well-nigh slipped. At such a time the gentle eyes of Bellaroba—nobody's enemy—courted him, like a beam of firelight on a rain-scoured street, with a smiling invitation to share the peace within doors. He hung uneasily about the gateways in these days, cold-elbowed by the lackeys, ignored by the higher sort, unseen by the quality; he burnished the lintels with his shoulder-blades, chewed many straws, counted the flagstones, knew the hours by the signals of his stomach. Then, if by hazard Bellaroba should come dancing by with a "Good morning, Signor Capitano," a "Come sta?" or, prettier still, a bright "Sta bene?" what wonder if the man of rage humbled himself before the little Maid of Honour? What wonder, again, if she, out of the overflowings of her happiness, should give him an alms?

No wonder at all, but pity there should be; for the Captain played an unworthy part. I suppose his standard was not very high. I know he was hungry; I know that nothing degrades a man so low as degradation—since what he believes himself, that he is; but I find it hard to excuse him for draining Bellaroba of her little secrets. Judas that he was, he took her sop, and then sold her for thirty pieces of silver.

The draining of a well so limpid was the easiest thing in the world. She was too absurdly happy, too triumphant altogether in the successful craft of her brilliant little lord, to be continent. She dealt in semi-transparent mystery with her manipulator from the moment he had won her compassion. Her secret was none from the first, or it was like the secret which a child will tell you, all the louder for being said in your ear.

"My dear little friend," said the smirking Captain, when he had it, "what you tell me there is as wine in my blood. I declare it sets me singing tunes."

"Ah, but he is wonderful, my Angioletto," said she, and her eyes grew larger for the thought of him.

"For a stripling of his inches he beats any cock that ever fought a main," Mosca declared; "blood of Blood, but he does! What and if he did square up to me—do I bear a grudge? Never, upon my body."

"You will not—you would not—ah, tell Olimpia of this, Signor Capitano?" she hazarded. The Captain stroked one eye with the back of his finger. He looked pityingly upon her with the other.

"Ah, my dear soul," he said, sighing, "could you think it of old Mosca?"

Bellaroba hastened to disclaim. "No, no, no, I did not think it, Signor Capitano. But for a minute I had a little fear. Olimpia never loved Angioletto at all, and I don't think she loves me very much—now."

"To be plain with you, my lamb," said the Mosca, "she has no such vasty love for me. I have not set foot within her door since a certain day you may remember."

The girl shivered. "If I remember it! Ah, Madonna delle Grazie, she had a devil that day!"

"She had seven, I'm sure of it," cried the Captain. "So I leave you to judge how much of your story she may worm out of me."

He so beamed upon her, kissed her hands with such a lofty stoop, that she felt ashamed of herself, and begged his pardon.

This brought the Captain to his knees. "By the God who made the Jews," he swore, "I leave not this raw flagstone till you have unsaid those words!"

In the end, after a prodigious fuss, he drifted away down the corridor and left her to go about her business.

But he drifted not very far. He felt himself full of affairs which were as meat and drink to his spirit starved by neglect. It was so great a thing to have a pretext for approaching Count Guarini. That young lord had a way like a keen-edged knife. You might weave a whole vestment about your errand, fold upon fold of ingenious surmise, argument pro, argument con; Guarino Guarini would dart eyes upon you—slash! he had rent your fabric and discovered you naked underneath, a liar ready for the whip. Nor, to do him justice, did he ever fail to apply it. Truth was, indeed, the only key to Guarino's chamber.

Truth, and timely truth, was what the Captain felt he had at last. With it he braved the supercilious doorkeeper; with it he forced the fellow to lift his intolerable eyelids.

"By the powers of darkness, my friend," he said, "it will be a bad day's work for you if you deny me this time." So he won his admission and faced his master.

"Now, Mosca, your lie," said the Count, with his cold-steel delivery. Mosca did not stumble.

"Master," he said, "I can do you service."

"Do it then," whipped in the Count.

"I can tell your Excellence why he succeeds no better with La Bellaroba."

"Ah!" The Count was suspicious, but interested.

"The little lady has a lover."

"Body of a dog!"

"Body of Angioletto, Excellence."

"Angioletto? That spaniel? How many more laps will he cradle in? Cut his tongue out, my good fellow, and then come to me again."

"Excellence, may I speak?"

"I suppose so. Speak."

The Captain waited no further invitation, but told the whole story from the beginning. Guarino thought upon it for a moment.

"He will come to-night?" he asked.

"Certain, Excellence."

"Then we have him. You have done well, Mosca—it was time, my friend, for you are an expensive hack to keep at grass. Now listen. Take Bellaroba away—command of the Contessa, of course. Take her to the little house in the Borgo. Make all fast, and return here in time for the steeple-jack. When you have him in the trap, run him through the body, raise the devil's uproar, and denounce him to the patrol. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly, Excellence."

"Take my purse from the table and off with you then."

Captain Mosca bowed to the ground and backed out.



VIII

FIRST MIDNIGHT CONVERSATION

The Borgo of Borso's day was, as you might say, a sucker of the city of the Po, a flowery crop of villas and gardens about the city's root. There was the discreet house which Captain Mosca had once chosen for his Olimpia; there also was that which Guarino Guarini maintained for his (or any) Bellaroba. It is probable that there were many such houses in the Borgo; it was a very pleasant place, heavy scented with lilac and hawthorn in the spring, drowsy all the summer through with rustling leaves and the murmur of innumerable bees. The place was quiet; there was no traffic, no hint of the city bustle; on the other hand there was the notoriety which must always attach to any act done where no others are doing. Time, day-time especially, hangs heavy in the Borgo. One machinates in the face of many green shutters, which are not necessarily dead because they are shut.

This reasoning does not attack the sagacity of Count Guarini, for the only circumstance which could give it force was entirely unknown to him. He did not know that the Borgo held Bellaroba's friend, Olimpia, or that it sheltered under the same roof Olimpia, the Captain's enemy. He knew nothing of Bellaroba's friends and cared nothing for the Captain's enemies. But, as a matter of history, the proceedings of Mosca upon that eventful day were of the greatest possible interest to Signorina Castaneve. Donna Matura, trust her, had not failed to report his first appearance, stork-like, in the Borgo. No subsequent voyage of his into those parts (and he made many) was lost upon Olimpia. Captain Mosca, honest man, made a preposterous accomplice. His rusty cloak, the white of his observant eye, the craning of his neck, the very angle of his sword—cocked up for frolic like a wren's tail—spoke the profuse conspirator. He spent money liberally, seemed to have plenty more, had his finger to his nose with every other word. He brought a troop of underlings; a bevy of young women under his orders turned the little shuttered house out of doors—at every window carpets, curtains, hangings of all sorts, fluttered as if for a triumphal procession. Flowers came in stacks: "H'm!" said Olimpia, "there's a woman in this." A couple of asses brought skins of wine. "That will be wash for the lean hog himself," she added. From that time forth she never left her shutter. To make herself the more sure she gave orders to Donna Matura to close all the shutters alike. Captain Mosca, on one of his returns to the Borgo, looked up at the blind green eyes of his former haven and, chuckling, rubbed his hands. This artless outlet to his feelings was interpreted for what it was worth behind the shutter.

By six of the evening Mosca, seeing Olimpia's house still keep a dead face, threw off the last remnant of his cares and bade himself be merry. "My handsome friend is either asleep or on a journey, it appears," said he to himself. "That, on the whole, is well. I cannot think she would be pleased at the advent of little Bellaroba riding pillion to me. Still less would the honour about to be paid the young lady afford her any gratification. Least of all would her observations on the subject tend to clear the air. No, no. Everything is for the best, it seems, and the world still a tolerable place. Now for my little wood-bird." He paid and dismissed his work-people, then rode off himself to fetch Bellaroba. And Olimpia, from her shutter, watched him go.

There was no trouble on the child's score. The Countess was away; a feigned message from her was enough. Had she been at home and in a good humour, she would have accorded a real one, no doubt; so the deceit was quite harmless. Bellaroba demurred a little that she could not in person warn Angioletto, but the Captain begged her to have no fears. Time pressed; it was evident the Countess's service was urgent. Yet the Captain swore by all that he held sacred—to be sure no great things, but Bellaroba could not know that—to deliver her message to the lad with his own hand. "For," said he, and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse and rode with her into the green-sheltered Borgo, just as it was settling into twilight. And Olimpia, from her shutter, saw them come.

I spare you the picture of her fury: it was not seemly, for all it was very white and still. The sight of a handsome girl shuddering in a cold stare under the grip of an evil spirit can never be pleasant; and where the experienced Donna Matura shrank from what she saw and heard, it becomes not me to tread. Donna Matura was of her country, that cheerful, laughing Midland of the Po, and neither felt the Venetian throb of pleasure nor conceived the excesses of Venetian pain. Extremes touch on the Lagoon. Donna Matura saw her gold-haired mistress white and drawn, saw her witless shaking, saw her tear and rend herself, heard her jerked words of loathing, blasphemy, and obscene defiance—and fairly fled the house. "For," as she said, "if words of man or woman could bring the rafters about our ears, or open a pit to send us lightly whither we all must go who have heard them, those words which Madam Olimpia spat about her must surely do it." So much she confessed to afterwards, but no more; for she stayed nothing more.

Olimpia may have leaned twisting against her wall for about an hour, mouthing insane babble from her blued lips. It was at least quite dark when she came to herself, lit the lamp, wiped the cold beads from her forehead, smoothed and bound her hair. She was not herself, nor looked to be so; she had a face completely colourless, lips like grey mould, and burning black eyes. But her hand was steady; she hardly winked; her breath, which came through her nose, was even, though it whistled rather sharply. Whatever she was about—and she seemed to be acting a part—she did with extraordinary care, down to the changing of her crimson dress for a dark green one. The former had been loose and clinging, made of velvet; the dark green was of cloth, fitted her close, and, as she ascertained by a few gestures, gave free play to her arms. She knocked off her heeled Venetian shoes, whose clatter was familiar to the house, and bound on flat-soled sandals instead. Over her head she had a black lace scarf, on her hands leather gauntlets. Lastly, she took from a press a long, double-edged knife, felt its temper, and stuck it inside her stocking, under the garter. She made a final hasty sweep of the room with her unquiet eyes as she went out of it.

The door of the house she knocked upon was opened by a page, who asked her business.

"Mosca, Captain Mosca, is my business," said she in a whisper.

"The Signor Capitano is occupied, Madonna," replied the boy.

"I know it, I know it," she answered. "But my business is the lady's business also. I must see them both—and at once. Let me pass."

The page vowed and swore by all the company of Heaven that those were her actual words. He was put to the torture and cried in the most heartrending manner; but he held to it, so long as he could hold to anything, that the visitor had said "her business was the other lady's business." What a further application of the question might have brought we cannot tell, since he fainted before it could be tried. "The boy Gasparo appeared to take no further interest in the elucidation of the truth," reported the judges, "and we recommend that he be chastised for contumacy." He was, at any rate, no witness of the scene which followed Olimpia's entry. There was that about her, a subdued haste, a deliberation, a kind of intensity got by rote, which fascinated the youngster and left him staring in the hall.

Olimpia walked across it alone, went straight to a door at the bottom on the right-hand side, turned the handle, and entered. There was a table spread with supper; there was Captain Mosca seated at it eating a peach from his wine-glass; there was Bellaroba, flushed and marred with tears, leaning against the further wall. She gave a little gasp of fear when she saw what the doorway framed; after that she followed Olimpia about the room with the same incurable fascination which the page-boy had felt. Olimpia shut the door as softly as she had opened it, and as softly shot the bolt.

Then it seemed that Mosca felt her presence, for he turned, saw, and jumped up with a cry mingled of fear and rage. It was found out afterwards that he was unarmed. This will explain his alarm. Disastrous honesty! his sword was upstairs in the bed.

There followed a most curious scene. The Captain stood up by the table and dogged Olimpia with his narrow eyes. When she advanced, he backed; when she stopped, he stopped. In this manner, eyeing each other without a blink, they made the round of the table. Bellaroba cowered by the wall; pursued and pursuer brushed against her in turn. She shivered and moaned a little at every touch; but they were too intent upon their game to know that she was there. In the second round, Mosca, who was again close to her, reached out his hand for a knife from the table. Quick as thought Olimpia was at him, reached across and drove her knife through his hand into the wood. Mosca howled, but his fear by now was such that he must be free to run as before, though he maimed himself. He tore his hand away and left Olimpia holding a fixed blade. She wrenched it out and made a pounce. The miserable Mosca turned to Bellaroba. He laid what he had left of hands upon her shoulders; he pulled her from the wall; he set her before him and hugged her close to his breast. Thus he made her back a shield against the long knife, and with her he fenced and held off his enemy for minutes more. Olimpia, horribly busy, scorched the girl's neck with her breath—but she never made to hurt her.

Then came the end. Olimpia made a lunge at his right side. The Captain hugged Bellaroba there. At the next moment the long knife was below his left arm, buried to the hilt, and defender and defence rolled heavily to the floor. Olimpia walked to the table and helped herself to the Captain's Val Pulicella.

The watch (whom the page had roused after Mosca's first cry) broke in by the window, disentangled Bellaroba, bound the hands of both prisoners behind their backs, and marched them and the boy off to the Castle. Count Guarini, coming in an hour later, found his murdered lieutenant for his only guest.



IX

SECOND MIDNIGHT CONVERSATION

In that same night of mine and countermine Duke Borso, who had broken up the circle early by reason of his toothache, went wandering the long corridors of the Schifanoia under the sting of his scourge. He found his spacious pleasure-house valueless against that particular annoy, but (as always) he was the more whimsical for his affliction. Nothing works your genuine man of humour so nearly as himself. The sight of his own image, puffed and blinking in nightcap, bed-gown, and slippers, when he came upon it in a long mirror, set him chuckling. He paused before the absurd epitome to apostrophise, wagged a finger at it, and got wag for wag. "We might be two drolls in a pantomime!" said he to his double. "Your arm, gossip:" he crooked an elbow. "It seems," he continued, "that we are both sufferers, my poor fellow! Magnificence goes drooping; a swollen estate does not forbid a jowl of the same proportions; and give me leave to tell you, brother, that we have each of us been better dressed in our day. Fie, what a pair of quills below your gown; and what a sorry diadem to stand for two duchies and a marquisate of uncertain age! Duke and my brother, if we were to be spied upon by any of our Court just now, what sort of a reverence should we get, think you? Eh, you rogue, as much as we deserve! I will tell you, good Borso, my own poor opinion of these things. A Duke who cannot be dukely in his shirt, a Pope who is but an afflicted biped between the blankets, is no Duke at all, is a Pope by toleration. There should be some such test at every crowning of our sort. Souse a Bishop in his bath before you let him warm his chair; cry 'Fire!' on the stairs of the Vatican and watch your Pontiff-elect scudding over the Piazza in his sark, before the Conclave sing Veni Creator. Judge of your Emperor with a swollen nose, blacken your Dukes in the eye: if they remain Dukes and Emperors you may safely obey them. They are men, Borso, they are men! Yes, you spindle-shanked rascal, you may well wince. Do you ponder how you would stand assay? So do I ponder it, brother, and doubt horribly." He clapped his hand to his face. "Steady now, steady, here comes another bout. Ah, Madonna of the Este—but this is a shrewd twinge! Fare you well, brother Fat-chops. I must walk this devil out of me." He waved a hand to his brother of the looking-glass and slippered away, groaning and sniggering to himself. So he walked and was philosophical till two of the morning. At that hour he was ready to drop with fatigue; but his pains had left him. "I will sleep, by the grace of Heaven," he said. He plumped down in the embrasure of a door, prepared to follow his humour: the door yielded and he with it. "Who am I to outrage a lady's chamber?" he muttered, half asleep. "To be sure she seems to invite me. Let us look at this complaisant sleeper." He went into the room. A glimmering lamp burned before a shrine, enough to show him to a decent four-post bed, empty. "By the great god Pan!" cried Borso, "my luck holds. Courage! I am not a Duke for nothing, then." He shut and bolted the door, slipped into the bed and was asleep in three minutes. It was twenty minutes after two.

At the stroke of three, with a scarcely perceptible rustling, Angioletto slid down the chimney and stepped into the room. He carefully brushed himself with a brush which hung by the hearth. The chimney was by now thoroughly clean, however. He next washed his face and hands, undressed, and crept softly to the bed. Very quietly he inserted himself between the sheets, very softly kissed the shoulder of the sleeper; very soon he was as sound as his bedfellow.

The Duke awoke, as his habit was, with the first light, and saw the curly head on the pillow beside him. He whistled softly to himself.

"Now, by the tears of the Virgin," said he, "how did this lady come in? It would be as well to know it, since plainly I must go out." He sat up in bed, clasped his knees, and frowned a little. "It is clean against the traditions of my house," he ruminated, "but I think I will go. And the sooner the better."

Suiting action to word, he had one foot on the floor when Angioletto, with a long sigh, opened his eyes, turned over, and saw him.

"The devil!" said Duke Borso.

"Madonna," was his second venture, when he had recognised the impropriety of his first, "Madonna, I am this moment about to retire—"

Angioletto, whose eyes had attained their fullest stretch of wonder, opened his mouth—but not to speak. He gaped at the lord of the land.

"Madonna—" Borso began once more. Then the other found his voice—

"Alas, my lord Duke, it is Madonna I thought to find. Where is my wife?"

That was Borso's cue to stare.

"Your wife?" he cried, "your wife! Heaven above us, man, why the devil should your wife be in my bed?"

Angioletto, with the deepest respect always, suffered a smile to play askew about his lips.

"Alas, Magnificence," he said, "if I dared I would ask him, why the devil he should be in my wife's bed?"

It was the youth's way to preface his audacities by the assurance that he dared not utter them. But the retort pleased Borso. His eyes began to twinkle.

"Look ye, young gentleman," said he, suppressing his wish to chuckle, "if this is your wife's bed, I am sorry for you, for I give you my word she has not been in it to-night. But I confess I should like to know why your wife has a bed in my house."

Angioletto nodded gravely.

"I should be the last person to deny your Grace's right to all information. Bellaroba is my dear wife's name, her country is Venice, her duties are to be about Madama Lionella's person. My own duties are to be about hers, so far as I may."

"Fair and softly, my friend," said the Duke, "not so fast, if you please. Do you know that Maids of Honour may not marry without permission, and, in any case, may not be visited by their husbands during their service?"

"Magnificence, she was not married without permission. Or rather, she was married before permission was needed."

"Eh, how may that be now?" said Borso, tucking in his chin. "Did she come here as Signora Qualcosa?"

"She came here as Bellaroba, Magnificence. No one knows of our marriage but your Grace and the Holy Virgin."

"Then you are not married, but should be. That is your meaning—eh?"

"Ah, by Heaven, Magnificence," cried Angioletto, "we are the most married couple in the world!"

"H'm," was all Borso had to say to that. "And who made her of Madama's Court?"

"It was your Grace."

"Oh, of course, of course, man! But why the deuce did I do it?"

"It was at the request of Count Guarino Guarini, Magnificence?"

"Eh, eh! now I recollect. Ah, to be sure! That must be a very agreeable reflection for you at this moment, my friend," he said, with a sly look.

Angioletto took the equivoque with dignity, "I have perfect confidence in my wife, my lord Duke."

Borso shrugged. "Well, it is your affair—not mine," he said. Then he changed his tone. "I think, however, we will come back to what is my affair as well as yours. Be so good as to tell me how you came here."

"I came down the chimney," said Angioletto calmly. "I am by calling a chimney-sweep."

"Upon my word," Borso said, "this is a fine story I am piecing together! How long have you been of that trade, pray?"

Angioletto received this shot with firmness, even dignity. "I was formerly a poet attached to the Court, Magnificence. But when Madama turned me away it became necessary that I should see my young wife; so I became a chimney-sweep for the purpose."

The Duke's mouth twitched too much for his own dignity. He pulled the bedclothes up to his nose, therefore, before he asked—

"Why did Madama turn you away, sir?"

Angioletto, for the first time, was confused. He hung his head.

"I hope your Grace will not insist upon an answer," he replied in a troubled voice.

Borso looked keenly at him for a time. "No, I think I will not," said he. "Are you the lad who sang me the Caccia col falcone?"

"The same, my lord Duke."

"I thought so. Now, sir, to come back to this performance of yours, which I suppose is not the first by any means—eh?"

"It appears to be the last, my lord," said Angioletto ruefully.

"I think it is the last," replied the Duke; "for I hope you understand that I can have you clapped into gaol for it."

"Pardon, Magnificence—he can do more. He can have me hanged for it."

"I don't agree with you," said Borso. "If my name were Ferdinand of Arragon, or Sforza, or della Rovere, yes; but being Borso d'Este, no."

"Your Grace puts me to shame," said Angioletto, with feeling. "I am to take it then—"

"You shall take it as you please, my friend," Borso rejoined, with his chin once more upon his clasped knees. "For my part I propose to take you and keep you under lock and key for a season—as at present advised."

Angioletto bowed, as well as one may who is sitting up in a very soft bed. His voice was quite meek.

"I shall in all duty obey your Grace's directions, and will leave behind me but one small request, which I am persuaded Borso d'Este will not refuse his prisoner."

"And what is that, my good friend?"

"It is the care for the person and honour of my wife, my lord Duke," answered Angioletto.

This set Borso rubbing his nose. He thought before he spoke again.

"As for your wife's person, my man," said he, "it will be as safe in my dominions as all persons, whatever their ages or conditions. Her honour is another affair. That is neither for me nor my laws, but for herself. And perhaps you will let me add that if to-night is a sample of her course of living, you are putting upon me a rather onerous charge."

"My Lord, my Lord," cried Angioletto here, "I will answer for my wife's honour with my last drop of blood. It is her person I cannot answer for if I am in prison."

"I have told you that I will answer for her person, master poet. I would much rather leave her honour to you and your drops of blood. So you may go to the Castle with a clear mind. To the Castle, moreover, you shall undoubtedly go, if it is only to teach you that the possession of a wife is no passport to other men's chimneys. First, however, I will ask you to do me a small service, which is to go to my bedchamber and send me my gentlemen, my dresser, and my clothes. I am, you perceive, entirely at your mercy. You will follow these persons back to me here, and will then give yourself up as I shall direct."

Angioletto, out of bed by this time, knelt to the Duke's hand.

"I am your Grace's servant," said he. He hastily dressed himself and went about the business he was bidden on.

"Madam the Virgin," said Borso, with a half-laugh, "that is a fine young man! If he had not made so free with my chimneys I would advance him. Advanced he shall be!" he cried out after a while. "Zounds! has not Guarino made free with his wife? Eh, but I fear it." He shook his nightcap at the thought. "A couple of days' reflection in a half light will do the lad no harm. He'll dream of his wife, or compose me some songs. Bellaroba, he called her. I remember the jade—a demure, rosy-cheeked little cat, for ever twiddling her fingers or her apron-ends. Those sleek ones are the worst. Poor boy! I'll advance him. He shall be librarian, go secretary to Rome or Florence. I'll have him about my own person. By the Sons of Heaven, but he's as good as gold! Ah, I hear him."