CHAPTER VMesser Lanti and his party entered Milan, in a very subdued mood, by the Gate of Saint Mark. It had been with an emotion beyond words that Bembo had found himself approaching the walls of this fair city of his dreams. The prosperous contado, watered in every direction by broad dykes; the clustering vines and saintly-hued olive gardens; the busy peasantry; the richness of the very wayside shrines, had all appeared to speak a content and holiness with which the perverse passions of men were at such bitter variance. The discrepancy confounded, as it was presently upon a fuller experience to inspire, him. Here in one land, incessantly jostling and reacting on one another, were a devotional and a sensuous fervour, both exhibiting a lust of beauty at fever-heat; were a gross superstition and an excellent reason; were a powerful priestcraft and a jeering scepticism—all drawing from the forehead of a Papacy, which, latterly pledged to the most unscrupulous temporal self-aggrandisement, was reverenced for the vicarship of a poor and celibate Christ. Issuing, equipped with an artless conventual purpose, from the cool groves of his cloister, he found a land dyed in blood and the blue of heaven, festering under God's sun, and rejoicing in the colour schemes of its sores. On what principle could he study to sweeten this paradox of a constitution, where health was enamoured of disease? 'Deus meus, in te confido,' he prayed, with hands clasped fervently upon his breast; 'Non erubescam, neque irrideant me inimici mei! O Lord, give me the vision to find and show to others a path through this beautiful wilderness!'As the long walls of the town, broken at intervals into turrets, broadened before him, violet against a deep, cloudless sky, his ecstasy but increased—he held out his arms.'O thou,' he murmured, 'that I have hungered for, looking down on thee from the mountain of myrrh! Until the day break and the shadows flee away!'A little later, in a deep angle of the enceinte, they came upon a gruesome sight. This was no less than the Montmartre of Milan—a great stone gallows with dangling chains, and tenanted—faugh! A cloud of winged creatures rose as they approached, and scattered, dropping fragments. It was the common repast, stuff of rogues and pilferers—nothing especial. The ground was trodden underneath, and Bembo shrieked to see two white, stiff feet sticking from it. Lanti followed the direction of his hand, and exclaimed with a moody shrug:—'An assassin, Saint—nothing more. We plant them like that, head down.''Alive?''O, of course!'Bembo cried out: 'These are not sons of God, but of Belial!' and passed on, with his head drooping. Carlo turned to Beatrice, where she rode behind, and, without a word, pointed significantly to the horrible vision. She laughed, and went by unmoved.In a little after they had all entered by the gate, and the city was before them. Bembo, kindled against his will, rose in his saddle and uttered an exclamation of delight. Before his eyes was spread a white town with blue water and upstanding cypresses—wedges of midnight in midday. There were terraces and broad flagged walks, and palaces and spacious loggias—fair glooms of marble shaken in the spray of fountains. From its cold, shadowless bridges to the heaped drift of the duomo in its midst, there seemed no slur, but those dark cypresses, on all its candid purity. It looked like a city flushed under a veil of hoar frost, the glare of its streets and markets and gardens subdued to one softest harmony of opal.Yet in quick contrast with this chill, sweet austerity, glowed the burning life of it. In the distance, like travelling sparks in wood ashes; nearer, flashing from roof or balcony in harlequin spots of light; nearest of all, a very baggage-rout of figures, fantastic, chameleonic, an endless mutation and interflowing of blues, and crimsons, and purples—tirelessly that life circulated, the hot arterial blood which gave their tender hue to those encompassing veins of marble.It was on this drift of souls going by him, gay and light, it seemed, as blown petals, that Bernardo gazed with the most loving fondness. He pictured them all, eager, passionate, ardent, moving about the business of the Nature-God, propagating His Gospel of sweetness, adapting to imperishable works the endlessly varying arabesques of woods, and starry meadows, and running clouds and waters—epitomising His System. He admired these works, their beauty, their stability, their triumphant achievement; though, in truth, his soul of souls could conceive no achievement for man so ideal as a world of glorious gardens and little abodes. But the sun was once more in his heart, and heaven in his eyes.The swallows stooped in the streets to welcome him: 'Hail, little priest of the cloistered hills!' The scent of flowers offered itself the incense to his ritual; the fountains leapt more merrily for his coming. 'Love! love!' sang the birds under the great eaves; 'He will woo this cruel world to harmlessness. Where men shall lead with charity, all animals shall follow. The good fruits ripen to be eaten; it is their love, their lust to be consumed in joy. What lamb ever gave its throat to the knife? The violet flowers the thicker the more its blossoms are ravished. What new limb ever budded on a maimed beast?''Ah! the secret,' sang Bembo's soul—'the secret, or the secret grievance, of the cosmos will yield itself only to love. Useless to try to wrench forth its confession by torture. Let retaliation spell love, for once and for ever, and to the infinite sorrows of life will appear at last their returned Redeemer.'His heart was full as they rode by the narrow streets. His eyes and ears were tranced with colour, the murmur of happy voices, the clash of melodious bells. He could not think of that late vision of horror but as a dream. These blithe souls, in all their moods and worships such true apostles of his gay, sweet God! They could not love or practise harshness but as a deterrent from things unnameable. The very absence of sightseers from that pit of scowling death proved it.And then, in a moment, they had debouched upon an open place overlooked by a massive fortress, and in its midst, the cynosure of hundreds of gloating eyes, was a human thing under the flail—a voice moaning from the midst of a red jelly.His heart sunk under a very avalanche. He uttered a cry so loud as to attract the attention of the spectators nearest.'Who is it? What hath he done?' he roared of one. 'Trampled on the Host? Defiled a virgin of the mother? Murdered a priest?'The face puckered and grinned.'Worse, Messer Cavalier. He once whipped the Duke when his tutor.'Bembo's whole little body braced itself to the spring.'Tutor!' he cried: 'is that, then, Cola Montano?'The gross eye winked—'What is left of it.'He was answered with a leap and rush. The mob at that point staggered, and bellowed, and fell away from the hoofs of a furious assailant. Carlo, pre-admonished, was already on the boy's flank. 'Stop, little lunatic!' he shouted, sweating and spurring to intervene. He had no concern for the feet he trampled or the ribs he bruised. He stooped and snatched at the struggling horse's bridle. 'It is the Duke's vengeance!' he panted. 'See him there above! Art mad?'A face, flushed as the face of Him who scourged the hucksters from the temple, was turned upon him.'Art thou? Strike for retaliation by love, or get behind!''Know'st nothing of his deserts,' cried Carlo. 'Be advised!''By love,' cried the boy. 'He is worthy of it—a good man—I carry a letter to him from my father. Fall back, I say.'He drove in his heels, and the horse plunged and started, tearing the rein from Lanti's grasp. It was true that Bembo bore this letter, among others, in his pouch. The Abbot of San Zeno was so long out of the world as to have miscalculated the durations of court favour. Cola had been an influence inhistime.'Devil take him!' growled Carlo; but he followed, scowling and slashing, in his wake. The mob, authorised of its worst humour, took his truculence ill. That reduced him to a very devilish sobriety. He began to strike with an eye to details, 'blazing' his passage through the throng. The method justified itself in the opening out of a human lane, at the end of which he saw Bembo spring upon the stage.The executioner was cutting deliberately, monotonously on, and as monotonously the voice went moaning. Messer Jacopo, standing at iron ease beside, took no thought, it seemed, of anything—least of all of interference with the Duke's will. It must have been, therefore, no less than an amazing shock to that functionary to find himself all in an instant stung and staggered by a bolt from the blue. He may have been, like some phlegmatic serpent, conscious of a hornet winging his way; but that the insect should have had it in its mind to pounce onhim!He found himself and his voice in one metallic clang:—'Seize him, men!'Carlo panted up, and Jacopo recognised him on the moment.'Messer Lanti! Death of the Cross! Is this the Duke's order?''Christ's, old fool!' gasped the cavalier. 'Touch him, I say, and die. I neither know nor care.'His great chest was heaving; he whipped out his sword, and stood glaring and at bay. Bembo had thrown himself between the upraised thong and its quivering victim. He, too, faced the stricken mob.'Christ is coming! Christ is coming!' he shrieked. 'Prepare ye all to answer to Him for this!'A dead silence fell. Some turned their faces in terror. Here and there a woman cried out. In the midst, Messer Jacopo raised his eyes to the battlements, and saw a white hand lifted against the blue. He shrugged round grumpily on his fellows.'Unbind him,' he said; and the whip was lowered.The poor body sunk beside the post. Bembo knelt, with a sob of pity, to whisper to it—'Courage, sad heart! He comes indeed.'The livid and suffering face was twisted to view its deliverer.'Escape, then,' the blue lips muttered, 'while there is time.'Bembo cried out: 'O, thou mistakest who I mean!'The face dropped again.'Never. Christ or Galeazzo—it is all one.'A hand was laid on the boy's shoulder. He looked up to find himself captive to one of the Duke's guard. A grim little troop, steel-bonneted and armed with halberts, surrounded the stage. Messer Lanti, dismounted, had already committed himself to the inevitable. He addressed himself, with a laugh, to his friend:—'Very well acquitted, little Saint,' said he—'of all but the reckoning.'Bembo lingered a moment, pointing down to the bleeding and shattered body."'And there passed by a certain priest,"' he cried, '"and likewise a Levite; but a Samaritan had compassion on him,"' and he bowed his head, and went down with the soldiers.Now, because of his beauty, or of the fear or of the pity he had wrought in some of his hearers, for whatever reason a woman or two of the people was emboldened to come and ask the healing of that wounded thing; and they took it away, undeterred of the executioners, and carried it to their quarters. And in the meanwhile, Bembo and his comrade were brought before the Duke.Galeazzo had descended from the battlements, and sat in a little room of the gatehouse, with only a few, including his wife and child, to attend him. And his brow was wrinkled, and the lust of fury, beyond dissembling, in his veins. He took no notice of Lanti—though generally well enough disposed to the bully—but glared, even with some amazement in his rage, on the boy.'Who art thou?' he thundered at length.'Bernardo Bembo.'The clear voice was like the call of a bird's through tempest.'Whence comest thou?''From San Zeno in the hills.''What seek'st thou here?''Thy cure.'The Duke started, and seemed actually to crouch for a moment. Then, while all held their breath in fear, of a sudden he fell back, and gripped a hand to his heart, and muttered, staring: 'The face!'He closed his eyes, and passed a tremulous hand across his brow before he looked again; and lo! when he did so, the madness was past.'Child,' he said hoarsely, almost whispered, 'what said'st thou? Come nearer: let me look at thee.'He rose himself, with the word, stiffly, like an old man, and stood before the boy, and gazing hungrily for a little into the solemn eyes, dropped his own as if abashed—half-blinded. In the background, Bona, his wife, and the child Catherine clung together in a silence of fear and wonder.'Ah, I am haunted!' shuddered the tyrant. 'Who told thee that? It is a face, child, a face—there—in the dead watches of the night—behind me—and by day, always the same, a damned clinging bur on my soul—not to be shaken off—always behind me!'He gave a little jerk and motion of repugnance, as if he were trying to throw something off. Carlo struck in: 'Lord, let him sing to thee! I say no more.'The deep, gloomy eyes of the Duke were lifted one instant to the strange seraph-gaze fixed silently upon him; then, making an acquiescent motion with his hand, he turned, and sat himself down again as if exhausted, and hid his brow under his palm.Now the boy, never looking away, slung forward his lute, and like one that charms a serpent, began softly to finger the strings. And Galeazzo's head, in very truth like an adder's, swung to the rhythm; and as the chords rose piercing, he clutched his brow, and as they melted and sobbed away, so did he sink and moan. And then, suddenly, into that wild symphony drew the voice, as a spray of sweetbriar is drawn into a wheel; and all around caught their breath to listen:—'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow.They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips,He to protect, she to trust—always together for ever and ever.A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed,Probing the earth with its keen tongue.How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing!Yet adored her little love to see him dareThat tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath.And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed,And drove the roaring terror from the woods.She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength.Then shone out the rainbow,And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot."Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph,"And I'll fetch it ye."But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too!We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!"But he was already on his way.And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before,And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake:"O leave me not behind!"Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage,the unattainable,The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession.And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain andthe whirl of dead leaves:"Leave me not behind!"But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain,And often he staggered in the slough,Or fell and cut himself on rocks.And so, pushing on half-blindly,Knew not at last from the dead rainbow theignis fatuus,The false witch-light that danced upon his path,Leading him to destruction. Until, lo!With a flash and laugh it was not,And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness—Night in the infernal swamps—Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heartThe weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!"Then at that, like one amazed, he turned,And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence,Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!"And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset aheart-broken sigh.'He ended to a deep silence, and, while all stood stricken between tears and expectancy, moved to within a pace of the Duke.'O prince!' he cried, 'haunted of that Innocence! Turn back, turn back, and find in thy lost playmate's face the ghost that now eludes thee!'Carlo gave a little gasp, and his hand shivered down to his sword-hilt. He must die for his Saint, if provoked to that martyrdom; but he would take a desperate pledge or two of the sacrifice with him. One of the women, the younger, watching him, knew what was in his mind, and breathed a little scornfully. The other's eyes were set in a sort of rapture upon the singer's face. A minute may have passed, holding them all thus suspended, when suddenly Galeazzo rose, and, throwing himself at Bembo's feet, broke into a passion of sobs and moans.'Margherita, my little playmate, that liest under the daisies. O, I will be good, sweet—I will be good again for thy sake.'CHAPTER VIMany a head in the palace, though accustomed witness of strange things, tossed on its pillow that night in sleepless review of a scene which had been as amazing in its singularity as it was potential in its promise. What were to be the first-fruits of that cataclysmic revulsion of feeling in a nature so habitually frozen from all tenderness? If no more than a shy snowdrop or two of reason, mercy, justice, pushing their way up through a savage soil, the result would be marvel enough. Yet there seemed somehow in the atmosphere an earnest of that and better. The hearts of all trod on tiptoe, fearful of waking their souls to disenchantment—agitated, exultant; wooing them to convalescence from an ancient sickness. The spring of a joyous hope was rising voiceless somewhere in the thick of those drear corridors. The f[oe]tid air, wafted through a healing spray, came charged with an unwonted sweetness. Whence had he risen, the lovely singing-boy, spirit of change, harbinger of a new humanity? Whither had he gone? To the Duke's quarters—that was all they knew. They had seen him carried off, persuaded, fondled, revered by that very despot whom he had dared divinely to rebuke, and the doors had clanged and the dream passed. To what phase of its development, confirming or disillusioning, would they reopen? The answer to them was at least a respite; and that was an answer sufficient and satisfying to lives that obtained on a succession of respites. Alas! as there is no logic in tyranny, so can there be none in those who endure it.The earliest ratification of the promise was to witness in the figure of the Duke coming radiant from his rooms in company with the stranger himself, his left arm fondly passed about the boy's neck, his eyes full of admiration and flattery. He felt no more discomfort, it appeared, than had Madam Beatrice on a certain occasion, in the thought of his late self-exposure before his creatures. Such shamelessness is the final condition of autocracy. He had slept well, untormented of his vision. As is the case with neurotics, a confident diagnosis of his disease had proved the shortest means to its cure. Clever the doctor, too, who could make such a patient's treatment jump with his caprices; and with an inspired intuition Bernardo had so manoeuvred to reconcile the two. A whim much indulged may become a habit, and he was determined to encourage to the top of its bent this whim of reformation in the Duke. No ungrateful physicking of a soured bile for him; no uncomfortable philosophy of organic atoms recombined. He just restored to him that long-lost toy of innocence, trusting that the imagination of the man would find ever novel resources for play in that of which the invention of the child had soon tired. So for the present, and until virtue in his patient should have become a second nature, was he resolved wisely to eschew all reference to the intermediate state, and only by example and analogy to win him to consciousness and repentance of the enormities by which it had been stained. A very profound little missionary, to be sure.The Duke, leaning on his arm as he strolled, had a smile and a word for many. The only visible token of his familiar self which he revealed was the arbitrariness with which he exacted from all a fitting deference towards his protégé. This, however, none, not the greatest, was inclined to withhold, especially on such a morning. Soft-footed cardinals, princes of the blood, nobles and jingling captains, vied with one another in obsequious attentions to our little neophyte of love. The reasons, apart from superstitious reverence, were plentiful: his sweetness, his beauty, his gifts of song—all warm recommendations to a sensuous sociality; the whispered romance of his origin, no less a patent in its eyes because it turned on a title doubly bastard; finally, and most cogently, no doubt, his political potentialities as a favouritein posse.This last reason above any other may have accounted for the extraordinary complaisance shown him by Messer Ludovico, the Duke's third younger brother, at present at court, who was otherwise of a rather inward and withdrawing nature. He, this brother, had come from Pavia, riding the final stage that morning, and though he had only gathered by report the story of the last twelve hours, thought it worth his while to go and ingratiate himself with the stranger. He found him in the great hall of the castello, awaiting the trial of certain causes, which, as coming immediately under the ducal jurisdiction, it was Galeazzo's sport often to preside over in person. Here he saw the boy, standing at his brother's shoulder by the judgment-seat—the comeliest figure, between Cupid and angel, he had ever beheld; frank, sweet, child-eyed—in every feature and quality, it would seem, the antithesis of himself. Messer Ludovico came up arm in arm, very condescendingly, with his excellency the Ser Simonetta, Secretary of State, a gentleman whom he was always at pains to flatter, since he intended by and by to destroy him. Not that he had any personal spite against this minister, however much he might suspect him of misrepresenting his motives and character to the Duchess Bona, his sister-in-law, to whom he, Ludovico, was in reality, he assured himself, quite attached. His policy, on the contrary, was always a passionless one; and the point here was simply that the man, in his humble opinion, affected too much reason and temperance for a despotic government.As he approached the tribune he uncapped, a thought on the near side of self-abasement, to his brother, whose cavalier acknowledgment of the salute halted him, however, affable and smiling, on the lowest step of the dais. He was studious, while there, to inform with the right touch of pleasant condescension (at least while Galeazzo's regard was fixed on him) his attitude towards Simonetta, lest the ever-suspicious mind of the tyrant should discover in it some sign of a corruptive intimacy. With heirs-possibly-presumptive in Milan, sufficient for the day's life must be the sleepless diplomacy thereof; and better than any man Ludovico knew on what small juggleries of the moment the continuance of his depended. His complexion being of a swarthiness to have earned him the surname of The Moor, he had acquired a habit of drooping his lids in company, lest the contrastive effect of white eyeballs moving in a dark, motionless face should betray him to the subjects of those covert side-long glances by which he was wont to observe unobserved. Even to his shoulders, which were slightly rounded by nature, he managed, when in his brother's presence, to give the suggestion of a self-deprecatory hump, as though the slight burden of State which they already endured were too much for them. His voice was low-toned; his expression generally of a soft and rather apologetic benignity. His manner towards all was calculated on a graduated scale of propitiation. Paying every disputant the compliment of deferring outwardly to his opinions, he would not whip so little as a swineherd without apologising for the inconvenience to which he was putting him. His dress was rich, but while always conceived on the subdominant note, so to speak, as implying the higher ducal standard, was in excellent taste, a quality which he could afford to indulge with impunity, since it excited no suspicion but of his simplicity in Galeazzo's crude mind. In point of fact Messer Ludovico was a born connoisseur, and, equally in his choice of men, methods, and tools, a first exemplar of the faculty of selection.Presently, seeing the Duke's gaze withdrawn from him, he spoke to Messer Simonetta more intimately, but still out of the twisted corner of his mouth, while his eyes remained slewed under their lids towards the throne:—'Indeed, my lord, indeed yes; 'tis a veritable Castalidis, fresh from Parnassus and the spring. Tell me, now—'tis no uncommon choice of my brother to favour a fair boy—what differentiates this case from many?'The secretary, long caged in office, and worn and toothless from friction on its bars, had yet his ideals of Government, personal as well as political.'Your Highness,' said he, in his hoarse, thin voice, 'what differentiates sacramental wine from Malvasia?''Why,' answered Ludovico, 'perhaps a degree or two of headiness.''Nay,' said the secretary, 'is it not rather a degree or two of holiness?''Ebbene!' said the other, 'I stand excellently corrected. (Your servant, Messer Tassino,' he said, in parenthesis, to a pert and confident young exquisite, who held himself arrogantly forward of the group of spectators. The jay responded to the attention with a condescending nod. Ludovico readdressed himself to the secretary.) 'How neatly you put things! It is a degree or two, as you say—between the intoxication of the spirit and the intoxication of the senses. And is this pretty stranger sacramental wine, and hath Heaven vouchsafed us the Grael without the Quest? It is a sign of its high favour, Messer Slmonetta, of which I hope and trust we shall prove ourselves worthy.''And I hope so, Highness,' said the grave secretary.'Hush!' whispered Ludovico. 'The court opens.'There was a little stir and buzz among the spectators who, thronging the hall, left a semi-circle of clear space about the dais; and into this, at the moment, a fellow in a ragged gabardine was haled by a guard of city officers. The Duke, seated above, stroked his chin with a glance at the prisoner of sinister relish, which, on the thought, he smoothed, with a little apologetic cough, into an expression of mild benignancy. Messer Lanti, planted near at hand amid a very parterre of nobles, envoys, ecclesiastics, bedizenedchères amiesand great officers of the court who supported their lord on the dais, sniggered under his breath till his huge shoulders shook.The Jew was charged with a very heinous offence—sweating coins, no less. He was voluble and nasal over his innocence, until one of the officers flicked him bloodily on the mouth with his mailed hand.'Nay,' said Bembo, shrinking; 'that is to give the poor man a dumb advocate, methinks.'The Duke applauded—eliciting some louder applause from Ludovico—and forbade the fellow sternly to strike again without orders. A sudden sigh and movement seemed to ripple the congregated faces and to subside. The prisoner, however, was convicted, on sound enough evidence, and stood sullen and desperate to hear his sentence. Galeazzo eyed him covetously a moment; then turning to a clerk of the court who knelt beside him with his tablets ready, bade that obsequious functionary proclaim the penalty which by statute obtained against all coiners or defacers of the ducal image. It was bad enough—breaking on the wheel—to pass without deadlier revision; yet to such, and to the high will or caprice of his lord, Master Scrivener humbly submitted it.Then, to the dumfoundering of all, did his Magnificence appeal, with a smile, to the little Parablist at his shoulder:—'Mi' amico; thou hearest? What say'st?''Lord,' answered Bernardo, in the soft, clear young voice that all might hear like a bird's song in the stillness after rain, 'this wretch hath defaced thy graven image.''It is true.''What if, in a more impious mood, he had dared to raise his hand against thyself?''Ha! He would be made to die—not pleasantly.''Is to be broken on the wheel pleasant?''Well, the dog shall hang.''Still for so little? Why, were he Cain he could pay no higher. Valuest thy life, then, at a pinch of gold dust? This is to put a premium on regicide.'The Duke bit his lip, and frowned, and laughed vexedly.'How now, Bernardino?''Lord, I am young—a child, and without comparative experience. I pray thee put this rogue aside, while we consider.'Galeazzo waved his hand, and the Jew, staring and stumbling, was removed. Another, a creature gaunt and wolfish, took his place. What had he done? He had trodden on a hare in her form, and, half-killing, had despatched her. Why? asked Bembo. To still her telltale cries, intimated the wretched creature. Galeazzo's eyes gleamed; but still he called upon Heaven to sentence. In such a case? Men glanced at one another half terrified. Any portent, even of good, is fearful in its rising. Bembo turned to the kneeling clerk.'Come, Master Scrivener! A little offence, in any case, and with humanity to condone it.'The frightened servant shook his head, with a glance at his master. He murmured the worst he dared—that the law exacted the extremest penalty from the unauthorised killer of game. Bembo stared a moment incredulous, then pounced in mock fury at the prisoner:—'Wretch! what didst thou with this hare?'The hind had to be goaded to an answer.'Master, I ate it.''What!' cried the other—'a monster, to devour thy prince's flesh!''God knows I did not!''Nay, God is nothing to the law, which says you did. Else why should it draw no distinction between the crimes of harecide and regicide? Thou hast eaten of thy prince.''Well, if I have I have.''Thou art anthropophagous.''Mercy!''No shame to thee—a lover of thy kind' (the Saint chuckled). 'And no cannibal neither, since we have made game of thy prince.' He chuckled again, and turned merrily on the Duke. 'Is the hare to be prince, or the prince hare? And yet, in either case, O Galeazzo, I see no way for thee out of this thy loving subject's belly!'The tyrant, half captivated, half furious, started forward.'Give him,' he roared—and stopped. 'Give him,' he repeated, 'a kick on his breach and send him flying. Nay!' he snarled, 'even that were too much honour. Give him a scudo with which to buy an emetic.'Bembo smiled and sighed: 'I begin to see daylight'; and Ludovico, after laughing enjoyingly over his brother's pleasantry, exclaimed audibly to Simonetta: 'This is the very wedding of human wit and divine. I seem to see the air full of laughing cherubs having my brother's features.'Now there brake into the arena one clad like an artificer in a leathern apron; a sinewy figure, but eloquent, in his groping hands and bandaged face, of some sudden blight of ruin seizing prime. And he cried out in a great voice:—'A boon, lord Duke, a boon! I am one Lupo, an armourer, and thou seest me!''Certes,' said the Duke. 'Art big enough.''O lord!' cried the shattered thing, 'let me see justice as plain with these blinded eyes.''Well, on whom?''Lord, on him that took me sleeping, and struck me for ever from the rolls of daylight, sith I had cursed him for the ruin of my daughter.'Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders.'This thine assailant—is he noble?''Master, as titles go.''Wert a fool, then, to presume. He were like else to have made it good to thee. Now, an eye for—' but he checked himself in the midst of the enormous blasphemy.'Judge thou, my guardian angel,' he murmured meekly.'What!' answered the boy, with a burning face, 'needsthisrevision by Heaven?' And he cried terribly: 'Master armourer, summon thy transgressor!'For a moment the man seemed to shrink.'Nay,' cried the Saint, 'thou need'st not. I see the hand of God come forth and write upon a forehead.' His eyes sparkled, as if in actual inspiration. 'Tassino!' he cried, in a ringing voice.('He heard me address him,' thought Ludovico, curious and watchful.)At the utterance of that name, the whole nerve of the audience seemed to leap and fall like a candle-flame. Galeazzo himself started, and his lids lifted, and his mouth creased a moment to a little malevolent grin. For why? This Tassino, while too indifferent a skipjack for his jealousy, was yet the squire amoroso, the lovercomme il fautto his own correct Duchess, Madam Bona.A minute's ticking silence was ended by the stir and pert laugh of the challenged himself, as he left the ring of spectators and sauntered into the arena. It was a little showy upstart, to be sure, as ebulliently curled and groomed as her Grace's lap-dog, and sharing, indeed, with Messer Tinopino the whole present caprice of their mistress's spoiling. His own base origin and inherent vulgarity, moreover, seeming to associate him with the ducal brutishness (an assumption which Galeazzo rather favoured than resented), confirmed in him a self-confidence which had early come to see no bounds to its own viciousness or effrontery.Now he cocked one arm akimbo, and stared with insufferable insolence on the pronouncer of his name.'Know'st me, Prophet?' bawled he. 'Not more than I thee, methinks. Wert well coached in this same inspiration.''Well, indeed,' answered Bembo. 'Thou hast said it. It was God spake in mine ear.'Tassino laughed scornfully. It was a study to see these young wits opposed, the one such plated goods, the other so silver pure.'In the name of this lying carle,' he cried, 'what spake He?''He said,' said Bembo quietly, '"Let the false swearer remember Ananias!"'Then in a moment he was all ruffled and combative, like a young eagle.'Answer!' he roared. 'Didst thou this thing?'Now, a woman-petted, cake-fed belswagger is too much of an anomaly for the test of nerves. Tassino, shouted at, gave an hysteric jump which brought him to the very brink of tears. He was really an ill-bred little coward, made arrogant by spoiling. He had the greatest pity and tenderness for himself, and to any sense of his being lost would always respond with a lump in his throat. Now he suddenly realised his position, alone and baited before all—no petticoat to fly to, no sympathy to expect from a converted tyrant, none from a mob which, habitually the butt to his viciousness, would rejoice in his discomfiture. Actually the little beast began to whimper.'Darest thou!' he cried, stamping.'Didst thou this thing?' repeated Bernardo.'It is no business of thine.''Didst thou this thing?''An oaf's word against——''Didst thou this thing?''Lord Duke!' appealed Tassino.'Didst thou this thing?'The victim fairly burst into tears.'If I say no——''Die, Ananias!' shouted the Duke. His eyes gleamed maniacally. He half rose in his chair. He seemed as if furious to foreclose on a dénouement his superstition had already anticipated. Tassino fell upon his knees.'I did it!' he screamed.The Duke sank back, his lips twitching and grinning. Then he glanced covertly at Bembo, and rubbed his hands together, with a motion part gloating, part deprecatory. The Ser Ludovico's eyes, shaded under his palm, were very busy, to and fro. Bembo stood like frowning marble.'The law, Master Scrivener?' said he quietly.The kneeling clerk murmured from a dry throat—'Holy sir, it takes no cognisance of these accidents. The condescensions of the great compensate them.'The Parablist, his lips pressed together, nodded gravely twice or thrice.'I see,' he said; 'a condescension which ruins two lives.'He addressed himself, with a deadly sweetness, to the Duke.'I prithee, who standest for God's vicegerent, call up the Jew to sentence.'Jehoshaphat was produced, and placed beside the blubbered, resentful young popinjay. The Saint addressed him:—'Wretch, thou art convicted of the crime of defacing the Duke's image; and he at thine elbow of defacing God's image. Shall man dare the awful impiety to pronounce the greater guilt thine? Yet, if it merits death and mutilation, what for this other?'He paused, and a stir went through the dead stillness of the hall. Then Bembo addressed one of the tipstaves with ineffable civility:—'Good officer, this rogue hath sweated coins, say'st?''Ay, your worship,' answered the man; 'a hundred gold ducats, if a lire. Shook 'em in a leathern bag, a' did, like so much rusted harness.'Bembo nodded.'They are forfeit, by the token; and he shall labour to provide other hundred, with cost of metal and stamping.'Jehoshaphat, secure of his limbs, shrieked derisive—'God of Ishril! O, yes! O, to be sure! I can bleed moneys!''Nay,' said the Saint, 'but sweat them. Go!'The coiner was dragged away blaspheming. He would have preferred a moderate dose of the rack; but the standard set by his sentence elicited a murmur of popular approval. From all, that is to say, but Tassino, who saw his own fate looming big by comparison. He rose and looked about him desperately, as if he contemplated bolting. The spectators edged together. He whinnied. Suddenly the stranger's voice swooped upon him like a hawk:—'Man's image shall be restored; restore thou God's.'The little wretch screamed in a sudden access of passion:—'I don't know what you mean! Leave me alone. It was his own fault, I say. Why did he insult me?''Restore thou this image of God his sight,' said Bembo quietly.'You know I cannot!''Thou canst not? Then an eye for an eye, as it was spoken. Take ye this wicked thing, good officers, and blind him even as he blinded the poor armourer.'A vibrant sound went up from the spectators, and died. Messer Ludovico veiled his sight, and, it might be said, his laughter. Tassino was seen struggling and crying in the half-fearful clutch of his gaolers.'Thou darest not! Dogs! Let me go, I say. What! would ye brave Madonna? Lord Duke, lord Duke, help me!''To repentance, my poor Tassino,' cried Galeazzo, leaning lustfully forward. 'I trow thy part on earth is closed.'The little monster could not believe it. This instant fall from the heights! He was flaccid with terror as he fell screeching on his knees.'Mercy, good stranger! Mercy, dear lord saint! The terror! the torture! I could not suffer them and live. O, let me live, I pray thee!—anywhere, anyhow, and I will do all; make whatever restitution you impose.'As he prayed and wept and grovelled, the Saint looked down with icy pity on his abasement.'Restitution, Tassino!' he cried, 'for that murthered vision, for that ruined virtue? Wouldst thou even in thine impiousness arrogate to thyself such divine prerogatives? Yet, in respect of that reason with which true justice doth hedge her reprisals, the Duke's mercy shall still allot thee an alternative. Sith thou canst not restore his honour or his eyes to poor Lupo, thou shalt take his shame to wife, and in her seek to renew that image of God which thou hast defaced. Do this, and only doing it, know thyself spared.'A silence of stupefaction fell upon the court. What would Bona say to this arbitrary disposal of her pet, made husband to a common gipsy he had debauched? True, the sentence, by virtue of its ethical completeness, seemed an inspiration. But it was a disappointment too. None doubted but that the popinjay would subscribe to the present letter in order to evade the practice of it by and by. Already the paltry soul of the creature was struggling from its submersion, gasping, and blinking wickedly to see how it could retort upon its judge and deliverer. It had been better to have trodden it under for once and for good—better for the moral of the lesson, as for all who foresaw some hope for themselves in the crushing of an insufferable petty tyranny. Galeazzo himself frowned and bit his nails. He would have lusted to see heaven pluck off this vulgar burr for him. Only his brother, sleek and smiling, applauded the verdict. He had a far-seeing vision, had Ludovico, and perhaps already it was alotting a more telling rôle to the little aristocrat of San Zeno than had ever been played by the cockney parvenu down in the arena.Suddenly the Duke was on his feet, fierce and glaring.'Answer, dog!' he roared; 'acceptest thou the condition?'Tassino started and sobbed.'Yes, yes. I accept. I will marry her.'The Duke took a costly chain from his own neck, and hung it about the shoulders of the Parablist.'Wear this,' he said, 'in earnest of our love and duty.'Then he turned upon the mob.'These judgments stand, and all that shall be spoken hereafter by our dear monitor and proctor. It is our will. Make way, gentlemen.'He took Bernardo's arm and descended the steps. A cloud of courtiers hovered near, acclaiming the boy Saint and Daniel. Messer Ludovico saluted him with fervour. He foresaw the millennium in this association of piety with greatness. Galeazzo sneered.'Remember that three spoils company, brother,' said he. 'Keep thou thine own confessor, and leave me mine.'It was then only that Bernardo learned the rank of his accoster.'Alas! sweet lord,' said he, 'is piety such a stranger here that ye must entertain him like a king?'The Duke laughed loudly and drew him on. He was extravagant in his attentions to him—eager, voluble, feverish. He would point out to him the lavish decorations of his house—marbles, sculptures, paintings, the rising fabric of a new era—and ask his opinion on all. A word from the child at that period would have floored a cardinal or a scaffolding, have clothed Aphrodite in a cassock, have made afête champêtreof all Milan, or darkened its walls with mourning. Messer Lanti, following in their wake, was amazed, and dubious, and savage in turns. Earlier in the day the Duke had had from him the whole story of his connection with the Parablist, up to the moment of their interference in Montano's punishment.'Meschino me!' he had said, greatly laughing over that episode; 'yet I cannot but be glad that the old code beat itself out on his back. 'Twas a reptile well served—a venomous, ungrateful beast. A mercy if it has broken his fang.'That remained to be seen; and in the meantime Carlo, the old auxiliary in debauch, was taken again into full favour. He accepted the condescension with reserve. The oddest new attachment had come to supplant in him some ancient devotions that were the furthest from devout. He found himself in a very queer mood, between irritable and gentle. He had never before felt this inclination to hit hard for virtue, and it bewildered his honest head. But it made him a dangerous watchdog.By and by the Duke carried his protégé into the Duchess's privy garden. There was a necessary economy of ornamental ground about the castello, though the most was made of what could be spared. In a nest of green alleys, and falling terraces, and rose-wreathed arches, they came upon the two ladies whom Bembo had already seen, themselves as pretty, graceful flowers as any in the borders. The young Catherine sat upon a fountain edge, fanning herself with a great leaf, and talking to a flushed, down-looking page, who, it seemed likely, had brought news from the court of a recent scandal and its sequel. Her shrewd, pretty face took curious stock of the new comers. She was a pale slip of a girl, lithe, bosomless, the green plum of womanhood. Her thin, plain dress was green, fitting her like a sheath its blade of corn, and she wore on her sleek fair head a cap of green velvet banded with a scroll of beaten gold. A child she was, yet already for two years betrothed to a Pope's nephew. His presents on the occasion had included a camera of green velvet, sewn with pearls as thick as daisies in grass. It seemed natural to associate her with spring verdure, so sweet and fair she was; yet never, surely, worked a more politic little brain under its cap of innocence.Hard by, on one of the walks, a woman and a child of seven played at ball. These were Bona, and her little son Gian-Galeazzo. As the other was spring, so was she summer, ripe in figure and mellowed in the passion of motherhood. Her eyes burned with the caress and entreaty of it—appealed in loveliness to the fathers of her desires. Her beauty, her stateliness, the very milk of her were all sweet lures to increase. She loved babies, not men—saw them most lusty, perhaps, in the glossy eyes of fools, the breeding-grounds of Cupids. She was always a mother before a wife.The Duke led Bernardo to her side. Pale as ivory, she bent and embraced her boy, and dismissed him to the fountain; then rose to face the ordeal.'Hail, judgments of Solomon!' she said, with a smile that quivered a little. 'O believe me, sir, thy fame has run before!''Which was the reason thou dismissedst Gian,' said Galeazzo, 'in fears that Solomon would propose to halve him?'He did not doubt her, or wing his shaft with anything but brutality. It was his coward way, and, having asserted it, he strolled off, grinning and whistling, to the fountain.Bona shivered and drew herself up. Her robe was all of daffodil, with a writhed golden hem to it that looked like a long flicker of flame. On her forehead, between wings of auburn hair, burned a great emerald. She seemed to Bernardo the loveliest, most gracious thing, a vision personified of fruitfulness, the golden angel of maternity, warm, fragrant, kind-bosomed. He met the gaze of her eyes with wonderment, but no fear.'Sweet Madonna,' he said, 'hail me nothing, I pray thee, but the clear herald of our Christ—His mouthpiece and recorder. We may all be played upon for truth, so we be pure of heart.''And that art thou? No guile? No duplicity? No self-interest?'He marvelled. She looked at him earnestly.'Bernardo, didst know this Tassino was my servant?''Nay, I knew it not.''Wouldst have spared him hadst thou known?''How could I spare him the truth?''But its shame, its punishment?''Greater shame could no man have than to debauch innocence. His punishment was his redemption.''Ah! I defend him not. Yet, bethink thee, she may have been the temptress?''He should have loathed, not loved her, then.''Madreperla, mother-of-pearl,' cried Catherine, with a little shriek of laughter, from the fountain; 'come and help me! I have caught a butterfly in my hand, and my father wishes to take it from me and kill it!'
CHAPTER V
Messer Lanti and his party entered Milan, in a very subdued mood, by the Gate of Saint Mark. It had been with an emotion beyond words that Bembo had found himself approaching the walls of this fair city of his dreams. The prosperous contado, watered in every direction by broad dykes; the clustering vines and saintly-hued olive gardens; the busy peasantry; the richness of the very wayside shrines, had all appeared to speak a content and holiness with which the perverse passions of men were at such bitter variance. The discrepancy confounded, as it was presently upon a fuller experience to inspire, him. Here in one land, incessantly jostling and reacting on one another, were a devotional and a sensuous fervour, both exhibiting a lust of beauty at fever-heat; were a gross superstition and an excellent reason; were a powerful priestcraft and a jeering scepticism—all drawing from the forehead of a Papacy, which, latterly pledged to the most unscrupulous temporal self-aggrandisement, was reverenced for the vicarship of a poor and celibate Christ. Issuing, equipped with an artless conventual purpose, from the cool groves of his cloister, he found a land dyed in blood and the blue of heaven, festering under God's sun, and rejoicing in the colour schemes of its sores. On what principle could he study to sweeten this paradox of a constitution, where health was enamoured of disease? 'Deus meus, in te confido,' he prayed, with hands clasped fervently upon his breast; 'Non erubescam, neque irrideant me inimici mei! O Lord, give me the vision to find and show to others a path through this beautiful wilderness!'
As the long walls of the town, broken at intervals into turrets, broadened before him, violet against a deep, cloudless sky, his ecstasy but increased—he held out his arms.
'O thou,' he murmured, 'that I have hungered for, looking down on thee from the mountain of myrrh! Until the day break and the shadows flee away!'
A little later, in a deep angle of the enceinte, they came upon a gruesome sight. This was no less than the Montmartre of Milan—a great stone gallows with dangling chains, and tenanted—faugh! A cloud of winged creatures rose as they approached, and scattered, dropping fragments. It was the common repast, stuff of rogues and pilferers—nothing especial. The ground was trodden underneath, and Bembo shrieked to see two white, stiff feet sticking from it. Lanti followed the direction of his hand, and exclaimed with a moody shrug:—
'An assassin, Saint—nothing more. We plant them like that, head down.'
'Alive?'
'O, of course!'
Bembo cried out: 'These are not sons of God, but of Belial!' and passed on, with his head drooping. Carlo turned to Beatrice, where she rode behind, and, without a word, pointed significantly to the horrible vision. She laughed, and went by unmoved.
In a little after they had all entered by the gate, and the city was before them. Bembo, kindled against his will, rose in his saddle and uttered an exclamation of delight. Before his eyes was spread a white town with blue water and upstanding cypresses—wedges of midnight in midday. There were terraces and broad flagged walks, and palaces and spacious loggias—fair glooms of marble shaken in the spray of fountains. From its cold, shadowless bridges to the heaped drift of the duomo in its midst, there seemed no slur, but those dark cypresses, on all its candid purity. It looked like a city flushed under a veil of hoar frost, the glare of its streets and markets and gardens subdued to one softest harmony of opal.
Yet in quick contrast with this chill, sweet austerity, glowed the burning life of it. In the distance, like travelling sparks in wood ashes; nearer, flashing from roof or balcony in harlequin spots of light; nearest of all, a very baggage-rout of figures, fantastic, chameleonic, an endless mutation and interflowing of blues, and crimsons, and purples—tirelessly that life circulated, the hot arterial blood which gave their tender hue to those encompassing veins of marble.
It was on this drift of souls going by him, gay and light, it seemed, as blown petals, that Bernardo gazed with the most loving fondness. He pictured them all, eager, passionate, ardent, moving about the business of the Nature-God, propagating His Gospel of sweetness, adapting to imperishable works the endlessly varying arabesques of woods, and starry meadows, and running clouds and waters—epitomising His System. He admired these works, their beauty, their stability, their triumphant achievement; though, in truth, his soul of souls could conceive no achievement for man so ideal as a world of glorious gardens and little abodes. But the sun was once more in his heart, and heaven in his eyes.
The swallows stooped in the streets to welcome him: 'Hail, little priest of the cloistered hills!' The scent of flowers offered itself the incense to his ritual; the fountains leapt more merrily for his coming. 'Love! love!' sang the birds under the great eaves; 'He will woo this cruel world to harmlessness. Where men shall lead with charity, all animals shall follow. The good fruits ripen to be eaten; it is their love, their lust to be consumed in joy. What lamb ever gave its throat to the knife? The violet flowers the thicker the more its blossoms are ravished. What new limb ever budded on a maimed beast?'
'Ah! the secret,' sang Bembo's soul—'the secret, or the secret grievance, of the cosmos will yield itself only to love. Useless to try to wrench forth its confession by torture. Let retaliation spell love, for once and for ever, and to the infinite sorrows of life will appear at last their returned Redeemer.'
His heart was full as they rode by the narrow streets. His eyes and ears were tranced with colour, the murmur of happy voices, the clash of melodious bells. He could not think of that late vision of horror but as a dream. These blithe souls, in all their moods and worships such true apostles of his gay, sweet God! They could not love or practise harshness but as a deterrent from things unnameable. The very absence of sightseers from that pit of scowling death proved it.
And then, in a moment, they had debouched upon an open place overlooked by a massive fortress, and in its midst, the cynosure of hundreds of gloating eyes, was a human thing under the flail—a voice moaning from the midst of a red jelly.
His heart sunk under a very avalanche. He uttered a cry so loud as to attract the attention of the spectators nearest.
'Who is it? What hath he done?' he roared of one. 'Trampled on the Host? Defiled a virgin of the mother? Murdered a priest?'
The face puckered and grinned.
'Worse, Messer Cavalier. He once whipped the Duke when his tutor.'
Bembo's whole little body braced itself to the spring.
'Tutor!' he cried: 'is that, then, Cola Montano?'
The gross eye winked—
'What is left of it.'
He was answered with a leap and rush. The mob at that point staggered, and bellowed, and fell away from the hoofs of a furious assailant. Carlo, pre-admonished, was already on the boy's flank. 'Stop, little lunatic!' he shouted, sweating and spurring to intervene. He had no concern for the feet he trampled or the ribs he bruised. He stooped and snatched at the struggling horse's bridle. 'It is the Duke's vengeance!' he panted. 'See him there above! Art mad?'
A face, flushed as the face of Him who scourged the hucksters from the temple, was turned upon him.
'Art thou? Strike for retaliation by love, or get behind!'
'Know'st nothing of his deserts,' cried Carlo. 'Be advised!'
'By love,' cried the boy. 'He is worthy of it—a good man—I carry a letter to him from my father. Fall back, I say.'
He drove in his heels, and the horse plunged and started, tearing the rein from Lanti's grasp. It was true that Bembo bore this letter, among others, in his pouch. The Abbot of San Zeno was so long out of the world as to have miscalculated the durations of court favour. Cola had been an influence inhistime.
'Devil take him!' growled Carlo; but he followed, scowling and slashing, in his wake. The mob, authorised of its worst humour, took his truculence ill. That reduced him to a very devilish sobriety. He began to strike with an eye to details, 'blazing' his passage through the throng. The method justified itself in the opening out of a human lane, at the end of which he saw Bembo spring upon the stage.
The executioner was cutting deliberately, monotonously on, and as monotonously the voice went moaning. Messer Jacopo, standing at iron ease beside, took no thought, it seemed, of anything—least of all of interference with the Duke's will. It must have been, therefore, no less than an amazing shock to that functionary to find himself all in an instant stung and staggered by a bolt from the blue. He may have been, like some phlegmatic serpent, conscious of a hornet winging his way; but that the insect should have had it in its mind to pounce onhim!
He found himself and his voice in one metallic clang:—
'Seize him, men!'
Carlo panted up, and Jacopo recognised him on the moment.
'Messer Lanti! Death of the Cross! Is this the Duke's order?'
'Christ's, old fool!' gasped the cavalier. 'Touch him, I say, and die. I neither know nor care.'
His great chest was heaving; he whipped out his sword, and stood glaring and at bay. Bembo had thrown himself between the upraised thong and its quivering victim. He, too, faced the stricken mob.
'Christ is coming! Christ is coming!' he shrieked. 'Prepare ye all to answer to Him for this!'
A dead silence fell. Some turned their faces in terror. Here and there a woman cried out. In the midst, Messer Jacopo raised his eyes to the battlements, and saw a white hand lifted against the blue. He shrugged round grumpily on his fellows.
'Unbind him,' he said; and the whip was lowered.
The poor body sunk beside the post. Bembo knelt, with a sob of pity, to whisper to it—
'Courage, sad heart! He comes indeed.'
The livid and suffering face was twisted to view its deliverer.
'Escape, then,' the blue lips muttered, 'while there is time.'
Bembo cried out: 'O, thou mistakest who I mean!'
The face dropped again.
'Never. Christ or Galeazzo—it is all one.'
A hand was laid on the boy's shoulder. He looked up to find himself captive to one of the Duke's guard. A grim little troop, steel-bonneted and armed with halberts, surrounded the stage. Messer Lanti, dismounted, had already committed himself to the inevitable. He addressed himself, with a laugh, to his friend:—
'Very well acquitted, little Saint,' said he—'of all but the reckoning.'
Bembo lingered a moment, pointing down to the bleeding and shattered body.
"'And there passed by a certain priest,"' he cried, '"and likewise a Levite; but a Samaritan had compassion on him,"' and he bowed his head, and went down with the soldiers.
Now, because of his beauty, or of the fear or of the pity he had wrought in some of his hearers, for whatever reason a woman or two of the people was emboldened to come and ask the healing of that wounded thing; and they took it away, undeterred of the executioners, and carried it to their quarters. And in the meanwhile, Bembo and his comrade were brought before the Duke.
Galeazzo had descended from the battlements, and sat in a little room of the gatehouse, with only a few, including his wife and child, to attend him. And his brow was wrinkled, and the lust of fury, beyond dissembling, in his veins. He took no notice of Lanti—though generally well enough disposed to the bully—but glared, even with some amazement in his rage, on the boy.
'Who art thou?' he thundered at length.
'Bernardo Bembo.'
The clear voice was like the call of a bird's through tempest.
'Whence comest thou?'
'From San Zeno in the hills.'
'What seek'st thou here?'
'Thy cure.'
The Duke started, and seemed actually to crouch for a moment. Then, while all held their breath in fear, of a sudden he fell back, and gripped a hand to his heart, and muttered, staring: 'The face!'
He closed his eyes, and passed a tremulous hand across his brow before he looked again; and lo! when he did so, the madness was past.
'Child,' he said hoarsely, almost whispered, 'what said'st thou? Come nearer: let me look at thee.'
He rose himself, with the word, stiffly, like an old man, and stood before the boy, and gazing hungrily for a little into the solemn eyes, dropped his own as if abashed—half-blinded. In the background, Bona, his wife, and the child Catherine clung together in a silence of fear and wonder.
'Ah, I am haunted!' shuddered the tyrant. 'Who told thee that? It is a face, child, a face—there—in the dead watches of the night—behind me—and by day, always the same, a damned clinging bur on my soul—not to be shaken off—always behind me!'
He gave a little jerk and motion of repugnance, as if he were trying to throw something off. Carlo struck in: 'Lord, let him sing to thee! I say no more.'
The deep, gloomy eyes of the Duke were lifted one instant to the strange seraph-gaze fixed silently upon him; then, making an acquiescent motion with his hand, he turned, and sat himself down again as if exhausted, and hid his brow under his palm.
Now the boy, never looking away, slung forward his lute, and like one that charms a serpent, began softly to finger the strings. And Galeazzo's head, in very truth like an adder's, swung to the rhythm; and as the chords rose piercing, he clutched his brow, and as they melted and sobbed away, so did he sink and moan. And then, suddenly, into that wild symphony drew the voice, as a spray of sweetbriar is drawn into a wheel; and all around caught their breath to listen:—
'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow.They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips,He to protect, she to trust—always together for ever and ever.A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed,Probing the earth with its keen tongue.How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing!Yet adored her little love to see him dareThat tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath.And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed,And drove the roaring terror from the woods.She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength.Then shone out the rainbow,And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot."Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph,"And I'll fetch it ye."But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too!We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!"But he was already on his way.And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before,And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake:"O leave me not behind!"Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage,the unattainable,The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession.And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain andthe whirl of dead leaves:"Leave me not behind!"But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain,And often he staggered in the slough,Or fell and cut himself on rocks.And so, pushing on half-blindly,Knew not at last from the dead rainbow theignis fatuus,The false witch-light that danced upon his path,Leading him to destruction. Until, lo!With a flash and laugh it was not,And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness—Night in the infernal swamps—Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heartThe weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!"Then at that, like one amazed, he turned,And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence,Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!"And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset aheart-broken sigh.'
'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow.They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips,He to protect, she to trust—always together for ever and ever.A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed,Probing the earth with its keen tongue.How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing!Yet adored her little love to see him dareThat tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath.And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed,And drove the roaring terror from the woods.She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength.Then shone out the rainbow,And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot."Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph,"And I'll fetch it ye."But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too!We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!"But he was already on his way.And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before,And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake:"O leave me not behind!"Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage,the unattainable,The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession.And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain andthe whirl of dead leaves:"Leave me not behind!"But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain,And often he staggered in the slough,Or fell and cut himself on rocks.And so, pushing on half-blindly,Knew not at last from the dead rainbow theignis fatuus,The false witch-light that danced upon his path,Leading him to destruction. Until, lo!With a flash and laugh it was not,And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness—Night in the infernal swamps—Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heartThe weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!"Then at that, like one amazed, he turned,And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence,Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!"And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset aheart-broken sigh.'
'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow.
They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips,
He to protect, she to trust—always together for ever and ever.
A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed,
Probing the earth with its keen tongue.
How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing!
Yet adored her little love to see him dare
That tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath.
And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed,
And drove the roaring terror from the woods.
She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength.
Then shone out the rainbow,
And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot.
"Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph,
"And I'll fetch it ye."
But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too!
We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!"
But he was already on his way.
And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before,
And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake:
"O leave me not behind!"
Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage,
the unattainable,
the unattainable,
the unattainable,
The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession.
And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain and
the whirl of dead leaves:
the whirl of dead leaves:
the whirl of dead leaves:
"Leave me not behind!"
But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain,
And often he staggered in the slough,
Or fell and cut himself on rocks.
And so, pushing on half-blindly,
Knew not at last from the dead rainbow theignis fatuus,
The false witch-light that danced upon his path,
Leading him to destruction. Until, lo!
With a flash and laugh it was not,
And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness—
Night in the infernal swamps—
Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heart
The weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!"
Then at that, like one amazed, he turned,
And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence,
Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!"
And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset a
heart-broken sigh.'
heart-broken sigh.'
He ended to a deep silence, and, while all stood stricken between tears and expectancy, moved to within a pace of the Duke.
'O prince!' he cried, 'haunted of that Innocence! Turn back, turn back, and find in thy lost playmate's face the ghost that now eludes thee!'
Carlo gave a little gasp, and his hand shivered down to his sword-hilt. He must die for his Saint, if provoked to that martyrdom; but he would take a desperate pledge or two of the sacrifice with him. One of the women, the younger, watching him, knew what was in his mind, and breathed a little scornfully. The other's eyes were set in a sort of rapture upon the singer's face. A minute may have passed, holding them all thus suspended, when suddenly Galeazzo rose, and, throwing himself at Bembo's feet, broke into a passion of sobs and moans.
'Margherita, my little playmate, that liest under the daisies. O, I will be good, sweet—I will be good again for thy sake.'
CHAPTER VI
Many a head in the palace, though accustomed witness of strange things, tossed on its pillow that night in sleepless review of a scene which had been as amazing in its singularity as it was potential in its promise. What were to be the first-fruits of that cataclysmic revulsion of feeling in a nature so habitually frozen from all tenderness? If no more than a shy snowdrop or two of reason, mercy, justice, pushing their way up through a savage soil, the result would be marvel enough. Yet there seemed somehow in the atmosphere an earnest of that and better. The hearts of all trod on tiptoe, fearful of waking their souls to disenchantment—agitated, exultant; wooing them to convalescence from an ancient sickness. The spring of a joyous hope was rising voiceless somewhere in the thick of those drear corridors. The f[oe]tid air, wafted through a healing spray, came charged with an unwonted sweetness. Whence had he risen, the lovely singing-boy, spirit of change, harbinger of a new humanity? Whither had he gone? To the Duke's quarters—that was all they knew. They had seen him carried off, persuaded, fondled, revered by that very despot whom he had dared divinely to rebuke, and the doors had clanged and the dream passed. To what phase of its development, confirming or disillusioning, would they reopen? The answer to them was at least a respite; and that was an answer sufficient and satisfying to lives that obtained on a succession of respites. Alas! as there is no logic in tyranny, so can there be none in those who endure it.
The earliest ratification of the promise was to witness in the figure of the Duke coming radiant from his rooms in company with the stranger himself, his left arm fondly passed about the boy's neck, his eyes full of admiration and flattery. He felt no more discomfort, it appeared, than had Madam Beatrice on a certain occasion, in the thought of his late self-exposure before his creatures. Such shamelessness is the final condition of autocracy. He had slept well, untormented of his vision. As is the case with neurotics, a confident diagnosis of his disease had proved the shortest means to its cure. Clever the doctor, too, who could make such a patient's treatment jump with his caprices; and with an inspired intuition Bernardo had so manoeuvred to reconcile the two. A whim much indulged may become a habit, and he was determined to encourage to the top of its bent this whim of reformation in the Duke. No ungrateful physicking of a soured bile for him; no uncomfortable philosophy of organic atoms recombined. He just restored to him that long-lost toy of innocence, trusting that the imagination of the man would find ever novel resources for play in that of which the invention of the child had soon tired. So for the present, and until virtue in his patient should have become a second nature, was he resolved wisely to eschew all reference to the intermediate state, and only by example and analogy to win him to consciousness and repentance of the enormities by which it had been stained. A very profound little missionary, to be sure.
The Duke, leaning on his arm as he strolled, had a smile and a word for many. The only visible token of his familiar self which he revealed was the arbitrariness with which he exacted from all a fitting deference towards his protégé. This, however, none, not the greatest, was inclined to withhold, especially on such a morning. Soft-footed cardinals, princes of the blood, nobles and jingling captains, vied with one another in obsequious attentions to our little neophyte of love. The reasons, apart from superstitious reverence, were plentiful: his sweetness, his beauty, his gifts of song—all warm recommendations to a sensuous sociality; the whispered romance of his origin, no less a patent in its eyes because it turned on a title doubly bastard; finally, and most cogently, no doubt, his political potentialities as a favouritein posse.
This last reason above any other may have accounted for the extraordinary complaisance shown him by Messer Ludovico, the Duke's third younger brother, at present at court, who was otherwise of a rather inward and withdrawing nature. He, this brother, had come from Pavia, riding the final stage that morning, and though he had only gathered by report the story of the last twelve hours, thought it worth his while to go and ingratiate himself with the stranger. He found him in the great hall of the castello, awaiting the trial of certain causes, which, as coming immediately under the ducal jurisdiction, it was Galeazzo's sport often to preside over in person. Here he saw the boy, standing at his brother's shoulder by the judgment-seat—the comeliest figure, between Cupid and angel, he had ever beheld; frank, sweet, child-eyed—in every feature and quality, it would seem, the antithesis of himself. Messer Ludovico came up arm in arm, very condescendingly, with his excellency the Ser Simonetta, Secretary of State, a gentleman whom he was always at pains to flatter, since he intended by and by to destroy him. Not that he had any personal spite against this minister, however much he might suspect him of misrepresenting his motives and character to the Duchess Bona, his sister-in-law, to whom he, Ludovico, was in reality, he assured himself, quite attached. His policy, on the contrary, was always a passionless one; and the point here was simply that the man, in his humble opinion, affected too much reason and temperance for a despotic government.
As he approached the tribune he uncapped, a thought on the near side of self-abasement, to his brother, whose cavalier acknowledgment of the salute halted him, however, affable and smiling, on the lowest step of the dais. He was studious, while there, to inform with the right touch of pleasant condescension (at least while Galeazzo's regard was fixed on him) his attitude towards Simonetta, lest the ever-suspicious mind of the tyrant should discover in it some sign of a corruptive intimacy. With heirs-possibly-presumptive in Milan, sufficient for the day's life must be the sleepless diplomacy thereof; and better than any man Ludovico knew on what small juggleries of the moment the continuance of his depended. His complexion being of a swarthiness to have earned him the surname of The Moor, he had acquired a habit of drooping his lids in company, lest the contrastive effect of white eyeballs moving in a dark, motionless face should betray him to the subjects of those covert side-long glances by which he was wont to observe unobserved. Even to his shoulders, which were slightly rounded by nature, he managed, when in his brother's presence, to give the suggestion of a self-deprecatory hump, as though the slight burden of State which they already endured were too much for them. His voice was low-toned; his expression generally of a soft and rather apologetic benignity. His manner towards all was calculated on a graduated scale of propitiation. Paying every disputant the compliment of deferring outwardly to his opinions, he would not whip so little as a swineherd without apologising for the inconvenience to which he was putting him. His dress was rich, but while always conceived on the subdominant note, so to speak, as implying the higher ducal standard, was in excellent taste, a quality which he could afford to indulge with impunity, since it excited no suspicion but of his simplicity in Galeazzo's crude mind. In point of fact Messer Ludovico was a born connoisseur, and, equally in his choice of men, methods, and tools, a first exemplar of the faculty of selection.
Presently, seeing the Duke's gaze withdrawn from him, he spoke to Messer Simonetta more intimately, but still out of the twisted corner of his mouth, while his eyes remained slewed under their lids towards the throne:—
'Indeed, my lord, indeed yes; 'tis a veritable Castalidis, fresh from Parnassus and the spring. Tell me, now—'tis no uncommon choice of my brother to favour a fair boy—what differentiates this case from many?'
The secretary, long caged in office, and worn and toothless from friction on its bars, had yet his ideals of Government, personal as well as political.
'Your Highness,' said he, in his hoarse, thin voice, 'what differentiates sacramental wine from Malvasia?'
'Why,' answered Ludovico, 'perhaps a degree or two of headiness.'
'Nay,' said the secretary, 'is it not rather a degree or two of holiness?'
'Ebbene!' said the other, 'I stand excellently corrected. (Your servant, Messer Tassino,' he said, in parenthesis, to a pert and confident young exquisite, who held himself arrogantly forward of the group of spectators. The jay responded to the attention with a condescending nod. Ludovico readdressed himself to the secretary.) 'How neatly you put things! It is a degree or two, as you say—between the intoxication of the spirit and the intoxication of the senses. And is this pretty stranger sacramental wine, and hath Heaven vouchsafed us the Grael without the Quest? It is a sign of its high favour, Messer Slmonetta, of which I hope and trust we shall prove ourselves worthy.'
'And I hope so, Highness,' said the grave secretary.
'Hush!' whispered Ludovico. 'The court opens.'
There was a little stir and buzz among the spectators who, thronging the hall, left a semi-circle of clear space about the dais; and into this, at the moment, a fellow in a ragged gabardine was haled by a guard of city officers. The Duke, seated above, stroked his chin with a glance at the prisoner of sinister relish, which, on the thought, he smoothed, with a little apologetic cough, into an expression of mild benignancy. Messer Lanti, planted near at hand amid a very parterre of nobles, envoys, ecclesiastics, bedizenedchères amiesand great officers of the court who supported their lord on the dais, sniggered under his breath till his huge shoulders shook.
The Jew was charged with a very heinous offence—sweating coins, no less. He was voluble and nasal over his innocence, until one of the officers flicked him bloodily on the mouth with his mailed hand.
'Nay,' said Bembo, shrinking; 'that is to give the poor man a dumb advocate, methinks.'
The Duke applauded—eliciting some louder applause from Ludovico—and forbade the fellow sternly to strike again without orders. A sudden sigh and movement seemed to ripple the congregated faces and to subside. The prisoner, however, was convicted, on sound enough evidence, and stood sullen and desperate to hear his sentence. Galeazzo eyed him covetously a moment; then turning to a clerk of the court who knelt beside him with his tablets ready, bade that obsequious functionary proclaim the penalty which by statute obtained against all coiners or defacers of the ducal image. It was bad enough—breaking on the wheel—to pass without deadlier revision; yet to such, and to the high will or caprice of his lord, Master Scrivener humbly submitted it.
Then, to the dumfoundering of all, did his Magnificence appeal, with a smile, to the little Parablist at his shoulder:—
'Mi' amico; thou hearest? What say'st?'
'Lord,' answered Bernardo, in the soft, clear young voice that all might hear like a bird's song in the stillness after rain, 'this wretch hath defaced thy graven image.'
'It is true.'
'What if, in a more impious mood, he had dared to raise his hand against thyself?'
'Ha! He would be made to die—not pleasantly.'
'Is to be broken on the wheel pleasant?'
'Well, the dog shall hang.'
'Still for so little? Why, were he Cain he could pay no higher. Valuest thy life, then, at a pinch of gold dust? This is to put a premium on regicide.'
The Duke bit his lip, and frowned, and laughed vexedly.
'How now, Bernardino?'
'Lord, I am young—a child, and without comparative experience. I pray thee put this rogue aside, while we consider.'
Galeazzo waved his hand, and the Jew, staring and stumbling, was removed. Another, a creature gaunt and wolfish, took his place. What had he done? He had trodden on a hare in her form, and, half-killing, had despatched her. Why? asked Bembo. To still her telltale cries, intimated the wretched creature. Galeazzo's eyes gleamed; but still he called upon Heaven to sentence. In such a case? Men glanced at one another half terrified. Any portent, even of good, is fearful in its rising. Bembo turned to the kneeling clerk.
'Come, Master Scrivener! A little offence, in any case, and with humanity to condone it.'
The frightened servant shook his head, with a glance at his master. He murmured the worst he dared—that the law exacted the extremest penalty from the unauthorised killer of game. Bembo stared a moment incredulous, then pounced in mock fury at the prisoner:—
'Wretch! what didst thou with this hare?'
The hind had to be goaded to an answer.
'Master, I ate it.'
'What!' cried the other—'a monster, to devour thy prince's flesh!'
'God knows I did not!'
'Nay, God is nothing to the law, which says you did. Else why should it draw no distinction between the crimes of harecide and regicide? Thou hast eaten of thy prince.'
'Well, if I have I have.'
'Thou art anthropophagous.'
'Mercy!'
'No shame to thee—a lover of thy kind' (the Saint chuckled). 'And no cannibal neither, since we have made game of thy prince.' He chuckled again, and turned merrily on the Duke. 'Is the hare to be prince, or the prince hare? And yet, in either case, O Galeazzo, I see no way for thee out of this thy loving subject's belly!'
The tyrant, half captivated, half furious, started forward.
'Give him,' he roared—and stopped. 'Give him,' he repeated, 'a kick on his breach and send him flying. Nay!' he snarled, 'even that were too much honour. Give him a scudo with which to buy an emetic.'
Bembo smiled and sighed: 'I begin to see daylight'; and Ludovico, after laughing enjoyingly over his brother's pleasantry, exclaimed audibly to Simonetta: 'This is the very wedding of human wit and divine. I seem to see the air full of laughing cherubs having my brother's features.'
Now there brake into the arena one clad like an artificer in a leathern apron; a sinewy figure, but eloquent, in his groping hands and bandaged face, of some sudden blight of ruin seizing prime. And he cried out in a great voice:—
'A boon, lord Duke, a boon! I am one Lupo, an armourer, and thou seest me!'
'Certes,' said the Duke. 'Art big enough.'
'O lord!' cried the shattered thing, 'let me see justice as plain with these blinded eyes.'
'Well, on whom?'
'Lord, on him that took me sleeping, and struck me for ever from the rolls of daylight, sith I had cursed him for the ruin of my daughter.'
Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders.
'This thine assailant—is he noble?'
'Master, as titles go.'
'Wert a fool, then, to presume. He were like else to have made it good to thee. Now, an eye for—' but he checked himself in the midst of the enormous blasphemy.
'Judge thou, my guardian angel,' he murmured meekly.
'What!' answered the boy, with a burning face, 'needsthisrevision by Heaven?' And he cried terribly: 'Master armourer, summon thy transgressor!'
For a moment the man seemed to shrink.
'Nay,' cried the Saint, 'thou need'st not. I see the hand of God come forth and write upon a forehead.' His eyes sparkled, as if in actual inspiration. 'Tassino!' he cried, in a ringing voice.
('He heard me address him,' thought Ludovico, curious and watchful.)
At the utterance of that name, the whole nerve of the audience seemed to leap and fall like a candle-flame. Galeazzo himself started, and his lids lifted, and his mouth creased a moment to a little malevolent grin. For why? This Tassino, while too indifferent a skipjack for his jealousy, was yet the squire amoroso, the lovercomme il fautto his own correct Duchess, Madam Bona.
A minute's ticking silence was ended by the stir and pert laugh of the challenged himself, as he left the ring of spectators and sauntered into the arena. It was a little showy upstart, to be sure, as ebulliently curled and groomed as her Grace's lap-dog, and sharing, indeed, with Messer Tinopino the whole present caprice of their mistress's spoiling. His own base origin and inherent vulgarity, moreover, seeming to associate him with the ducal brutishness (an assumption which Galeazzo rather favoured than resented), confirmed in him a self-confidence which had early come to see no bounds to its own viciousness or effrontery.
Now he cocked one arm akimbo, and stared with insufferable insolence on the pronouncer of his name.
'Know'st me, Prophet?' bawled he. 'Not more than I thee, methinks. Wert well coached in this same inspiration.'
'Well, indeed,' answered Bembo. 'Thou hast said it. It was God spake in mine ear.'
Tassino laughed scornfully. It was a study to see these young wits opposed, the one such plated goods, the other so silver pure.
'In the name of this lying carle,' he cried, 'what spake He?'
'He said,' said Bembo quietly, '"Let the false swearer remember Ananias!"'
Then in a moment he was all ruffled and combative, like a young eagle.
'Answer!' he roared. 'Didst thou this thing?'
Now, a woman-petted, cake-fed belswagger is too much of an anomaly for the test of nerves. Tassino, shouted at, gave an hysteric jump which brought him to the very brink of tears. He was really an ill-bred little coward, made arrogant by spoiling. He had the greatest pity and tenderness for himself, and to any sense of his being lost would always respond with a lump in his throat. Now he suddenly realised his position, alone and baited before all—no petticoat to fly to, no sympathy to expect from a converted tyrant, none from a mob which, habitually the butt to his viciousness, would rejoice in his discomfiture. Actually the little beast began to whimper.
'Darest thou!' he cried, stamping.
'Didst thou this thing?' repeated Bernardo.
'It is no business of thine.'
'Didst thou this thing?'
'An oaf's word against——'
'Didst thou this thing?'
'Lord Duke!' appealed Tassino.
'Didst thou this thing?'
The victim fairly burst into tears.
'If I say no——'
'Die, Ananias!' shouted the Duke. His eyes gleamed maniacally. He half rose in his chair. He seemed as if furious to foreclose on a dénouement his superstition had already anticipated. Tassino fell upon his knees.
'I did it!' he screamed.
The Duke sank back, his lips twitching and grinning. Then he glanced covertly at Bembo, and rubbed his hands together, with a motion part gloating, part deprecatory. The Ser Ludovico's eyes, shaded under his palm, were very busy, to and fro. Bembo stood like frowning marble.
'The law, Master Scrivener?' said he quietly.
The kneeling clerk murmured from a dry throat—
'Holy sir, it takes no cognisance of these accidents. The condescensions of the great compensate them.'
The Parablist, his lips pressed together, nodded gravely twice or thrice.
'I see,' he said; 'a condescension which ruins two lives.'
He addressed himself, with a deadly sweetness, to the Duke.
'I prithee, who standest for God's vicegerent, call up the Jew to sentence.'
Jehoshaphat was produced, and placed beside the blubbered, resentful young popinjay. The Saint addressed him:—
'Wretch, thou art convicted of the crime of defacing the Duke's image; and he at thine elbow of defacing God's image. Shall man dare the awful impiety to pronounce the greater guilt thine? Yet, if it merits death and mutilation, what for this other?'
He paused, and a stir went through the dead stillness of the hall. Then Bembo addressed one of the tipstaves with ineffable civility:—
'Good officer, this rogue hath sweated coins, say'st?'
'Ay, your worship,' answered the man; 'a hundred gold ducats, if a lire. Shook 'em in a leathern bag, a' did, like so much rusted harness.'
Bembo nodded.
'They are forfeit, by the token; and he shall labour to provide other hundred, with cost of metal and stamping.'
Jehoshaphat, secure of his limbs, shrieked derisive—
'God of Ishril! O, yes! O, to be sure! I can bleed moneys!'
'Nay,' said the Saint, 'but sweat them. Go!'
The coiner was dragged away blaspheming. He would have preferred a moderate dose of the rack; but the standard set by his sentence elicited a murmur of popular approval. From all, that is to say, but Tassino, who saw his own fate looming big by comparison. He rose and looked about him desperately, as if he contemplated bolting. The spectators edged together. He whinnied. Suddenly the stranger's voice swooped upon him like a hawk:—
'Man's image shall be restored; restore thou God's.'
The little wretch screamed in a sudden access of passion:—
'I don't know what you mean! Leave me alone. It was his own fault, I say. Why did he insult me?'
'Restore thou this image of God his sight,' said Bembo quietly.
'You know I cannot!'
'Thou canst not? Then an eye for an eye, as it was spoken. Take ye this wicked thing, good officers, and blind him even as he blinded the poor armourer.'
A vibrant sound went up from the spectators, and died. Messer Ludovico veiled his sight, and, it might be said, his laughter. Tassino was seen struggling and crying in the half-fearful clutch of his gaolers.
'Thou darest not! Dogs! Let me go, I say. What! would ye brave Madonna? Lord Duke, lord Duke, help me!'
'To repentance, my poor Tassino,' cried Galeazzo, leaning lustfully forward. 'I trow thy part on earth is closed.'
The little monster could not believe it. This instant fall from the heights! He was flaccid with terror as he fell screeching on his knees.
'Mercy, good stranger! Mercy, dear lord saint! The terror! the torture! I could not suffer them and live. O, let me live, I pray thee!—anywhere, anyhow, and I will do all; make whatever restitution you impose.'
As he prayed and wept and grovelled, the Saint looked down with icy pity on his abasement.
'Restitution, Tassino!' he cried, 'for that murthered vision, for that ruined virtue? Wouldst thou even in thine impiousness arrogate to thyself such divine prerogatives? Yet, in respect of that reason with which true justice doth hedge her reprisals, the Duke's mercy shall still allot thee an alternative. Sith thou canst not restore his honour or his eyes to poor Lupo, thou shalt take his shame to wife, and in her seek to renew that image of God which thou hast defaced. Do this, and only doing it, know thyself spared.'
A silence of stupefaction fell upon the court. What would Bona say to this arbitrary disposal of her pet, made husband to a common gipsy he had debauched? True, the sentence, by virtue of its ethical completeness, seemed an inspiration. But it was a disappointment too. None doubted but that the popinjay would subscribe to the present letter in order to evade the practice of it by and by. Already the paltry soul of the creature was struggling from its submersion, gasping, and blinking wickedly to see how it could retort upon its judge and deliverer. It had been better to have trodden it under for once and for good—better for the moral of the lesson, as for all who foresaw some hope for themselves in the crushing of an insufferable petty tyranny. Galeazzo himself frowned and bit his nails. He would have lusted to see heaven pluck off this vulgar burr for him. Only his brother, sleek and smiling, applauded the verdict. He had a far-seeing vision, had Ludovico, and perhaps already it was alotting a more telling rôle to the little aristocrat of San Zeno than had ever been played by the cockney parvenu down in the arena.
Suddenly the Duke was on his feet, fierce and glaring.
'Answer, dog!' he roared; 'acceptest thou the condition?'
Tassino started and sobbed.
'Yes, yes. I accept. I will marry her.'
The Duke took a costly chain from his own neck, and hung it about the shoulders of the Parablist.
'Wear this,' he said, 'in earnest of our love and duty.'
Then he turned upon the mob.
'These judgments stand, and all that shall be spoken hereafter by our dear monitor and proctor. It is our will. Make way, gentlemen.'
He took Bernardo's arm and descended the steps. A cloud of courtiers hovered near, acclaiming the boy Saint and Daniel. Messer Ludovico saluted him with fervour. He foresaw the millennium in this association of piety with greatness. Galeazzo sneered.
'Remember that three spoils company, brother,' said he. 'Keep thou thine own confessor, and leave me mine.'
It was then only that Bernardo learned the rank of his accoster.
'Alas! sweet lord,' said he, 'is piety such a stranger here that ye must entertain him like a king?'
The Duke laughed loudly and drew him on. He was extravagant in his attentions to him—eager, voluble, feverish. He would point out to him the lavish decorations of his house—marbles, sculptures, paintings, the rising fabric of a new era—and ask his opinion on all. A word from the child at that period would have floored a cardinal or a scaffolding, have clothed Aphrodite in a cassock, have made afête champêtreof all Milan, or darkened its walls with mourning. Messer Lanti, following in their wake, was amazed, and dubious, and savage in turns. Earlier in the day the Duke had had from him the whole story of his connection with the Parablist, up to the moment of their interference in Montano's punishment.
'Meschino me!' he had said, greatly laughing over that episode; 'yet I cannot but be glad that the old code beat itself out on his back. 'Twas a reptile well served—a venomous, ungrateful beast. A mercy if it has broken his fang.'
That remained to be seen; and in the meantime Carlo, the old auxiliary in debauch, was taken again into full favour. He accepted the condescension with reserve. The oddest new attachment had come to supplant in him some ancient devotions that were the furthest from devout. He found himself in a very queer mood, between irritable and gentle. He had never before felt this inclination to hit hard for virtue, and it bewildered his honest head. But it made him a dangerous watchdog.
By and by the Duke carried his protégé into the Duchess's privy garden. There was a necessary economy of ornamental ground about the castello, though the most was made of what could be spared. In a nest of green alleys, and falling terraces, and rose-wreathed arches, they came upon the two ladies whom Bembo had already seen, themselves as pretty, graceful flowers as any in the borders. The young Catherine sat upon a fountain edge, fanning herself with a great leaf, and talking to a flushed, down-looking page, who, it seemed likely, had brought news from the court of a recent scandal and its sequel. Her shrewd, pretty face took curious stock of the new comers. She was a pale slip of a girl, lithe, bosomless, the green plum of womanhood. Her thin, plain dress was green, fitting her like a sheath its blade of corn, and she wore on her sleek fair head a cap of green velvet banded with a scroll of beaten gold. A child she was, yet already for two years betrothed to a Pope's nephew. His presents on the occasion had included a camera of green velvet, sewn with pearls as thick as daisies in grass. It seemed natural to associate her with spring verdure, so sweet and fair she was; yet never, surely, worked a more politic little brain under its cap of innocence.
Hard by, on one of the walks, a woman and a child of seven played at ball. These were Bona, and her little son Gian-Galeazzo. As the other was spring, so was she summer, ripe in figure and mellowed in the passion of motherhood. Her eyes burned with the caress and entreaty of it—appealed in loveliness to the fathers of her desires. Her beauty, her stateliness, the very milk of her were all sweet lures to increase. She loved babies, not men—saw them most lusty, perhaps, in the glossy eyes of fools, the breeding-grounds of Cupids. She was always a mother before a wife.
The Duke led Bernardo to her side. Pale as ivory, she bent and embraced her boy, and dismissed him to the fountain; then rose to face the ordeal.
'Hail, judgments of Solomon!' she said, with a smile that quivered a little. 'O believe me, sir, thy fame has run before!'
'Which was the reason thou dismissedst Gian,' said Galeazzo, 'in fears that Solomon would propose to halve him?'
He did not doubt her, or wing his shaft with anything but brutality. It was his coward way, and, having asserted it, he strolled off, grinning and whistling, to the fountain.
Bona shivered and drew herself up. Her robe was all of daffodil, with a writhed golden hem to it that looked like a long flicker of flame. On her forehead, between wings of auburn hair, burned a great emerald. She seemed to Bernardo the loveliest, most gracious thing, a vision personified of fruitfulness, the golden angel of maternity, warm, fragrant, kind-bosomed. He met the gaze of her eyes with wonderment, but no fear.
'Sweet Madonna,' he said, 'hail me nothing, I pray thee, but the clear herald of our Christ—His mouthpiece and recorder. We may all be played upon for truth, so we be pure of heart.'
'And that art thou? No guile? No duplicity? No self-interest?'
He marvelled. She looked at him earnestly.
'Bernardo, didst know this Tassino was my servant?'
'Nay, I knew it not.'
'Wouldst have spared him hadst thou known?'
'How could I spare him the truth?'
'But its shame, its punishment?'
'Greater shame could no man have than to debauch innocence. His punishment was his redemption.'
'Ah! I defend him not. Yet, bethink thee, she may have been the temptress?'
'He should have loathed, not loved her, then.'
'Madreperla, mother-of-pearl,' cried Catherine, with a little shriek of laughter, from the fountain; 'come and help me! I have caught a butterfly in my hand, and my father wishes to take it from me and kill it!'