Bembo had fled, like one distracted, from the walls, his faithful shadow jumping in his wake. The two, running and following, never slackened in their pace until a half-mile separated them from the city; and then, in a gloomy thicket, under a falling sky, the boy threw himself down on the grass, and buried his face from heaven. Pitiful and distraught, the Fool stood over, silently regarding him. At length he spoke, panting and reproachful.'Nay, in pity, master, wert thou not advised?'The boy writhed.'So lying, so wicked cunning, to make me his decoy and seeming abettor! O, I am punished for my faith! Is Christ dead?'The Fool sighed.'By thy showing, He lingers behind in the wood.''Tell Him I have gone on to my father.''Thou wilt?'Bernardo sat up, a towzled angel. In the interval the tears had come fast, and his face was wet.'God help you all!' he sobbed. 'You, even you, prevaricated to me. Whither shall I turn? I see everywhere a death-dealing wilderness, lies and lust and inhumanity.''I prevaricated,' said Cicada mournfully. 'I admit it. You once claimed my wit and experience to your tutoring. Well, do I not know the tyrant—the persistent devil in him? He had his teeth in that monk. Not Christ Himself would have loosened them.''Ah! what shall I do?''What, but go forward steadfast. This is but a jog by the way. Judge life on the broad lines of action, the ruts which mark the progress of the wheels. 'Tis a morbid sentiment that wastes itself on the quarrel between the wheels and the road.''Ah, me! if I could but foresee the end of that bloody mire—the sweet, crisp path again! I can advance no further. My weak heart fails. I will go back to the wood.''Then back, a' God's name, so I come too.'Bernardo rose and seized the Fool's hand, the tears streaming down his cheeks.'This dreadful race—monsters all!' he cried. 'Is there one kind deed recorded to its credit—one, one only, one little deed? Tell me, and if there is, by its memory I will persevere.''Humph! Should I wish thee to? Think again of that wood.''Tell me, kind, good Cicca, my nurse and friend.''Go to! Shalt not put a bone in my throat. Well, they are monsters, but made by that same brute Circumstance thou decriest. "Wavering out of chaos," says you? Very like, sir; but, after all, Circumstance is our head artist in a tuneless world. What a dull sing-song 'twould be without him—league-long choirs of saints praising God—a universe of chirping crickets! With respect, sir, I, though his Fool, would not have him caged in my time.''Alas, dear, for thine understanding! Love, that I would have depose him, is ten thousand times his superior in art—ay, and in humour. But go on.''I doubt the humour. However, as things are, I owe to him, as do you, and Galeazzo—the Fool, the Saint, and the Monster. Could love conceive such a trio? But to the point. Hast ever heard speak of our Duke's grand-dad?''Muzio?''So he called himself, or was called, pretending to trace his descent from Mutius Scævola the Roman. Flattery, you see, will make a braying ass of honesty. He was Giacommuzzo—just that; one of a family of fighting yeomen. But he had points. Hast been told how he began?''No.''Why, he was digging turnips by the evening star in his father's farm at Cotignola, when the sound of pipes and drums disturbed him. 'Twas some band of Boldrino of Panicale come to recruit from the fields; and they halted by the big man. "Be a soldier of fortune like us," says they; and he tossed his dusty hair from his eyes, and saw the glint of gold in baldricks. He looked at the evening star, and 'twas pale beside. Borrowers glean the real heaven of credit in this topsy-turvy world. Look at any pool of water: what a glittering prospectus it makes of the moon! Muzzo flung his spade into an oak hard by, leaving the decision to Circumstance. If it fell, he would resume it; if it stayed, a soldier he would be. It stuck in the branches.''Cicca!''Peace! I will tell thee. He fought up and down, but never back to Cotignola. He put his ploughing shoulder to his work, and dug a furrow to fame. Popes and kings engaged for and against this Condottieri. He took them all to market like his beans. He knew the values of fear and money and discipline—bought over honour; wrenched treason by the joints; flogged slackness for a rusty hinge in its armour; made warriors of his rabble. Sought letters, too, to spur them on by legend.''All this is nothing.''He went to Mass every day——''Alas!''Cast his true plain wife, and took to bed the widow of Naples——''Alas! Alas!''And lost his life at Pescara, trying to save another.''Ah! How was that?''He had crossed the river on a blown tide, when he saw his page a-drowning in the stream. "Poor lad," quoth he, "will none help thee?" And he dashed back, was overwhelmed himself, and sank. They saw his mailed hands twice rise and clutch the air. A' was never seen again. The waters were his tomb.'Bernardo was silent.'Was not that a creditable deed?' quoth the Fool.The boy, pressing the tangled hair from his eyes, feverishly seized his comrade's hands in his own.'God forgive me!' he cried; 'am I one to judge him, who have let my father's friend go under, and never reached a hand?'The Fool looked frankly amazed.'Montano,' cried Bembo, 'whom, in my pride of place, I have forgotten! I will go down among the people where he lies, and seek to heal his wounds, and sing Christ's parables to simple hearts. Love lies not in palaces. I will seek Montano.''Come, then,' said Cicada.'Nay, in a little,' said the boy. 'Let the kind night find us first. I will flaunt my creed no longer in the sun.'From behind the barred door of Lupo's shop came the sound of muffled laughter. The tragic incongruity of it in that house of ruin was at least arresting enough to halt a pedestrian here and there on his passage along the dark, wet-blown street outside. The mirth broke gustily, with little snarls at intervals, bestial and worrying; hearing which, the lingerer would perhaps hurry on his way with a shudder, crossing himself against, or spitting out like a bad odour, the influence of the fiend who had evidently got hold of the master armourer.Libera nos à malo!The fiend, in fact, in possession was no other than Messer Montano's Cerberus, and its orgy, had the listener known it, had more than justified his apprehensions. The mirth which terrified his heart was perhaps even a degree more deadly in its evocation than anything he could imagine. It was really laughter so dreadful that, had he guessed its import, he had rushed, in an agony of self-vindication, to summon the watch. But guessing nothing, unless it might be Lupo's madness under the shock of his misfortunes, he simply crossed himself and hurried away.Blood conspiracies are rarely successful. Perhaps a too scrupulous forethought against contingencies tends to clog the issues. If that is so, the recklessness of these men may, in a measure, have spelt their present security. A laugh, after all, is less open to suspicion than a whisper. Who could imagine a fatal thrust in a guffaw? Nevertheless, every chuckle uttered here punctuated a stab.In rehearsal only at present, it is true; but practice, good practice, sirs. The victim of the attack was a dummy, contrived suggestively to represent Galeazzo. At least the habit made the man; and hate and a stinging imagination supplied the rest.It stood in a dusky corner by the dead forge. Not so much light as would certainly guide a hand was allowed to fall upon it; for deeds of darkness, to be successful, must be prepared against darkness. Its stuffed, daubed face, staring from out this gloom, was like nothing human. To catch sudden sight, within a vista of dim lamp-shine, of its motionless eyes and features warped with stabs, was to gasp and shrink, as if one had looked into a glass and seen Death reflected back. Its suggestion of reality (and it possessed it) was to seek rather in velvet and satin; in a cunning, familiar disposition of its dress; in the sombre but profuse sparkle of artificial gems with which it was looped and hung. Thence came a grotesque and wicked semblance to a doomed figure. For the rest, in the bloodless slashes, gaping, rag-exuding, which had taken it cunningly in weak places—through the neck, under the gorget, between joints of the mail with which Lupo's craft had fitted it—there was a suggestiveness almost more horrible than truth.It was in actual fact a sop to Cerberus, was this grisly-ludicrous doll, fruit of the decision (which had followed much discussion of ways and means) to postpone its prototype's murder to some occasion of public festivity, when the sympathies of the mob might be kindled and a revolution accomplished at a stroke. Politic Cerberus must nevertheless have something to stay the gnawing and craving of a delayed revenge which had otherwise corroded him. He took a ferociously boyish delight in fashioning this lay-figure, and, having made, in whetting his teeth on it; in clothing it in purple and fine linen; in addressing it wheedlingly, or ironically, or brutally, as the mood swayed him. And to-night his mood, stung by the tempest, perhaps, was unearthly in its wildness. It rose in fiendish laughter; it mocked the anguish of the blast, a threefold litany, now blended, now a trifurcating blasphemy. There were the roaring bass of Visconti, Lampugnani's smooth treble, the deadly considered baritone of Olgiati. And, punctuating all, like the tap of a baton, flew the interjections of Messer Montano, the conductor:—'Su! Gia-gia! Bravo, Carlo! That was a Brutus stroke! Uh-uh, Andrea! hast bled him there for arrears of wages! a scrap of gold-cloth, by Socrates! A brave sign, a bright token, Andrea!'He chuckled and hugged himself, involuntarily embracing in the action the long pendant which hung from his roundlet or turban, and half-pulling the cap from his skull-like forehead.'Death!' he screeched in an ecstasy, and Lampugnani, glancing at him, went off into husky laughter, and sank back, breathed, upon a bench.'Cometh in a doctor's gown,' he panted. 'Nay, sir, bonnet! bonnet! or the dummy will suspect you.'He might have, himself, and with a better advantage to his fortunes, could he have penetrated the vestments of that drear philosophic heart. There was a secret there would have astoundedhisself-assurance. Montano wore his doctor's robe, meetly as a master of rhetoric, not the least of whose contemplated flights was one timely away from that political arena, whose gladiators in the meanwhile he was bent only on inflaming to a contest in which he had no intention of personally participating. He had a fixed idea, his back and his principles being still painfully at odds, that the cause would be best served by his absence, when once the long train to the explosion he was engineering had been fired at his hand. And so he hugged himself, and Lampugnani laughed.'Look at Master Lupo, with the sound of thy screech in his ears! As if he thought we contemplated anything but to bring slashed Venetian doublets into vogue!'He was a large, fleshly creature, was this Lampugnani, needing some fastidious lust to stir him to action, and then suddenly violent. His face was big and vealy, with a mouth in its midst like a rabbit's, showing prominently a couple, no more, of sleek teeth. His eyes drooped under lids so languid as to give him an affectation of fatigue in lifting them. His voice was soft, but compelling: he never lent it to platitudes. An intellectual sybarite, a voluptuary by deliberation, he had tested God and Belial, and pronounced for the less Philistine lordship of the beast. Quite consistent with his principles, he not hated, but highly disapproved of Galeazzo, who, as consistently, had pardoned him some abominable crime which, under Francesco the father, had procured him the death sentence. But Messer Andrea had looked for a more sympathetic recognition of his merits at the hands of his deliverer than was implied in an ill-paid lieutenancy of Guards; and his exclusion from a share in the central flesh-pots was a conclusive proof to him of the æsthetic worthlessness of the master it was his humility to serve.The Visconti, at whom he breathed his little laugh, was a contrast to him in every way—a bluff, stout-built man, with fat red chaps flushing through a skin of red hair, a braggadocio manner, and small eyes red with daring. There was nothing of his house's emblematic adder about him, save a readiness with poisons; and after all, that gave him no particular distinction. He took a great, stertorous pull at a flagon of wine, and smacked his lips bullyingly, before he answered with a roar:—'Wounds! scarlet scotched on a ground of flesh-tint—a fashion will please our saint.'Montano chuckled again, and more shrilly.'Good, good!' he cried: 'scarlet on flesh!' and he squinted roguishly at the blind smith, who sat beside him on a bench, nervously kneading together his wasted hands.'Messers,' muttered the poor fellow; 'but will this holy boy approve the means to such a fashion? For Love to exalt himself by blood!'He turned his sightless eyes instinctively towards Olgiati, where the boy stood, a dark, fatalistic young figure, breathing himself by the forge. He, he guessed, or perhaps knew, was alone of the company actuated by impersonal motives in this dread conspiracy. But he did not guess that, by so much as the young man was a pure fanatic of liberty, his hand and purpose were the most of all to be dreaded.Olgiati gave a melancholy smile, and, stirring a little, looked down. He was habited, as were his two companions, for the occasion—a recurrent dress-rehearsal—in a coat and hose of mail, and a jerkin of crimson satin. It was not the least significant part of his undertaking that he, like the others, was court-bred and court-employed. The fact, at its smallest, implied in them a certain anatomic-cum-sartorial acquaintance with their present business.'Offerimus tibi, Domine, Calicem salutaris!' he quoted from the Mass, in his sweet, strong voice. 'Hast thou not a first example of that exaltation, Lupo, in the oblation of the chalice?'Revolution knows no blasphemy.'Bah!' grumbled Visconti.'He died for men: we worship the sacrifice of Himself,' protested the armourer.'And shall not Messer Bembo sacrifice himself, his scruples and his reluctances, that love may be exalted over hate, mercy over tyranny?' asked Olgiati.'I know not, Messer,' muttered the suffering armourer. 'I cannot trace the saint in these sophistries, that is all.''True, he is a saint,' conceded Lampugnani, yawning as he lolled. 'Now, what is a saint, Lupo?''O, Messer! look on his mother's son, and ask!''Why, that is the true squirrel's round. We are all born of women'—he yawned again.'They bear us, and we endure them,' he murmured smilingly, the water in his eyes. 'It is so we retaliate on their officiousness.'Montano tittered.'Lupo,' Lampugnani went on, lazily stirring himself, 'you suggest to me two-thirds of a syllogism:Iam my mother's son; therefore I am a saint.''Ho! ho!' hooted Visconti.'Messer,' entreated the bewildered armourer, 'with respect, it turns upon the question of the mother.''The mother? O dog, to question the repute of mine!''I did not—no, never.''Well, who was his?''None knows. A star, 'tis said.''Venus, of course. And his father?''Some son of God, perchance.''Ay, Mars. He was that twain's by-blow, and fell upon an altar. I know now how saints are made. Yet shall we, coveting sanctity, wish our parents bawds? 'Tis a confusing world!'He sank back as if exhausted, while Montano chirped, and Visconti roared with laughter.'Saints should be many in it, Andrea,' he applauded. 'Knows how they are made, quotha!' and he stamped about, holding his sides till, reeling near to the dummy, he paused, and made a savage lunge at it with his dagger. His mood changed on the instant.'Death!' he snarled, 'I warrant here's one hath propagated some saints to his undoing!' and he went muttering a rosary of curses under his breath.Lampugnani, smilingly languid, continued:—'Well, Lupo, so Messer Bembo is the son of his mother? It seems like enough—what with his wheedling and his love-locks. He shall be Saint Cupid on promotion. I think he will regard scarlet or pink as no objectionable fashion, does it come to make a god of him.'The armourer uttered an exclamation:—'Some think him that already. It is the question of his coming to be Duke that hips me. I can't see him there.''Nor I,' said Visconti, with a sarcastic laugh.Olgiati interposed quietly:—'Have comfort, Lupo. We are all good republicans. The exaltation of Messer Bembo is to be provisional only, preceding the consummation. He is to be lifted like the Host, to bring the people to their knees, and then lowered, and——''Put away,' said Lampugnani blandly.The armourer started to his feet in agitation.'Messers!' he cried, 'he poured oil into my wounds; I will consent to no such wickedness.''Youwon't?' roared Visconti; but Lampugnani soothed him down.'When I said "put away," I meant in a tabernacle, like that sacred bread. I assure you, Lupo, he is the rose of our adoration also; he shall cultivate his thorn in peace; he shall wax fat like Jeshurun, and kick.''And in the meantime,' grumbled Visconti, 'we are measuring our fish before we've hooked him.'Lampugnani's face took on a very odd expression.'What the devil's behind that?' hectored the bully.'O, little!' purred the other. 'I fancy I feel him nibble, that's all. Perhaps you don't happen to know how he hath cut his connection with the palace?''What! When?'They all jumped to stare at him.'This day,' he said, 'in offence of some carrion of Galeazzo's which he had nosed out. The poor boy is particular in his tastes, for a shambles—ran like a sheep from the slaughter-house door, taking his Patch with him, and a ring her Grace had loaned him for a safe-conduct. I heard it said she would have been ravished of anything rather—by him. 'Twas her lord's troth-gift. The castle is one fume of lamentation.'Montano, rubbing his lean hands between his knees, went into a rejoicing chatter:—'We have him, we have him! Gods! who's here?'Their intentness had deafened them some minutes earlier to a more mouthing note in the thunder of the rain, as if the swell of the tempest had been opened an instant and shut. The moment, in fact, and a master-key, had let in a new comer. He had closed the latch behind him, and now, seeing himself observed, stood ducking and lowering in the blinking light. The philosopher heaved a tremulous sigh of relief.'Narcisso!'The hulking creature grinned, and stabbed a thumb over his shoulder.'Hist! him you speak of's out there, a-seeking your worship.''Seekingme? Messer Bembo?''Why not? A' met him at the town gate half-drowned, with his Patch to heel. The report of his running was got abroad, and, thinks I to myself, here's luck to my masters. To take him on the hop of grievance like——'Montano seemed to sip the phrase:—'Exactly: on the hop of grievance. Well?''Why, I spoke him fair: "Whither away, master?" A' spat a saintly word—'twere a curse in a sinner—and sprang back, a' did, glaring at me. But the great Fool pushed him by. "You're the man," says he. "Desperation knows its fellows. Where's Montano?" "Why, what would you with him?" says I, taken off my guard. "A salve for his wounds," he answered. And so I considered a bit, and brought 'em on, and there they wait.'Visconti uttered a furious oath, but Lampugnani hushed him down.'Didst well, pretty innocence,' he said to Narcisso. 'The hop of grievance?—never a riper moment. Show in your friends.'He was serenely confident of his policy—waved all protest aside.'I see my way: the hook is baited: let him bite.''Bite?' growled Visconti. 'And what about our occupation here?''Why, 'tis testing mail, nothing more. Is a lay-figure in an armoury so strange?''Ay, when 'tis a portrait-model.''O glowing tribute to my art! I designed the doll, true. You make me look down, sir, and simper and bite my finger. Yet my mind misgives me thou flatterest. A portrait-model, yes; but will he recognise of whom?''The knave may—the shrewder fool of the pair.''The greater fool will testify to me? O happy artist! Well, if he do, I will still account him naught. He will take the bait also. The shadow swims and bites with the fish. Besides, should this befall, 'twill save mayhap a world of preliminaries. Remember that "hop of grievance." He comes, it seems, in a mood to jump with ours. Let them in.'Like souls salvaged from a wreck they came—the Fool propping the Saint—staggering in by the door. Grief and storm and weariness had robbed the boy of speculation, almost of his senses. His drenched hair hung in ropes, his wild eyes stared beneath like a frightened doe's, his clothes slopped on his limbs.Narcisso struggled with the door and closed it.Suddenly Bernardo, lifting his dazed lids, caught sight of the shadowed lay-figure, recoiled, and shrieking out hoarsely:—'Galeazzo! Thou! O God, doomed soul!' tottered and slid through Cicada's limp arms upon the floor. Instantly Narcisso was down by his side, and fumbling with his hands.'A's in a swound,' he was beginning, when, with a rush and heave, the Fool sent him wallowing.'Darest thou, hog! darest thou! Go rub thy filthy hoofs in ambergris first!' and he squatted, snarling and showing his teeth.Narcisso rose, to a chorus of laughter, and stood grinning and rubbing his head.'Well, I never!' he said.CHAPTER XIIIThe Countess of Casa Caprona was a widow. The news was waiting to overwhelm, or transport, her upon her return to the castello after her interview with Lanti. On the one hand it committed her to dowagery, that last infirmity of imperious minds; on the other to the freedom of a glorified spinsterhood. Though she recognised that, on the whole, the blow was destructive of the real zest of intrigue, she behaved very handsomely by the memory of the deceased, who had died, like a soldier, in harness. She caused a solemn requiem mass to be sung for him in the Duomo; she commissioned a monody, extolling his marital virtues, from an expensive poet; she distributed liberal alms to the poor of the city. There is no trollop so righteous in her matronhood as she made timely a widow. Besides, to this one, the zest of all zests for the moment was revenge. She withdrew to mature it, and to lament orthodoxly her lord, to her dower-house in the Via Sforza.It was a very pretty spot for melancholy and meditation—cool, large, secluded, and its smooth, silent walks and bubbling fountains cloistered in foliage. From its gardens one had glimpses of the castello and of the candied, biscuit-like pinnacles of the cathedral. Cypresses and little marble fauns broke between them the flowering intervals, and peacocks on the gravel made wandering parterres of colour. Sometimes, musing in the shades, with a lock of her long hair between her lips, she would pet her frowning fancy with the figure of a youthful Adam, golden and glorious, approaching her down an avenue of this smiling paradise, making its mazes something less than scentless; and then, behold! a lizard, perhaps, would wink on the terrace, and she would snatch and crush the little palpitating life under her heel, cursing it for a symbol of the serpent desolating her Eden, and transforming it all into a mirage of warmth and passion. Not Adam he, that lusted-for, but the angel at the gate, menacing and awful. She must be more and worse than Eve to seek to corrupt an angel.Perhaps she was, in her most tortured, most animal moods. The sensuous, by training and heredity, had quite over-swollen and embedded in her beautiful trunk the small spike of conscience, which as a child had tormented, and which yet, at odd moments, would gall and tease her like an ancient wound. She might even have been stung by it into some devotional self-sacrifice in her present phase of passion, could she have been assured of, or believed in, its object's inaccessibility to a higher grace of solicitation. But jealousy kept her ravening.On a languorous noon of this week of losses she was lying, a conventionally social exile, having her hair combed and perfumed, in a little green pavilion pitched in her grounds, when a heavy step on the gravel outside aroused her from a dream of voluptuous rumination. The tread she recognised, yet, though moved by it to a little flutter of curiosity, would not so far alloy a drowsy ecstasy as to bid the visitor enter while it lasted. Hypnotised by the soft burrowing of the comb, she closed her eyes until the perfect moment was passed, when, with a sigh, she bade the intruder enter, and Narcisso came slouching in by the opening.Beatrice dismissed her attendants with a look. She never spoke to her servants where a gesture would serve, and could draw hour-long silent enjoyment from the weary hands of tire-woman or slave, hairdresser or fanner, without a sign of embarrassment, or indeed understanding. Now she lay back, restful, impassive—indifferent utterly to any impression her will for a solitary interview with this gross creature might make upon them. And, indeed, there was little need for such concern. Hired assassination, a recognised institution, explained many otherwise strange conjunctions between the beauties and beasts of Milan.The beast, in the present instance, behaved as was habitual with him in the presence of this Circe. That is to say, he was awkward, deprecating, and, of stranger significance, devoted to truthfulness. He adored her, as Caliban Miranda, but more fearfully: was her slave, the genii of the lamp of her loveliness, with which to be on any familiar terms, even of debasement, was enough. What did it matter that she paid him with offence and disdain? Her use of him was as her use of some necessary organic part of herself. And she might deprecate the necessity; but the secret of it was, nevertheless, their common property. Her beauty and his devotion were as near akin as blood and complexion. Perhaps some day, in the resurrection of the flesh, he would be able to substantiate that kinship.The thought may have been there in him, instinctive, unilluminated, as he stood fumbling with his cap, and raising and lowering his hang-dog eyes, and waiting for her to open. Physically, at least, she showed no shame in implying his close right to her confidence. The noon was a noon of slumbering fires, and her mood a responsive one. A long white camisole, of the frailest tissue, rounded on her lower limbs, and, splitting at the waist, straddled her shoulders clingingly, leaving a warm breathing-space between. Round her full neck clung one loop of emeralds; and to the picture her black falling hair made a tenderest frame, while the sun, penetrating the tilt above, finished all with a mist of green translucence. A Circe, indeed, to this coarse and animal rogue, and alive with awful and covetable lusts, to which, nevertheless, he was an admitted procurer. He had not ceased to be in her pay and confidence, cursed and repudiated though he had been by his master, her erst protector. He had not even resented that episode of his betrayal at her hands, though it had condemned him for a living to the rôle of the hired bravo. She might always do with him as she liked; overbid with one imperious word his fast pledges to others; convert his craft wheresoever she wished to her own profit. The more she condescended to him, the more was he claimed a necessary part of her passions' functions. She discharged through him her hates and desires, and he was beatified in the choice of himself as their medium. There was a suggestion of understanding, of a conscious partnership between them, in the very fulsomeness with which he abased himself before her.'Well,' she murmured at last, 'hast drunk thy senses to such surfeit that they drown in me?''Ay,' he mumbled, 'I could die looking.''A true Narcissus,' she scoffed; 'but I could wish a sweeter. Stand away, fellow. Your clothes offend me.'He backed at once.'Now,' she said, 'I can breathe. Deliver yourself!'He heaved up his chest, and looked above her, concentrating his wits on an open loop of the tent, behind which a bird was flickering and chirping.'I come, by Madonna's secret instructions, from privately informing Messer Lanti where Messer Bembo lies hidden,' he said, speaking as if by rote.She nodded imperiously.'What questions did he ask?''How I knew; and I answered, that I knew.''Good. That least was enough. Art a right rogue. Now will he go seek him, and be drawn by his devotion into this net.'Narcisso was silent.'Will he not?' she demanded sharply.The fellow dropped his eyes to her an instant.'Madonna knows. He loves the Messer Saint. No doubt a' will hold by him.''What then, fool?''They have not caught Messer Bembo yet, they at the forge—that is all.''How!' she cried angrily, 'when thou told'st me——''With humility, Madonna,' he submitted, 'I told thee naught but that he and this Montano were agreed on the State's disease.''Well?''But I never said on its cure.'She frowned, leaning forward and again biting a strand of her hair—a sullen trick with her in anger.'A doctor of rhetoric, and so feeble in persuasion!' she muttered scornfully.'A' starts at a shadow, this saint,' pleaded Narcisso. 'A' must be coaxed, little by little, like a shy foal. We will have him in the halter anon. Yet a' be only one out of five, when all's said.''Dolt!' she hissed. 'What are the other four, or their purpose, to me, save as a lever to my revenge? I foresee it all. Why telled'st me not before I sent thee? Now this gross lord, instead of himself tangling in the meshes, will persuade the other back to court and reason and forgiveness, and I shall be worse than damned. Dolt, I could kill thee!'She rose to her height, furious, and he shrunk cowering before her.'Listen, Madonna,' he said, trembling: 'Canst net them all yet at one swoop. Go tell Messer Ludovico, and certes a' will jump to destroy the nest and all in it, before a' inquires their degrees of guilt.'She stared at him, still threatening.'Why?''Why, says Madonna? Listen again, then. Does the Ser Simonetta trust Messer Ludovico, or Messer Ludovico love the Ser Simonetta? The secretary clings to the Duchess. If she falls, a' falls with her.''Again, thou tedious rogue, why should the Saint's destruction bring Bona down?''A' would have his mouth shut from explaining.''Explaining what? I lose patience.''How a' came, a conspirator against the Duke, to be found wi' his wife's troth ring in his possession. Here it be. I've filched it for thee at last.'She sprang to seize the token, glowing triumphant in a moment, and putting it on her own finger, pressed the clinched hand that enclosed it into her bosom.She laughed low and rejoicingly, shameless in the quick transition of her mood.'Good Narcisso! It is the Key at last! Let Lanti persuade him back now—I am content. I hold them, and Bona too, in the hollow of this hand.'She held it out, her right one, palm upwards, and, smiling, bade him kiss it.'Rogue,' she said, 'to tease and vex me, and all the time this talisman in thy sleeve. Ay, make the most of it: snuffle and root. My dog has deserved of me.'He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, as if he had drunk.'Now,' she said, 'how wert successful? how won'st it, sweet put?''Took it from him, that was all.''How?''When a' came tumbling in and staggered in a swound. Had heard Messer Andrea relating of how 'twas on him as I entered. Ho, ho! thinks I, here's that, maybe, will pay the filching! and I dropped and got it, all in a moment like.''You never told me.''You never asked till yesterday. Then I had it not with me. But to-day, thinks I, I'll bring it up my sleeve for a win-favour—a good last card.''No matter, since I have got it.'She held it out, and gloated on its device and sparkle. She knew it well: indeed it was a famous gem, the Sforza lion cut in cameo on a deep pure emerald, and known as the Lion ring.'Hath he not missed it?' she murmured.'Not by any sign a' gives. The sickness of that night still holds him half-amazed. A' thinks our fine doll, even, but a bug of it—fancies a' saw it in a dream like. They'd locked it away when he came to.''Poor worldling! Poor little new-born worldling! He shall cut his pretty teeth anon. Well—for Messer Lanti? Did he leap to the trail, or what?''That same moment. Belike they are together now.'She stood musing a little: then heaved a sudden sigh.'Poor boy,' she murmured, 'poor boy! is it I must seek to destroy thee!'Her mood had veered again in a breath. Her eyes were full of a brooding love and pity.'Not for the first time,' muttered Narcisso.She seemed not to hear him—to have grown oblivious of his presence.'The song he sang to me!' she murmured: 'Ah, me, if that hour could be mine! A saint in heaven?—not Bona's! she hath a lord—no saint, did he love her. He looked at me: it came from his heart. If that hour could be mine! Not then—'twere a sin—but now! That one hour—cherished—unspent—the seed of the unquickened pledge between us to all eternity. I could be content, knowing him a saint through that abstinence. My hour—mine—to passion to my breast—the shadow of the child that would not be born to me. He looked at me—no spectre of a dead lost love in his eyes—only a hopeless quest—bonds never to be riven. But now—Ah! I cannot kill him!'She hid her eyes, shuddering. Narcisso, vaguely troubled, gloomed at her.'You will not go to Messer Ludovico?' he said.She returned to knowledge of him, as to a sense of pain out of oblivion.'Go,' she said coldly. 'Leave all to me. You have done well, and been paid your wages.'And he did not demur. It was not in her nature to gild her favours unnecessarily. Gold came less lavishly from her than kisses. Her pounds of flesh were her most profitable assets. She was a spendthrift in everything but money.CHAPTER XIV'Messer Bembo,' said Montano, between meditative and caustic, 'you do not agree that our poor Lupo's definition of a perfect government, an autocracy with an angel at its head, is a practicable definition?'He was sitting, as often during the last few days, at talk with the boy, on subjects civic, political, and theological. They had discussed at odd times the whole ethics of government, from the constitution of Lycurgus to the code of Thomas Aquinas: they had expounded, each in his way, a scheme or a dream of socialism: they had agreed, without prejudice, to liken the evolution of the simple Church of Peter into the complicated fabric of the fourth Sixtus to a woodland cottage, bought by some great princely family, and improved into a summer palace, which was grown out of harmony with its environments. Somewhat to his amazement, Montano discovered that the boy was the opposite to a dogmatic Christian; that his was a religion, which, while conforming or adapting itself to the orthodox, was in its essence a religion of mysticism. No doubt the traditions of his origin were, to some extent, to seek for this. A pledge, so to speak, of spontaneous generation, Bernardo accounted for himself on a theory of reincarnation from another sphere. He believed in the possibility of the resurrection of the body, which, though destroyed, and many times destroyed, could be, in its character of mere soul-envelope or soul expression, as regularly reconstructed at the will of its informing spirit. Death, he declared, was just the beginning of the return of that divested spirit to the spring of life—to the river welling in the central Eden from the loins of the Father, the spouse of Nature, the secret, the unspeakable God, of whom was Christ, his own dear brother and comrade.He would tell Messer Montano, with his sweet, frank eyes arraigning that crabbed philosopher's soul, how this unstained first-born of Nature, this sinless heir of love, this wise and pitying Christ, moved by an infinite compassion to see the wounded souls of his brothers—those few who had not made their backward flight too difficult—come, soiled and earth-cloyed, to seek their reincarnation in the spring, had descended, himself, upon earth at last, sacrificing his birthright of divinity, that he might teach men how to live. And the men his brothers had slain him, in jealousy, even as Cain slew Abel; yet had his spirit, imperishably great, continued to dwell in their midst, knowing that, did it once leave the earth, it must be for ever, and to mankind's eternal unregeneracy. For, so Bernardo insisted, there was an immutable law in Nature that no soul reincarnated could re-enter the sphere from which it was last returned, but must seek new fields of action. Wherefore all earth-loving spirits, which we call apparitions, were such as after death clung about the ways of men, in a yearning hopefulness to redeem them by touching their hearts with sympathy and their eyes with a mist of sorrow. And, of such gentle ghosts, Christ was but the first in faith and tenderness.A wild, dim theory, peopling woods, and fields, and cities with a mystic company—phantoms, yet capable of revealing themselves in fitful glimpses to the sinless and the sympathetic among men—ghosts, weaving impalpable webs of love across populous ways to catch men's souls in their meshes. Montano called it all transcendental fustian. It aroused his most virulent scorn. What had this cloud-moulding, moon-paring stuff to do with the practical issues of life, with freedom, and government by popular representation? He even professed to prefer to it Lascaris, with his metaphysical jargon and apostolic succession of atoms.'He gives you at least something to take hold of,' he snarled. 'Listen to this'—and he condescended to read an excerpt from a recent treatise by his hated rival:—'"Life,"' he read, '"is put out at compound interest. We represent, each in himself, a fraction of the principal, having a direct pedigreeab initio. As a spider will gather the hundred strands of his web into a little ball which he will swallow, so might we each absorb and claim the whole vast web of life. Rolled up to include each radiating thread, the web becomes I; the spider is I; I am the principal of life—not the principle: that is Prometheus' secret."''"I am a fraction of life's compound interest. The sum of the mental impressions of all my thread of tendency (which gathers back, taking up cross threads by the way, to the central origin) is invested in my paltry being, and lieth there, together with mine own interest on the vast accumulation, in tail for my next of kin. What can I do in my tiny span but touch the surface of this huge estate: pluck here and there a flower of its fields, whose roots are in immemorial time? Imagination founders in those fathomless depths. Tenuous, dim-forgotten ghosts rise from them. Who shall say that my dreams, however seeming mad and grotesque, are not faithful reflexes of states and conditions which were once realities; memories of forms long extinct; echoes of times when I flew, or spun, or was gaseous, or vast, or little; when I mingled intimate with shapes which are chimerical to my present understanding——"'The reader broke off, with an impatient grunt.'There!' he said, 'dreams mad and grotesque enough, in good sooth; yet not so mad as thine.''Well,' said Bernardo, 'well,' with perfect sweetness and good temper.'Christ in the world? Fah!' snarled the philosopher. 'I know him. He sits at Rome under a triple tiara. Quit all this sugared dreaming, boy, and face the future like a man.''Does the sun shine out of yesterday or to-morrow? It is enough for the moment to take thought for itself. The future is not.''Pooh! a mere Jesuitry, justifying the moment's abomination.''Nay: for we shall have to retraverse our deeds, and carry back their burden to our first account—with most, a toilful journey.''They would do better to stop with your Christ, then; and, judged by the preponderance of evil spirits here, I think most do. No future, say'st? But how about that heir of the compound interest? Is there not one waiting to succeed to him? Where? Why, in the future, as surely and inevitably as this date, which I am going to swallow in a moment, will be blood and tissue in me to-morrow.'He held the fruit up—with a swift movement Bernardo whipped it out of his hand and ate it himself.'How for your future now?' he chuckled, pinking all over.Cicada laughed loudly, and Montano swore. His philosophy was not proof against such practical jokes. But, seeing his fury, the boy put out all his sweetness to propitiate him. He was his father's friend; he was a man of learning; he had suffered grievous wrong. The dog was coaxed presently into opening again upon the angelic principles. It was by such virulent irony that he thought—so warped was his mental vision—to corrode the candour of this saint, and bend him to his own views and uses—a diseased vanity, even had he not reckoned, as will now appear, without the consideration of another possible factor.And 'So,' said he upon a later occasion, in the sentence which opens this chapter, 'you do not agree with our poor Lupo's practicable definition of a perfect government?'The Saint's steadfast eyes canvassed the speaker's soul, as if in some shadowy suspicion of an integrity which they were being led, not for the first time, to probe.'Why, Messer,' said he, 'practicable in so far as, by the dear Christ's influence, grace may come to make an angel even of our Duke.'Montano tried to return his steady gaze, but failed meanly.'With submission, Messer Bernardo,' he sniggered, 'I can only follow, in my mind's eye, one certain road to that great man's apotheosis.'Bembo was silent.''Tis the road,' continued the other, 'taken before by the Emperor Nero.''He stabbed himself, the most wretched pagan, in fear of a worser retribution than heaven's,' said Bembo. 'Alas! do you call that an apotheosis?''There are gods and gods,' said Montano,—'Hades and Olympus. Belike Nero was welcomed of his kind, as Galeazzo would be. I can scarce see in the Duke the raw material of your fashion of angel. There's more of the harpy about him than the harp.'It was a heavenly day. Bernardo, still a little hectic and languid from his fever, sat in the embrasure of a window which gave upon the back court of the smithy. A muffled tinkling of armourers' hammers reached his ears pleasantly from the rear of neighbouring premises. There was a certain happy suggestiveness to him in the sound, evoked, as he hoped it might be, at his host Lupo's instigation. For his endearing optimism had so wrought upon that stricken artificer, during the week he had dwelt in hiding with him, as to persuade the poor man to quit his self-despairing, and hire out his skill—not practically; that was no longer possible; but theoretically—to a deserving fellow-craftsman. Already the sense of touch was curiously refining in the sightless creature, and the glimmer of a new dawn of interest penetrating him. And he was at work again elsewhere.On the floor at Bembo's feet squatted Cicada, acrid, speaking little, and spending his long intervals of silence in staring at the girl Lucia, who, crouching at a distance away by the fireless forge, in the gloom of the shuttered smithy, seemed given over to an eternal reverie of hate. She, alone of the household, had remained impervious to all the sweet influences of sorrow and pity. Her wrong was such as no angel could remedy.Cicada spoke now, with a scowl of significance for Montano:—'Speak plain, master philosopher. Innuendo is the weapon of Fools, and wisdom shall prevail in candour. Thou canst not picture to thyself this evangelised Duke?'Montano shot a lowering glance at him.'No, I confess, master Patch,' said he—'unless,' he added grinning, 'by Nero's road.''Two whispers do not make one outspokenness,' answered the Fool. 'Hast hinted Nero once, and once again, and still we lack the application. Nero was driven to the road, quotha; well, by whom?—one Galba, an my learning's not a'rust. What then? Is Galba going to drive Galeazzo?''Nay, Love, dear Cicca,' put in Bernardo, but half hearing and half understanding.'Love!' cried the Fool. 'Thou hast hit it. Hear wisdom from the mouths of babes. Love in the hands of rascals—a tool, a catspaw, to pull them their chestnuts from the fire, and then be cast burnt aside.'He addressed himself, with infinite irony, to Montano.'Good master philosopher,' said he, 'there is one fable for you: listen while I relate another. A certain rogue was stripped and beaten by a greater, who going on his way, there came a stranger, a mere child, and marked the fellow groaning. "Poor soul!" quoth he in pity; and knelt and bound his hurts and gave him wine, and by kind arts restored him. When shortly the aggressor returning and whistling by that place, his erst-victim, stung to revenge, yet having no weapon left him, did leap and incontinent seize up by his heels the ministering angel, and using his body for flail, knock down his enemy with him, killing both together. Which having done, and picked their pockets, on his way goes he rejoicing, "Now do I succeed to mine enemy's purse and roguery!"'He ended. Montano, glancing stealthily at Bernardo, wriggled and tittered uneasily.'Patch hath spoken,' he said; 'great is Patch!''I have spoken,' quoth the Fool. 'Dost gather the moral?''Not I, indeed.''Why, sir, 'tis of roguery making himself master of Love's estate; and yet that is not the full moral neither. For I mind me of a correction; how, before the blow was struck, Folly stepped between, and snatched Love from such a fate, and left the rogues to their conclusions.''Well, Folly and Love were well mated. Have you done? I am going to my books.'He yawned, and stretched himself, and rose.'I will show you to the door, says Folly,' chirped Cicada, and skipped about the other as he went, with a mincing affectation of ceremonial. But when they were got out of immediate sight and hearing of Bernardo into the front chamber, like a wolf the Fool snapped upon the philosopher, and pinned him into a corner.'Understood'st my fable well enough,' he grated, in a rapid whisper. 'What! I have waited this opportunity a day or two. Now the stopper is out, let us flow.'Montano, taken by surprise, was seized with a tremor of irresolution. He returned the Fool's gaze with a frown uncertain, sullen, eager all in one.'Flow, then,' he muttered, after a little.'I flow,' went on the other, 'oil and verjuice combined. Imprimis, think not that because I read I would betray thee. Ay, ay—no need to start, sir. Thou shalt not quit playing with thy doll for me; nay, nor dressing and goring it, if thou wilt, with triangles of steel. O, I saw!—the face and the slashes in it, too. I have not since been so ill, like him there, as to read a phantasy out of fact. What then? Would ye silence me?''Go on,' whispered Montano hoarsely.'Well, I flow,' returned the Fool. 'Did I not tell thee candour was the best part of wisdom? Learn by it, then. I have marked thee of late; O, trust me, I have marked thee, thy hints and insinuations. And hereby by folly I swear, could once I think my master wax to such impressions, I would kill him where he stands, and damn my soul to send his uncorrupt to heaven. You sneer? Sneer on. Why, I could have laughed just now to see you, tortuous, sound his sweet candid shallows, where every pebble's plain. Do your own work, I'll not speak or care. You shall not have him to it, that's all. Sooner shall the heavens fall, than he be led by you to poison Galeazzo. Is that plain?'It was so plain, that the philosopher gasped vainly for a retort.'Who—who spoke of poison?' he stammered. 'Not I. Dear Messer Fool, you wrong me. This boy—the protégé of della Grande—mine old friend—I would not so misuse him. Why, he succoured me—an ill requital. If I sounded him, 'twas in self-justification only. We seek the same end by different roads—the ancient Gods restored—the return to Nature. Is it not so? Christ or Hyperion—I will not quarrel with the terms. "Knowledge," saith he, "is the fool that left his Eden." Well, he harks back, and so do I.''No further, thou, than to Rome and Regillus; but he to Paradise. Halt him not, I say. He shall not be thy catspaw. On these terms only is my silence bought.''Then is it bought. Why, Fool, I could think thee a fool indeed. He hath forsworn the court: how could we think to employ him there?''You know, as I know, sir, that this secession is a parenthesis, no more. He came to cure the State—not your way. A little repentance will win him back. The disease is in the head—he sees it; not in these warped limbs that the brain governs. He will go back anon.''And reign again by love?''I hope so, as first ministers reign.''No more? Well, we will back him there.''Again, be warned; not your way. Make him no text for the reform which builds on murder. I have spoken.''Well, we will not.Vale!'—and the philosopher, bowing his head, slunk out by the door which the other opened for him.A little later, creeping into a narrow court which was the 'run' to his burrow, at the entrance he crossed the path of two cavaliers, whom, upon their exclaiming over the encounter, he drew under an archway.They were come from playing pall-mall on the ramparts, and carried over their shoulders the tools of their sport—thin boxwood mallets, painted with emblematic devices in scarlet and blue, and having handle-butts of chased silver. Each gentleman wore red full-hose ending in short-peaked shoes, a plain red biretta, and a little green bodice coat, tight at the waist and open at the bosom to leave the arms and shoulders free play. Montano squinted approval of their flushed faces and strong-breathed lungs.'Well exercised,' quoth he, in his high-pitched whisper; 'well exercised, and betimes belike.''News?' drawled Lampugnani. 'O, construe thyself!''The Fool,' answered Montano, 'sees through us, that is all.''What!' Visconti's brows came down.'Hush! He hath warned me—not finally; only he pledges his silence on the discontinuance of my practices on his cub.''Well,' said Lampugnani serenely; 'discontinue.''Messer, he looks, with certainty, to the boy being won back to court anon. How, then! shall we let him go?''No!' rapped out Visconti.'Yes,' said Lampugnani. 'I trow his good way is after all our best. Let him go back, and make the State so fast in love with Love as to prove Galeazzo impossible. He will sanctify our holocaust for us.''But the Fool, Messer—the Fool!''Will never conspire against his adored master's exaltation.''Exaltation? Would ye let this saint, then, to become the people's idol?''Ay, that we may discredit him presently for an adulterous idol. No saint so scorned as he whose sanctity trips on woman.''What! You think——?''Exactly—yes—the Duchess.Vale, Messer Montano!'—and he lifted his cap mockingly, and moved off.In the meanwhile Cicada, having watched, through a slit of the unclosed door, the retreat and disappearance of the philosopher, was about to shut himself in again, with a muttered objurgation or two, when a rapid step sounded without, and on the instant the door was flung back against him, and Messer Lanti strode in. There was no opportunity given him to temporise: the great creature was there in a moment, and had recognised him with a 'pouf!' of relief. He just accepted the situation, and closed the door upon them both.'Well,' he said acridly, 'here you be, and whether for good or ill let the gods answer!'Lanti stretched his great chest.'It is well, Fool; and I am well if he is well. Where is he?'Cicada pointed. The girl by the forge crouched and glared unwinkingly. The next moment Carlo was in his loved one's arms.'Why hast hidden thyself, boy?—ah! it is a long while, boy—good to see thee again—stand off—I cannot see thee after all—a curse on these blinking eyes!''Dear Carlo, I have been a little ill; my joints ached.'He wept himself, and fondled and clung to his friend.'Thou great soft bully! For shame! Why, I love thee, dear. Wert thou so hurt? O Carlo! I have been most ill in spirit.''Come back, and we will nurse thee.''Alas! What nurses!''The tenderest and most penitent—Bona, first of all.'The arms slid from his neck. Sweet angel eyes glowered at him.'Bona to heal my spirit? To pour fire into its wounds rather! O, I had thought her pure till yesterday!'And, indeed, Montano, in the furtherance of his corroding policy, had spared him no evidences of court scandal.Carlo hung his bullet head.'Lucia!' cried the boy suddenly and sternly.The girl, at the word, came slinking to him like a dog, setting her teeth by the way at the stranger. Bernardo put his hand on her lowered head.'Dost know who this is?' he asked of Carlo.'Why, I can guess.''Canst thou, and still talk of Bona's penitence? Here's proof of it—in this foul deed unexpiated. Was it ever meant it should be?'He raised his arm denunciatory.'They have used me to justify their abominations; they have made mine innocence a pander to their lusts. Beware! God's patience nears exhaustion. We wait for Tassino. Will he come? Not while lewd arms imprison and protect him. Talk to me of Bona! Go, child.'The girl crept back to her former seat. Carlo burst out, low and urgent:—'Nay, boy, you do the Duchess wrong; now, by Saint Ambrose, I swear you do! She hath not set eyes on Jackanapes since that day—believe it—nor knows, more than another, what's become of him.''I could enlighten her. Can she be so fickle?''What! Don't you want her fickle? You make my brain turn.''O Carlo! What can such a woman see in such a man?''God! You have me there. She's just woman, conforming to the fashions.''Ah, me! the fashions!''Woman's religion.''She was taught a better. The fashions! Her wedding-gown should suffice her for all.''What! Night and day? But, there, I don't defend her!''No, indeed. Art thyself a fashion.''I don't defend her, I say. I'm worn and cast aside too.''Poor fashion! You'll grace your mistress' tire-woman next; and after her a kitchen-maid; and last some draggled scarecrow of the streets. O, for shame, for shame!''Go on. Compare me to Tassino next.''Indeed, I see no difference.''A low-born Ferrarese! A greasy upstart! Was carver to the Duke, no better; and oiled his fingers in the dish, and sleeked his hair!''Well, he was made first fashion. The Duchess sets them.''Now, by Saint Ambrose! First fashion! this veal-faced scullion, this fat turnspit promoted to a lap-dog! His fashion was to nurse lusty babies in his eyes!''What nursed thou in thine?''Go to! I'm a numskull, that I know; but to see no more in me!''I speak not for myself.''Why, these women, true, whom we hold so delicate—coarser feeders than ourselves—their tastes a fable. There, you're right; I've no right to talk.''Not yet.''Then, you're wrong. We've parted, I and Beatrice.''Carlo!''Didst think I 'd risk a quarrel with my saint on so small a matter?''Carlo!'He flew upon the great creature and hugged him.'My dear, my love! O, I went on so! Why did you let me? O, you give me hope again!''There,' growled the honest fellow, still a little sulkily. ''Twas to please myself, not you.''Not me!''Well, if I did, please me by returning.'Bernardo shook his head.'And seem to acquiesce in this?' He signified the girl.'No seeming,' said Lanti. 'The Duchess promises to abet you in everything. I was to say so, an I could find thee.''How did you find me?''Let that pass. Will you come?'
Bembo had fled, like one distracted, from the walls, his faithful shadow jumping in his wake. The two, running and following, never slackened in their pace until a half-mile separated them from the city; and then, in a gloomy thicket, under a falling sky, the boy threw himself down on the grass, and buried his face from heaven. Pitiful and distraught, the Fool stood over, silently regarding him. At length he spoke, panting and reproachful.
'Nay, in pity, master, wert thou not advised?'
The boy writhed.
'So lying, so wicked cunning, to make me his decoy and seeming abettor! O, I am punished for my faith! Is Christ dead?'
The Fool sighed.
'By thy showing, He lingers behind in the wood.'
'Tell Him I have gone on to my father.'
'Thou wilt?'
Bernardo sat up, a towzled angel. In the interval the tears had come fast, and his face was wet.
'God help you all!' he sobbed. 'You, even you, prevaricated to me. Whither shall I turn? I see everywhere a death-dealing wilderness, lies and lust and inhumanity.'
'I prevaricated,' said Cicada mournfully. 'I admit it. You once claimed my wit and experience to your tutoring. Well, do I not know the tyrant—the persistent devil in him? He had his teeth in that monk. Not Christ Himself would have loosened them.'
'Ah! what shall I do?'
'What, but go forward steadfast. This is but a jog by the way. Judge life on the broad lines of action, the ruts which mark the progress of the wheels. 'Tis a morbid sentiment that wastes itself on the quarrel between the wheels and the road.'
'Ah, me! if I could but foresee the end of that bloody mire—the sweet, crisp path again! I can advance no further. My weak heart fails. I will go back to the wood.'
'Then back, a' God's name, so I come too.'
Bernardo rose and seized the Fool's hand, the tears streaming down his cheeks.
'This dreadful race—monsters all!' he cried. 'Is there one kind deed recorded to its credit—one, one only, one little deed? Tell me, and if there is, by its memory I will persevere.'
'Humph! Should I wish thee to? Think again of that wood.'
'Tell me, kind, good Cicca, my nurse and friend.'
'Go to! Shalt not put a bone in my throat. Well, they are monsters, but made by that same brute Circumstance thou decriest. "Wavering out of chaos," says you? Very like, sir; but, after all, Circumstance is our head artist in a tuneless world. What a dull sing-song 'twould be without him—league-long choirs of saints praising God—a universe of chirping crickets! With respect, sir, I, though his Fool, would not have him caged in my time.'
'Alas, dear, for thine understanding! Love, that I would have depose him, is ten thousand times his superior in art—ay, and in humour. But go on.'
'I doubt the humour. However, as things are, I owe to him, as do you, and Galeazzo—the Fool, the Saint, and the Monster. Could love conceive such a trio? But to the point. Hast ever heard speak of our Duke's grand-dad?'
'Muzio?'
'So he called himself, or was called, pretending to trace his descent from Mutius Scævola the Roman. Flattery, you see, will make a braying ass of honesty. He was Giacommuzzo—just that; one of a family of fighting yeomen. But he had points. Hast been told how he began?'
'No.'
'Why, he was digging turnips by the evening star in his father's farm at Cotignola, when the sound of pipes and drums disturbed him. 'Twas some band of Boldrino of Panicale come to recruit from the fields; and they halted by the big man. "Be a soldier of fortune like us," says they; and he tossed his dusty hair from his eyes, and saw the glint of gold in baldricks. He looked at the evening star, and 'twas pale beside. Borrowers glean the real heaven of credit in this topsy-turvy world. Look at any pool of water: what a glittering prospectus it makes of the moon! Muzzo flung his spade into an oak hard by, leaving the decision to Circumstance. If it fell, he would resume it; if it stayed, a soldier he would be. It stuck in the branches.'
'Cicca!'
'Peace! I will tell thee. He fought up and down, but never back to Cotignola. He put his ploughing shoulder to his work, and dug a furrow to fame. Popes and kings engaged for and against this Condottieri. He took them all to market like his beans. He knew the values of fear and money and discipline—bought over honour; wrenched treason by the joints; flogged slackness for a rusty hinge in its armour; made warriors of his rabble. Sought letters, too, to spur them on by legend.'
'All this is nothing.'
'He went to Mass every day——'
'Alas!'
'Cast his true plain wife, and took to bed the widow of Naples——'
'Alas! Alas!'
'And lost his life at Pescara, trying to save another.'
'Ah! How was that?'
'He had crossed the river on a blown tide, when he saw his page a-drowning in the stream. "Poor lad," quoth he, "will none help thee?" And he dashed back, was overwhelmed himself, and sank. They saw his mailed hands twice rise and clutch the air. A' was never seen again. The waters were his tomb.'
Bernardo was silent.
'Was not that a creditable deed?' quoth the Fool.
The boy, pressing the tangled hair from his eyes, feverishly seized his comrade's hands in his own.
'God forgive me!' he cried; 'am I one to judge him, who have let my father's friend go under, and never reached a hand?'
The Fool looked frankly amazed.
'Montano,' cried Bembo, 'whom, in my pride of place, I have forgotten! I will go down among the people where he lies, and seek to heal his wounds, and sing Christ's parables to simple hearts. Love lies not in palaces. I will seek Montano.'
'Come, then,' said Cicada.
'Nay, in a little,' said the boy. 'Let the kind night find us first. I will flaunt my creed no longer in the sun.'
From behind the barred door of Lupo's shop came the sound of muffled laughter. The tragic incongruity of it in that house of ruin was at least arresting enough to halt a pedestrian here and there on his passage along the dark, wet-blown street outside. The mirth broke gustily, with little snarls at intervals, bestial and worrying; hearing which, the lingerer would perhaps hurry on his way with a shudder, crossing himself against, or spitting out like a bad odour, the influence of the fiend who had evidently got hold of the master armourer.Libera nos à malo!
The fiend, in fact, in possession was no other than Messer Montano's Cerberus, and its orgy, had the listener known it, had more than justified his apprehensions. The mirth which terrified his heart was perhaps even a degree more deadly in its evocation than anything he could imagine. It was really laughter so dreadful that, had he guessed its import, he had rushed, in an agony of self-vindication, to summon the watch. But guessing nothing, unless it might be Lupo's madness under the shock of his misfortunes, he simply crossed himself and hurried away.
Blood conspiracies are rarely successful. Perhaps a too scrupulous forethought against contingencies tends to clog the issues. If that is so, the recklessness of these men may, in a measure, have spelt their present security. A laugh, after all, is less open to suspicion than a whisper. Who could imagine a fatal thrust in a guffaw? Nevertheless, every chuckle uttered here punctuated a stab.
In rehearsal only at present, it is true; but practice, good practice, sirs. The victim of the attack was a dummy, contrived suggestively to represent Galeazzo. At least the habit made the man; and hate and a stinging imagination supplied the rest.
It stood in a dusky corner by the dead forge. Not so much light as would certainly guide a hand was allowed to fall upon it; for deeds of darkness, to be successful, must be prepared against darkness. Its stuffed, daubed face, staring from out this gloom, was like nothing human. To catch sudden sight, within a vista of dim lamp-shine, of its motionless eyes and features warped with stabs, was to gasp and shrink, as if one had looked into a glass and seen Death reflected back. Its suggestion of reality (and it possessed it) was to seek rather in velvet and satin; in a cunning, familiar disposition of its dress; in the sombre but profuse sparkle of artificial gems with which it was looped and hung. Thence came a grotesque and wicked semblance to a doomed figure. For the rest, in the bloodless slashes, gaping, rag-exuding, which had taken it cunningly in weak places—through the neck, under the gorget, between joints of the mail with which Lupo's craft had fitted it—there was a suggestiveness almost more horrible than truth.
It was in actual fact a sop to Cerberus, was this grisly-ludicrous doll, fruit of the decision (which had followed much discussion of ways and means) to postpone its prototype's murder to some occasion of public festivity, when the sympathies of the mob might be kindled and a revolution accomplished at a stroke. Politic Cerberus must nevertheless have something to stay the gnawing and craving of a delayed revenge which had otherwise corroded him. He took a ferociously boyish delight in fashioning this lay-figure, and, having made, in whetting his teeth on it; in clothing it in purple and fine linen; in addressing it wheedlingly, or ironically, or brutally, as the mood swayed him. And to-night his mood, stung by the tempest, perhaps, was unearthly in its wildness. It rose in fiendish laughter; it mocked the anguish of the blast, a threefold litany, now blended, now a trifurcating blasphemy. There were the roaring bass of Visconti, Lampugnani's smooth treble, the deadly considered baritone of Olgiati. And, punctuating all, like the tap of a baton, flew the interjections of Messer Montano, the conductor:—
'Su! Gia-gia! Bravo, Carlo! That was a Brutus stroke! Uh-uh, Andrea! hast bled him there for arrears of wages! a scrap of gold-cloth, by Socrates! A brave sign, a bright token, Andrea!'
He chuckled and hugged himself, involuntarily embracing in the action the long pendant which hung from his roundlet or turban, and half-pulling the cap from his skull-like forehead.
'Death!' he screeched in an ecstasy, and Lampugnani, glancing at him, went off into husky laughter, and sank back, breathed, upon a bench.
'Cometh in a doctor's gown,' he panted. 'Nay, sir, bonnet! bonnet! or the dummy will suspect you.'
He might have, himself, and with a better advantage to his fortunes, could he have penetrated the vestments of that drear philosophic heart. There was a secret there would have astoundedhisself-assurance. Montano wore his doctor's robe, meetly as a master of rhetoric, not the least of whose contemplated flights was one timely away from that political arena, whose gladiators in the meanwhile he was bent only on inflaming to a contest in which he had no intention of personally participating. He had a fixed idea, his back and his principles being still painfully at odds, that the cause would be best served by his absence, when once the long train to the explosion he was engineering had been fired at his hand. And so he hugged himself, and Lampugnani laughed.
'Look at Master Lupo, with the sound of thy screech in his ears! As if he thought we contemplated anything but to bring slashed Venetian doublets into vogue!'
He was a large, fleshly creature, was this Lampugnani, needing some fastidious lust to stir him to action, and then suddenly violent. His face was big and vealy, with a mouth in its midst like a rabbit's, showing prominently a couple, no more, of sleek teeth. His eyes drooped under lids so languid as to give him an affectation of fatigue in lifting them. His voice was soft, but compelling: he never lent it to platitudes. An intellectual sybarite, a voluptuary by deliberation, he had tested God and Belial, and pronounced for the less Philistine lordship of the beast. Quite consistent with his principles, he not hated, but highly disapproved of Galeazzo, who, as consistently, had pardoned him some abominable crime which, under Francesco the father, had procured him the death sentence. But Messer Andrea had looked for a more sympathetic recognition of his merits at the hands of his deliverer than was implied in an ill-paid lieutenancy of Guards; and his exclusion from a share in the central flesh-pots was a conclusive proof to him of the æsthetic worthlessness of the master it was his humility to serve.
The Visconti, at whom he breathed his little laugh, was a contrast to him in every way—a bluff, stout-built man, with fat red chaps flushing through a skin of red hair, a braggadocio manner, and small eyes red with daring. There was nothing of his house's emblematic adder about him, save a readiness with poisons; and after all, that gave him no particular distinction. He took a great, stertorous pull at a flagon of wine, and smacked his lips bullyingly, before he answered with a roar:—
'Wounds! scarlet scotched on a ground of flesh-tint—a fashion will please our saint.'
Montano chuckled again, and more shrilly.
'Good, good!' he cried: 'scarlet on flesh!' and he squinted roguishly at the blind smith, who sat beside him on a bench, nervously kneading together his wasted hands.
'Messers,' muttered the poor fellow; 'but will this holy boy approve the means to such a fashion? For Love to exalt himself by blood!'
He turned his sightless eyes instinctively towards Olgiati, where the boy stood, a dark, fatalistic young figure, breathing himself by the forge. He, he guessed, or perhaps knew, was alone of the company actuated by impersonal motives in this dread conspiracy. But he did not guess that, by so much as the young man was a pure fanatic of liberty, his hand and purpose were the most of all to be dreaded.
Olgiati gave a melancholy smile, and, stirring a little, looked down. He was habited, as were his two companions, for the occasion—a recurrent dress-rehearsal—in a coat and hose of mail, and a jerkin of crimson satin. It was not the least significant part of his undertaking that he, like the others, was court-bred and court-employed. The fact, at its smallest, implied in them a certain anatomic-cum-sartorial acquaintance with their present business.
'Offerimus tibi, Domine, Calicem salutaris!' he quoted from the Mass, in his sweet, strong voice. 'Hast thou not a first example of that exaltation, Lupo, in the oblation of the chalice?'
Revolution knows no blasphemy.
'Bah!' grumbled Visconti.
'He died for men: we worship the sacrifice of Himself,' protested the armourer.
'And shall not Messer Bembo sacrifice himself, his scruples and his reluctances, that love may be exalted over hate, mercy over tyranny?' asked Olgiati.
'I know not, Messer,' muttered the suffering armourer. 'I cannot trace the saint in these sophistries, that is all.'
'True, he is a saint,' conceded Lampugnani, yawning as he lolled. 'Now, what is a saint, Lupo?'
'O, Messer! look on his mother's son, and ask!'
'Why, that is the true squirrel's round. We are all born of women'—he yawned again.
'They bear us, and we endure them,' he murmured smilingly, the water in his eyes. 'It is so we retaliate on their officiousness.'
Montano tittered.
'Lupo,' Lampugnani went on, lazily stirring himself, 'you suggest to me two-thirds of a syllogism:Iam my mother's son; therefore I am a saint.'
'Ho! ho!' hooted Visconti.
'Messer,' entreated the bewildered armourer, 'with respect, it turns upon the question of the mother.'
'The mother? O dog, to question the repute of mine!'
'I did not—no, never.'
'Well, who was his?'
'None knows. A star, 'tis said.'
'Venus, of course. And his father?'
'Some son of God, perchance.'
'Ay, Mars. He was that twain's by-blow, and fell upon an altar. I know now how saints are made. Yet shall we, coveting sanctity, wish our parents bawds? 'Tis a confusing world!'
He sank back as if exhausted, while Montano chirped, and Visconti roared with laughter.
'Saints should be many in it, Andrea,' he applauded. 'Knows how they are made, quotha!' and he stamped about, holding his sides till, reeling near to the dummy, he paused, and made a savage lunge at it with his dagger. His mood changed on the instant.
'Death!' he snarled, 'I warrant here's one hath propagated some saints to his undoing!' and he went muttering a rosary of curses under his breath.
Lampugnani, smilingly languid, continued:—
'Well, Lupo, so Messer Bembo is the son of his mother? It seems like enough—what with his wheedling and his love-locks. He shall be Saint Cupid on promotion. I think he will regard scarlet or pink as no objectionable fashion, does it come to make a god of him.'
The armourer uttered an exclamation:—
'Some think him that already. It is the question of his coming to be Duke that hips me. I can't see him there.'
'Nor I,' said Visconti, with a sarcastic laugh.
Olgiati interposed quietly:—
'Have comfort, Lupo. We are all good republicans. The exaltation of Messer Bembo is to be provisional only, preceding the consummation. He is to be lifted like the Host, to bring the people to their knees, and then lowered, and——'
'Put away,' said Lampugnani blandly.
The armourer started to his feet in agitation.
'Messers!' he cried, 'he poured oil into my wounds; I will consent to no such wickedness.'
'Youwon't?' roared Visconti; but Lampugnani soothed him down.
'When I said "put away," I meant in a tabernacle, like that sacred bread. I assure you, Lupo, he is the rose of our adoration also; he shall cultivate his thorn in peace; he shall wax fat like Jeshurun, and kick.'
'And in the meantime,' grumbled Visconti, 'we are measuring our fish before we've hooked him.'
Lampugnani's face took on a very odd expression.
'What the devil's behind that?' hectored the bully.
'O, little!' purred the other. 'I fancy I feel him nibble, that's all. Perhaps you don't happen to know how he hath cut his connection with the palace?'
'What! When?'
They all jumped to stare at him.
'This day,' he said, 'in offence of some carrion of Galeazzo's which he had nosed out. The poor boy is particular in his tastes, for a shambles—ran like a sheep from the slaughter-house door, taking his Patch with him, and a ring her Grace had loaned him for a safe-conduct. I heard it said she would have been ravished of anything rather—by him. 'Twas her lord's troth-gift. The castle is one fume of lamentation.'
Montano, rubbing his lean hands between his knees, went into a rejoicing chatter:—
'We have him, we have him! Gods! who's here?'
Their intentness had deafened them some minutes earlier to a more mouthing note in the thunder of the rain, as if the swell of the tempest had been opened an instant and shut. The moment, in fact, and a master-key, had let in a new comer. He had closed the latch behind him, and now, seeing himself observed, stood ducking and lowering in the blinking light. The philosopher heaved a tremulous sigh of relief.
'Narcisso!'
The hulking creature grinned, and stabbed a thumb over his shoulder.
'Hist! him you speak of's out there, a-seeking your worship.'
'Seekingme? Messer Bembo?'
'Why not? A' met him at the town gate half-drowned, with his Patch to heel. The report of his running was got abroad, and, thinks I to myself, here's luck to my masters. To take him on the hop of grievance like——'
Montano seemed to sip the phrase:—
'Exactly: on the hop of grievance. Well?'
'Why, I spoke him fair: "Whither away, master?" A' spat a saintly word—'twere a curse in a sinner—and sprang back, a' did, glaring at me. But the great Fool pushed him by. "You're the man," says he. "Desperation knows its fellows. Where's Montano?" "Why, what would you with him?" says I, taken off my guard. "A salve for his wounds," he answered. And so I considered a bit, and brought 'em on, and there they wait.'
Visconti uttered a furious oath, but Lampugnani hushed him down.
'Didst well, pretty innocence,' he said to Narcisso. 'The hop of grievance?—never a riper moment. Show in your friends.'
He was serenely confident of his policy—waved all protest aside.
'I see my way: the hook is baited: let him bite.'
'Bite?' growled Visconti. 'And what about our occupation here?'
'Why, 'tis testing mail, nothing more. Is a lay-figure in an armoury so strange?'
'Ay, when 'tis a portrait-model.'
'O glowing tribute to my art! I designed the doll, true. You make me look down, sir, and simper and bite my finger. Yet my mind misgives me thou flatterest. A portrait-model, yes; but will he recognise of whom?'
'The knave may—the shrewder fool of the pair.'
'The greater fool will testify to me? O happy artist! Well, if he do, I will still account him naught. He will take the bait also. The shadow swims and bites with the fish. Besides, should this befall, 'twill save mayhap a world of preliminaries. Remember that "hop of grievance." He comes, it seems, in a mood to jump with ours. Let them in.'
Like souls salvaged from a wreck they came—the Fool propping the Saint—staggering in by the door. Grief and storm and weariness had robbed the boy of speculation, almost of his senses. His drenched hair hung in ropes, his wild eyes stared beneath like a frightened doe's, his clothes slopped on his limbs.
Narcisso struggled with the door and closed it.
Suddenly Bernardo, lifting his dazed lids, caught sight of the shadowed lay-figure, recoiled, and shrieking out hoarsely:—'Galeazzo! Thou! O God, doomed soul!' tottered and slid through Cicada's limp arms upon the floor. Instantly Narcisso was down by his side, and fumbling with his hands.
'A's in a swound,' he was beginning, when, with a rush and heave, the Fool sent him wallowing.
'Darest thou, hog! darest thou! Go rub thy filthy hoofs in ambergris first!' and he squatted, snarling and showing his teeth.
Narcisso rose, to a chorus of laughter, and stood grinning and rubbing his head.
'Well, I never!' he said.
CHAPTER XIII
The Countess of Casa Caprona was a widow. The news was waiting to overwhelm, or transport, her upon her return to the castello after her interview with Lanti. On the one hand it committed her to dowagery, that last infirmity of imperious minds; on the other to the freedom of a glorified spinsterhood. Though she recognised that, on the whole, the blow was destructive of the real zest of intrigue, she behaved very handsomely by the memory of the deceased, who had died, like a soldier, in harness. She caused a solemn requiem mass to be sung for him in the Duomo; she commissioned a monody, extolling his marital virtues, from an expensive poet; she distributed liberal alms to the poor of the city. There is no trollop so righteous in her matronhood as she made timely a widow. Besides, to this one, the zest of all zests for the moment was revenge. She withdrew to mature it, and to lament orthodoxly her lord, to her dower-house in the Via Sforza.
It was a very pretty spot for melancholy and meditation—cool, large, secluded, and its smooth, silent walks and bubbling fountains cloistered in foliage. From its gardens one had glimpses of the castello and of the candied, biscuit-like pinnacles of the cathedral. Cypresses and little marble fauns broke between them the flowering intervals, and peacocks on the gravel made wandering parterres of colour. Sometimes, musing in the shades, with a lock of her long hair between her lips, she would pet her frowning fancy with the figure of a youthful Adam, golden and glorious, approaching her down an avenue of this smiling paradise, making its mazes something less than scentless; and then, behold! a lizard, perhaps, would wink on the terrace, and she would snatch and crush the little palpitating life under her heel, cursing it for a symbol of the serpent desolating her Eden, and transforming it all into a mirage of warmth and passion. Not Adam he, that lusted-for, but the angel at the gate, menacing and awful. She must be more and worse than Eve to seek to corrupt an angel.
Perhaps she was, in her most tortured, most animal moods. The sensuous, by training and heredity, had quite over-swollen and embedded in her beautiful trunk the small spike of conscience, which as a child had tormented, and which yet, at odd moments, would gall and tease her like an ancient wound. She might even have been stung by it into some devotional self-sacrifice in her present phase of passion, could she have been assured of, or believed in, its object's inaccessibility to a higher grace of solicitation. But jealousy kept her ravening.
On a languorous noon of this week of losses she was lying, a conventionally social exile, having her hair combed and perfumed, in a little green pavilion pitched in her grounds, when a heavy step on the gravel outside aroused her from a dream of voluptuous rumination. The tread she recognised, yet, though moved by it to a little flutter of curiosity, would not so far alloy a drowsy ecstasy as to bid the visitor enter while it lasted. Hypnotised by the soft burrowing of the comb, she closed her eyes until the perfect moment was passed, when, with a sigh, she bade the intruder enter, and Narcisso came slouching in by the opening.
Beatrice dismissed her attendants with a look. She never spoke to her servants where a gesture would serve, and could draw hour-long silent enjoyment from the weary hands of tire-woman or slave, hairdresser or fanner, without a sign of embarrassment, or indeed understanding. Now she lay back, restful, impassive—indifferent utterly to any impression her will for a solitary interview with this gross creature might make upon them. And, indeed, there was little need for such concern. Hired assassination, a recognised institution, explained many otherwise strange conjunctions between the beauties and beasts of Milan.
The beast, in the present instance, behaved as was habitual with him in the presence of this Circe. That is to say, he was awkward, deprecating, and, of stranger significance, devoted to truthfulness. He adored her, as Caliban Miranda, but more fearfully: was her slave, the genii of the lamp of her loveliness, with which to be on any familiar terms, even of debasement, was enough. What did it matter that she paid him with offence and disdain? Her use of him was as her use of some necessary organic part of herself. And she might deprecate the necessity; but the secret of it was, nevertheless, their common property. Her beauty and his devotion were as near akin as blood and complexion. Perhaps some day, in the resurrection of the flesh, he would be able to substantiate that kinship.
The thought may have been there in him, instinctive, unilluminated, as he stood fumbling with his cap, and raising and lowering his hang-dog eyes, and waiting for her to open. Physically, at least, she showed no shame in implying his close right to her confidence. The noon was a noon of slumbering fires, and her mood a responsive one. A long white camisole, of the frailest tissue, rounded on her lower limbs, and, splitting at the waist, straddled her shoulders clingingly, leaving a warm breathing-space between. Round her full neck clung one loop of emeralds; and to the picture her black falling hair made a tenderest frame, while the sun, penetrating the tilt above, finished all with a mist of green translucence. A Circe, indeed, to this coarse and animal rogue, and alive with awful and covetable lusts, to which, nevertheless, he was an admitted procurer. He had not ceased to be in her pay and confidence, cursed and repudiated though he had been by his master, her erst protector. He had not even resented that episode of his betrayal at her hands, though it had condemned him for a living to the rôle of the hired bravo. She might always do with him as she liked; overbid with one imperious word his fast pledges to others; convert his craft wheresoever she wished to her own profit. The more she condescended to him, the more was he claimed a necessary part of her passions' functions. She discharged through him her hates and desires, and he was beatified in the choice of himself as their medium. There was a suggestion of understanding, of a conscious partnership between them, in the very fulsomeness with which he abased himself before her.
'Well,' she murmured at last, 'hast drunk thy senses to such surfeit that they drown in me?'
'Ay,' he mumbled, 'I could die looking.'
'A true Narcissus,' she scoffed; 'but I could wish a sweeter. Stand away, fellow. Your clothes offend me.'
He backed at once.
'Now,' she said, 'I can breathe. Deliver yourself!'
He heaved up his chest, and looked above her, concentrating his wits on an open loop of the tent, behind which a bird was flickering and chirping.
'I come, by Madonna's secret instructions, from privately informing Messer Lanti where Messer Bembo lies hidden,' he said, speaking as if by rote.
She nodded imperiously.
'What questions did he ask?'
'How I knew; and I answered, that I knew.'
'Good. That least was enough. Art a right rogue. Now will he go seek him, and be drawn by his devotion into this net.'
Narcisso was silent.
'Will he not?' she demanded sharply.
The fellow dropped his eyes to her an instant.
'Madonna knows. He loves the Messer Saint. No doubt a' will hold by him.'
'What then, fool?'
'They have not caught Messer Bembo yet, they at the forge—that is all.'
'How!' she cried angrily, 'when thou told'st me——'
'With humility, Madonna,' he submitted, 'I told thee naught but that he and this Montano were agreed on the State's disease.'
'Well?'
'But I never said on its cure.'
She frowned, leaning forward and again biting a strand of her hair—a sullen trick with her in anger.
'A doctor of rhetoric, and so feeble in persuasion!' she muttered scornfully.
'A' starts at a shadow, this saint,' pleaded Narcisso. 'A' must be coaxed, little by little, like a shy foal. We will have him in the halter anon. Yet a' be only one out of five, when all's said.'
'Dolt!' she hissed. 'What are the other four, or their purpose, to me, save as a lever to my revenge? I foresee it all. Why telled'st me not before I sent thee? Now this gross lord, instead of himself tangling in the meshes, will persuade the other back to court and reason and forgiveness, and I shall be worse than damned. Dolt, I could kill thee!'
She rose to her height, furious, and he shrunk cowering before her.
'Listen, Madonna,' he said, trembling: 'Canst net them all yet at one swoop. Go tell Messer Ludovico, and certes a' will jump to destroy the nest and all in it, before a' inquires their degrees of guilt.'
She stared at him, still threatening.
'Why?'
'Why, says Madonna? Listen again, then. Does the Ser Simonetta trust Messer Ludovico, or Messer Ludovico love the Ser Simonetta? The secretary clings to the Duchess. If she falls, a' falls with her.'
'Again, thou tedious rogue, why should the Saint's destruction bring Bona down?'
'A' would have his mouth shut from explaining.'
'Explaining what? I lose patience.'
'How a' came, a conspirator against the Duke, to be found wi' his wife's troth ring in his possession. Here it be. I've filched it for thee at last.'
She sprang to seize the token, glowing triumphant in a moment, and putting it on her own finger, pressed the clinched hand that enclosed it into her bosom.
She laughed low and rejoicingly, shameless in the quick transition of her mood.
'Good Narcisso! It is the Key at last! Let Lanti persuade him back now—I am content. I hold them, and Bona too, in the hollow of this hand.'
She held it out, her right one, palm upwards, and, smiling, bade him kiss it.
'Rogue,' she said, 'to tease and vex me, and all the time this talisman in thy sleeve. Ay, make the most of it: snuffle and root. My dog has deserved of me.'
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, as if he had drunk.
'Now,' she said, 'how wert successful? how won'st it, sweet put?'
'Took it from him, that was all.'
'How?'
'When a' came tumbling in and staggered in a swound. Had heard Messer Andrea relating of how 'twas on him as I entered. Ho, ho! thinks I, here's that, maybe, will pay the filching! and I dropped and got it, all in a moment like.'
'You never told me.'
'You never asked till yesterday. Then I had it not with me. But to-day, thinks I, I'll bring it up my sleeve for a win-favour—a good last card.'
'No matter, since I have got it.'
She held it out, and gloated on its device and sparkle. She knew it well: indeed it was a famous gem, the Sforza lion cut in cameo on a deep pure emerald, and known as the Lion ring.
'Hath he not missed it?' she murmured.
'Not by any sign a' gives. The sickness of that night still holds him half-amazed. A' thinks our fine doll, even, but a bug of it—fancies a' saw it in a dream like. They'd locked it away when he came to.'
'Poor worldling! Poor little new-born worldling! He shall cut his pretty teeth anon. Well—for Messer Lanti? Did he leap to the trail, or what?'
'That same moment. Belike they are together now.'
She stood musing a little: then heaved a sudden sigh.
'Poor boy,' she murmured, 'poor boy! is it I must seek to destroy thee!'
Her mood had veered again in a breath. Her eyes were full of a brooding love and pity.
'Not for the first time,' muttered Narcisso.
She seemed not to hear him—to have grown oblivious of his presence.
'The song he sang to me!' she murmured: 'Ah, me, if that hour could be mine! A saint in heaven?—not Bona's! she hath a lord—no saint, did he love her. He looked at me: it came from his heart. If that hour could be mine! Not then—'twere a sin—but now! That one hour—cherished—unspent—the seed of the unquickened pledge between us to all eternity. I could be content, knowing him a saint through that abstinence. My hour—mine—to passion to my breast—the shadow of the child that would not be born to me. He looked at me—no spectre of a dead lost love in his eyes—only a hopeless quest—bonds never to be riven. But now—Ah! I cannot kill him!'
She hid her eyes, shuddering. Narcisso, vaguely troubled, gloomed at her.
'You will not go to Messer Ludovico?' he said.
She returned to knowledge of him, as to a sense of pain out of oblivion.
'Go,' she said coldly. 'Leave all to me. You have done well, and been paid your wages.'
And he did not demur. It was not in her nature to gild her favours unnecessarily. Gold came less lavishly from her than kisses. Her pounds of flesh were her most profitable assets. She was a spendthrift in everything but money.
CHAPTER XIV
'Messer Bembo,' said Montano, between meditative and caustic, 'you do not agree that our poor Lupo's definition of a perfect government, an autocracy with an angel at its head, is a practicable definition?'
He was sitting, as often during the last few days, at talk with the boy, on subjects civic, political, and theological. They had discussed at odd times the whole ethics of government, from the constitution of Lycurgus to the code of Thomas Aquinas: they had expounded, each in his way, a scheme or a dream of socialism: they had agreed, without prejudice, to liken the evolution of the simple Church of Peter into the complicated fabric of the fourth Sixtus to a woodland cottage, bought by some great princely family, and improved into a summer palace, which was grown out of harmony with its environments. Somewhat to his amazement, Montano discovered that the boy was the opposite to a dogmatic Christian; that his was a religion, which, while conforming or adapting itself to the orthodox, was in its essence a religion of mysticism. No doubt the traditions of his origin were, to some extent, to seek for this. A pledge, so to speak, of spontaneous generation, Bernardo accounted for himself on a theory of reincarnation from another sphere. He believed in the possibility of the resurrection of the body, which, though destroyed, and many times destroyed, could be, in its character of mere soul-envelope or soul expression, as regularly reconstructed at the will of its informing spirit. Death, he declared, was just the beginning of the return of that divested spirit to the spring of life—to the river welling in the central Eden from the loins of the Father, the spouse of Nature, the secret, the unspeakable God, of whom was Christ, his own dear brother and comrade.
He would tell Messer Montano, with his sweet, frank eyes arraigning that crabbed philosopher's soul, how this unstained first-born of Nature, this sinless heir of love, this wise and pitying Christ, moved by an infinite compassion to see the wounded souls of his brothers—those few who had not made their backward flight too difficult—come, soiled and earth-cloyed, to seek their reincarnation in the spring, had descended, himself, upon earth at last, sacrificing his birthright of divinity, that he might teach men how to live. And the men his brothers had slain him, in jealousy, even as Cain slew Abel; yet had his spirit, imperishably great, continued to dwell in their midst, knowing that, did it once leave the earth, it must be for ever, and to mankind's eternal unregeneracy. For, so Bernardo insisted, there was an immutable law in Nature that no soul reincarnated could re-enter the sphere from which it was last returned, but must seek new fields of action. Wherefore all earth-loving spirits, which we call apparitions, were such as after death clung about the ways of men, in a yearning hopefulness to redeem them by touching their hearts with sympathy and their eyes with a mist of sorrow. And, of such gentle ghosts, Christ was but the first in faith and tenderness.
A wild, dim theory, peopling woods, and fields, and cities with a mystic company—phantoms, yet capable of revealing themselves in fitful glimpses to the sinless and the sympathetic among men—ghosts, weaving impalpable webs of love across populous ways to catch men's souls in their meshes. Montano called it all transcendental fustian. It aroused his most virulent scorn. What had this cloud-moulding, moon-paring stuff to do with the practical issues of life, with freedom, and government by popular representation? He even professed to prefer to it Lascaris, with his metaphysical jargon and apostolic succession of atoms.
'He gives you at least something to take hold of,' he snarled. 'Listen to this'—and he condescended to read an excerpt from a recent treatise by his hated rival:—
'"Life,"' he read, '"is put out at compound interest. We represent, each in himself, a fraction of the principal, having a direct pedigreeab initio. As a spider will gather the hundred strands of his web into a little ball which he will swallow, so might we each absorb and claim the whole vast web of life. Rolled up to include each radiating thread, the web becomes I; the spider is I; I am the principal of life—not the principle: that is Prometheus' secret."'
'"I am a fraction of life's compound interest. The sum of the mental impressions of all my thread of tendency (which gathers back, taking up cross threads by the way, to the central origin) is invested in my paltry being, and lieth there, together with mine own interest on the vast accumulation, in tail for my next of kin. What can I do in my tiny span but touch the surface of this huge estate: pluck here and there a flower of its fields, whose roots are in immemorial time? Imagination founders in those fathomless depths. Tenuous, dim-forgotten ghosts rise from them. Who shall say that my dreams, however seeming mad and grotesque, are not faithful reflexes of states and conditions which were once realities; memories of forms long extinct; echoes of times when I flew, or spun, or was gaseous, or vast, or little; when I mingled intimate with shapes which are chimerical to my present understanding——"'
The reader broke off, with an impatient grunt.
'There!' he said, 'dreams mad and grotesque enough, in good sooth; yet not so mad as thine.'
'Well,' said Bernardo, 'well,' with perfect sweetness and good temper.
'Christ in the world? Fah!' snarled the philosopher. 'I know him. He sits at Rome under a triple tiara. Quit all this sugared dreaming, boy, and face the future like a man.'
'Does the sun shine out of yesterday or to-morrow? It is enough for the moment to take thought for itself. The future is not.'
'Pooh! a mere Jesuitry, justifying the moment's abomination.'
'Nay: for we shall have to retraverse our deeds, and carry back their burden to our first account—with most, a toilful journey.'
'They would do better to stop with your Christ, then; and, judged by the preponderance of evil spirits here, I think most do. No future, say'st? But how about that heir of the compound interest? Is there not one waiting to succeed to him? Where? Why, in the future, as surely and inevitably as this date, which I am going to swallow in a moment, will be blood and tissue in me to-morrow.'
He held the fruit up—with a swift movement Bernardo whipped it out of his hand and ate it himself.
'How for your future now?' he chuckled, pinking all over.
Cicada laughed loudly, and Montano swore. His philosophy was not proof against such practical jokes. But, seeing his fury, the boy put out all his sweetness to propitiate him. He was his father's friend; he was a man of learning; he had suffered grievous wrong. The dog was coaxed presently into opening again upon the angelic principles. It was by such virulent irony that he thought—so warped was his mental vision—to corrode the candour of this saint, and bend him to his own views and uses—a diseased vanity, even had he not reckoned, as will now appear, without the consideration of another possible factor.
And 'So,' said he upon a later occasion, in the sentence which opens this chapter, 'you do not agree with our poor Lupo's practicable definition of a perfect government?'
The Saint's steadfast eyes canvassed the speaker's soul, as if in some shadowy suspicion of an integrity which they were being led, not for the first time, to probe.
'Why, Messer,' said he, 'practicable in so far as, by the dear Christ's influence, grace may come to make an angel even of our Duke.'
Montano tried to return his steady gaze, but failed meanly.
'With submission, Messer Bernardo,' he sniggered, 'I can only follow, in my mind's eye, one certain road to that great man's apotheosis.'
Bembo was silent.
''Tis the road,' continued the other, 'taken before by the Emperor Nero.'
'He stabbed himself, the most wretched pagan, in fear of a worser retribution than heaven's,' said Bembo. 'Alas! do you call that an apotheosis?'
'There are gods and gods,' said Montano,—'Hades and Olympus. Belike Nero was welcomed of his kind, as Galeazzo would be. I can scarce see in the Duke the raw material of your fashion of angel. There's more of the harpy about him than the harp.'
It was a heavenly day. Bernardo, still a little hectic and languid from his fever, sat in the embrasure of a window which gave upon the back court of the smithy. A muffled tinkling of armourers' hammers reached his ears pleasantly from the rear of neighbouring premises. There was a certain happy suggestiveness to him in the sound, evoked, as he hoped it might be, at his host Lupo's instigation. For his endearing optimism had so wrought upon that stricken artificer, during the week he had dwelt in hiding with him, as to persuade the poor man to quit his self-despairing, and hire out his skill—not practically; that was no longer possible; but theoretically—to a deserving fellow-craftsman. Already the sense of touch was curiously refining in the sightless creature, and the glimmer of a new dawn of interest penetrating him. And he was at work again elsewhere.
On the floor at Bembo's feet squatted Cicada, acrid, speaking little, and spending his long intervals of silence in staring at the girl Lucia, who, crouching at a distance away by the fireless forge, in the gloom of the shuttered smithy, seemed given over to an eternal reverie of hate. She, alone of the household, had remained impervious to all the sweet influences of sorrow and pity. Her wrong was such as no angel could remedy.
Cicada spoke now, with a scowl of significance for Montano:—
'Speak plain, master philosopher. Innuendo is the weapon of Fools, and wisdom shall prevail in candour. Thou canst not picture to thyself this evangelised Duke?'
Montano shot a lowering glance at him.
'No, I confess, master Patch,' said he—'unless,' he added grinning, 'by Nero's road.'
'Two whispers do not make one outspokenness,' answered the Fool. 'Hast hinted Nero once, and once again, and still we lack the application. Nero was driven to the road, quotha; well, by whom?—one Galba, an my learning's not a'rust. What then? Is Galba going to drive Galeazzo?'
'Nay, Love, dear Cicca,' put in Bernardo, but half hearing and half understanding.
'Love!' cried the Fool. 'Thou hast hit it. Hear wisdom from the mouths of babes. Love in the hands of rascals—a tool, a catspaw, to pull them their chestnuts from the fire, and then be cast burnt aside.'
He addressed himself, with infinite irony, to Montano.
'Good master philosopher,' said he, 'there is one fable for you: listen while I relate another. A certain rogue was stripped and beaten by a greater, who going on his way, there came a stranger, a mere child, and marked the fellow groaning. "Poor soul!" quoth he in pity; and knelt and bound his hurts and gave him wine, and by kind arts restored him. When shortly the aggressor returning and whistling by that place, his erst-victim, stung to revenge, yet having no weapon left him, did leap and incontinent seize up by his heels the ministering angel, and using his body for flail, knock down his enemy with him, killing both together. Which having done, and picked their pockets, on his way goes he rejoicing, "Now do I succeed to mine enemy's purse and roguery!"'
He ended. Montano, glancing stealthily at Bernardo, wriggled and tittered uneasily.
'Patch hath spoken,' he said; 'great is Patch!'
'I have spoken,' quoth the Fool. 'Dost gather the moral?'
'Not I, indeed.'
'Why, sir, 'tis of roguery making himself master of Love's estate; and yet that is not the full moral neither. For I mind me of a correction; how, before the blow was struck, Folly stepped between, and snatched Love from such a fate, and left the rogues to their conclusions.'
'Well, Folly and Love were well mated. Have you done? I am going to my books.'
He yawned, and stretched himself, and rose.
'I will show you to the door, says Folly,' chirped Cicada, and skipped about the other as he went, with a mincing affectation of ceremonial. But when they were got out of immediate sight and hearing of Bernardo into the front chamber, like a wolf the Fool snapped upon the philosopher, and pinned him into a corner.
'Understood'st my fable well enough,' he grated, in a rapid whisper. 'What! I have waited this opportunity a day or two. Now the stopper is out, let us flow.'
Montano, taken by surprise, was seized with a tremor of irresolution. He returned the Fool's gaze with a frown uncertain, sullen, eager all in one.
'Flow, then,' he muttered, after a little.
'I flow,' went on the other, 'oil and verjuice combined. Imprimis, think not that because I read I would betray thee. Ay, ay—no need to start, sir. Thou shalt not quit playing with thy doll for me; nay, nor dressing and goring it, if thou wilt, with triangles of steel. O, I saw!—the face and the slashes in it, too. I have not since been so ill, like him there, as to read a phantasy out of fact. What then? Would ye silence me?'
'Go on,' whispered Montano hoarsely.
'Well, I flow,' returned the Fool. 'Did I not tell thee candour was the best part of wisdom? Learn by it, then. I have marked thee of late; O, trust me, I have marked thee, thy hints and insinuations. And hereby by folly I swear, could once I think my master wax to such impressions, I would kill him where he stands, and damn my soul to send his uncorrupt to heaven. You sneer? Sneer on. Why, I could have laughed just now to see you, tortuous, sound his sweet candid shallows, where every pebble's plain. Do your own work, I'll not speak or care. You shall not have him to it, that's all. Sooner shall the heavens fall, than he be led by you to poison Galeazzo. Is that plain?'
It was so plain, that the philosopher gasped vainly for a retort.
'Who—who spoke of poison?' he stammered. 'Not I. Dear Messer Fool, you wrong me. This boy—the protégé of della Grande—mine old friend—I would not so misuse him. Why, he succoured me—an ill requital. If I sounded him, 'twas in self-justification only. We seek the same end by different roads—the ancient Gods restored—the return to Nature. Is it not so? Christ or Hyperion—I will not quarrel with the terms. "Knowledge," saith he, "is the fool that left his Eden." Well, he harks back, and so do I.'
'No further, thou, than to Rome and Regillus; but he to Paradise. Halt him not, I say. He shall not be thy catspaw. On these terms only is my silence bought.'
'Then is it bought. Why, Fool, I could think thee a fool indeed. He hath forsworn the court: how could we think to employ him there?'
'You know, as I know, sir, that this secession is a parenthesis, no more. He came to cure the State—not your way. A little repentance will win him back. The disease is in the head—he sees it; not in these warped limbs that the brain governs. He will go back anon.'
'And reign again by love?'
'I hope so, as first ministers reign.'
'No more? Well, we will back him there.'
'Again, be warned; not your way. Make him no text for the reform which builds on murder. I have spoken.'
'Well, we will not.Vale!'—and the philosopher, bowing his head, slunk out by the door which the other opened for him.
A little later, creeping into a narrow court which was the 'run' to his burrow, at the entrance he crossed the path of two cavaliers, whom, upon their exclaiming over the encounter, he drew under an archway.
They were come from playing pall-mall on the ramparts, and carried over their shoulders the tools of their sport—thin boxwood mallets, painted with emblematic devices in scarlet and blue, and having handle-butts of chased silver. Each gentleman wore red full-hose ending in short-peaked shoes, a plain red biretta, and a little green bodice coat, tight at the waist and open at the bosom to leave the arms and shoulders free play. Montano squinted approval of their flushed faces and strong-breathed lungs.
'Well exercised,' quoth he, in his high-pitched whisper; 'well exercised, and betimes belike.'
'News?' drawled Lampugnani. 'O, construe thyself!'
'The Fool,' answered Montano, 'sees through us, that is all.'
'What!' Visconti's brows came down.
'Hush! He hath warned me—not finally; only he pledges his silence on the discontinuance of my practices on his cub.'
'Well,' said Lampugnani serenely; 'discontinue.'
'Messer, he looks, with certainty, to the boy being won back to court anon. How, then! shall we let him go?'
'No!' rapped out Visconti.
'Yes,' said Lampugnani. 'I trow his good way is after all our best. Let him go back, and make the State so fast in love with Love as to prove Galeazzo impossible. He will sanctify our holocaust for us.'
'But the Fool, Messer—the Fool!'
'Will never conspire against his adored master's exaltation.'
'Exaltation? Would ye let this saint, then, to become the people's idol?'
'Ay, that we may discredit him presently for an adulterous idol. No saint so scorned as he whose sanctity trips on woman.'
'What! You think——?'
'Exactly—yes—the Duchess.Vale, Messer Montano!'—and he lifted his cap mockingly, and moved off.
In the meanwhile Cicada, having watched, through a slit of the unclosed door, the retreat and disappearance of the philosopher, was about to shut himself in again, with a muttered objurgation or two, when a rapid step sounded without, and on the instant the door was flung back against him, and Messer Lanti strode in. There was no opportunity given him to temporise: the great creature was there in a moment, and had recognised him with a 'pouf!' of relief. He just accepted the situation, and closed the door upon them both.
'Well,' he said acridly, 'here you be, and whether for good or ill let the gods answer!'
Lanti stretched his great chest.
'It is well, Fool; and I am well if he is well. Where is he?'
Cicada pointed. The girl by the forge crouched and glared unwinkingly. The next moment Carlo was in his loved one's arms.
'Why hast hidden thyself, boy?—ah! it is a long while, boy—good to see thee again—stand off—I cannot see thee after all—a curse on these blinking eyes!'
'Dear Carlo, I have been a little ill; my joints ached.'
He wept himself, and fondled and clung to his friend.
'Thou great soft bully! For shame! Why, I love thee, dear. Wert thou so hurt? O Carlo! I have been most ill in spirit.'
'Come back, and we will nurse thee.'
'Alas! What nurses!'
'The tenderest and most penitent—Bona, first of all.'
The arms slid from his neck. Sweet angel eyes glowered at him.
'Bona to heal my spirit? To pour fire into its wounds rather! O, I had thought her pure till yesterday!'
And, indeed, Montano, in the furtherance of his corroding policy, had spared him no evidences of court scandal.
Carlo hung his bullet head.
'Lucia!' cried the boy suddenly and sternly.
The girl, at the word, came slinking to him like a dog, setting her teeth by the way at the stranger. Bernardo put his hand on her lowered head.
'Dost know who this is?' he asked of Carlo.
'Why, I can guess.'
'Canst thou, and still talk of Bona's penitence? Here's proof of it—in this foul deed unexpiated. Was it ever meant it should be?'
He raised his arm denunciatory.
'They have used me to justify their abominations; they have made mine innocence a pander to their lusts. Beware! God's patience nears exhaustion. We wait for Tassino. Will he come? Not while lewd arms imprison and protect him. Talk to me of Bona! Go, child.'
The girl crept back to her former seat. Carlo burst out, low and urgent:—
'Nay, boy, you do the Duchess wrong; now, by Saint Ambrose, I swear you do! She hath not set eyes on Jackanapes since that day—believe it—nor knows, more than another, what's become of him.'
'I could enlighten her. Can she be so fickle?'
'What! Don't you want her fickle? You make my brain turn.'
'O Carlo! What can such a woman see in such a man?'
'God! You have me there. She's just woman, conforming to the fashions.'
'Ah, me! the fashions!'
'Woman's religion.'
'She was taught a better. The fashions! Her wedding-gown should suffice her for all.'
'What! Night and day? But, there, I don't defend her!'
'No, indeed. Art thyself a fashion.'
'I don't defend her, I say. I'm worn and cast aside too.'
'Poor fashion! You'll grace your mistress' tire-woman next; and after her a kitchen-maid; and last some draggled scarecrow of the streets. O, for shame, for shame!'
'Go on. Compare me to Tassino next.'
'Indeed, I see no difference.'
'A low-born Ferrarese! A greasy upstart! Was carver to the Duke, no better; and oiled his fingers in the dish, and sleeked his hair!'
'Well, he was made first fashion. The Duchess sets them.'
'Now, by Saint Ambrose! First fashion! this veal-faced scullion, this fat turnspit promoted to a lap-dog! His fashion was to nurse lusty babies in his eyes!'
'What nursed thou in thine?'
'Go to! I'm a numskull, that I know; but to see no more in me!'
'I speak not for myself.'
'Why, these women, true, whom we hold so delicate—coarser feeders than ourselves—their tastes a fable. There, you're right; I've no right to talk.'
'Not yet.'
'Then, you're wrong. We've parted, I and Beatrice.'
'Carlo!'
'Didst think I 'd risk a quarrel with my saint on so small a matter?'
'Carlo!'
He flew upon the great creature and hugged him.
'My dear, my love! O, I went on so! Why did you let me? O, you give me hope again!'
'There,' growled the honest fellow, still a little sulkily. ''Twas to please myself, not you.'
'Not me!'
'Well, if I did, please me by returning.'
Bernardo shook his head.
'And seem to acquiesce in this?' He signified the girl.
'No seeming,' said Lanti. 'The Duchess promises to abet you in everything. I was to say so, an I could find thee.'
'How did you find me?'
'Let that pass. Will you come?'