"Prefect of Romagna!" said Ramiro d'Orco to himself, walking up and down his private cabinet in the castle of Imola; "that may create a conflict of jurisdictions with the vicars of the Church. It is an awkward office to give or to hold."
He spoke in a low voice to himself, and though his words were serious, and implied a difficulty of some magnitude, there was an unwonted smile upon his lip, as if there was something that satisfied him well.
He rang a little silver bell which stood upon the table, and when a servant appeared, ordered him to seek for Father Peter and bring him thither. The man was a long time absent, but Ramiro d'Orco sat quietly, with that well-pleased smile on his lip, gazing at some papers before him, but quite unconscious of the characters with which they were covered. What were his meditations, who can say? for some smiles are not altogether pleasant; and his was far from being benign.
At length the friar appeared--now in reality a friar, for there were strange transformations in those days; assassins sometimes became friars, and friars were not unfrequently assassins.
"Sit, good father, sit," said Ramiro d'Orco, "I have news for you."
"Good news, I hope, my lord," replied Mardocchi. "I have some news for you, too; but mine is not the best; however, it matters but little."
"Mine matters much," said Ramiro d'Orco. "What think you, Mardocchi? Our friend, Lorenzo Visconti, has been appointed by the pope, at the instigation of Louis XII., King of France, Prefect of Romagna, and is about, in this fine weather, to make a tour through the exarchate and the legations. He must come to Imola of course; and I have letters here from that high and mighty prince Cæsar, Duke of Valentinois, requiring me, by the favour in which I stand with him, to receive the prefect with all due honour, and to make his time pass pleasantly. We will do it, Mardocchi--we will do it; for, although there is a very palpable hint in Borgia's missive that no harm is to be done to the cousin of King Louis, yet, perhaps, we can so manage that he shall find means to harm himself. He has an army at his back to help Cæsar Borgia in carving out a principality from the heart of Italy; but the vicars of the Holy See, and I as the humblest of them, must reverently crave his Holiness to spare us the burden of the prefect's troops. We will receive him gladly with a noble train, but methinks we cannot admit an armed French force within our walls."
"Of course," replied Mardocchi, "that would be selling yourself to the devil without pay. But I should think he would not come to Imola. He cannot like to show himself before your eyes--and, if he did come, it would be somewhat painful to the signora your daughter."
"He will come--he will come," replied Ramiro; "and he shall be gallantly received. Fêtes and festivals shall greet him; he shall have every reverence and every joy. He shall be taught to think that we can forget as easily as he can; but he shall find that to slight the daughter of Ramiro d'Orco is to tread upon an asp. As for my Leonora, she has a proud and a noble heart. I have seen all the struggles--I have marked the terrible conflict in her breast, and she has come out victorious. My word for it, she will meet the young prefect and his fair wife with all calm courtesy, greet him as an old friend, and seem never to remember that he betrayed her unsuspecting heart, slighted her love, and left her to disappointment and regret."
"That is all very good for the beginning," said Mardocchi, who was quite a practical man; "but how does your lordship intend to proceed in the more weighty part of the business? This Lorenzo Visconti is not so easily reached as people might suppose. I told you how he killed my friend and lord, Buondoni, under the very nose of the Duke of Milan--a better man than Signor Buondoni never lived--and, if my advice had been taken, and a dagger used instead of a sword, the youth would not have troubled us any more; but Buondoni was always fond of the sword, and of doing things openly, and so----"
"I know the whole history better than even you do, my friend," replied Ramiro d'Orco; "Buondoni did like the sword, but he liked it well anointed, and this Lorenzo would have died had I not cured him. His life is mine, for I saved it for him; but as to how I shall proceed I cannot yet determine. That must depend upon the time and circumstances of his coming; but I have thought it needful to have you warned and prepared in the matter; for on your skill and assistance I rely, and you know I never forget services rendered any more than offences given."
Mardocchi made no answer for a few minutes, but remained gazing in silent thought upon the ornamented floor, until, at length, Ramiro exclaimed:
"You make no answer, friar; what are you thinking of?"
"I was thinking," said Mardocchi slowly, "of what a glorious thing it would be if we could so entangle him that we could make him not only forfeit his own life, but also that honour and renown of which he is so proud. Such things have been done, my lord, and may be done again. I have heard that when Galeazzo was Duke of Milan, he got a cavalier to poison his own sister to save her honour, as he thought, then proved the crime upon him, and put him to the rack. Now, this Lorenzo, if I have heard rightly, cares little for mere life--nay, would almost thank the man who took it from him."
"Why so?" asked Ramiro, sharply, a sudden doubt flashing across his mind, like a light in a dark night lost again as soon as seen; "why so, friar?"
"If there be any truth," said Mardocchi, fully on his guard, "in the reports brought by the followers of the great duke from France, this wife whom he has wedded is as light a piece of vanity as ever made a husband miserable. Nothing has been proved against her, but there are many suspicions of her faithlessness. She is ever followed by a train of lovers, giving her smiles now to the one, now to the other. Visconti feels the wound with all the bitterness of a proud heart, but cannot find the cure. In the meanwhile he bears himself carelessly, as if he thought not of it; but Antonio Pistrucci, Duke Cæsar's under purse-bearer, assured me that the young man was weary of his life, and that, at the storming of a castle in Navarre, he so clearly sought to lose it that the whole army saw his purpose. What I would infer, my lord, is this: if you give him merely death, you give him what he wants, and he remains unpunished but if you give him dishonour too, you inflict all that other men feel in death, and something more besides."
"That were hard to accomplish," said Ramiro d'Orco, rising, and pacing backward and forward in the room; "I see not how it can be done."
"We have time to think, my lord," replied the friar; "leave me to devise a scheme. If my brain be better than a mouldy biscuit, I will find some means. If I fail, we can always recur to the ordinary plan."
"Well, ingenuity does much," said Ramiro d'Orco; "and, as you say, Mardocchi, there is time to consider our plans well. But you mentioned news you had to bring me: what may be their purport?"
"'Tis no great matter," answered Mardocchi; "but it bears upon the very subject we have spoken of. As I came hither at your lordship's order, I saw, riding in by the Forli gate, no other than an old friend of mine, one Antonio, whom you know well, for he procured me the honour of your service. I know not whether he is a follower of this Lorenzo still, but I should think he is; and if I can find him in the city, where he must stop at least to bait his horse, I can perhaps procure information which may be serviceable."
"Serviceable indeed," replied Ramiro d'Orco, with more eagerness than he was accustomed to show; "hasten down, good friar. See where he lodges; obtain all the news you can from him. What we most want is information of this young man's plans and purposes. That once obtained, we can shape our own course to meet them. But remember, my good Mardocchi, this man, this Antonio, is a personage to be treated warily. He is shrewd and far-seeing. You must guard well every word you say."
"I know him well, my lord," replied Mardocchi. "We were at school together when we were boys, and he is not much changed since. But I will not waste time in talking. He was riding fast when I saw him, and perhaps he may only stop to bait his horse and get some food for himself."
Thus saying, Mardocchi left the room, and proceeded straight from the castle through the sort of esplanade that lay before the gates, and into the town. He walked fast, but with a meditative air; and it must be remembered that he had many things to consider.
When there is in the human heart a consciousness of evil done, there is always more or less fear; and his first thoughts were directed to calculate what where the chances of explanations taking place between Lorenzo Visconti and Ramiro d'Orco if they ever met again on familiar terms.
He soon saw, however, that those chances were small; that Lorenzo, by his marriage, had placed a barrier between the present and the past, that was not likely to be overleaped; and that while he was certain never to seek explanations himself, there was as little probability of Ramiro or Leonora either giving or receiving them.
"Besides," he argued, "if all the explanations in the world took place, they can prove nothing in the world against me."
The next consideration that presented itself was the promise he made Antonio to practise nothing against his lord's life; and though it may seem strange that a man so utterly unscrupulous should attach such importance to an adherence to his word, yet we see such anomalies every day in human character, and in his case it might easily be explained, if we had time or space to bestow upon it.
Suffice it, however, to say, in a few words, that this adherence to his word, once pledged, was the only virtue he had retained through life. A stubborn adhesion to his resolutions of any kind had characterized him even as a boy, and it had become a matter of pride with him to abide by what he had said. The difficulty with him now was that Ramiro d'Orco would indubitably require assistance from his own hand in taking vengeance upon Lorenzo Visconti, if some means could not be found to betray the young nobleman into some dangerous act which would fall back upon his own head.
This scheme had flashed suddenly through his mind while conversing with Ramiro; and he saw in it the only means of escaping from the breach of his word, or the acknowledgment of scruples which he knew would be treated with contempt. The plan when he first suggested it, was without form or feature; but now his busy and crafty brain eagerly pursued the train, and a thousand schemes suggested themselves, some of which were feasible, some wild and hopeless.
During all this time, however, he forgot not his immediate errand. He watched everything passing in the street around him, and looked in at the two small taverns in the street of the citadel. There was a better inn, however, on the small square by the bishop's palace, where were also most of the best houses of the city, and thither Mardocchi bent his way. On reaching it, he entered the great court-yard, and inquired if any strangers had arrived that day.
"Yes, father," replied the ostler to whom he spoke, "some seven or eight; one gentleman, with four or five servants and three sumpter mules, and two or three other persons."
"I will go into the stable and see the horses, my son," said Mardocchi. "You know I am fond of a fine beast, and my own mule has not its match in Imola."
The two strolled onward to the stable door, conversing familiarly, as was the custom with friar and citizen in those days; and Mardocchi passed down the line of stalls, discussing the merits of the horses, till at length he laid his hand upon the haunch of a fine grey barb, saying, "I want to see the man who rode this horse."
"He is within, at dinner in the hall," answered the ostler. "He came himself to see his horse fed while they got ready for him. He is a careful signor, and marks everything he sees. He told me in a minute that those other horses belong to the great maestro Leonardo da Vinci though he did not know him, for they passed each other close without speaking."
"I will go in and see him," said the friar; and entering the inn by the back way, he strolled into the dining-hall with an indifferent and purposeless look, as if there was no object in his coming.
Antonio was sitting alone at a table, with his back towards the door by which Mardocchi entered; but the tread of the latter upon the rushes which strewed the floor made the other turn sharply round as he came near.
"Ah! Signor Antonio, is that you?" exclaimed Mardocchi; "why what, in Fortune's name, brings you to Imola?"
"Well met, father---father what is your name? for, by my faith, I have forgotten," cried Antonio, keeping his eye fixed upon him more firmly than Mardocchi altogether liked; "and what brings you to the Keys of St. Peter? I thought that taverns and public-houses were forbidden to your sacred calling except in time of travel."
"Many things are forbidden that men do," replied Mardocchi, with a laugh; "and my sacred calling does not prevent my throat from getting dry. I came seeking a small flagon of the wine they have here, which is the best in Italy. Have you tasted it?"
"Good faith! no," answered Antonio; "I thought not to find anything worth drinking in this small, dull place."
"Then I will have a big flagon instead of a small one," rejoined Mardocchi, "and you shall share it with me. Here, drawer! drawer! bring me a big flagon of that same old Orvietto wine which I had when last I was here. You mistake much, Signor Antonio, both as to the wine and as to the place. It is no dull town, I can tell you, but as gay a city as any in Italy."
"It will be gayer before we have done with it," replied Antonio, "for there are high doings where my lady is, and she will be here ere many days are over."
"Indeed!" said Mardocchi; "but taste that wine, my son--taste that wine, and tell me if ever you drank better. Sour stuff we used to have where I passed my novitiate. They were strict in nothing but that, Antonio; but it was the rule of the order that the body must be mortified in some way, and they judged that the wine way was the safest; for, there being taverns not far off, a man might mend his drink when he went out to buy for the convent."
"By my faith! it is good, indeed," said Antonio, after a deep draught; "if the meat be as good as the drink, we shall fare well."
"Nowhere better," replied the friar; "woodcocks with bills that long, and breasts that thick" (and he demonstrated the measures on his arm and hand); "beef as fat and as juicy as if it had been cut out of an abbot's sirloin; fish from the Adriatic and the brook for Fridays; and now and then a wild-boar steak, which would make a hermit break Lent."
"Well then, my lady will fare sumptuously, and I shall be spared scolding the purveyors, as I was obliged to do at Forli," was Antonio's reply.
"But you speak only of your lady," remarked Mardocchi; "does not your lord come likewise?"
"That I cannot tell," answered Antonio; "I only know that she comes first, and waits for him here, while he makes a tour through the legations. He thinks the air of Rome too cool for her health, and, as he is very careful of her, she comes hither."
There was a sly humour in his speech which Mardocchi well understood; and he asked, "But why did he choose Imola for her residence; because he thought it was so dull, as you said just now?"
"He did not choose it," replied Antonio; "no, no, 'twas she. He gave her the choice of several cities around, and she chose Imola. She knew, perhaps, it was the place he would least like; for some of the good-natured babblers of the court had taken care to tell her of certain passages in days past, and also that the lady of his early love lived here. Madonna Eloise might think it would give him pain to meet a dame who had treated him so unkindly, and so she chose Imola."
"Theirs must be a sweet life, by all accounts," said the friar; "I have heard a good deal of this matter before from men in the cardinal's train when he went to France. They say she is unfaithful to him."
"Nay, nay, not unfaithful," replied Antonio, quickly, "but light enough to make men think her so. But now, my good friend Mardocchi, what makes you interest yourself so much in all this matter? You have got over all old grudges by this time, I hope."
"No," answered Mardocchi bluntly, "I never forget grudges or promises either, Antonio. You tied my hands, or I would have sent your lord to a better world long ago. I could have taken his life in the French camp, just when he parted from the old Cardinal Julian; for I was close behind them both, and nobody would have known it."
"I should," replied Antonio, "for I know your handiwork, Mardocchi, just as a connoisseur knows the touch of a great master's pencil. But why should you bear him ill-will? His sword got you a much better master than Buondoni."
"That I deny," said Mardocchi; "besides, I am little with this Signor Ramiro now; I am but a poor friar, and he is great lord."
"Yes, but you are much with greater lords than he," said Antonio. "I have heard of you in Rome, Mardocchi; and I could tell where you were on certain nights which you wot of; but I am as secret as the grave, my good friend. Now tell me how it fares with the Lady Leonora?"
"Oh, she is well, and gay as a sunbeam," replied Mardocchi; "the life and the delight of the city."
"Methinks if I had treated a lover so, first broke his heart and then driven him to wed without love, I should not be quite so happy," was Antonio's answer.
"It is strange," said the friar, in a natural tone; "but women are full of wild caprices."
"That is true, indeed," replied Antonio; "but she might at least have written to say she had changed her mind--that her mood was altered--that she had seen some one else she loved better."
"Did she never write?" asked the friar.
"He never received her letter, if she did," answered Antonio, in a tone so peculiar that Mardocchi's cheek changed colour, not unperceived by his companion. But Antonio instantly sought another subject, and the conversation was prolonged for more than an hour. The wine was very good, and both drank deep; but neither could persuade the other to pass the bound where the brain becomes unsteady and the tongue treacherous. When they rose to separate, the balance of knowledge gained, however, was certainly on Antonio's side. He had told nothing but what was known, or soon would be known to every one. Neither had the monk in words; but Antonio gathered not his intelligence from words. It was one of his quaint sayings that no two things were so opposite as words and facts. But every look, every turn of expression, every doubtful phrase, or endeavour to evade the point or double round the question, gave him light; and by the time Mardocchi left him, if he had not reached the truth, he had come somewhat near it.
True, he fancied that the friar had been but Ramiro's instrument in breaking through the engagement between Leonora and her lover; but that her letters had been stopped, and probably Lorenzo's intercepted, he did not doubt. To a mind so keen as his this was a sufficient clue to after discoveries; and while Mardocchi hurried back to the citadel to tell Ramiro that Antonio would stay out the day, and was about to hire the great Casa Orsina, next to the bishop's palace, for the prefect's wife--that she would be in Imola in a few days, and that Lorenzo's coming was uncertain, Antonio remained for half an hour in thought.
"No, no," he said to himself, "hers was true love, if ever I beheld it; and he says she is gay, the life and soul of the place. That is unnatural--she loves him still! And he, poor youth, loves her; and is ever contrasting her in his mind with this light, half-harlot wife, with whom it has pleased Heaven to curse him. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at her--I can see it when she scatters round her smiles on the gilded coxcombs of the court. Yet there must be something more to discover, and, please God, I will discover it."
Days flew; the wife of the prefect arrived at Imola; Ramiro d'Orco went out to meet her at a league's distance from the city; no honour, no attention did he neglect; the guards at the gates received her drawn up in martial array; and in the palace which had been engaged for her, at the foot of the great staircase, Leonora waited with her maids to welcome the young wife of him whom she had so tenderly loved.
It was a strange meeting between these two girls--for both were yet girls--neither twenty years of age. They both gazed upon each other with curious, scrutinizing eyes; but their feelings were very different. Eloise de Chaumont marvelled at Leonora's wonderful beauty--at the profusion of her jetty hair--at the softened lustre of her large, full, shaded eyes--at the delicate carving of the ever varying features--at the undulating grace, flowing, with every movement of her rounded, symmetrical limbs, into some new form of loveliness. She thought, "Well, she is beautiful, indeed! No wonder Lorenzo loved her. But, on my faith, she does not appear one to treat any man cruelly. I should rather think she would yield at love's first summons."
Leonora, on the other hand, though she was calm and perfectly composed, felt matter for pain in the gaze which Eloise fixed upon her. She could plainly see that Lorenzo's wife knew of the love which had once existed between him and herself. "Perhaps he himself had told her of it--and how had he told it? Had he boasted that he had won her heart and then cast her off? She would not believe it. Notwithstanding all, she believed him to be noble still. He might be fickle; but Lorenzo could not be base. Oh yes, fickle he was even to Eloise," she thought. "From every report which had reached her, he had soon wearied of her who had supplanted the first love of his heart."
A certain wavering look of grief, which came from time to time into the countenance of Eloise, showed that she too was somehow disappointed, and a strange, unnatural bond of sympathy seemed to establish itself between two hearts the most opposite in feelings and in principles, the least likely, from circumstances, to be linked together.
They passed nearly an hour together; and Eloise promised on the following day to come and partake of a banquet at the villa on the hill. She had a sort of caressing way with her which was very winning; and when Leonora told her she must go, for that Leonardo, the great painter, waited her at home, she took the once promised bride of her husband in her arms, and held her there for a moment, kissing her cheek tenderly. "You are very beautiful," she whispered; "well may the painter take you for his model!"
Leonora blushed and disengaged herself; and, though she was still calm as a statue externally, many an hour passed before her heart recovered from the agitation of that interview.
She was destined to feel more emotion, too, that day. Leonardo de Vinci waited her as she expected, and at once proceeded to his work. While Ramiro d'Orco remained, the painter was nearly silent; but as soon as the baron was gone, he began to speak; and his speech was cruel upon poor Leonora. He asked her many questions regarding her late meeting with Lorenzo's wife, made her describe Eloise, and commented as she spoke.
Then he began to ask questions as to the past--not direct and intrusive, but such as forced indirectly much of the truth from Leonora regarding her own feelings and her view of Lorenzo's conduct--and the painter meditated gloomily. He had not yet mentioned Lorenzo's name, but at length it was spoken with a melancholy allusion to the many chances, deceits, and accidents which might bring disunion between two hearts both true.
Leonora burst into tears, and, starting up, exclaimed, "I cannot--I cannot, my friend. If you would have my picture, forbear! Come to-morrow; to-day I can bear no more."
So saying, she left the room, and Leonardo remained in thought, sometimes gazing at the picture he had commenced, sometimes at the pallet in his hand, figuring in fancy strange forms and glowing landscapes out of the colours daubed upon it. But though the eye, and the fancy, and the imagination had occupation, the reasoning mind, which has a strange faculty of separating itself from things which seem its attributes, nay, even parts of its essence, to the superficial eye, was busy with matters altogether different. It was engaged with Leonora and her fate.
"This is strange--this is unaccountable," he thought; "she loves him still; she always has loved him. She casts the blame of their separation on him; and he--miserable young man!--thinks her to blame, and has put a seal upon his own wretchedness by marrying yon light piece of vanity whom I saw in Rome. Pride, pride! How much wretchedness would be spared if people would condescend to explain; and yet perhaps there has been some dark work under this; it must be so, or some explanation would have taken place. I will search it to the bottom. I will know the whole ere I am done. They cannot, they shall not baffle me."
He started up, laid down his pallet and his brushes, and then, after gazing at the picture for a moment, took his way down the few steps which led from Leonora's saloon down to a little flower-garden, shaded by some pine-trees, in a quiet nook at the end of the terrace. Two marble steps brought him to the terrace itself, and, hurrying along its broad expanse, not without feeling and noticing the beauty of the view, Leonardo reached the wide avenue, lined with stone-pines, which led to the gates of the gardens.
About half way down he met a man coming leisurely up; and, as his all-noting eye fell upon him, the painter suddenly stopped, saying:
"Who are you, my friend? I know your face right well, and yet I cannot attach a name to it."
"I know yours too, signor," replied the other; "but there is a difference between Leonardo da Vinci, the great master, and poor Antonio, the humble friend and servant of Lorenzo Visconti; the one name will live for ever, the other will never be known. I met you and spoke to you once or twice at Belgiojoso in happier days."
"Ay, I recollect you now," said Leonardo; "but how happens it, my friend, that you are going up to the villa of the Signor d'Orco and his daughter?"
"I was going to see the young signora," replied Antonio. "I do not perceive why I should not. I have ever loved her in my humble way, and love her still; for, to tell the truth, signer maestro, I cannot believe that she has ever wilfully ill-treated one whom I love better still."
"Nor I--nor I, Antonio," cried the painter, eagerly grasping his arm; "she believes that he has ill-treated her."
"Nay, God knows, not that," replied Antonio. "Oh, had you seen how he pined, signor, for the least news of her, or how his heart was torn and moved when his letters were returned with nothing but a scrap of her handwriting, contemptuous in its tone and meaning, you would know at once he is not to blame."
"Nor she either, by my hopes of Heaven!" cried Leonardo. "But come with me, good friend--come with me. You cannot see the lady--she is ill; and I have matter for your own private ear. There is some dark mystery here, which I fain would unravel with your aid. I am resolute to sound it to the very depth."
"But how can we do that?" said Antonio; "those who have kept their secrets so well and so long, are not likely to let it slip out of their hands now. These are no babes we have deal with, signor, and if Ramiro d'Orco is at the bottom of it, you might as well hope to see through a block of stone as to discover anything that is in his mind."
"He has no share in it, I think," answered Leonardo, after a moment's thought. "He is a man moved solely by his ambition or his interests; and all his interests would have led him to seek this marriage rather than break it off. Not a man in Italy, who seeks to gain a seat upon the hill of power, but looks to the King of France to lend a helping hand, and this breach between his daughter and Lorenzo tends more to Ramiro's destruction than his elevation. Do you not know some one who has some ancient grudge or desperate enmity towards our young prefect?"
Antonio started as if some one had struck him a blow. The truth, the whole truth, flashed upon his mind at once.
"The villain!" he murmured; "but, to expose him altogether, and to discover all, we must, we must be very careful. I do know such a man, Signor Leonardo; but let us be very secret or we may frighten him. Satan was never more cunning, Moloch more cruel. He was bred up in a school of blood and craft, and we must speak of him in whispers till we can grasp him by the neck. Let us be silent as we pass through the town. There, at your lodgings in the inn, after seeing that all the doors are closed, and no one eaves-dropping around, I will tell you all I know, and leave you to judge if my suspicions are right."
Not a word more was spoken; and as the results of the conversation which took place between them after they reached the "Keys of St. Peter" will be developed hereafter, it were mere waste of time to relate it in this place.
Some words, sad, but true, may, indeed, be noted.
"For our own heart's ease," said Leonardo, "we had better solve all doubts; but yet what skills it? They can never be happy. Lorenzo's rash marriage puts an everlasting bar between them."
"I will not only solve all doubts, but I will punish the traitor," said Antonio; "for, if we let him escape he may do more mischief still. He shall die for his pains, if my own hand does it. But I think I have a better hold on him than that; I will make him over to a stronger hand."
That day came and went. There was a great banquet at the villa of Ramiro d'Orco, which passed as such banquets usually do, and was only marked by one expression of the Countess Visconti when she was led by Leonora through her own private apartments. She was pleased particularly with the beautiful saloon, and the sweet retired garden on the terrace with the steps between.
"Oh! what a charming spot to meet a lover!" she said, gazing laughingly into Leonora's eyes.
"I meet no lover here but my own thoughts," replied Leonora; and the conversation dropped.
The next day every one of distinction was invited to the house of the young countess; and it seemed strange to Leonora to find there several gentlemen, both French and Italian, arrived that day from Rome. They were evidently very intimate with the fair Eloise, but she was somewhat on her guard, and nothing appeared to shock or offend, although Leonora thought:
"If I had a husband, I would not waste so many smiles on other men."
Balls, festas, parties of pleasure through the country round succeeded during the ensuing week, chequered but not saddened by the news that there had been hard fighting at Forli, where lay the army of the Duke of Valentinois, assisted by the French under Lorenzo Visconti, and that the town, besieged by them, still held out. Imola had never seen such gay doings; and Leonora, at her father's desire, took part in all the festivities of the time, admired, sought, courted, but apparently indifferent to all. Strange to say she seemed at once to have won the regard, if not the affections of Eloise Visconti. When there was no gay flatterer near her, she must have the society of her beautiful Leonora; and certainly there was something wonderfully engaging in Eloise when she chose. There might be something in her manner, even apart from her demeanour toward men, which created a doubt, a suspicion in the bosom of a pure-minded woman; but yet it was soon forgotten in her apparent child-like simplicity.
Leonardo da Vinci did not seem to love her; her beauty was not of the style that pleased him, and when asked to paint her portrait he declined, alleging that he had undertaken more than he could accomplish already. His portrait of Leonora made more progress in a week than any work he had ever undertaken. The head was finished, the limbs and the drapery sketched out; but when he had arrived at about the tenth sitting, he requested to have easel and picture both brought down to the citadel, where a large room was assigned to him. It fatigued him, he said, to go to the villa every day; and, having finished the face and head, the few more sittings which were required could be given him there whenever he found it necessary to ask them. Leonora willingly consented to come at his call; and for several days he worked diligently for nearly twelve hours a day, shut up in the hall where he painted, or in a small room adjoining, where he kept the implements of his art.
It was on Tuesday, the 19th of September, early in the morning, that Leonora received a brief note from the great painter, loosely translatable as follows:
"Most beautiful and excellent Lady,--Though to your perfections my picture owes an excellence which the painter could never have given from his mere mind, yet there are wants which time and observation have enabled me to detect. Come to me, then, if it be possible, at four this evening, and enable me to supply those graces which had previously escaped me. Be as beautiful as possible, and, for that object, as gay. Might I commend to you the depth of two fingers breadths of that fine old Pulciano wine before you come? It heightened your colour, I saw, when last you tasted it; and I want a little more of the red in the cheek."
Leonora was punctual to the appointment, and Leonardo, meeting her at the door of the hall, led her round by the back of the picture to the small room I have mentioned, saying, "You must not see it now till it is finished." Then, seating her in a large arm-chair, he stood and gazed at her for a moment, saying, laughingly, "You must be content to be stared at, for I wish to take down every shade of expression in the note-book of my mind, and write it out upon the picture in the other room." After a few minutes, changing her attitude once or twice, and changing her hair to suit his fancy, he went out into the hall, and engaged himself upon the picture.
For some five minutes Leonora satin solitude, and all seemed silence through the citadel. Then came some noise in the courtyard below--the clatter of horses feet and voices speaking; and then some steps upon the flight of stairs which led up to the grand apartments of the castle. All these sounds were so usual, however, that in themselves they could excite no emotion. But yet Leonora turned somewhat pale. There was something in the sound of the step of one of those who mounted the stairs which recalled other days to her mind. It might be heavier, firmer, less elastic, but yet it was very like Lorenzo's tread. Who ever forgets the footstep of one we have loved?
Before she could consider long, Leonardo da Vinci came back to her, and seeming to have noticed nothing that went on without, took his place before her, and gazed at her again. He had nearly closed the door behind him, but not quite, and the next moment a step was heard in the adjoining hall, and some one speaking.
"This is the saloon, my lord," said the voice of Antonio, opening the door of the hall. "There it stands; and a masterpiece of art it is. I will now tell the Signor Ramiro that you are here; but I will go slowly, so you will have time."
The well-know step sounded across the marble pavement of the hall, at first firm and strong, then less regular, then weak and unsteady.
Next came a silent pause, and Leonora could hear her heart beat in the stillness; and then a voice was raised in lamentation.
"Oh, Leonora! Leonora!" it cried, "had you been but as true as you are beautiful, what misery would you have spared the heart that loved you as never woman before was loved! Had you but told me to pour out the last drop of life's blood in my veins at your feet, you had been kind, not cruel; but you have condemned me to endless tortures for having loved--nay, for loving you still too well!"
Leonardo da Vinci took Leonora's hand as if he would have led her towards the door, but she snatched it from him, and covered her eyes, while her whole frame shook as if with an ague-fit.
The speaker in the hall was silent; but then came once more the sound of steps upon the stairs, and Lorenzo's voice exclaimed, "Oh, God! have they given me but this short moment?" and his steps could be heard retreating towards the door. Then the voice of Ramiro d'Orco was heard saluting him in courteous terms, and the sound died away altogether.
Profound silence reigned in the hall and in the little room adjoining; but at length Leonora took her hands from her eyes, and said, in a mournful and reproachful tone, "If you have done this, you have been very cruel."
"I did it not," answered Leonardo; "but yet I am right glad it has happened. You accuse him of having been faithless to you, he accuses you of having been fickle to him. Both have been betrayed, my child. Both have been true, though both may be wretched."
"But what matters it to either of us?" said Leonora, almost sternly; "the time has passed, the die is cast, and there is no retrieving the fatal throw."
"And yet," said Leonardo da Vinci, "to a fine mind, methinks it must be a grand and noble satisfaction to discover that one we loved, but doubted or condemned, had been accused unjustly--that we have not loved unworthily--that the high qualities, the noble spirit, the generous, sincere, and tender heart, were not vain dreams of fancy or affection, but steadfast truths of God's own handiwork, which we had reverenced and loved as the finest gifts of the Almighty Benefactor. You may not feel this now, Leonora, in the bitterness of disappointment, but the time will come when such thoughts will be comfort and consolation to you--when you will glory and feel pride in having loved and been loved by such a man."
Leonora snatched his hand and kissed it warmly. "Thank you," she said, "thank you. To-night or to-morrow I shall have to meet him in public, and your words will give me strength. Now that I know him worthy as I once thought him, I shall glory in his renown, as you have well said; for my Lorenzo's spirit, I feel, is married to mine, though our hands must be for ever disunited. Farewell, my friend, farewell. I will no longer regret this accident; it has had its bitter, but it has its sweet also;" and, clasping her hands together, she exclaimed almost wildly, "Oh, yes, I am loved, I am loved--still loved!"
She arose from her chair as if to go, but then, catching hold of the tall back, she said, "Let me crave you, Signor Leonardo, bid some of the attendants order my jennet round to the back of the palace. I am wonderfully weak, and I fear my feet would hardly carry me in search of them myself."
"I will go with you to the villa," said Leonardo. "My horse is here below. Sit you still in that chair till I return, and meditate strong thoughts, not weak ones. Pause not on tender recollections, but revolve high designs, and your mind will recover strength, and your body through your mind."
On what a miserable thing it must be to return to a home, and to find that the heart has none, the fond, true welcome wanting--the welcome of the soul, not the lips. Oh, where is the glad smile! where the cordial greeting! where the abandonment of everything else in the joy of seeing the loved one return! Where, Lorenzo?--where?
'Tis bad enough when we find petty cares and small annoyances thrust upon us the moment our foot passes the threshold--to know that we have been waited for to set right some trivial wrong, to mend some minute evil, to hear some small complaint--when we have been flying from anxieties and labours, and thirsting for repose and love, to find that the black care, which ever rides behind the horseman, has seated himself at our fireside before we could pull off our boots. 'Tis bad enough--that is bad enough.
But to return to that which ought to be our home, and find every express wish neglected, every warning slighted, every care frustrated, and all we have condemned or forbidden, done--that must be painful indeed!
The arrival of Lorenzo Visconti in Imola was unexpected; and his short stay with Ramiro d'Orco but served to carry the news to the gay palazzo inhabited by his wife, and create some confusion there. True, when he entered the wide saloons, where she was surrounded by her own admiring crowd, Eloise rose and advanced to meet him, with alight, careless air of independence, saying, "Why, my good lord, you have taken us by surprise. We thought you still at the siege of Forli."
"Forli has capitulated, madame," replied Lorenzo, gazing round, and seeing all those whom he wished not to see. "It was too wise to be taken by surprise. But I am dusty with riding--tired too. I will retire, take some repose, and change my apparel."
Thus saying, he left the room. Eloise made no pretence of following him; and, as he closed the door, he could hear her light laugh at a jest--perhaps at himself--from some of her gay attendants.
Oh, how his heart sickened as, led by Antonio, he trod the way to the apartments of his wife!
"Leave me, Antonio," he said, "and return in an hour. There, busy not yourself with the apparel. Heaven knows whether I shall want it. Leave me, I say!"
"When you have leisure, my lord, I would fain speak a word or two in your private ear," said Antonio; "you rode so fast upon the road I could not give you some information I have obtained."
"Regarding whom?" asked Lorenzo, with a frowning brow; "your lady?"
"No, my lord, regarding the Signora d'Orco," replied the man.
But Lorenzo merely waved his hand for him to depart; and when he was gone, pressed his hands upon his burning temples, and sat gazing on the ground. His head swam; his heart ached; his mind was irresolute. In his own soul he compared Leonora d'Orco with Eloise de Chaumont. He asked himself if, fickle as she had shown herself to be, Leonora, once his wife, would have received him so on his return from labour and dangers.
He remembered the days of old, and answered the question readily. But then he turned to bitterer and more terrible inquiries. Was his wife faithful to him? or was he but the butt and ridicule of those whom, contrary to his plainest injunctions, she had brought from Rome?
He was of no jealous disposition. By nature he was frank and confiding; but her conduct had been such--was such, that those comments, so hard to bear--those suspicions, that sting more terribly than scorpions, had been busy round his ears even at the court of France.
In vain he had remonstrated, in vain had he used authority. He found her now, as he had left her in Rome, lighter than vanity itself. That accident, propinquity, and some interest in the accident she had brought upon him, with the vanity of winning one who had been considered cold and immovable, had induced her to give him what little love she could bestow on any one, and confirm it with her hand, he had long known. Long, too, had he repented of his rash marriage; but that carelessness of all things, that weariness of the world, that longing for repose, even were it the repose of the grave, which Leonora's fancied fickleness had brought upon him, had not been removed by his union with Eloise de Chaumont. A thousand evils had been added--evils the more terrible to a proud, high mind. He had never expected much; but he had believed Eloise innocent, though thoughtless; tender and affectionate, though light. But he had not found the tenderness after the ring was on her finger; and the very semblance of affection had soon died away.
"What was there on earth worth living for?" he asked himself; "what was there to compensate the pangs he endured--the burthen he bore. Nothing--nothing. Life was only not a blank because it was full of miseries."
Thus he sat, with a wrung heart and whirling brain, for nearly half an hour. At length he took a picture from his bosom--one of those small gems of art which the great painters of that and the preceding age sometimes took a pride in producing--and gazed upon it earnestly. It was the portrait of a very beautiful woman (his own mother), which the reader has seen him receive from Milan. He thought it like Leonora d'Orco; but oh! that mother was faithful and true unto the death. She had defended her own honour, she had protected herself from shame, she had escaped the power of a tyrant, by preferring the grave to pollution.
He turned to the back of the picture, now repaired, and read the inscription on it, "A cure for the ills of life."
"And why not my cure?" asked Lorenzo of his own heart; "why should I not pass from misery and shame even as my mother did?"
He pressed the spring, and the lid flew open. There were the fatal powders beneath, all ready to his hand.
He was seated in his wife's room, and among many an article of costly luxury on the table were a small silver cup and water-pitcher. Lorenzo stretched out his hand to take the cup, laying the portrait with the powders down while he half filled the cup with water. But, ere he could take a powder from the case, Antonio re-entered.
"The hour has passed, my lord, and I do hope you will now hear me," he said. "I have to tell you that which, perhaps, may be of little comfort, but is yet important for you to know."
"Speak on, my good Antonio," said Lorenzo, in a gentler tone than he had lately used; for the thoughts of death were still upon him, and to the wretched there is gentleness in the thoughts of death. "What is it you would say? I am in no haste;" and he set down the cup upon the table by the picture.
"My lord, we have been all terribly deceived," said Antonio; "you, I, the Signora Leonora--all. While you have thought her false and fickle, she has believed you the same."
"Antonio!" exclaimed his lord, in a reproachful tone, "Antonio, forbear. Try not to deceive me by fictions."
"My lord, I stake my life upon the truth of what I say," replied Antonio. "I have seen a maid whom she hired in Florence after the rest had left her--those who were carried away from the Villa Morelli, and never heard of more. I had my suspicions; and, after having won her good graces, I questioned the girl closely. Signora d'Orco wrote to you often--sent letters by any courier that was going to France--wept at your silence--pined, and nearly died."
"But I wrote often," said Lorenzo.
"Your letters never reached her, nor hers you," replied the man; "by a base trick----"
"But her handwriting!" exclaimed Lorenzo, "her own handwriting! I saw it--read it."
"I know not what that handwriting implied, my lord," was the answer; "but perhaps, if you were to examine it closely, you might find either that it was not hers, or that, thinking you false and forsworn, she wrote in anger, as you have spoken and thought of her."
Lorenzo meditated deeply, and then murmured, "It may be so. O God! if this be true!"
"It is true, my lord, by my salvation," replied Antonio; "I have the whole clue in my hands. The Signor Leonardo da Vinci, too, knows all, and can satisfy you better than I can."
"Is he here?" asked Lorenzo, in a tone of melancholy interest, remembering the happy house at Belgiojosa. "If he be convinced, there must be some truth in it. But tell me, Antonio, what fiend has done this? It cannot surely be Ramiro d'Orco?"
"Oh no," replied the man; "but ask me no more, my lord, at present. See the Signor Leonardo. He and I have worked together to discover all, and he will tell you all. Well may you call the man a friend; but I am on his traces, like a staghound, and I will have my fangs in his flanks ere long. Let the maestro tell you, however. I only wished to let you know the truth, as the Signora Leonora is even now with her father below, and you must meet her presently. You could not meet the faithless as the faithful; and she is true to you, my lord--has been ever true."
Lorenzo started up. "Leonora here!" he exclaimed; "I must see her---I will see her. Where leads that door, Antonio?"
"To the room reserved for your lordship's toilet," replied the man.
"Quick! send my varlets up," cried the master; "I will but shake off this dust and go down."
"Better appear as becomes you, my noble lord," replied Antonio; "there is a splendid company below--indeed, there always is when the countess receives her guests. Your apparel is all put forth and ready. To dress will but take you a few minutes."
"Well, be it so," said Lorenzo; "bring me those lights, my good Antonio;" and he walked straight to the door of the dressing-room, leaving his mother's portrait and the poison on the table. He remembered it once while going down the stairs after dressing, but there was too much eagerness in his heart for him to return to take it then, and from that moment events and--more engrossing still--feelings hurried on so rapidly, he forgot entirely his purpose of going back for the portrait at an after period.
The entrance of the young prefect into his wife's splendid saloons caused no slight movement among the many guests there present. His noble and dignified carriage, the strange air of command in one so young--an air of command obtained as much by sorrows endured, and a manly struggle against despair, as by the habit of authority--impressed all the strangers in the room with a feeling going somewhat beyond mere respect. But there was one there present whose feelings cannot be described. He was to her, as it were, a double being--the Lorenzo of the past, the Lorenzo of the present. The change in personal appearance was very slight, though the youth had become the man. The dark, brown curling beard, the greater breadth of the shoulders, the powerful development of every limb, and perhaps some increase of height, formed the only material change, while the grace as well as the dignity was still there. In the ideal Lorenzo--the Lorenzo of her imagination--the change was, of course, greater to the eyes of Leonora. He was no longer her own--he was no longer her lover--he was the husband of another--there was an impassable barrier between them; but that day had diminished the difference. She now knew that he was as noble as ever, that he had not been untrue to her without cause, that he had loved her faithfully, painfully, sorrowfully (she dared not let her mind dwell on the thought that he loved her still); and there was a sort of a tie between her heart and his, between the present and the past, produced by undeserved grief mutually endured.
Oh! how she longed to tell him that she had never been faithless to him--that she had loved him ever! Again, she did not dare to admit that she loved him still.
Yet she commanded herself wonderfully. She had come prepared; and she had long obtained the power of concealing her emotions. That she felt and suffered was only known to one in the whole room. She clung more tightly to her father's arm, her fingers pressed more firmly on it; and Ramiro d'Orco felt all she endured, and imagined more. He said not a word indeed to comfort or console her, but there were words spoken in his own heart which would have had a very different effect if they had found breath.
"The day of vengeance is coming," he thought--"is coming fast;" but his aspect betrayed no emotion.
Lorenzo took his way straight to where the Lord of Imola and his daughter stood, close by the side of his own wife; and Eloise laughed with a gay, careless laugh, as she saw the sparkle in her husband's eyes.
"This is my friend, the Signora d'Orco," she said; but Lorenzo took Leonora's hand at once, saying, "I have long had the happiness of knowing her;" and he added (aloud, though in a somewhat sad and softened tone) words which had only significance for her; they were: "I have known her long, though not as well as I should have known her."
He stood and spoke with Leonora herself for some moments. He referred no farther to the past, for the icy touch of her hand on that warm night told him plainly enough that she was agitated as far as she could endure, and he strove to diminish that agitation rather than increase it.
He then turned to Ramiro d'Orco, saying, "My Lord of Imola, I will beseech you to go with me through the rooms, and introduce me to the noble gentlemen and ladies of your city."
Ramiro d'Orco was all graciousness, and led him from one to another, while Eloise with some malice, whispered in Leonora's ear:
"He is marvellously handsome, is he not? When you were standing together the Count do Rouvri whispered me that you were the two most beautiful personages in Italy."
"He is a poor judge and a poor courtier," replied Leonora; and the conversation dropped.
She had now fully recovered her composure, and she thanked God that the trying moment was over. Numbers flocked round her, gay words and pleasant devices passed, and all that fine wit for which the Italians were famous, displayed itself. Nor did Leonora do her part amiss, although it must be owned her thoughts sometimes wandered, and her words were once or twice somewhat wide of the mark.
At length the prefect and Ramiro d'Orco returned, and then began arrangements for the following day. It seemed understood that on alternate nights the Lord of Imola and the lady of the prefect should entertain the nobility of the city and the district round, and their meeting for the following evening had been fixed for rather an early hour at the villa on the hill, before Lorenzo's unexpected arrival at Imola. Eloise, however, who was not without her caprices, thought fit to change the arrangement, declared that she was weary of so much gaiety, felt herself somewhat indisposed, and would prefer a day of rest, if it were not inconvenient to the Signor d'Orco to postpone his festa till the following day.
Ramiro d'Orco declared that, on the contrary, the change would be convenient to him, for that he was bound to go, either on the morrow or the day after, to hold a court of high justiciary at a small town just within his vicariate, and that he could not return the same night.
"I will set out to-morrow, my lord," he said, "and shall be back early on the following day. In the mean time, I must leave my daughter here to do the honours of the city to you and your fair lady; and if she fails in any point, she shall be well rated at my return."
Thus saying, he and Leonora took their leave; but the festivities in Lorenzo's house continued long. He himself was present to the last, although his presence certainly did not throw much gaiety upon the scene. To the citizens of Imola he was attentive and courteous, but to the crowd of butterflies who had followed Eloise from Rome, without being repulsive, he was cold and distant. When the last guest was gone, he and his wife took their several ways, she to her chamber, he to his dressing-room; and, long after she had retired to rest, she heard her husband's voice conversing eagerly with Antonio.
"Talking over my foibles, I suppose," said Eloise to herself; "I wish I could hear what they say;" and she raised herself up in bed to go towards the door, but she felt weary, and her natural indifference got the better of her curiosity. She sank back upon her pillow, and soon was buried in sleep.
The conversation of which she had heard the murmur had no reference to herself. Lorenzo questioned his humble friend in regard to the facts he had mentioned in the earlier part of the evening, and many and varied were the feelings which the intelligence he received produced--deep and bitter regret, some self-reproval, and a sensation which would have resembled despair had not a sort of dreamy, moonlight joy, to know that he had been still beloved, pervaded all his thoughts with a cold but soothing light. He sought to know on whom the suspicions of Antonio and Leonardo fixed as the agent of all his misery, but the good man refused to satisfy him.
"Leave him to me, my lord," he said; "I have means of dealing with him which you have not. I will only beseech you tell me how long the great Duke of Valentinois remains at Forli, and to give me leave to absent myself for a day or two at any time I may think fit."
"Oh, that you have, of course," replied Lorenzo. "Did I ever restrain you, Antonio? As to Borgia, he will most probably remain a month at Forli. I left him as soon as the place capitulated; for I love him not, although my good cousin, King Louis, is so fond of him. Well, policy, like necessity, too often brings the base and the noble together. But, as the capitulation imported that the town would surrender, if not relieved, in three days, and I know that De Vitry is on his march with three thousand men, which will render relief impossible, I thought I might very well leave this good lord duke to watch the city by himself. He is an extraordinary, a great, and a mighty man, but as bad a man as ever the world produced--unless it be his father."
"That will do right well," replied Antonio; "I neither love him nor hate him, for my part, but I must use him for my purposes."
"He generally uses other men for his," answered his lord, with a doubtful look.
"Great stones are moved by great levers," said Antonio; "and I have got the lever in my hands, my lord, with which I can move this mighty man to do well-nigh what I wish. I will set out to-morrow evening, I think, and ride by night---no, it must be on the following day. There is a game playing even now upon which I must have my eye. In the mean time, your lordship had better see the Signor Leonardo; he will tell you much; and if there be a lingering doubt, as there well may be, that your poor servant has ascertained the facts he states beyond a doubt, the maestro will confirm all I have said."
"Antonio," said Lorenzo, giving him his hand, "if ever there was a man who faithfully loved and served another, so you have loved and served me. But love and service are sometimes blind and dull. Not such have been yours. Where I have wanted wisdom, perception, or discretion, you have furnished them to me; and of all the many benefits conferred on me by Lorenzo de Medici, his placing you near me was the greatest. Power, and wealth, and authority are often irritable, and sometimes unjust. If I have ever shown myself so to you, Antonio, forgive me for it; but never believe that, knowing you as I know you, I ever doubt your truth."
Antonio made no reply, but kissed his lord's hand, as was the custom in those reverent ages, and left him with a swimming eye.
Lorenzo cast from him the gorgeous dress at that time common in Italy, the gorgeous chain of gold, the knightly order of St. Michael, the surcoat of brown and gold, the vest and haut-de-chaussée of white satin and silver, and, after plunging his burning head several times in water, cast on a loose dressing-gown, and seating himself in a wide easy-chair, endeavoured to sleep. The day had been one of fatigue and excitement. Neither mind nor body had enjoyed any repose, but sleep was long a stranger to his eyelids. At length she came, fanning his senses with her downy wings, but only as a vampire, to wound his heart while she seemed to soothe. He dreamed of Eloise. He saw her dying by the dagger-blow of a hand issuing from a cloud. All was forgotten--indignation, anger, shame, I may say contempt. She was his wife, the wife of his bosom, the wife plighted to him by the solemn vow of the altar. He seized the visionary hand, uplifted for a second blow, and pushed it back, exclaiming, "No, no, strike me! If any one must die, strike me!" and then he woke.
The lights which he had left burning were nearly in the sockets. The first blue gleam of morning was seen through the windows; and Lorenzo, dressing himself quietly in his ordinary garments, descended to the court-yard, endeavouring to forget the troublous visions of the night.