FOOTNOTE:

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

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

There is hardly a sonnet, there are certainly neitherballate,canzoni, norcapitoliwhich do not contain some reference to Monna Selvaggia's fine eyes, and always to the same tune. They scorch him, they beacon him, they flash out upon him in the dark, so that he falls prone as Saul (who got up with a new name and an honourable addition); they are lodestones, swords, lamps, torches, fires, fixed and ambulatory stars, the sun, the moon, candles. They hold lurking a thief to prey upon the vitals of Cino; they are traitors, cruel lances; they kill him by stabbing day after day. You can picture the high-spirited young lady from his book—her noble bearing, her proud head, her unflinching regard, again the sparks in her grey-green eyes, and so on. He plays upon herforte nome, her dreadful name of Selvaggia; so she comes to be Ferezza itself. "Tanto è altiera," he says, so haughtily she goes that love sets him shaking; but, kind or cruel, it is all one to the enamoured Master Cino; for even if she "un pochettin sorride (light him a little smile)," it melts him as sun melts snow. In any case, therefore, he must go, like Dante's cranes, trailing his woes. It appears that she had very little mercy upon him; for all that in one place he records that she was "of all sweet sport and solace amorous,"in many more than one he complains of her bringing him to "death and derision," of her being in a royal rage with her poet. At last he cries out for Pity to become incarnate and vest his lady in her own robe. It may be that he loved his misery; he is always on the point of dying, but, like the swan, he was careful to set it to music first. Selvaggia, in fact, laughed at him (he turned once to call her a Jew for that) egged on as she was by her brother and her own vivacious habit. She had no Nicoletta at Pitecchio, no mother anywhere, and a scheming father too busy to be anything but shrugging towards poets. She accepted his rhymes (she would probably have been scared if they ceased), his services, his lowered looks, his bent knee; and then she tripped away with an arm round Gianbattista's neck to laugh at all these praiseworthy attentions. As for Cino, Selvaggia was become his religion, and his rhyming her reasonable service. His goddess may have been as thirsty as the Scythian Artemis; may be that she asked blood and stripes of her devotees. All this may well be; for, by the Lord, did she not have them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugolino read the sestett:—

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

"'His book is but the vesture of her spirit;

So too thy poet, that feels the living coal

Flame on his lips and leap to song, shall know,

To whom the glory, whose the unending merit;

Nor faltering shall his utterance be, nor slow

The mute confession of his inmost soul.'"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Love struck me in the side,And from the wound my soul took wing and flewTo Heaven, and all my prideFell, and I knewThere was no balm could stay that wound so wide."

"Love struck me in the side,

And from the wound my soul took wing and flew

To Heaven, and all my pride

Fell, and I knew

There was no balm could stay that wound so wide."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cino."

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

For the present I leave him on his way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ay me, indeed! And thus he ends:

"Ay me, sharp Death! till what I ask is doneAnd my whole life is ended utterly,—Answer,—must I weep onEven thus, and never cease to moanay me?"[2]

"Ay me, sharp Death! till what I ask is done

And my whole life is ended utterly,—

Answer,—must I weep on

Even thus, and never cease to moanay me?"[2]

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

FOOTNOTE:[2]The translation is Rossetti's.

[2]The translation is Rossetti's.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bellaroba was much interested.

"Was the lady kind to you, Angioletto?"

"Oh, very kind."

"But you had to go, you say?"

"Yes. It was judged better."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, quite well."

"What will you do?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But what else?"

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Mosca fiddled at his sword-hilt.

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

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

"And you, Madonnetta," he said sweetly, "what do you say toboars headlarded?"

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

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

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

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

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

"What then, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Certainly you may."

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

"But we cannot live there alone, Captain."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But why?"

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

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

"Oh!" said Bellaroba, blushing beautifully.

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

Bellaroba paused for strength to tell the painful truth.

"She would say 'Fiddlesticks,' Angioletto."

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

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

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

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

"Well, dearest?"

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

Angioletto kissed her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Madonna gave them to me, Olimpia."

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

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

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

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