THE SLIGHTED BEAUTY STARTED TO HER FEETTHE SLIGHTED BEAUTY STARTED TO HER FEET
"Signora, I am too young and too little wise to know how I ought to speak to you, so as not to seem blind nor yet ungrateful. But this I know, I were both naught and ungrateful, and the worst foe e'er you had, did I take advantage of this mad fancy. Sure someill spirit hath had leave to afflict you withal. For 'tis all unnatural that a princess adorned with every grace should abase her affections on a churl."
The princess withdrew her hand slowly from Gerard's wrist.
Yet as it passed lightly over his arm it seemed to linger a moment at parting.
"You fear the daggers of my kinsmen," said she, half sadly, half contemptuously.
"No more than I fear the bodkins of your women," said Gerard, haughtily. "But I fear God and the saints, and my own conscience."
"The truth, Gerardo, the truth! Hypocrisy sits awkwardly on thee. Princesses, while they are young, are not despised for love of God, but of some other woman. Tell me whom thou lovest: and if she is worthy thee I will forgive thee."
"No she in Italy, upon my soul."
"Ah! there is one somewhere, then. Where? where?"
"In Holland, my native country."
"Ah! Marie de Bourgoyne is fair, they say. Yet she is but a child."
"Princess, she I love is not noble. She is as I am. Nor is she so fair as thou. Yet is she fair; and linked to my heart for ever by her virtues, and by all the dangers and griefs we have borne together, and for one another. Forgive me; but I would not wrong my Margaret for all the highest dames in Italy."
The slighted beauty started to her feet, and stood opposite him, as beautiful, but far more terrible than when she slapped Floretta, for then her cheeks were red, but now they were pale, and her eyes full of concentrated fury.
"This to my face, unmannered wretch," she cried. "Was I born to be insulted, as well as scorned, by such as thou? Beware! We nobles brook no rivals. Bethink thee whether is better, the love of a Cesarini, or her hate: for after all I have said and done to thee, it must be love or hate between us and to the death. Choose now!"
He looked up at her with wonder and awe, as she stood towering over him in her Roman toga, offering this strange alternative.
He seemed to have affronted a goddess of antiquity; he a poor puny mortal.
He sighed deeply, but spoke not.
Perhaps something in his deep and patient sigh touched a tender chord in that ungoverned creature; or perhaps the time had come for one passion to ebb and another to flow. The princess sank languidly into a seat, and the tears began to steal rapidly down her cheeks.
"Alas! alas!" said Gerard. "Weep not, sweet lady; your tears they do accuse me, and I am like to weep for company. My kind patron; be yourself! you will live to see how much better a friend I was to you than I seemed."
"I see it now, Gerardo," said the princess. "Friend is the word: the only word can ever pass between us twain. I was mad. Any other man had ta'en advantage of my folly. You must teach me to be your friend and nothing more."
Gerard hailed this proposition with joy; and told her out of Cicero how godlike a thing was friendship, and how much better and rarer and more lasting than love: to prove to her he was capable of it, he even told her about Denys and himself.
She listened with her eyes half shut, watching his words to fathom his character, and learn his weak point.
At last, she addressed him calmly thus: "Leave me now, Gerardo; and come as usual to-morrow. You will find your lesson well bestowed." She held out her hand to him: he kissed it; and went away pondering deeply this strange interview, and wondering whether he had done prudently or not.
The next day he was received with marked distance, and the princess stood before him literally like a statue, and after a very short sitting, excused herself and dismissed him. Gerard felt the chilling difference: but said to himself, "She is wise." So she was in her way.
The next day, he found the princess waiting for him surrounded by young nobles flattering her to the skies. She and they treated him like a dog that could do one little trick they could not. The cavaliers in particular criticised his work with a mass of ignorance and insolence combined that made his cheeks burn.
The princess watched his face demurely with half-closed eyes, at each sting the insects gave him: and, when they had fled, had her doors closed against every one of them for their pains.
The next day Gerard found her alone: cold, and silent. Afterstanding to him so some time, she said, "You treated my company with less respect than became you."
"Did I, signora?"
"Did you? you fired up at the comments they did you the honour to make on your work."
"Nay, I said nought," observed Gerard.
"Oh, high looks speak as plain as high words. Your cheeks were red as blood."
"I was nettled a moment at seeing so much ignorance and ill-nature together."
"Now it is me, their hostess, you affront."
"Forgive me, signora, and acquit me of design. It would ill become me to affront the kindest patron and friend I have in Rome—but one."
"How humble we are all of a sudden. In sooth, Ser Gerardo, you are a capital feigner. You can insult or truckle at will."
"Truckle? to whom?"
"To me, for one; to one, whom you affronted for a base-born girl like yourself: but whose patronage you claim all the same."
Gerard rose, and put his hand to his heart. "These are biting words, signora. Have I really deserved them?"
"Oh, what are words to an adventurer like you? cold steel is all you fear."
"I am no swashbuckler, yet I have met steel with steel: and methinks I had rather face your kinsmen's swords than your cruel tongue, lady. Why do you use me so?"
"Gerar-do, for no good reason, but because I am wayward, and shrewish, and curst, and because everybody admires me but you."
"I admire you too, signora. Your friends may flatter you more; but believe me they have not the eye to see half your charms. Their babble yesterday showed me that. None admire you more truly, or wish you better, than the poor artist, who might not be your lover, but hoped to be your friend: but no, I see that may not be between one so high as you, and one so low as I."
"Ay! but it shall, Gerardo," said the princess, eagerly. "I will not be so curst. Tell me now where abides thy Margaret; and I will give thee a present for her; and on that you and I will be friends."
"She is the daughter of a physician called Peter, andthey bide at Sevenbergen; ah me shall I e'er see it again?"
"'Tis well. Now go." And she dismissed him somewhat abruptly.
Poor Gerard. He began to wade in deep waters when he encountered this Italian princess; callida et calida solis filia. He resolved to go no more when once he had finished her likeness. Indeed he now regretted having undertaken so long and laborious a task.
This resolution was shaken for a moment by his next reception, which was all gentleness and kindness.
After standing to him some time in her toga, she said she was fatigued, and wanted his assistance in another way: would he teach her to draw a little? He sat down beside her, and taught her to make easy lines. He found her wonderfully apt. He said so.
"I had a teacher before thee, Gerar-do. Ay, and one as handsome as thyself." She then went to a drawer, and brought out several heads drawn with a complete ignorance of the art, but with great patience and natural talent. They were all heads of Gerard, and full of spirit: and really not unlike. One was his very image.
"There," said she. "Now thou seest who was my teacher."
"Not I, signora."
"What, know you not who teaches us women to do all things? 'Tis love, Gerar-do. Love made me draw because thou drawest, Gerar-do. Love prints thine image in my bosom. My fingers touch the pen, and love supplies the want of art, and lo! thy beloved features lie upon the paper."
Gerard opened his eyes with astonishment at this return to an interdicted topic. "Oh, signora, you promised me to be friends and nothing more."
She laughed in his face. "How simple you are; who believes a woman promising nonsense, impossibilities? Friendship, foolish boy, who ever built that temple on red ashes? Nay, Gerardo," she added gloomily, "between thee and me it must be love or hate."
"Which you will, signora," said Gerard, firmly. "But for me I will neither love nor hate you; but with your permission I will leave you." And he rose abruptly.
She rose too pale as death, and said, "Ere thou leavest me so, know thy fate; outside that door are armed men who wait to slay thee at a word from me."
"But you will not speak that word, signora."
"That word I will speak. Nay, more, I shall noise it abroad it was for proffering brutal love to me thou wert slain; and I will send a special messenger to Sevenbergen: a cunning messenger, well taught his lesson. Thy Margaret shall know thee dead, and think thee faithless; now, go to thy grave; a dog's. For a man thou art not."
Gerard turned pale, and stood dumbstricken. "God have mercy on us both."
"Nay, have thou mercy on her, and on thyself. She will never know in Holland what thou dost in Rome; unless I be driven to tell her my tale. Come, yield thee, Gerar-do mio: what will it cost thee to say thou lovest me? I ask thee but to feign it handsomely. Thou art young: die not for the poor pleasure of denying a lady what—the shadow of a heart. Who will shed a tear for thee? I tell thee men will laugh, not weep, over thy tombstone—ah!" She ended in a little scream, for Gerard threw himself in a moment at her feet, and poured out in one torrent of eloquence the story of his love and Margaret's. How he had been imprisoned, hunted with bloodhounds for her, driven to exile for her; how she had shed her blood for him, and now pined at home. How he had walked through Europe, environed by perils, torn by savage brutes, attacked by furious men, with sword and axe and trap, robbed, shipwrecked for her.
The princess trembled, and tried to get away from him: but he held her robe, he clung to her, he made her hear his pitiful story and Margaret's; he caught her hand, and clasped it between both his, and his tears fell fast on her hand, as he implored her to think on all the woes of the true lovers she would part; and what but remorse, swift and lasting, could come of so deep a love betrayed, and so false a love feigned, with mutual hatred lurking at the bottom.
In such moments none ever resisted Gerard.
The princess, after in vain trying to get away from him, for she felt his power over her, began to waver, and sigh, and her bosom to rise and fall tumultuously, and her fiery eyes to fill.
"You conquer me," she sobbed. "You, or my better angel. Leave Rome!"
"I will, I will."
"If you breath a word of my folly, it will be your last."
"Think not so poorly of me. You are my benefactress once more. Is it for me to slander you?"
"Go! I will send you the means. I know myself; if you cross my path again, I shall kill you. Addio; my heart is broken."
She touched her bell. "Floretta," she said, in a choked voice, "take him safe out of the house through my chamber and by the side poster."
He turned at the door; she was leaning with one hand on a chair, crying, with averted head. Then he thought only of her kindness, and ran back and kissed her robe. She never moved.
Once clear of the house he darted home, thanking Heaven for his escape, soul and body.
"Landlady," said he, "there is one would pick a quarrel with me. What is to be done?"
"Strike him first, and at vantage! Get behind him; and then draw."
"Alas, I lack your Italian courage. To be serious, 'tis a noble."
"Oh, holy saints, that is another matter. Change thy lodging awhile, and keep snug; and alter the fashion of thy habits."
She then took him to her own niece, who let lodgings at some little distance, and installed him there.
He had little to do now, and no princess to draw, so he set himself resolutely to read that deed of Floris Brandt, from which he had hitherto been driven by the abominably bad writing. He mastered it, and saw at once that the loan on this land must have been paid over and over again by the rents, and that Ghysbrecht was keeping Peter Brandt out of his own.
"Fool! not to have read this before," he cried. He hired a horse and rode down to the nearest port. A vessel was to sail for Amsterdam in four days.
He took a passage; and paid a small sum to secure it.
"The land is too full of cut-throats for me," said he; "and 'tis lovely fair weather for the sea. Our Dutch skippers are not shipwrecked like these bungling Italians."
When he returned home there sat his old landlady with her eyes sparkling.
"You are in luck, my young master," said she. "All the fish run to your net this day methinks. See what a lacquey hath brought to our house! This bill and this bag."
Gerard broke the seals, and found it full of silver crowns. The letter contained a mere slip of paper with this line, cut out of some MS.—"La lingua non ha osso, ma fa rompere il dosso."
"Fear me not!" said Gerard, aloud. "I'll keep mine between my teeth."
"What is that?"
"Oh, nothing. Am I not happy, dame? I am going back to my sweetheart with money in one pocket, and land in the other." And he fell to dancing around her.
"Well," said she, "I trow nothing could make you happier."
"Nothing, except to be there."
"Well, that is a pity, for I thought to make you a little happier with a letter from Holland."
"A letter? for me? where? how? who brought it? Oh, dame!"
"A stranger; a painter, with a reddish face and an outlandish name; Anselmin, I trow."
"Hans Memling? a friend of mine. God bless him!"
"Ay, that is it; Anselmin. He could scarce speak a word, but a had the wit to name thee: and a puts the letter down, and a nods and smiles, and I nods and smiles, and gives him a pint o'wine, and it went down him like a spoonful."
"That is Hans, honest Hans. Oh, dame, I am in luck to-day: but I deserve it. For, I care not if I tell you, I have just overcome a great temptation for dear Margaret's sake."
"Who is she?"
"Nay, I'd have my tongue cut out sooner than betray her, but oh itwasa temptation. Gratitude pushing me wrong, Beauty almost divine pulling me wrong: curses, reproaches, and, hardest of all to resist, gentle tears from eyes used to command. Sure some saint helped me; Anthony belike. But my reward is come."
"Ay, is it, lad; and no farther off than my pocket. Come out, Gerard's reward," and she brought a letter out of her capacious pocket.
Gerard threw his arm around her neck and hugged her. "My best friend," said he, "my second mother, I'll read it to you."
"Ay, do, do."
"Alas! it is not from Margaret. This is not her hand." And he turned it about.
"Alack; but may be her bill is within. The lasses are aye for gliding in their bills under cover of another hand."
"True. Whose hand is this? sure I have seen it. I trow 'tis my dear friend the demoiselle VanEyck. Oh, then Margaret's billwillbe inside." He tore it open. "Nay, 'tis all in one writing. 'Gerard, my well beloved son,' (she never called me that before that I mind) 'this letter brings thee heavy news from one would liever send thee joyful tidings. Know that Margaret Brandt died in these arms on Thursday sennight last.' (What does the doting old woman mean by that?) 'The last word on her lips was "Gerard:" she said "Tell him I prayed for him at my last hour: and bid him pray for me." She died very comfortable, and I saw her laid in the earth, for her father was useless, as you shall know. So no more at present from her that is with sorrowing heart thy loving friend and servant,
'Margaret VanEyck.'
"Ay, that is her signature sure enough. Now what d'ye think of that, dame?" cried Gerard, with a grating laugh. "There is a pretty letter to send to a poor fellow so far from home. But it is Reicht Heynes I blame for humouring the old woman and letting her do it; as for the old woman herself, she dotes, she has lost her head, she is fourscore. Oh, my heart, I'm choking. For all that she ought to be locked up, or her hands tied. Say this had come to a fool; say I was idiot enough to believe this; know ye what I should do? run to the top of the highest church tower in Rome and fling myself off it, cursing Heaven. Woman! woman! what are you doing?" And he seized her rudely by the shoulder. "What are ye weeping for?" he cried in a voice all unlike his own, and loud and hoarse as a raven. "Would ye scald me to death with your tears? She believes it. She believes it. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!—Then there is no God."
The poor woman sighed and rocked herself. "And must I be the one to bring it thee all smiling and smirking? I could kill myself for't. Death spares none," she sobbed. "Death spares none."
Gerard staggered against the window sill. "But He is master of death," he groaned. "Or they have taught me a lie. I beginto fear there is no God, and the saints are but dead bones, and hell is master of the world. My pretty Margaret; my sweet, my loving Margaret. The best daughter, the truest lover! the pride of Holland! the darling of the world! It is a lie. Where is this caitiff Hans? I'll hunt him round the town. I'll cram his murdering falsehood down his throat."
And he seized his hat and ran furiously about the streets for hours.
Towards sunset he came back white as a ghost. He had not found Memling: but his poor mind had had time to realize the woman's simple words, that Death spares none.
He crept into the house bent, and feeble as an old man, and refused all food. Nor would he speak, but sat, white, with great staring eyes, muttering at intervals "there is no God."
Alarmed both on his account and on her own (for he looked a desperate maniac), his landlady ran for her aunt.
The good dame came, and the two women, braver together, sat one on each side of him, and tried to soothe him with kind and consoling voices. But he heeded them no more than the chairs they sat on. Then the younger held a crucifix out before him, to aid her. "Maria, mother of heaven, comfort him," they sighed. But he sat glaring, deaf to all external sounds.
Presently, without any warning, he jumped up, struck the crucifix rudely out of his way with a curse and made a headlong dash at the door. The poor women shrieked. But, ere he reached the door, something seemed to them to draw him up straight by his hair, and twirl him round like a top. He whirled twice around with arms extended; then fell like a dead log upon the floor, with blood trickling from his nostrils and ears.
GERARD returned to consciousness and to despair.
On the second day he was raving with fever on the brain. On a table hard by lay his rich auburn hair, long as a woman's.
The deadlier symptoms succeeded one another rapidly.
On the fifth day his leech retired and gave him up.
On the sunset of that same day he fell into a deep sleep.
Some said he would wake only to die.
But an old gossip, whose opinion carried weight (she had been a professional nurse), declared that his youth might save him yet could he sleep twelve hours.
On this his old landlady cleared the room and watched him alone. She vowed a wax candle to the Virgin for every hour he should sleep.
He slept twelve hours.
The good soul rejoiced, and thanked the Virgin on her knees.
He slept twenty-four hours.
His kind nurse began to doubt. At the thirtieth hour she sent for the woman of art. "Thirty hours! shall we wake him?"
The other inspected him closely for some time.
"His breath is even, his hand moist. I know there be learned leeches would wake him, to look at his tongue, and be none the wiser; but we that be women should have the sense to let bon Nature alone. When did sleep ever harm the racked brain or the torn heart?"
When he had been forty-eight hours asleep, it got wind, and they had much ado to keep the curious out. But they admitted only Fra Colonna and his friend the gigantic Fra Jerome.
These two relieved the women, and sat silent; the former eyeing his young friend with tears in his eyes, the latter with beads in his hand looked as calmly on him, as he had on the sea when Gerard and he encountered it hand to hand.
At last, I think it was about the sixtieth hour of this strange sleep, the landlady touched Fra Colonna with her elbow. He looked. Gerard had opened his eyes as gently as if he had been but dozing.
He stared.
He drew himself up a little in bed.
He put his hand to his head, and found his hair was gone.
He noticed his friend Colonna, and smiled with pleasure. But in the middle of smiling his face stopped, and was convulsed in a moment with anguish unspeakable, and he uttered a loud cry, and turned his face to the wall.
His good landlady wept at this. She had known what it is to awake bereaved.
Fra Jerome recited canticles, and prayers from his breviary.
Gerard rolled himself in the bed-clothes.
Fra Colonna went to him, and, whimpering, reminded him that all was not lost. The divine muses were immortal. He must transfer his affection to them; they would never betray him nor fail him like creatures of clay. The good, simple father then hurried away; for he was overcome by his emotion.
Fra Jerome remained behind. "Young man," said he, "the Muses exist but in the brains of pagans and visionaries. The Church alone gives repose to the heart on earth, and happiness to the soul hereafter. Hath earth deceived thee, hath passion broken thy heart after tearing it, the Church opens her arms: consecrate thy gifts to her! The Church is peace of mind."
He spoke these words solemnly at the door, and was gone as soon as they were uttered.
"The Church!" cried Gerard, rising furiously and shaking his fist after the friar. "Malediction on the Church! But for the Church I should not lie broken here, and she lie cold, cold, cold, in Holland. O my Margaret! O my darling! my darling! And I must run from thee the few months thou hadst to live. Cruel! cruel! The monsters, they let her die. Death comes not without some signs. These the blind, selfish wretches saw not, or recked not; but I had seen them, I that love her. Oh, had I been there, I had saved her, I had saved her. Idiot! idiot! to leave her for a moment."
He wept bitterly a long time.
Then, suddenly bursting into rage again, he cried vehemently, "The Church! for whose sake I was driven from her; my malison be on the Church! and the hypocrites that name it to my broken heart. Accursed be the world! Ghysbrecht lives; Margaret dies. Thieves, murderers, harlots, live for ever. Only angels die. Curse life! Curse death! and whosoever made them what they are!"
The friar did not hear these mad and wicked words; but only the yell of rage with which they were flung after him.
It was as well. For, if he had heard them, he would have had his late shipmate burned in the forum with as little hesitation as he would have roasted a kid.
His old landlady, who had accompanied Fra Colonna down the stair, heard the raised voice, and returned in some anxiety.
She found Gerard putting on his clothes, and crying.
She remonstrated.
"What avails my lying here?" said he gloomily. "Can I find here that which I seek?"
"Saints preserve us! Is he distraught again? What seek ye?"
"Oblivion."
"Oblivion, my little heart? Oh, but y' are young to talk so."
"Young or old, what else have I to live for?"
He put on his best clothes.
The good dame remonstrated. "My pretty Gerard, know that it is Tuesday, not Sunday."
"Oh, Tuesday is it? I thought it had been Saturday."
"Nay, thou has slept long. Thou never wearest thy brave clothes on working days. Consider."
"What I did, when she lived, I did. Now I shall do whatever erst I did not. The past is the past. There lies my hair, and with it my way of life. I have served one Master as well as I could. You see my reward. Now I'll serve another, and give him a fair trial too."
"Alas!" sighed the woman, turning pale, "what mean these dark words? and what new master is this whose service thou wouldst try?"
"SATAN."
And with this horrible declaration on his lips the miserable creature walked out with his cap and feather set jauntily on one side, and feeble limbs, and a sinister face pale as ashes, and all drawn down as if by age.
A DARK cloud fell on a noble mind.
His pure and unrivalled love for Margaret had been his polar star. It was quenched, and he drifted on the gloomy sea of no hope.
Nor was he a prey to despair alone, but to exasperation at all his self-denial, fortitude, perils, virtue, wasted and worse than wasted; for it kept burning and stinging him, that, had he stayed lazily, selfishly, at home, he should have saved his Margaret's life.
These two poisons, raging together in his young blood, maddenedand demoralized him. He rushed fiercely into pleasure. And in those days, even more than now, pleasure was vice.
Wine, women, gambling, whatever could procure him an hour's excitement and a moment's oblivion. He plunged into these things, as men tired of life have rushed among the enemy's bullets.
The large sums he had put by for Margaret gave him ample means for debauchery, and he was soon the leader of those loose companions he had hitherto kept at a distance.
His heart deteriorated along with his morals.
He sulked with his old landlady for thrusting gentle advice and warning on him; and finally removed to another part of the town, to be clear of remonstrance, and reminiscences. When he had carried this game on some time, his hand became less steady, and he could no longer write to satisfy himself. Moreover his patience declined as the habits of pleasure grew on him. So he gave up that art, and took likenesses in colours.
But this he neglected whenever the idle rakes, his companions, came for him.
And so he dived in foul waters, seeking that sorry oyster-shell, Oblivion.
It is not my business to paint at full length the scenes of coarse vice, in which this unhappy young man now played a part. But it is my business to impress the broad truth, that he was a rake, a debauchee, and a drunkard, and one of the wildest, loosest, and wickedest young men in Rome.
They are no lovers of truth, nor of mankind, who conceal or slur the wickedness of the good, and so by their want of candour rob despondent sinners of hope.
Enough, the man was not born to do things by halves. And he was not vicious by halves.
His humble female friends often gossiped about him. His old landlady told Teresa he was going to the bad, and prayed her to try and find out where he was.
Teresa told her husband Lodovico his sad story, and bade him look about and see if he could discover the young man's present abode. "Shouldst remember his face, Lodovico mio?"
"Teresa, a man in my way of life never forgets a face, least of all a benefactor's. But thou knowest I seldom go abroad by daylight."
Teresa sighed. "And how long is it to be so, Lodovico?"
"Till some cavalier passes his sword through me. They will not let a poor fellow like me take to any honest trade."
Pietro Vanucci was one of those who bear prosperity worse than adversity.
Having been ignominiously ejected for late hours by their old landlady, and meeting Gerard in the street, he greeted him warmly and soon after took up his quarters in the same house.
He brought with him a lad called Andrea, who ground his colours, and was his pupil, and also his model, being a youth of rare beauty, and as sharp as a needle.
Pietro had not quite forgotten old times, and professed a warm friendship for Gerard.
Gerard, in whom all warmth of sentiment seemed extinct, submitted coldly to the other's friendship.
And a fine acquaintance it was. This Pietro was not only a libertine, but half a misanthrope, and an open infidel.
And so they ran in couples, with mighty little in common. O rare phenomenon!
One day, when Gerard had undermined his health, and taken the bloom off his beauty, and run through most of his money, Vanucci got up a gay party to mount the Tiber in a boat drawn by buffaloes. Lorenzo de' Medici had imported these creatures into Florence about three years before. But they were new in Rome, and nothing would content this beggar on horseback, Vanucci, but being drawn by the brutes up the Tiber.
Each libertine was to bring a lady; and she must be handsome, or he be fined. But the one, that should contribute the loveliest, was to be crowned with laurel, and voted a public benefactor. Such was their reading of "Vir bonus est quis?" They got a splendid galley, and twelve buffaloes. And all the libertines and their female accomplices assembled by degrees at the place of embarkation. But no Gerard.
They waited for him some time, at first patiently, then impatiently.
Vanucci excused him. "I heard him say he had forgotten to provide himself with a fardingale. Comrades, the good lad is huntingfor a beauty fit to take rank among these peerless dames. Consider the difficulty, ladies, and be patient!"
At last Gerard was seen at some distance with a female in his hand.
"She is long enough," said one of her sex; criticizing her from afar.
"Gemini! what step she takes," said another; "Oh! it is wise to hurry into good company," was Pietro's excuse.
But when the pair came up, satire was choked.
Gerard's companion was a peerless beauty; she extinguished the boat-load, as stars the rising sun. Tall, but not too tall; and straight as a dart, yet supple as a young panther. Her face a perfect oval, her forehead white, her cheeks a rich olive with the eloquent blood mantling below; and her glorious eyes fringed with long thick silken eyelashes, that seemed made to sweep up sensitive hearts by the half-dozen. Saucy red lips, and teeth of the whitest ivory.
The women were visibly depressed by this wretched sight; the men in ecstasies; they received her with loud shouts and waving of caps, and one enthusiast even went down on his knees upon the boat's gunwale, and hailed her of origin divine. But his chère amie pulling his hair for it—and the goddess giving him a little kick—cotemporaneously, he lay supine: and the peerless creature frisked over his body without deigning him a look, and took her seat at the prow. Pietro Vanucci sat in a sort of collapse, glaring at her, and gaping with his mouth open like a dying cod-fish.
The drover spoke to the buffaloes, the ropes tightened, and they moved up stream.
"What think ye of this new beef, mesdames?"
"We ne'er saw monsters so vilely ill-favoured; with their nasty horns that make one afeard, and their foul nostrils cast up into the air. Holes be they; not nostrils."
"Signorina, the beeves are a present from Florence the beautiful. Would ye look a gift beef i' the nose?"
"They are so dull," objected a lively lady. "I went up Tiber twice as fast last time with but five mules and an ass."
"Nay, that is soon mended," cried a gallant, and jumping ashore he drew his sword, and despite the remonstrances of the drivers, went down the dozen buffaloes goading them.
They snorted and whisked their tails and went no faster, at which the boat-load laughed loud and long; finally he goaded a patriarch bull, who turned instantly on the sword, sent his long horns clean through the spark, and with a furious jerk of his prodigious neck sent him flying over his head into the air. He described a bold parabola and fell sitting, and unconsciously waving his glittering blade, into the yellow Tiber. The laughing ladies screamed and wrung their hands, all but Gerard's fair. She uttered something very like an oath, and seizing the helm steered the boat out, and the gallant came up sputtering, gripped the gunwale, and was drawn in dripping.
He glared round him confusedly. "I understand not that," said he a little peevishly; puzzled, and therefore it would seem, discontented. At which, finding he was by some strange accident not slain, his doublet being perforated, instead of his body, they began to laugh again louder than ever.
"What are ye cackling at?" remonstrated the spark. "I desire to know how 'tis that one moment a gentleman is out yonder a pricking of African beef, and the next moment—"
Gerard's lady.] "Disporting in his native stream."
"Tell him not, a soul of ye," cried Vanucci. "Let him find out 's own riddle."
"Confound ye all. I might puzzle my brains till doomsday, I should ne'er find it out. Also, where is my sword?"
Gerard's lady.] "Ask Tiber! Your best way, signor, will be to do it over again: and, in a word, keep pricking of Afric's beef, till your mind receives light. So shall you comprehend the matter by degrees as lawyers mount heaven, and buffaloes Tiber."
Here a chevalier remarked that the last speaker transcended the sons of Adam as much in wit as she did the daughters of Eve in beauty.
At which, and indeed at all their compliments, the conduct of Pietro Vanucci was peculiar. That signor had left off staring, and gaping bewildered: and now sat coiled up snakelike, on a bench, his mouth muffled, and two bright eyes fixed on the lady, and twinkling and scintillating most comically.
He did not appear to interest or amuse her in return. Her glorious eyes and eyelashes swept him calmly at times, but scarce distinguished him from the benches and things.
Presently the unanimity of the party suffered a momentary check.
"AHA! LADIES," SAID SHE, "HERE IS A RIVAL AN YE WILL""AHA! LADIES," SAID SHE, "HERE IS A RIVAL AN YE WILL"
Mortified by the attention the cavaliers paid to Gerard's companion, the ladies began to pick her to pieces sotto voce, and audibly.
The lovely girl then showed that, if rich in beauty, she was poor in feminine tact. Instead of revenging herself like a true woman through the men, she permitted herself to overhear, and openly retaliate on her detractors.
"There is not one of you that wears Nature's colours," said she. "Look here," and she pointed rudely in one's face. "This is the beauty that is to be bought in every shop. Here is cerussa, here is stibium, and here purpurissum. Oh I know the articles: bless you, I use them every day—but not on my face, no thank you."
Here Vanucci's eyes twinkled themselves nearly out of sight.
"Why your lips are coloured, and the very veins in your forehead: not a charm but would come off with a wet towel. And look at your great coarse black hair like a horse's tail, drugged and stained to look like tow. And then your bodies are as false as your heads and your cheeks, and your hearts I trow. Look at your padded bosoms, and your wooden heeled chopines to raise your little stunted limbs up and deceive the world. Skinny dwarfs ye are, cushioned and stiltified into great fat giants. Aha, mesdames, well is it said of you, grande—di legni: grosse—di straci: rosse—di bettito: bianche—di calcina."
This drew out a rejoinder. "Avaunt, vulgar toad, telling the men everything. Your coarse, ruddy cheeks are your own, and your little handful of African hair. But who is padded more? Why you are shaped like a fireshovel."
"Ye lie, malapert."
"Oh the well educated young person! Where didst pick her up, Ser Gerard?"
"Hold thy peace, Marcia," said Gerard, awakened by the raised trebles from a gloomy reverie. "Be not so insolent! The grave shall close over thy beauty as it hath over fairer than thee."
"They began," said Marcia petulantly.
"Then be thou the first to leave off."
"At thy request, my friend." She then whispered Gerard, "It was only to make you laugh: you are distraught, you are sad. Judge whether I care for the quips of these little fools, or the admiration of these big fools. Dear Signor Gerard, would I were what theytake me for? You should not be so sad." Gerard sighed deeply; and shook his head. But, touched by the earnest young tones, caressed the jet black locks, much as one strokes the head of an affectionate dog.
At this moment a galley drifting slowly down stream got entangled for an instant in their ropes: for, the river turning suddenly, they had shot out into the stream: and this galley came between them and the bank. In it a lady of great beauty was seated under a canopy with gallants and dependents standing behind her.
Gerard looked up at the interruption. It was the princess Clælia.
He coloured and withdrew his hand from Marcia's head.
Marcia was all admiration. "Aha! ladies," said she, "here is a rival an' ye will. Those cheeks were coloured by Nature—like mine."
"Peace, child! peace!" said Gerard. "Make not too free with the great."
"Why, she heard me not. Oh, Ser Gerard, what a lovely creature!"
Two of the females had been for some time past putting their heads together and casting glances at Marcia.
One of them now addressed her.
"Signorina, do you love almonds?"
The speaker had a lapful of them.
"Yes, I love them; when I can get them," said Marcia, pettishly, and eyeing the fruit with ill-concealed desire; "but yours is not the hand to give me any, I trow."
"You are much mistook," said the other. "Here, catch!"
And suddenly threw a double handful into Marcia's lap.
Marcia brought her knees together by an irresistible instinct.
"Aha! you are caught, my lad," cried she of the nuts. "'Tis a man; or a boy. A woman still parteth her knees to catch the nuts the surer in her apron; but a man closeth his for fear they shall fall between his hose. Confess now, didst never wear fardingale ere to-day."
"Give me another handful, sweetheart, and I'll tell thee."
"There! I said he was too handsome for a woman."
"Ser Gerard, they have found me out," observed the Epicæne, calmly cracking an almond.
The libertines vowed it was impossible, and all glared at the goddess like a battery. But Vanucci struck in, and reminded the gaping gazers of a recent controversy, in which they had, with an unanimity not often found among dunces, laughed Gerard and him to scorn, for saying that men were as beautiful as women in a true artist's eye.
"Where are ye now? This is my boy Andrea. And you have all been down on your knees to him. Ha! ha! But oh, my little ladies, when he lectured you and flung your stibium, your cerussa, and your purpurissum back in your faces, 'tis then I was like to burst; a grinds my colours. Ha! ha! he! he! he! ho!"
"The little impostor! Duck him!"
"What for, signors?" cried Andrea, in dismay, and lost his rich carnation.
But the females collected round him, and vowed nobody should harm a hair of his head.
"The dear child! How well his pretty little saucy ways become him."
"Oh, what eyes! and teeth!"
"And what eyebrows and hair!"
"And what lashes!"
"And what a nose!"
"The sweetest little ear in the world!"
"And what health! Touch but his cheek with a pin the blood should squirt."
"Who would be so cruel?"
"He is a rosebud washed in dew."
And they revenged themselves for their beaux' admiration of her by lavishing all their tenderness on him.