“Quel giorno piu non vi leggemo avanti.”
Giuliana's words: “Let us read no more to-day”—had seemed an echo of that line, and the echo made me of a sudden conscious of an unsuspected parallel. All at once our position seemed to me strangely similar to that of the ill-starred lovers of Rimini.
But the next moment I was sane again. She had withdrawn her hand, and had taken the volume to restore it to its shelf.
Ah, no! At Rimini there had been two fools. Here there was but one. Let me make an end of him by persuading him of his folly.
Yet Giuliana did nothing to assist me in that task. She returned from the book-shelf, and in passing lightly swept her fingers over my hair.
“Come, Agostino; let us walk in the garden,” said she.
We went, my mood now overpast. I was as sober and self-contained as was my habit. And soon thereafter came my Lord Gambara—a rare thing to happen in the afternoon.
Awhile the three of us were together in the garden, talking of trivial matters. Then she fell to wrangling with him concerning something that Caro had written and of which she had the manuscript. In the end she begged me would I go seek the writing in her chamber. I went, and hunted where she had bidden me and elsewhere, and spent a good ten minutes vainly in the task. Chagrined that I could not discover the thing, I went into the library, thinking that it might be there.
Doctor Fifanti was writing busily at the table when I intruded. He looked up, thrusting his horn-rimmed spectacles high upon his peaked forehead.
“What the devil!” quoth he very testily. “I thought you were in the garden with Madonna Giuliana.”
“My Lord Gambara is there,” said I.
He crimsoned and banged the table with his bony hand. “Do I not know that?” he roared, though I could see no reason for all this heat. “And why are you not with them?”
You are not to suppose that I was still the meek, sheepish lad who had come to Piacenza three months ago. I had not been learning my world and discovering Man to no purpose all this while.
“It has yet to be explained to me,” said I, “under what obligation I am to be anywhere but where I please. That firstly. Secondly—but of infinitely lesser moment—Monna Giuliana has sent me for the manuscript of Messer Caro's Gigli d'Oro.”
I know not whether it was my cool, firm tones that quieted him. But quiet he became.
“I... I was vexed by your interruption,” he said lamely, to explain his late choler. “Here is the thing. I found it here when I came. Messer Caro might discover better employment for his leisure. But there, there”—he seemed in sudden haste again. “Take it to her in God's name. She will be impatient.” I thought he sneered. “O, she will praise your diligence,” he added, and this time I was sure that he sneered.
I took it, thanked him, and left the room intrigued. And when I rejoined them, and handed her the manuscript, the odd thing was that the subject of their discourse having meanwhile shifted, it no longer interested her, and she never once opened the pages she had been in such haste to have me procure.
This, too, was puzzling, even to one who was beginning to know his world
But I was not done with riddles. For presently out came Fifanti himself, looking, if possible, yellower and more sour and lean than usual. He was arrayed in his long, rusty gown, and there were the usual shabby slippers on his long, lean feet. He was ever a man of most indifferent personal habits.
“Ah, Astorre,” his wife greeted him. “My Lord Cardinal brings you good tidings.”
“Does he so?” quoth Fifanti, sourly as I thought; and he looked at the legate as though his excellency were the very reverse of a happy harbinger.
“You will rejoice, I think, doctor,” said the smiling prelate, “to hear that I have letters from my Lord Pier Luigi appointing you one of the ducal secretaries. And this, I doubt not, will be followed, on his coming hither, by an appointment to his council. Meanwhile, the stipend is three hundred ducats, and the work is light.”
There followed a long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grew first red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with his scarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomander and smiling almost insolently into the other's face; and some of the insolence of his look, I thought, was reflected upon the pale, placid countenance of Giuliana.
At last, Fifanti spoke, his little eyes narrowing.
“It is too much for my poor deserts,” he said curtly.
“You are too humble,” said the prelate. “Your loyalty to the House of Farnese, and the hospitality which I, its deputy, have received...”
“Hospitality!” barked Fifanti, and looked very oddly at Giuliana; so oddly that a faint colour began to creep into her cheeks. “You would pay for that?” he questioned, half mockingly. “Oh, but for that a stipend of three hundred ducats is too little.”
And all the time his eyes were upon his wife, and I saw her stiffen as if she had been struck.
But the Cardinal laughed outright. “Come now, you use me with an amiable frankness,” he said. “The stipend shall be doubled when you join the council.”
“Doubled?” he said. “Six hundred...?” He checked. The sum was vast. I saw greed creep into his little eyes. What had troubled him hitherto, I could not fathom even yet. He washed his bony hands in the air, and looked at his wife again. “It... it is a fair price, no doubt, my lord,” said he, his tone contemptuous.
“The Duke shall be informed of the value of your learning,” lisped the Cardinal.
Fifanti knit his brows. “The value of my learning?” he echoed, as if slowly puzzled. “My learning? Oh! Is that in question?”
“Why else should we give you the appointment?” smiled the Cardinal, with a smile that was full of significance.
“It is what the town will be asking, no doubt,” said Messer Fifanti. “I hope you will be able to satisfy its curiosity, my lord.”
And on that he turned, and stalked off again, very white and trembling, as I could perceive.
My Lord Gambara laughed carelessly again, and over the pale face of Monna Giuliana there stole a slow smile, the memory of which was to be hateful to me soon, but which at the moment went to increase my already profound mystification.
In the days that followed I found Messer Fifanti in queerer moods than ever. Ever impatient, he would be easily moved to anger now, and not a day passed but he stormed at me over the Greek with which, under his guidance, I was wrestling.
And with Giuliana his manner was the oddest thing conceivable; at times he was mocking as an ape, at times his manner had in it a suggestion of the serpent; more rarely he was his usual, vulturine self. He watched her curiously, ever between anger and derision, to all of which she presented a calm front and a patience almost saintly. He was as a man with some mighty burden on his mind, undecided whether he shall bear it or cast it off.
Her patience moved me most oddly to pity; and pity for so beautiful a creature is Satan's most subtle snare, especially when you consider what a power her beauty had to move me as I had already discovered to my erstwhile terror. She confided in me a little in those days, but ever with a most saintly resignation. She had been sold into wedlock, she admitted, with a man who might have been her father, and she confessed to finding her lot a cruel one; but confessed it with the air of one who intends none the less to bear her cross with fortitude.
And then, one day, I did a very foolish thing. We had been reading together, she and I, as was become our custom. She had fetched me a volume of the lascivious verse of Panormitano, and we sat side by side on the marble seat in the garden what time I read to her, her shoulder touching mine, the fragrance of her all about me.
She wore, I remember, a clinging gown of russet silk, which did rare justice to the splendid beauty of her, and her heavy ruddy hair was confined in a golden net that was set with gems—a gift from my Lord Gambara. Concerning this same gift words had passed but yesterday between Giuliana and her husband; and I deemed the doctor's anger to be the fruit of a base and unworthy mind.
I read, curiously enthralled—though whether by the beauty of the lines or the beauty of the woman there beside me I could not then have told you.
Presently she checked me. “Leave now Panormitano,” she said. “Here is something else upon which you shall give me your judgment.” And she set before me a sheet upon which there was a sonnet writ in her own hand, which was as beautiful as any copyist's that I have ever seen.
I read the poem. It was the tenderest and saddest little cry from a heart that ached and starved for an ideal love; and good as the manner seemed, the matter itself it was that chiefly moved me. At my admission of its moving quality her white hand closed over mine as it had done that day in the library when we had read of “Isabetta and the Pot of Basil.” Her hand was warm, but not warm enough to burn me as it did.
“Ah, thanks, Agostino,” she murmured. “Your praise is sweet to me. The verses are my own.”
I was dumbfounded at this fresh and more intimate glimpse of her. The beauty of her body was there for all to see and worship; but here was my first glimpse of the rare beauties of her mind. In what words I should have answered her I do not know, for at that moment we suffered an interruption.
Sudden and harsh as the crackling of a twig came from behind us the voice of Messer Fifanti. “What do you read?”
We started apart, and turned.
Either he, of set purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the sheet in his bony claw.
He peered at it very closely, being without glasses, and screwed his eyes up until they all but disappeared.
Thus he stood, and slowly read, whilst I looked on a trifle uneasy, and Giuliana's face wore an odd look of fear, her bosom heaving unsteadily in its russet sheath.
He sniffed contemptuously when he had read, and looked at me.
“Have I not bidden you leave the vulgarities of dialect to the vulgar?” quoth he. “Is there not enough written for you in Latin, that you must be wasting your time and perverting your senses with such poor illiterate gibberish as this? And what is it that you have there?” He took the book. “Panormitano!” he roared. “Now, there's a fitting author for a saint in embryo! There's a fine preparation for the cloister!”
He turned to Giuliana. He put forward his hand and touched her bare shoulder with his hideous forefinger. She cringed under the touch as if it were barbed.
“There is not the need that you should render yourself his preceptress,” he said, with his deadly smile.
“I do not,” she replied indignantly. “Agostino has a taste for letters, and...”
“Tcha! Tcha!” he interrupted, tapping her shoulder sharply. “I had no thought for letters. There is my Lord Gambara, and there is Messer Cosimo d'Anguissola, and there is Messer Caro. There is even Pordenone, the painter.” His lips writhed over their names. “You have friends enough, I think. Leave, then, Ser Agostino here. Do not dispute him with God to whom he has been vowed.”
She rose in a fine anger, and stood quivering there, magnificently tall, and Juno, I imagined, must have looked to the poets as she looked then to me.
“This is too much!” she cried.
“It is, madam,” he snapped. “I agree with you.” She considered him with eyes that held a loathing and contempt unutterable. Then she looked at me, and shrugged her shoulders as who would say: “You see how I am used!” Lastly she turned, and took her way across the lawn towards the house.
There was a little silence between us after she had gone. I was on fire with indignation, and yet I could think of no words in which I might express it, realizing how utterly I lacked the right to be angry with a husband for the manner in which he chose to treat his wife.
At last, pondering me very gravely, he spoke.
“It were best you read no more with Madonna Giuliana,” he said slowly. “Her tastes are not the tastes that become a man who is about to enter holy orders.” He closed the book, which hitherto he had held open; closed it with an angry snap, and held it out to me.
“Restore it to its shelf,” he bade me.
I took it, and quite submissively I went to do his bidding. But to gain the library I had to pass the door of Giuliana's room. It stood open, and Giuliana herself in the doorway. We looked at each other, and seeing her so sorrowful, with tears in her great dark eyes, I stepped forward to speak, to utter something of the deep sympathy that stirred me.
She stretched forth a hand to me. I took it and held it tight, looking up into her eyes.
“Dear Agostino!” she murmured in gratitude for my sympathy; and I, distraught, inflamed by tone and look, answered by uttering her name for the first time.
“Giuliana!”
Having uttered it I dared not look at her. But I stooped to kiss the hand which she had left in mine. And having kissed it I started upright and made to advance again; but she snatched her hand from my clasp and waved me away, at once so imperiously and beseechingly that I turned and went to shut myself in the library with my bewilderment.
For full two days thereafter, for no reason that I could clearly give, I avoided her, and save at table and in her husband's presence we were never once together.
The repasts were sullen things at which there was little said, Madonna sitting in a frozen dignity, and the doctor, a silent man at all times, being now utterly and forbiddingly mute.
But once my Lord Gambara supped with us, and he was light and trivial as ever, an incarnation of frivolity and questionable jests, apparently entirely unconscious of Fifanti's chill reserve and frequent sneers. Indeed, I greatly marvelled that a man of my Lord Gambara's eminence and Governor of Piacenza should so very amiably endure the boorishness of that pedant.
Explanation was about to be afforded me.
On the third day, as we were dining, Giuliana announced that she was going afoot into the town, and solicited my escort. It was an honour that never before had been offered me. I reddened violently, but accepted it, and soon thereafter we set out, just she and I together.
We went by way of the Fodesta Gate, and passed the old Castle of Sant' Antonio, then in ruins—for Gambara was demolishing it and employing the material to construct a barrack for the Pontifical troops that garrisoned Piacenza. And presently we came upon the works of this new building, and stepped out into mid-street to avoid the scaffoldings, and so pursued our way into the city's main square—the Piazza del Commune, overshadowed by the red-and-white bulk of the Communal Palace. This was a noble building, rather in the Saracenic manner, borrowing a very warlike air from the pointed battlements that crowned it.
Near the Duomo we came upon a great concourse of people who were staring up at the iron cage attached to the square tower of the belfry near its summit. In this cage there was what appeared at first to be a heap of rags, but which presently resolved itself into a human shape, crouching in that narrow, cruel space, exposed there to the pitiless beating of the sun, and suffering Heaven alone can say what agonies. The murmuring crowd looked up in mingled fear and sympathy.
He had been there since last night, a peasant girl informed us, and he had been confined there by order of my Lord the Cardinal-legate for the odious sin of sacrilege.
“What!” I cried out, in such a tone of astonished indignation that Monna Giuliana seized my arm and pressed it to enjoin prudence.
It was not until she had made her purchases in a shop under the Duomo and we were returning home that I touched upon the matter. She chid me for the lack of caution that might have led me into some unpardonable indiscretions but for her warning.
“But the very thought of such a man as my Lord Gambara torturing a poor wretch for sacrilege!” I cried. “It is grotesque; it is ludicrous; it is infamous!”
“Not so loud,” she laughed. “You are being stared at.” And then she delivered herself of an amazing piece of casuistry. “If a man being a sinner himself, shall on that account refrain from punishing sin in others, then is he twice a sinner.”
“It was my Lord Gambara taught you that,” said I, and involuntarily I sneered.
She considered me with a very searching look.
“Now, what precisely do you mean, Agostino?”
“Why, that it is by just such sophistries that the Cardinal-legate seeks to cloak the disorders of his life. 'Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor?' is his philosophy. If he would encage the most sacrilegious fellow in Piacenza, let him encage himself.”
“You do not love him?” said she.
“O—as to that—as a man he is well enough. But as an ecclesiastic...O, but there!” I broke off shortly, and laughed. “The devil take Messer Gambara!”
She smiled. “It is greatly to be feared that he will.”
But my Lord Gambara was not so lightly to be dismissed that afternoon. As we were passing the Porta Fodesta, a little group of country-folk that had gathered there fell away before us, all eyes upon the dazzling beauty of Giuliana—as, indeed, had been the case ever since we had come into the town, so that I had been singularly and sweetly proud of being her escort. I had been conscious of the envious glances that many a tall fellow had sent after me, though, after all, theirs was but as the jealousy of Phoebus for Adonis.
Wherever we had passed and eyes had followed us, men and women had fallen to whispering and pointing after us. And so did they now, here at the Fodesta Gate, but with this difference, that, at last, I overheard for once what was said, for there was one who did not whisper.
“There goes the leman of my Lord Gambara,” quoth a gruff, sneering voice, “the light of love of the saintly legate who is starving Domenico to death in a cage for the sin of sacrilege.”
Not a doubt but that he would have added more, but that at that moment a woman's shrill voice drowned his utterance. “Silence, Giuffre!” she admonished him fearfully. “Silence, on your life!”
I had halted in my stride, suddenly cold from head to foot, as on that day when I had flung Rinolfo from top to bottom of the terrace steps at Mondolfo. It happened that I wore a sword for the first time in my life—a matter from which I gathered great satisfaction—having been adjudged worthy of the honour by virtue that I was to be Madonna's escort. To the hilt I now set hand impetuously, and would have turned to strike that foul slanderer dead, but that Giuliana restrained me, a wild alarm in her eyes.
“Come!” she panted in a whisper. “Come away!”
So imperious was the command that it conveyed to my mind some notion of the folly I should commit did I not obey it. I saw at once that did I make an ensample of this scurrilous scandalmonger I should thereby render her the talk of that vile town. So I went on, but very white and stiff, and breathing somewhat hard; for pent-up passion is an evil thing to house.
Thus came we out of the town and to the shady banks of the gleaming Po. And then, at last, when we were quite alone, and within two hundred yards of Fifanti's house, I broke at last the silence.
I had been thinking very busily, and the peasant's words had illumined for me a score of little obscure matters, had explained to me the queer behaviour and the odd speeches of Fifanti himself since that evening in the garden when the Cardinal-legate had announced to him his appointment as ducal secretary. I checked now in my stride, and turned to face her.
“Was it true?” I asked, rendered brutally direct by a queer pain I felt as a result of my thinking.
She looked up into my face so sadly and wistfully that my suspicions fell from me upon the instant, and I reddened from shame at having harboured them.
“Agostino!” she cried, such a poor little cry of pain that I set my teeth hard and bowed my head in self-contempt.
Then I looked at her again.
“Yet the foul suspicion of that lout is shared by your husband himself,” said I.
“The foul suspicion—yes,” she answered, her eyes downcast, her cheeks faintly tinted. And then, quite suddenly, she moved forward. “Come,” she bade me. “You are being foolish.”
“I shall be mad,” said I, “ere I have done with this.” And I fell into step again beside her. “If I could not avenge you there, I can avenge you here.” And I pointed to the house. “I can smite this rumour at its foulest point.”
Her hand fell on my arm. “What would you do?” she cried.
“Bid your husband retract and sue to you for pardon, or else tear out his lying throat,” I answered, for I was in a great rage by now.
She stiffened suddenly. “You go too fast, Messer Agostino,” said she. “And you are over-eager to enter into that which does not concern you. I do not know that I have given you the right to demand of my husband reason of the manner in which he deals with me. It is a thing that touches only my husband and myself.”
I was abashed; I was humiliated; I was nigh to tears. I choked it all down, and I strode on beside her, my rage smouldering within me. But it was flaring up again by the time we reached the house with no more words spoken between us. She went to her room without another glance at me, and I repaired straight in quest of Fifanti.
I found him in the library. He had locked himself in, as was his frequent habit when at his studies, but he opened to my knock. I stalked in, unbuckled my sword, and set it in a corner. Then I turned to him.
“You are doing your wife a shameful wrong, sir doctor,” said I, with all the directness of youth and indiscretion.
He stared at me as if I had struck him—as he might have stared, rather, at a child who had struck him, undecided whether to strike back for the child's good, or to be amused and smile.
“Ah!” he said at last. “She has been talking to you?” And he clasped his hands behind him and stood before me, his head thrust forward, his legs wide apart, his long gown, which was open, clinging to his ankles.
“No,” said I. “I have been thinking.”
“In that case nothing will surprise me,” he said in his sour, contemptuous manner. “And so you have concluded...?”
“That you are harbouring an infamous suspicion.”
“Your assurance that it is infamous would offend me did it not comfort me,” he sneered. “And what, pray, is this suspicion?
“You suspect that... that—O God! I can't utter the thing.”
“Take courage,” he mocked me. And he thrust his head farther forward. He looked singularly like a vulture in that moment.
“You suspect that Messer Gambara... that Messer Gambara and Madonna... that...” I clenched my hands together, and looked into his leering face. “You understand me well enough,” I cried, almost angrily.
He looked at me seriously now, a cold glitter in his small eyes.
“I wonder do you understand yourself?” he asked. “I think not. I think not. Since God has made you a fool, it but remains for man to make you a priest, and thus complete God's work.”
“You cannot move me by your taunts,” I said. “You have a foul mind, Messer Fifanti.”
He approached me slowly, his untidily shod feet slip-slopping on the wooden floor.
“Because,” said he, “I suspect that Messer Gambara... that Messer Gambara and Madonna... that... You understand me,” he mocked me, with a mimicry of my own confusion. “And what affair may it be of yours whom I suspect or of what I suspect them where my own are concerned?”
“It is my affair, as it is the affair of every man who would be accounted gentle, to defend the honour of a pure and saintly lady from the foul aspersions of slander.”
“Knight-errantry, by the Host!” quoth he, and his brows shot up on his steep brow. Then they came down again to scowl. “No doubt, my preux-chevalier, you will have definite knowledge of the groundlessness of these same slanders,” he said, moving backwards, away from me, towards the door; and as he moved now his feet made no sound, though I did not yet notice this nor, indeed, his movement at all.
“Knowledge?” I roared at him. “What knowledge can you need beyond what is afforded by her face? Look in it, Messer Fifanti, if you would see innocence and purity and chastity! Look in it!”
“Very well,” said he. “Let us look in it.”
And quite suddenly he pulled the door open to disclose Giuliana standing there, erect but in a listening attitude.
“Look in it!” he mocked me, and waved one of his bony hands towards that perfect countenance.
There was shame and confusion in her face, and some anger. But she turned without a word, and went quickly down the passage, followed by his evil, cackling laugh.
Then he looked at me quite solemnly. “I think,” said he, “you had best get to your studies. You will find more than enough to engage you there. Leave my affairs to me, boy.”
There was almost a menace in his voice, and after what had happened it was impossible to pursue the matter.
Sheepishly, overwhelmed with confusion, I went out—a knight-errant with a shorn crest.
I had angered her! Worse; I had exposed her to humiliation at the hands of that unworthy animal who soiled her in thought with the slime of his suspicions. Through me she had been put to the shameful need of listening at a door, and had been subjected to the ignominy of being so discovered. Through me she had been mocked and derided!
It was all anguish to me. For her there was no shame, no humiliation, no pain I would not suffer, and take joy in the suffering so that it be for her. But to have submitted that sweet, angelic woman to suffering—to have incurred her just anger! Woe me!
I came to the table that evening full of uneasiness, very unhappy, feeling it an effort to bring myself into her presence and endure be it her regard or her neglect. To my relief she sent word that she was not well and would keep her chamber; and Fifanti smiled oddly as he stroked his blue chin and gave me a sidelong glance. We ate in silence, and when the meal was done, I departed, still without a word to my preceptor, and went to shut myself up again in my room.
I slept ill that night, and very early next morning I was astir. I went down into the garden somewhere about the hour of sunrise, through the wet grass that was all scintillant with dew. On the marble bench by the pond, where the water-lilies were now rotting, I flung myself down, and there was I found a half-hour later by Giuliana herself.
She stole up gently behind me, and all absorbed and moody as I was, I had no knowledge of her presence until her crisp boyish voice startled me out of my musings.
“Of what do we brood here so early, sir saint?” quoth she.
I turned to meet her laughing eyes. “You... you can forgive me?” I faltered foolishly.
She pouted tenderly. “Should I not forgive one who has acted foolishly out of love for me?”
“It was, it was...” I cried; and there stopped, all confused, feeling myself growing red under her lazy glance.
“I know it was,” she answered. She set her elbows on the seat's tall back until I could feel her sweet breath upon my brow. “And should I bear you a resentment, then? My poor Agostino, have I no heart to feel? Am I but a cold, reasoning intelligence like that thing my husband? O God! To have been mated to that withered pedant! To have been sacrificed, to have been sold into such bondage! Me miserable!”
“Giuliana!” I murmured soothingly, yet agonized myself.
“Could none have foretold me that you must come some day?”
“Hush!” I implored her. “What are you saying?”
But though I begged her to be silent, my soul was avid for more such words from her—from her, the most perfect and beautiful of women.
“Why should I not?” said she. “Is truth ever to be stifled? Ever?”
I was mad, I know—quite mad. Her words had made me so. And when, to ask me that insistent question, she brought her face still nearer, I flung down the reins of my unreason and let it ride amain upon its desperate, reckless course. In short, I too leaned forward, I leaned forward, and I kissed her full upon those scarlet, parted lips.
I kissed her, and fell back with a cry that was of anguish almost—so poignantly had the sweet, fierce pain of that kiss run through my every fibre. And as I cried out, so too did she, stepping back, her hands suddenly to her face. But the next moment she was peering up at the windows of the house—those inscrutable eyes that looked upon our deed; that looked and of which it was impossible to discern how much they might have seen.
“If he should have seen us!” was her cry; and it moved me unpleasantly that such should have been the first thought my kiss inspired in her. “If he should have seen us! Gesu! I have enough to bear already!”
“I care not,” said I. “Let him see. I am not Messer Gambara. No man shall put an insult upon you on my account, and live.”
I was become the very ranting, roaring, fire-breathing type of lover who will slaughter a whole world to do pleasure to his mistress or to spare her pain—I—I—I, Agostino d'Anguissola—who was to be ordained next month and walk in the ways of St. Augustine!
Laugh as you read—for very pity, laugh!
“Nay, nay,” she reassured herself. “He will be still abed. He was snoring when I left.” And she dismissed her fears, and looked at me again, and returned to the matter of that kiss.
“What have you done to me, Agostino?”
I dropped my glance before her languid eyes. “What I have done to no other woman yet,” I answered, a certain gloom creeping over the exultation that still thrilled me. “O Giuliana, what have you done to me? You have bewitched me; You have made me mad!” And I set my elbows on my knees and took my head in my hands, and sat there, overwhelmed now by the full consciousness of the irrevocable thing that I had done, a thing that must brand my soul for ever, so it seemed.
To have kissed a maid would have been ill enough for one whose aims were mine. But to kiss a wife, to become a cicisbeo! The thing assumed in my mind proportions foolishly, extravagantly beyond its evil reality.
“You are cruel, Agostino,” she whispered behind me. She had come to lean again upon the back of the bench. “Am I alone to blame? Can the iron withstand the lodestone? Can the rain help falling upon the earth? Can the stream flow other than downhill?” She sighed. “Woe me! It is I who should be angered that you have made free of my lips. And yet I am here, wooing you to forgive me for the sin that is your own.”
I cried out at that and turned to her again, and I was very white, I know.
“You tempted me!” was my coward's cry.
“So said Adam once. Yet God thought otherwise, for Adam was as fully punished as was Eve.” She smiled wistfully into my eyes, and my senses reeled again. And then old Busio, the servant, came suddenly forth from the house upon some domestic errand to Giuliana, and thus was that situation mercifully brought to an end.
For the rest of the day I lived upon the memory of that morning, reciting to myself each word that she had uttered, conjuring up in memory the vision of her every look. And my absent-mindedness was visible to Fifanti when I came to my studies with him later. He grew more peevish with me than was habitual, dubbed me dunce and wooden-head, and commended the wisdom of those who had determined upon a claustral life for me, admitting that I knew enough Latin to enable me to celebrate as well as another without too clear a knowledge of the meaning of what I pattered. All of which was grossly untrue, for, as none knew better than himself, the fluency of my Latin was above the common wont of students. When I told him so, he delivered himself of his opinion upon the common wont of students with all the sourness of his crabbed nature.
“I'll write an ode for you upon any subject that you may set me,” I challenged him.
“Then write one upon impudence,” said he. “It is a subject you should understand.” And upon that he got up and flung out of the room in a pet before I could think of an answer.
Left alone, I began an ode which should prove to him his lack of justice. But I got no further than two lines of it. Then for a spell I sat biting my quill, my mind and the eyes of my soul full of Giuliana.
Presently I began to write again. It was not an ode, but a prayer, oddly profane—and it was in Italian, in the “dialettale” that provoked Fifanti's sneers. How it ran I have forgotten these many years. But I recall that in it I likened myself to a sailor navigating shoals and besought the pharos of Giuliana's eyes to bring me safely through, besought her to anoint me with her glance and so hearten me to brave the dangers of that procellous sea.
I read it first with satisfaction, then with dismay as I realized to the full its amorous meaning. Lastly I tore it up and went below to dine.
We were still at table when my Lord Gambara arrived. He came on horseback attended by two grooms whom he left to await him. He was all in black velvet, I remember, even to his thigh-boots which were laced up the sides with gold, and on his breast gleamed a fine medallion of diamonds. Of the prelate there was about him, as usual, nothing but the scarlet cloak and the sapphire ring.
Fifanti rose and set a chair for him, smiling a crooked smile that held more hostility than welcome. None the less did his excellency pay Madonna Giuliana a thousand compliments as he took his seat, supremely calm and easy in his manner. I watched him closely, and I watched Giuliana, a queer fresh uneasiness pervading me.
The talk was trivial and chiefly concerned with the progress of the barracks the legate was building and the fine new road from the middle of the city to the Church of Santa Chiara, which he intended should be called the Via Gambara, but which, despite his intentions, is known to-day as the Stradone Farnese.
Presently my cousin arrived, full-armed and very martial by contrast with the velvety Cardinal. He frowned to see Messer Gambara, then effaced the frown and smiled as, one by one, he greeted us. Last of all he turned to me.
“And how fares his saintliness?” quoth he.
“Indeed, none too saintly,” said I, speaking my thoughts aloud.
He laughed. “Why, then, the sooner we are in orders, the sooner shall we be on the road to mending that. Is it not so, Messer Fifanti?
“His ordination will profit you, I nothing doubt,” said Fifanti, with his habitual discourtesy and acidity. “So you do well to urge it.”
The answer put my cousin entirely out of countenance a moment. It was a blunt way of reminding me that in this Cosimo I saw one who followed after me in the heirship to Mondolfo, and in whose interests it was that I should don the conventual scapulary.
I looked at Cosimo's haughty face and cruel mouth, and conjectured in that hour whether I should have found him so very civil and pleasant a cousin had things been other than they were.
O, a very serpent was Messer Fifanti; and I have since wondered whether of intent he sought to sow in my heart hatred of my guelphic cousin, that he might make of me a tool for his own service—as you shall come to understand.
Meanwhile, Cosimo, having recovered, waved aside the imputation, and smiled easily.
“Nay, there you wrong me. The Anguissola lose more than I shall gain by Agostino's renunciation of the world. And I am sorry for it. You believe me, cousin?”
I answered his courteous speech as it deserved, in very courteous terms. This set a pleasanter humour upon all. Yet some restraint abode. Each sat, it seemed, as a man upon his guard. My cousin watched Gambara's every look whenever the latter turned to speak to Giuliana; the Cardinal-legate did the like by him; and Messer Fifanti watched them both.
And, meantime, Giuliana sat there, listening now to one, now to the other, her lazy smile parting those scarlet lips—those lips that I had kissed that morning—I, whom no one thought of watching!
And soon came Messer Annibale Caro, with lines from the last pages of his translation oozing from him. And when presently Giuliana smote her hands together in ecstatic pleasure at one of those same lines and bade him repeat it to her, he swore roundly by all the gods that are mentioned in Virgil that he would dedicate the work to her upon its completion.
At this the surliness became general once more and my Lord Gambara ventured the opinion—and there was a note of promise, almost of threat, in his sleek tones—that the Duke would shortly be needing Messer Caro's presence in Parma; whereupon Messer Caro cursed the Duke roundly and with all a poet's volubility of invective.
They stayed late, each intent, no doubt, upon outstaying the others. But since none would give way they were forced in the end to depart together.
And whilst Messer Fifanti, as became a host, was seeing them to their horses, I was left alone with Giuliana.
“Why do you suffer those men?” I asked her bluntly. Her delicate brows were raised in surprise. “Why, what now? They are very pleasant gentlemen, Agostino.”
“Too pleasant,” said I, and rising I crossed to the window whence I could watch them getting to horse, all save Caro, who had come afoot. “Too pleasant by much. That prelate out of Hell, now...”
“Sh!” she hissed at me, smiling, her hand raised. “Should he hear you, he might send you to the cage for sacrilege. O Agostino!” she cried, and the smiles all vanished from her face. “Will you grow cruel and suspicious, too?”
I was disarmed. I realized my meanness and unworthiness.
“Have patience with me,” I implored her. “I... I am not myself to-day.” I sighed ponderously, and fell silent as I watched them ride away. Yet I hated them all; and most of all I hated the dainty, perfumed, golden-headed Cardinal-legate.
He came again upon the morrow, and we learnt from the news of which he was the bearer that he had carried out his threat concerning Messer Caro. The poet was on his way to Parma, to Duke Pier Luigi, dispatched thither on a mission of importance by the Cardinal. He spoke, too, of sending my cousin to Perugia, where a strong hand was needed, as the town showed signs of mutiny against the authority of the Holy See.
When he had departed, Messer Fifanti permitted himself one of his bitter insinuations.
“He desires a clear field,” he said, smiling his cold smile upon Giuliana. “It but remains for him to discover that his Duke has need of me as well.”
He spoke of it as a possible contingency, but sarcastically, as men speak of things too remote to be seriously considered. He was to remember his words two days later when the very thing came to pass.
We were at breakfast when the blow fell.
There came a clatter of hooves under our windows, which stood open to the tepid September morning, and soon there was old Busio ushering in an officer of the Pontificals with a parchment tied in scarlet silk and sealed with the arms of Piacenza.
Messer Fifanti took the package and weighed it in his hand, frowning. Perhaps already some foreboding of the nature of its contents was in his mind. Meanwhile, Giuliana poured wine for the officer, and Busio bore him the cup upon a salver.
Fifanti ripped away silk and seals, and set himself to read. I can see him now, standing near the window to which he had moved to gain a better light, the parchment under his very nose, his short-sighted eyes screwed up as he acquainted himself with the letter's contents. Then I saw him turn a sickly leaden hue. He stared at the officer a moment and then at Giuliana. But I do not think that he saw either of them. His look was the blank look of one whose thoughts are very distant.
He thrust his hands behind him, and with head forward, in that curious attitude so reminiscent of a bird of prey, he stepped slowly back to his place at the table-head. Slowly his cheeks resumed their normal tint.
“Very well, sir,” he said, addressing the officer. “Inform his excellency that I shall obey the summons of the Duke's magnificence without delay.”
The officer bowed to Giuliana, took his leave, and went, old Busio escorting him.
“A summons from the Duke?” cried Giuliana, and then the storm broke
“Ay,” he answered, grimly quiet, “a summons from the Duke.” And he tossed it across the table to her.
I saw that fateful document float an instant in the air, and then, thrown out of poise by the blob of wax, swoop slanting to her lap.
“It will come no doubt as a surprise to you,” he growled; and upon that his hard-held passion burst all bonds that he could impose upon it. His great bony fist crashed down upon the board and swept a precious Venetian beaker to the ground, where it burst into a thousand atoms, spreading red wine like a bloodstain upon the floor.
“Said I not that this rascal Cardinal would make a clear field for himself? Said I not so?” He laughed shrill and fiercely. “He would send your husband packing as he has sent his other rivals. O, there is a stipend waiting—a stipend of three hundred ducats yearly that shall be made into six hundred presently, and all for my complaisance, all that I may be a joyous and content cornuto!”
He strode to the window cursing horribly, whilst Giuliana sat white of face with lips compressed and heaving bosom, her eyes upon her plate.
“My Lord Cardinal and his Duke may take themselves together to Hell ere I obey the summons that the one has sent me at the desire of the other. Here I stay to guard what is my own.”
“You are a fool,” said Giuliana at length, “and a knave, too, for you insult me without cause.”
“Without cause? O, without cause, eh? By the Host! Yet you would not have me stay?”
“I would not have you gaoled, which is what will happen if you disobey the Duke's magnificence,” said she.
“Gaoled?” quoth he, of a sudden trembling in the increasing intensity of his passion. “Caged, perhaps—to die of hunger and thirst and exposure, like that poor wretch Domenico who perished yesterday, at last, because he dared to speak the truth. Gesu!” he groaned. “O, miserable me!” And he sank into a chair.
But the next instant he was up again, and his long arms were waving fiercely. “By the Eyes of God! They shall have cause to cage me. If I am to be horned like a bull, I'll use those same horns. I'll gore their vitals. O madam, since of your wantonness you inclined to harlotry, you should have wedded another than Astorre Fifanti.”
It was too much. I leapt to my feet.
“Messer Fifanti,” I blazed at him. “I'll not remain to hear such words addressed to this sweet lady.”
“Ah, yes,” he snarled, wheeling suddenly upon me as if he would strike me. “I had forgot the champion, the preux-chevalier, the saint in embryo! You will not remain to hear the truth, sir, eh?” And he strode, mouthing, to the door, and flung it wide so that it crashed against the wall. “This is your remedy. Get you hence! Go! What passes here concerns you not. Go!” he roared like a mad beast, his rage a thing terrific.
I looked at him and from him to Giuliana, and my eyes most clearly invited her to tell me how she would have me act.
“Indeed, you had best go, Agostino,” she answered sadly. “I shall bear his insults easier if there be no witness. Yes, go.”
“Since it is your wish, Madonna,” I bowed to her, and very erect, very defiant of mien, I went slowly past the livid Fifanti, and so out. I heard the door slammed after me, and in the little hall I came upon Busio, who was wringing his hand and looking very white. He ran to me.
“He will murder her, Messer Agostino,” moaned the old man. “He can be a devil in his anger.”
“He is a devil always, in anger and out of it,” said I. “He needs an exorcist. It is a task that I should relish. I'd beat the devils out of him, Busio, and she would let me. Meanwhile, stay we here, and if she needs our help, it shall be hers.”
I dropped on to the carved settle that stood there, old Busio standing at my elbow, more tranquil now that there was help at hand for Madonna in case of need. And through the door came the sound of his storming, and presently the crash of more broken glassware, as once more he thumped the table. For well-high half an hour his fury lasted, and it was seldom that her voice was interposed. Once we heard her laugh, cold and cutting as a sword's edge, and I shivered at the sound, for it was not good to hear.
At last the door was opened and he came forth. His face was inflamed, his eyes wild and blood-injected. He paused for a moment on the threshold, but I do not think that he noticed us at first. He looked back at her over his shoulder, still sitting at table, the outline of her white-gowned body sharply defined against the deep blue tapestry of the wall behind her.
“You are warned,” said he. “Do you heed the warning!” And he came forward.
Perceiving me at last where I sat, he bared his broken teeth in a snarling smile. But it was to Busio that he spoke. “Have my mule saddled for me in an hour,” he said, and passed on and up the stairs to make his preparations. It seemed, therefore, that she had conquered his suspicions.
I went in to offer her comfort, for she was weeping and all shaken by that cruel encounter. But she waved me away.
“Not now, Agostino. Not now,” she implored me. “Leave me to myself, my friend.”
I had not been her friend had I not obeyed her without question.