Chapter VI: Part 6

'Dolt!' she hissed. 'What are the other four, or their purpose, to me, save as a lever to my revenge? I foresee it all. Why telled'st me not before I sent thee? Now this gross lord, instead of himself tangling in the meshes, will persuade the other back to court and reason and forgiveness, and I shall be worse than damned. Dolt, I could kill thee!'

She rose to her height, furious, and he shrunk cowering before her.

'Listen, Madonna,' he said, trembling: 'Canst net them all yet at one swoop. Go tell Messer Ludovico, and certes a' will jump to destroy the nest and all in it, before a' inquires their degrees of guilt.'

She stared at him, still threatening.

'Why?'

'Why, says Madonna? Listen again, then. Does the Ser Simonetta trust Messer Ludovico, or Messer Ludovico love the Ser Simonetta? The secretary clings to the Duchess. If she falls, a' falls with her.'

'Again, thou tedious rogue, why should the Saint's destruction bring Bona down?'

'A' would have his mouth shut from explaining.'

'Explaining what? I lose patience.'

'How a' came, a conspirator against the Duke, to be found wi' his wife's troth ring in his possession. Here it be. I've filched it for thee at last.'

She sprang to seize the token, glowing triumphant in a moment, and putting it on her own finger, pressed the clinched hand that enclosed it into her bosom.

She laughed low and rejoicingly, shameless in the quick transition of her mood.

'Good Narcisso! It is the Key at last! Let Lanti persuade him back now--I am content. I hold them, and Bona too, in the hollow of this hand.'

She held it out, her right one, palm upwards, and, smiling, bade him kiss it.

'Rogue,' she said, 'to tease and vex me, and all the time this talisman in thy sleeve. Ay, make the most of it: snuffle and root. My dog has deserved of me.'

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, as if he had drunk.

'Now,' she said, 'how wert successful? how won'st it, sweet put?'

'Took it from him, that was all.'

'How?'

'When a' came tumbling in and staggered in a swound. Had heard Messer Andrea relating of how 'twas on him as I entered. Ho, ho! thinks I, here's that, maybe, will pay the filching! and I dropped and got it, all in a moment like.'

'You never told me.'

'You never asked till yesterday. Then I had it not with me. But to-day, thinks I, I'll bring it up my sleeve for a win-favour--a good last card.'

'No matter, since I have got it.'

She held it out, and gloated on its device and sparkle. She knew it well: indeed it was a famous gem, the Sforza lion cut in cameo on a deep pure emerald, and known as the Lion ring.

'Hath he not missed it?' she murmured.

'Not by any sign a' gives. The sickness of that night still holds him half-amazed. A' thinks our fine doll, even, but a bug of it--fancies a' saw it in a dream like. They'd locked it away when he came to.'

'Poor worldling! Poor little new-born worldling! He shall cut his pretty teeth anon. Well--for Messer Lanti? Did he leap to the trail, or what?'

'That same moment. Belike they are together now.'

She stood musing a little: then heaved a sudden sigh.

'Poor boy,' she murmured, 'poor boy! is it I must seek to destroy thee!'

Her mood had veered again in a breath. Her eyes were full of a brooding love and pity.

'Not for the first time,' muttered Narcisso.

She seemed not to hear him--to have grown oblivious of his presence.

'The song he sang to me!' she murmured: 'Ah, me, if that hour could be mine! A saint in heaven?--not Bona's! she hath a lord--no saint, did he love her. He looked at me: it came from his heart. If that hour could be mine! Not then--'twere a sin--but now! That one hour--cherished--unspent--the seed of the unquickened pledge between us to all eternity. I could be content, knowing him a saint through that abstinence. My hour--_mine_--to passion to my breast--the shadow of the child that would not be born to me. He looked at me--no spectre of a dead lost love in his eyes--only a hopeless quest--bonds never to be riven. But now--Ah! I cannot kill him!'

She hid her eyes, shuddering. Narcisso, vaguely troubled, gloomed at her.

'You will not go to Messer Ludovico?' he said.

She returned to knowledge of him, as to a sense of pain out of oblivion.

'Go,' she said coldly. 'Leave all to me. You have done well, and been paid your wages.'

And he did not demur. It was not in her nature to gild her favours unnecessarily. Gold came less lavishly from her than kisses. Her pounds of flesh were her most profitable assets. She was a spendthrift in everything but money.

*CHAPTER XIV*

'Messer Bembo,' said Montano, between meditative and caustic, 'you do not agree that our poor Lupo's definition of a perfect government, an autocracy with an angel at its head, is a practicable definition?'

He was sitting, as often during the last few days, at talk with the boy, on subjects civic, political, and theological. They had discussed at odd times the whole ethics of government, from the constitution of Lycurgus to the code of Thomas Aquinas: they had expounded, each in his way, a scheme or a dream of socialism: they had agreed, without prejudice, to liken the evolution of the simple Church of Peter into the complicated fabric of the fourth Sixtus to a woodland cottage, bought by some great princely family, and improved into a summer palace, which was grown out of harmony with its environments. Somewhat to his amazement, Montano discovered that the boy was the opposite to a dogmatic Christian; that his was a religion, which, while conforming or adapting itself to the orthodox, was in its essence a religion of mysticism. No doubt the traditions of his origin were, to some extent, to seek for this. A pledge, so to speak, of spontaneous generation, Bernardo accounted for himself on a theory of reincarnation from another sphere. He believed in the possibility of the resurrection of the body, which, though destroyed, and many times destroyed, could be, in its character of mere soul-envelope or soul expression, as regularly reconstructed at the will of its informing spirit. Death, he declared, was just the beginning of the return of that divested spirit to the spring of life--to the river welling in the central Eden from the loins of the Father, the spouse of Nature, the secret, the unspeakable God, of whom was Christ, his own dear brother and comrade.

He would tell Messer Montano, with his sweet, frank eyes arraigning that crabbed philosopher's soul, how this unstained first-born of Nature, this sinless heir of love, this wise and pitying Christ, moved by an infinite compassion to see the wounded souls of his brothers--those few who had not made their backward flight too difficult--come, soiled and earth-cloyed, to seek their reincarnation in the spring, had descended, himself, upon earth at last, sacrificing his birthright of divinity, that he might teach men how to live. And the men his brothers had slain him, in jealousy, even as Cain slew Abel; yet had his spirit, imperishably great, continued to dwell in their midst, knowing that, did it once leave the earth, it must be for ever, and to mankind's eternal unregeneracy. For, so Bernardo insisted, there was an immutable law in Nature that no soul reincarnated could re-enter the sphere from which it was last returned, but must seek new fields of action. Wherefore all earth-loving spirits, which we call apparitions, were such as after death clung about the ways of men, in a yearning hopefulness to redeem them by touching their hearts with sympathy and their eyes with a mist of sorrow. And, of such gentle ghosts, Christ was but the first in faith and tenderness.

A wild, dim theory, peopling woods, and fields, and cities with a mystic company--phantoms, yet capable of revealing themselves in fitful glimpses to the sinless and the sympathetic among men--ghosts, weaving impalpable webs of love across populous ways to catch men's souls in their meshes. Montano called it all transcendental fustian. It aroused his most virulent scorn. What had this cloud-moulding, moon-paring stuff to do with the practical issues of life, with freedom, and government by popular representation? He even professed to prefer to it Lascaris, with his metaphysical jargon and apostolic succession of atoms.

'He gives you at least something to take hold of,' he snarled. 'Listen to this'--and he condescended to read an excerpt from a recent treatise by his hated rival:--

'"Life,"' he read, '"is put out at compound interest. We represent, each in himself, a fraction of the principal, having a direct pedigree _ab initio_. As a spider will gather the hundred strands of his web into a little ball which he will swallow, so might we each absorb and claim the whole vast web of life. Rolled up to include each radiating thread, the web becomes I; the spider is I; I am the principal of life--not the principle: that is Prometheus' secret."'

'"I am a fraction of life's compound interest. The sum of the mental impressions of all my thread of tendency (which gathers back, taking up cross threads by the way, to the central origin) is invested in my paltry being, and lieth there, together with mine own interest on the vast accumulation, in tail for my next of kin. What can I do in my tiny span but touch the surface of this huge estate: pluck here and there a flower of its fields, whose roots are in immemorial time? Imagination founders in those fathomless depths. Tenuous, dim-forgotten ghosts rise from them. Who shall say that my dreams, however seeming mad and grotesque, are not faithful reflexes of states and conditions which were once realities; memories of forms long extinct; echoes of times when I flew, or spun, or was gaseous, or vast, or little; when I mingled intimate with shapes which are chimerical to my present understanding----"'

The reader broke off, with an impatient grunt.

'There!' he said, 'dreams mad and grotesque enough, in good sooth; yet not so mad as thine.'

'Well,' said Bernardo, 'well,' with perfect sweetness and good temper.

'Christ in the world? Fah!' snarled the philosopher. 'I know him. He sits at Rome under a triple tiara. Quit all this sugared dreaming, boy, and face the future like a man.'

'Does the sun shine out of yesterday or to-morrow? It is enough for the moment to take thought for itself. The future is not.'

'Pooh! a mere Jesuitry, justifying the moment's abomination.'

'Nay: for we shall have to retraverse our deeds, and carry back their burden to our first account--with most, a toilful journey.'

'They would do better to stop with your Christ, then; and, judged by the preponderance of evil spirits here, I think most do. No future, say'st? But how about that heir of the compound interest? Is there not one waiting to succeed to him? Where? Why, in the future, as surely and inevitably as this date, which I am going to swallow in a moment, will be blood and tissue in me to-morrow.'

He held the fruit up--with a swift movement Bernardo whipped it out of his hand and ate it himself.

'How for your future now?' he chuckled, pinking all over.

Cicada laughed loudly, and Montano swore. His philosophy was not proof against such practical jokes. But, seeing his fury, the boy put out all his sweetness to propitiate him. He was his father's friend; he was a man of learning; he had suffered grievous wrong. The dog was coaxed presently into opening again upon the angelic principles. It was by such virulent irony that he thought--so warped was his mental vision--to corrode the candour of this saint, and bend him to his own views and uses--a diseased vanity, even had he not reckoned, as will now appear, without the consideration of another possible factor.

And 'So,' said he upon a later occasion, in the sentence which opens this chapter, 'you do not agree with our poor Lupo's practicable definition of a perfect government?'

The Saint's steadfast eyes canvassed the speaker's soul, as if in some shadowy suspicion of an integrity which they were being led, not for the first time, to probe.

'Why, Messer,' said he, 'practicable in so far as, by the dear Christ's influence, grace may come to make an angel even of our Duke.'

Montano tried to return his steady gaze, but failed meanly.

'With submission, Messer Bernardo,' he sniggered, 'I can only follow, in my mind's eye, one certain road to that great man's apotheosis.'

Bembo was silent.

''Tis the road,' continued the other, 'taken before by the Emperor Nero.'

'He stabbed himself, the most wretched pagan, in fear of a worser retribution than heaven's,' said Bembo. 'Alas! do you call that an apotheosis?'

'There are gods and gods,' said Montano,--'Hades and Olympus. Belike Nero was welcomed of his kind, as Galeazzo would be. I can scarce see in the Duke the raw material of your fashion of angel. There's more of the harpy about him than the harp.'

It was a heavenly day. Bernardo, still a little hectic and languid from his fever, sat in the embrasure of a window which gave upon the back court of the smithy. A muffled tinkling of armourers' hammers reached his ears pleasantly from the rear of neighbouring premises. There was a certain happy suggestiveness to him in the sound, evoked, as he hoped it might be, at his host Lupo's instigation. For his endearing optimism had so wrought upon that stricken artificer, during the week he had dwelt in hiding with him, as to persuade the poor man to quit his self-despairing, and hire out his skill--not practically; that was no longer possible; but theoretically--to a deserving fellow-craftsman. Already the sense of touch was curiously refining in the sightless creature, and the glimmer of a new dawn of interest penetrating him. And he was at work again elsewhere.

On the floor at Bembo's feet squatted Cicada, acrid, speaking little, and spending his long intervals of silence in staring at the girl Lucia, who, crouching at a distance away by the fireless forge, in the gloom of the shuttered smithy, seemed given over to an eternal reverie of hate. She, alone of the household, had remained impervious to all the sweet influences of sorrow and pity. Her wrong was such as no angel could remedy.

Cicada spoke now, with a scowl of significance for Montano:--

'Speak plain, master philosopher. Innuendo is the weapon of Fools, and wisdom shall prevail in candour. Thou canst not picture to thyself this evangelised Duke?'

Montano shot a lowering glance at him.

'No, I confess, master Patch,' said he--'unless,' he added grinning, 'by Nero's road.'

'Two whispers do not make one outspokenness,' answered the Fool. 'Hast hinted Nero once, and once again, and still we lack the application. Nero was driven to the road, quotha; well, by whom?--one Galba, an my learning's not a'rust. What then? Is Galba going to drive Galeazzo?'

'Nay, Love, dear Cicca,' put in Bernardo, but half hearing and half understanding.

'Love!' cried the Fool. 'Thou hast hit it. Hear wisdom from the mouths of babes. Love in the hands of rascals--a tool, a catspaw, to pull them their chestnuts from the fire, and then be cast burnt aside.'

He addressed himself, with infinite irony, to Montano.

'Good master philosopher,' said he, 'there is one fable for you: listen while I relate another. A certain rogue was stripped and beaten by a greater, who going on his way, there came a stranger, a mere child, and marked the fellow groaning. "Poor soul!" quoth he in pity; and knelt and bound his hurts and gave him wine, and by kind arts restored him. When shortly the aggressor returning and whistling by that place, his erst-victim, stung to revenge, yet having no weapon left him, did leap and incontinent seize up by his heels the ministering angel, and using his body for flail, knock down his enemy with him, killing both together. Which having done, and picked their pockets, on his way goes he rejoicing, "Now do I succeed to mine enemy's purse and roguery!"'

He ended. Montano, glancing stealthily at Bernardo, wriggled and tittered uneasily.

'Patch hath spoken,' he said; 'great is Patch!'

'I have spoken,' quoth the Fool. 'Dost gather the moral?'

'Not I, indeed.'

'Why, sir, 'tis of roguery making himself master of Love's estate; and yet that is not the full moral neither. For I mind me of a correction; how, before the blow was struck, Folly stepped between, and snatched Love from such a fate, and left the rogues to their conclusions.'

'Well, Folly and Love were well mated. Have you done? I am going to my books.'

He yawned, and stretched himself, and rose.

'I will show you to the door, says Folly,' chirped Cicada, and skipped about the other as he went, with a mincing affectation of ceremonial. But when they were got out of immediate sight and hearing of Bernardo into the front chamber, like a wolf the Fool snapped upon the philosopher, and pinned him into a corner.

'Understood'st my fable well enough,' he grated, in a rapid whisper. 'What! I have waited this opportunity a day or two. Now the stopper is out, let us flow.'

Montano, taken by surprise, was seized with a tremor of irresolution. He returned the Fool's gaze with a frown uncertain, sullen, eager all in one.

'Flow, then,' he muttered, after a little.

'I flow,' went on the other, 'oil and verjuice combined. Imprimis, think not that because I read I would betray thee. Ay, ay--no need to start, sir. Thou shalt not quit playing with thy doll for me; nay, nor dressing and goring it, if thou wilt, with triangles of steel. O, I saw!--the face and the slashes in it, too. I have not since been so ill, like him there, as to read a phantasy out of fact. What then? Would ye silence me?'

'Go on,' whispered Montano hoarsely.

'Well, I flow,' returned the Fool. 'Did I not tell thee candour was the best part of wisdom? Learn by it, then. I have marked thee of late; O, trust me, I have marked thee, thy hints and insinuations. And hereby by folly I swear, could once I think my master wax to such impressions, I would kill him where he stands, and damn my soul to send his uncorrupt to heaven. You sneer? Sneer on. Why, I could have laughed just now to see you, tortuous, sound his sweet candid shallows, where every pebble's plain. Do your own work, I'll not speak or care. You shall not have him to it, that's all. Sooner shall the heavens fall, than he be led by you to poison Galeazzo. Is that plain?'

It was so plain, that the philosopher gasped vainly for a retort.

'Who--who spoke of poison?' he stammered. 'Not I. Dear Messer Fool, you wrong me. This boy--the protege of della Grande--mine old friend--I would not so misuse him. Why, he succoured me--an ill requital. If I sounded him, 'twas in self-justification only. We seek the same end by different roads--the ancient Gods restored--the return to Nature. Is it not so? Christ or Hyperion--I will not quarrel with the terms. "Knowledge," saith he, "is the fool that left his Eden." Well, he harks back, and so do I.'

'No further, thou, than to Rome and Regillus; but he to Paradise. Halt him not, I say. He shall not be thy catspaw. On these terms only is my silence bought.'

'Then is it bought. Why, Fool, I could think thee a fool indeed. He hath forsworn the court: how could we think to employ him there?'

'You know, as I know, sir, that this secession is a parenthesis, no more. He came to cure the State--not your way. A little repentance will win him back. The disease is in the head--he sees it; not in these warped limbs that the brain governs. He will go back anon.'

'And reign again by love?'

'I hope so, as first ministers reign.'

'No more? Well, we will back him there.'

'Again, be warned; not your way. Make him no text for the reform which builds on murder. I have spoken.'

'Well, we will not. _Vale!_'--and the philosopher, bowing his head, slunk out by the door which the other opened for him.

A little later, creeping into a narrow court which was the 'run' to his burrow, at the entrance he crossed the path of two cavaliers, whom, upon their exclaiming over the encounter, he drew under an archway.

They were come from playing pall-mall on the ramparts, and carried over their shoulders the tools of their sport--thin boxwood mallets, painted with emblematic devices in scarlet and blue, and having handle-butts of chased silver. Each gentleman wore red full-hose ending in short-peaked shoes, a plain red biretta, and a little green bodice coat, tight at the waist and open at the bosom to leave the arms and shoulders free play. Montano squinted approval of their flushed faces and strong-breathed lungs.

'Well exercised,' quoth he, in his high-pitched whisper; 'well exercised, and betimes belike.'

'News?' drawled Lampugnani. 'O, construe thyself!'

'The Fool,' answered Montano, 'sees through us, that is all.'

'What!' Visconti's brows came down.

'Hush! He hath warned me--not finally; only he pledges his silence on the discontinuance of my practices on his cub.'

'Well,' said Lampugnani serenely; 'discontinue.'

'Messer, he looks, with certainty, to the boy being won back to court anon. How, then! shall we let him go?'

'No!' rapped out Visconti.

'Yes,' said Lampugnani. 'I trow his good way is after all our best. Let him go back, and make the State so fast in love with Love as to prove Galeazzo impossible. He will sanctify our holocaust for us.'

'But the Fool, Messer--the Fool!'

'Will never conspire against his adored master's exaltation.'

'Exaltation? Would ye let this saint, then, to become the people's idol?'

'Ay, that we may discredit him presently for an adulterous idol. No saint so scorned as he whose sanctity trips on woman.'

'What! You think----?'

'Exactly--yes--the Duchess. _Vale_, Messer Montano!'--and he lifted his cap mockingly, and moved off.

In the meanwhile Cicada, having watched, through a slit of the unclosed door, the retreat and disappearance of the philosopher, was about to shut himself in again, with a muttered objurgation or two, when a rapid step sounded without, and on the instant the door was flung back against him, and Messer Lanti strode in. There was no opportunity given him to temporise: the great creature was there in a moment, and had recognised him with a 'pouf!' of relief. He just accepted the situation, and closed the door upon them both.

'Well,' he said acridly, 'here you be, and whether for good or ill let the gods answer!'

Lanti stretched his great chest.

'It is well, Fool; and I am well if he is well. Where is he?'

Cicada pointed. The girl by the forge crouched and glared unwinkingly. The next moment Carlo was in his loved one's arms.

'Why hast hidden thyself, boy?--ah! it is a long while, boy--good to see thee again--stand off--I cannot see thee after all--a curse on these blinking eyes!'

'Dear Carlo, I have been a little ill; my joints ached.'

He wept himself, and fondled and clung to his friend.

'Thou great soft bully! For shame! Why, I love thee, dear. Wert thou so hurt? O Carlo! I have been most ill in spirit.'

'Come back, and we will nurse thee.'

'Alas! What nurses!'

'The tenderest and most penitent--Bona, first of all.'

The arms slid from his neck. Sweet angel eyes glowered at him.

'Bona to heal my spirit? To pour fire into its wounds rather! O, I had thought her pure till yesterday!'

And, indeed, Montano, in the furtherance of his corroding policy, had spared him no evidences of court scandal.

Carlo hung his bullet head.

'Lucia!' cried the boy suddenly and sternly.

The girl, at the word, came slinking to him like a dog, setting her teeth by the way at the stranger. Bernardo put his hand on her lowered head.

'Dost know who this is?' he asked of Carlo.

'Why, I can guess.'

'Canst thou, and still talk of Bona's penitence? Here's proof of it--in this foul deed unexpiated. Was it ever meant it should be?'

He raised his arm denunciatory.

'They have used me to justify their abominations; they have made mine innocence a pander to their lusts. Beware! God's patience nears exhaustion. We wait for Tassino. Will he come? Not while lewd arms imprison and protect him. Talk to me of Bona! Go, child.'

The girl crept back to her former seat. Carlo burst out, low and urgent:--

'Nay, boy, you do the Duchess wrong; now, by Saint Ambrose, I swear you do! She hath not set eyes on Jackanapes since that day--believe it--nor knows, more than another, what's become of him.'

'I could enlighten her. Can she be so fickle?'

'What! Don't you want her fickle? You make my brain turn.'

'O Carlo! What can such a woman see in such a man?'

'God! You have me there. She's just woman, conforming to the fashions.'

'Ah, me! the fashions!'

'Woman's religion.'

'She was taught a better. The fashions! Her wedding-gown should suffice her for all.'

'What! Night and day? But, there, I don't defend her!'

'No, indeed. Art thyself a fashion.'

'I don't defend her, I say. I'm worn and cast aside too.'

'Poor fashion! You'll grace your mistress' tire-woman next; and after her a kitchen-maid; and last some draggled scarecrow of the streets. O, for shame, for shame!'

'Go on. Compare me to Tassino next.'

'Indeed, I see no difference.'

'A low-born Ferrarese! A greasy upstart! Was carver to the Duke, no better; and oiled his fingers in the dish, and sleeked his hair!'

'Well, he was made first fashion. The Duchess sets them.'

'Now, by Saint Ambrose! First fashion! this veal-faced scullion, this fat turnspit promoted to a lap-dog! His fashion was to nurse lusty babies in his eyes!'

'What nursed thou in thine?'

'Go to! I'm a numskull, that I know; but to see no more in me!'

'I speak not for myself.'

'Why, these women, true, whom we hold so delicate--coarser feeders than ourselves--their tastes a fable. There, you're right; I've no right to talk.'

'Not yet.'

'Then, you're wrong. We've parted, I and Beatrice.'

'Carlo!'

'Didst think I 'd risk a quarrel with my saint on so small a matter?'

'Carlo!'

He flew upon the great creature and hugged him.

'My dear, my love! O, I went on so! Why did you let me? O, you give me hope again!'

'There,' growled the honest fellow, still a little sulkily. ''Twas to please myself, not you.'

'Not me!'

'Well, if I did, please me by returning.'

Bernardo shook his head.

'And seem to acquiesce in this?' He signified the girl.

'No seeming,' said Lanti. 'The Duchess promises to abet you in everything. I was to say so, an I could find thee.'

'How did you find me?'

'Let that pass. Will you come?'

'Will she hold Tassino to his bond?'

'She'll try to--I'll answer for it.'

'Will she excuse the Countess of Casa Caprona from her duties to her--for your sake, dear?'

'No need. The lady's a widow, and already self-dismissed.'

'Alas, a widow! O Carlo, that heavy witness gone before!'

'I must stand it. Will you come?'

'Why is this sudden change? I sore misdoubt it for a fashion.'

'Not sudden. I have her word the court goes all astray without thee. She pines to mother thee.'

'Mother!--an adulteress for mother! Alack, I am humbled!'

'Not so low as she. That touches the last matter. She wants the ring back she lent thee.'

'The ring?'

'Ay, the ring.'

'Carlo!'

He searched his clothes and hands in amaze.

'My God! It's gone!'

'Gone? Look again.'

'I had it on my finger. Till this moment I had forgot it clean--my brain so ached. Cicca!'

He turned in trouble on his servant.

'I know nought of it,' growled the Fool. 'If you had but chose to tell me. I am no gossip. Bona's ring was it, and leased to thee? Mayhap the rain that night washed it from thy finger.'

'If it were so--so great a trust abused! O Carlo! What shall I do?'

'Come back and make thy peace with her.'

Yet his brow gloomed, and he shook his head.

'O, O!' choked Bernardo, noting him with anguish.

'She sent a message--I can't help myself,' grunted Carlo. 'Did you seek to retaliate on her innocent confidence by ruining her? She meant the ring--your withholding it--'twas her troth-token from the Duke. Well, this is like getting a woman into trouble.'

Bernardo cast himself with a cry upon him.

'I will go back! I have no longer choice. I must hold myself a hostage to that loss!'

Carlo let out his satisfaction in a growl. But Cicada, squinting at the two, and rasping thoughtfully on his chin, pondered a speculation into a conviction.

'Narcisso!' he mused, 'was it he took it? As sure as he is a villain, it was Narcisso took it!'

*CHAPTER XV*

The astutest of all the six Sforza brothers was, without question, Messer Ludovico, at present sojourning in the castello of Milan. No higher than fourth in point of age, policy or premonition had never ceased to present him to himself for the first in succession. The uncertainty of life's tenure, unless ameliorated a little by qualities of tact and conciliation like his own, made him some excuse for this secret conviction. His eldest brother was a monster of the order which, in every age, invites tyrannicide; the Lord of Bari, the second, an ease-loving, good-humoured monster of another kind (he was to die shortly, in fact, of his own obesity), he valued only as so much gross bulk of supineness to be surmounted; Filippo, the third, was an imbecile, whose very existence was already slipping into the obscurity which was presently to spell obliteration. There remained only, junior to himself, Ascanio, a nonentity, and Ottaviano, a headstrong, irresponsible boy, whose possible destiny concerned him as little as though he foresaw his drowning, within the year, in the Adda river.

It was true that one other, more shrilly self-assertive, stood between himself and the light--the Duke's little son, Gian-Galeazzo. Here, most people would have thought, was his real insuperable barrier.

He did not regard matters from these popular points of view. He was very patient and far-seeing. At the outset of his career he had adopted for his device the mulberry-tree, because he had observed it to be cautious of putting forth its leaves until the last of winter was assured. He could picture the fatherless child as the most opportune of all steps to his exaltation. To climb presently those little shoulders to the regency! It would go hard with him but they sank gradually crushed under his weight. This was the wise policy, to get his seat as proxy, and through merciful and enlightened rule secure its permanency. There was infinite scope in the reaction he would make from a coarse and bloody despotism. His nature hated violence; his reason recognised the eternal insecurity of power built on it. Otherwise there was little doubt he might, in that first emergency, strike with good chance the straight usurper's stroke. His name, for graciousness and refinement, already shone like a star in the gross bog of Milan, revealing to it its foulness. Men, in the shame of their fulsome bondage to tyranny, looked up to him for hope and sympathy. He was even _persona grata_ with the people.

But he abhorred, and disbelieved in, violence. He would rule, if at all, in the popular recognition of great qualities: he would prevail through bounty and tolerance. Bona was his crux--Bona, and the secretary Simonetta, a fellow incorruptibly devoted to the reigning family. While these two lived in credit with the duchy, the regency was secure from him, and the State, he told himself, from progress. For what woman-regent had ever mothered an era of enlightenment? Good for Milan, good for Lombardy, could he once discredit and ruin Bona and Simonetta. They would fall together. The uses of Tassino as an instrument to this end had occurred to him--only to be rejected. How could he hope so to disgrace corruption in corruption's eyes? Such puppyish intrigue was not worth even the Duke's interference. He rated that curly perfumed head in Bona's lap at exactly the value of a puppy's.

But, with the advent of the stranger, the little pseudo-oracle, the child Tiresias, sweet and blind as Cupid, a sounder opportunity offered. To involve Bona in the defilement of this purity, in the violating of this holy trust, adored by the people and bequeathed to her by her lord--that was, in the vernacular, another pair of shoes. He had noted, with secret gratification, her first coquetting with the pretty toils. He had heard, with plenteous dismay, of the boy's untimely secession. But he possessed, almost alone in his tumultuous time, the faculty of patience; and he was well served by his well-paid spies and agents. Almost before he could order their reports, almost before he could gauge the significance of one especial piece of information they gave him, the boy, won to forgiveness, was back at court again. Thenceforth he saw his way smoothly, if any term so bland could be applied to such a devious course of policy.

That was a matter of cross-roads, leading from, or to, himself, the mute signpost of direction. One, for instance, pointed to Bona's disgrace through Bembo; another to Simonetta's disgrace through Bona's disgrace; a third, to Bembo's downfall; a fourth, and last, to his nephew's orphaned minority. And the meeting-place, the nucleus, of all these tendencies was--where he himself stood, on a grave. For did they not bury suicides at cross-roads, and was not Galeazzo's policy suicidal? Of all these birds he might kill three, at least, with one stone; and that stone, he believed, was already in his hand, or nearly.

Let it not be supposed that Ludovico was a wicked man. He was destined to bear one of the greatest of the renaissance reputations; but that reputation was to draw no less from munificence than from magnificence, from tolerance than from power. He stood, at this time, on the forehead of an epoch, feeling the promise of his wings, poising and waiting only for their maturity. His sympathies were all with progress, with moral emancipation. He was even now, in Milan (if it can be said without blasphemy), comparable to Christ in Hades. In a filthy age he was fastidious; precise and delicate in his speech; one of those men before whom the insolence of moral offences is instinctively silent. Guicciardini, a grudging Florentine, nevertheless pronounced him when he came to rule, 'milde and mercifull'; Arluno credited him with a sublimity of justice and benevolence. Others, less interested, testified to his wisdom and sagacity, about which there was certainly no disputing. If at any period the wrong that is ready to perpetrate itself in order to procure good is justifiable, it was to be justified in these corrupt years, when conformity with usage spelt putrefaction. He could foresee no health for the State in patching its disease. He was the operator predestined by Providence to remove, stock and block, the cancer.

Yet, though loving truth, he lied; yet, though hating the sight of blood, he procured its shedding; yet, though admiring virtue, he did not hesitate to prostitute it to his ends. There were crimes attributed to him of which he was no doubt innocent; there were lesser, or worse, unrecorded, of which he was no doubt guilty. Feeling himself, by temperament and intellect, the inevitable instrument of a vast emancipation, recognising his call to be as peremptory as it was unconsidered, he had no choice, in obeying it, but to cast scruples to the winds. With him, as with his contemporary the English Richard, a deep fervour of patriotism was at once the goad and the destruction. Judgment on the means both took to vindicate their commissions rests with the gods, who first inspired, then repudiated them. But there is no logic in Olympus.

Ludovico was sitting one evening in his private cabinet in the castello, when a lady was announced to him by the soft-voiced page. Every one instinctively subdued his speech in the presence of Messer Ludovico, even the rough venderaccios who occasionally came to make him their reports or receive his instructions.

The lady came in, and stood silent as a statue by the heavy portiere, which, closed, cut off all eavesdropping as effectively as a mattress. Nevertheless Messer Ludovico waited for full assurance of the page's withdrawal before he rose, and courteously greeted his visitor.

'Ave, Madonna Beatrice!' he said. 'You are welcome as the moonlight in my poor apartment.'

It was so far from being that, as to make the compliment an extravagance. Yet the beauty of the woman in her long black robe and mantle, and little black silk cap dropping wings of muslin, sorted gravely enough with the slumberous gold of picture frames under the lamplight, and all the sombre sparkle of gems and glass and silver with which the chamber was strewed in a considered disorder.

'You sent for me, Messer, and I have come,' she said. Her low, untroubled voice was quite in keeping with the rest.

'Fie, fie!' he answered smoothly. 'I begged a privilege, I begged an honour--with diffidence, of one so lately stricken. Will you be seated while I stand?'

As her subject, he meant to imply. She accepted the condescension for what it was worth. He bent his heavy eyebrows on her pleasantly. They were full and shaggy for so young a man. Presently she found the silence intolerable.

'You sent for me, Messer,' she repeated coldly. 'Will you say on account of which of your interests?'

'See the dangerous intuition of your sex!' he retorted smilingly--'a weapon wont to cut its wielder's hand. On account of _your_ interest, purely.'

She glanced up at him with insolent incredulity.

'True,' he said. 'I desired only to save you the consequences of an imprudence. That troth-ring, Madonna, our Duchess's: is it not rather a perilous toy to play with?'

She was startled, for all her immobility--so startled, that he could see the breath jump in her bosom. But, in the very gasp of her fear, she caught herself to recollection, and stiffened, silent, to the ordeal she felt was coming.

'How did I know it was in your possession?' he said, with a little whisper of a laugh. 'Your beauty is ever more speaking than your lips, Madonna; but I am an oracle: I can read the unspoken question. There is a creature, Narcisso his name, once fellow to a loved servant of our court. You know Messer Lanti? an honest, bluff gentleman. He did well to part with such a dangerous rogue. Why, the times are complicate: we should be choice in our confidants. This Narcisso is very well to slit a throat; but to negotiate a delicate theft----'

He paused. 'Go on,' she whispered.

'I will be frank as day,' he purred. ''Twas seen on this rogue's finger, when making for your house. It was not there when he left.'

'The gloating fool!' She stabbed out the words. 'Seen! By whom?'

'By one,' he answered, 'whose business it was to look for it.'

'Who, I say?'

'Most high lady, the very predestined man--no other. Would you still ask who? I had thought you more accomplished. Intrigue, like a statue, is not carved out with a single tool. The eyes, the ears, the lips, each demand their separate instrument. Dost thou seek to shape all with one? O, fie, fie!'

He shook his finger gaily at her. She sat, frowning, with her hands clenched before her; but she gave no answer.

'Why, I am but a tyro,' said the prince; 'yet could I teach thee, it seems, some first precepts in our craft--as thus: Use things most useful for their uses; employ not your dagger as a shoe-horn, or it may chance to cut your heel; an instrument hath its purpose and design; think not one password will unlock all camps; selection is the cream of policy--and so on.'

She started to her feet, in an instant resolution.

'I have the ring,' she said.

He bowed suavely. She stared at him.

'What then, Messer?'

'Why,' he said, 'only that, do you not think, it were safer in my hands than in yours?'

'Safer!' she cried in a suppressed voice; 'for whom?'

'Yourself,' he answered serenely.

'Ah!' she cried, 'you would threaten, if I refuse, to destroy me with it?'

He made a deprecating motion with his hands.

'Beware,' she said fiercely; 'I can retort. Where is Tassino?'

He looked at her kindly.

'Madonna, do you not know? Nay, do I not know that you know? He lies hidden in the burrow of this same Narcisso.'

'At whose instigation? Not yours, Messer--O no, of course, not yours!'

His lips never changed from their expression of smiling good-humour.

'Entirely at mine,' he said.

She gave a little gasp. His subtlety was too chill a thing for her fire; but she struggled against her quenching by it.

'Why do you not produce him, then? Do you not know that he is cried for high and low? that he is wanted to complete his contract with the armourer's drab? It is an ill thing to cross, this present ecstasy of conversion. We are all Bernardines now--lunatics--latter-day Cistercians--raging neophytes of love.'

'While the ecstasy lasts,' he murmured, unruffled.

'Ah!' she cried violently, 'yet may it last your time. Fanaticism is no respecter of rank or service. Standest thou so well with Bona? She would have racked the racker himself in the first fury of her contrition--torn confession from Jacopo's sullen throat with iron hooks, had not her saint rebuked her. Tassino had been last seen by him in the man's company, but, when they went to look for him, he was gone. When or whither, the fellow swore he knew not. It was like enough, thou being the lure. Will you not produce him now, and save your peace?'

Ludovico, regarding her vehemence from under half-closed lids, exhibited not the slightest tremor.

'Madonna,' he said, 'thy mourning beauty becometh thee like Cassandra's. Hast thou, too, so angered Apollo with thy continence as to make him nullify in thee his own gift of prophecy? Alas, that lips so moving must be so discounted in their warnings!'

She drew back, chilled and baffled.

'Thou wilt not?' she muttered. 'Well, then, thou wilt not. Take thou thine own course; I may not know thy purpose.'

For a moment the cold of him deepened to deadliness, and his voice to an iron hardness:--

'Nor any like thee--self-seekers--dominated by some single lust. _My_ purpose is a labyrinth of Cnossus. Beware, rash fools, who would seek to unravel it!'

Her lips were a little parted; the fine wings of her nostrils quivered. For all her bravery she felt her heart constricting as in the frost of some terror which she could neither gauge nor compass. But, in the very instant of her fear, Ludovico was his own bland self again.

'Tools, tools!' he said smiling--'for the eyes, the ears, the lips. I shall take up this one when I need it, not before. Meanwhile it lies ready to my hand.'

'I do not doubt thy cunning,' she said faintly.

'What then, Madonna?' he asked.

She struggled with herself, swallowing with difficulty.

'Its adequacy for its purpose--that is all.'

'What purpose?'

She looked up, and dared him:--

'To destroy the Duchess.'

He laughed out, tolerantly.

'Intuition! Intuition! O thou self-wounding impulse! To destroy the Duchess? Well! What is thy ring for? To destroy Monna Beatrice, belike. And Monna Beatrice had her instrument too, they will say afterwards--a blunt, coarse blade, but hers, hers only--as she thought. Yet, it seems, one Ludovic used something of him, this Narcisso, also--played him for his ends--marked him down, even, for landlord to a fribble called Tassino. What, Carissima! He hath not told thee so much?'

She shook her head dully.

'No?' mocked the Prince. 'And ye such sworn allies! O sweet, you shall learn policy betimes! You will not yield the ring? Well, there is Tassino, as you say. Play him against it.'

She knew she dared not. The vague implication of forces and understandings behind all this banter quite cowed her. She had defied the serpent, and been struck and overcome. Hate was no match for this craft. But emotion remained. She dwelt a long minute on his smooth, impenetrable face; then, all in an instant, yielded up her sex, and stole towards him, arms and moist eyes entreating.

'I dared thee; I was wrong. Only----'

Her palms trembled on his shoulders; her bosom heaved against his hand.

'I have suffered, what only a woman can. O, Messer, let me keep the ring!'

Her voice possessed him like an embrace; the soft pleading of it made any concession to his kindness possible. He was very sensitive to all emotions of loveliness, but with the rare gift of reasoning in temptation. He shook his head.

'Ah!' she murmured, 'let me. Thou shalt find jealousy a hot ally.'

She pressed closer to him. He neither resisted nor invited.

'Most excellent sweetness,' he said gently. 'I melt upon this confidence. Henceforth we'll bury misunderstanding, and kiss upon his grave. But truth with sugar is still a drug. A jealous woman is bad in policy. Trust her always to destroy her betrayer, though through whatever betrayal of her friends. Besides, forgive me, Messer Bembo may yet prove accommodating.'

At that she dropped her hands and stepped back.

'Is this to bury misunderstanding?' she cried low. 'O, I would _I_ were Duchess of Milan.'

'More impossible things might happen,' he said thickly, for all his self-control.

She stared at him fascinated a moment; then swiftly advanced again.

'Let me keep the ring,' she urged hoarsely. 'I could set something against it--some knowledge--some information.'

He had mastered himself in the interval; and now stood pondering upon her and fondling his chin.

'Yes?' he murmured. 'But it must be something to be worth.'

She hesitated; then spoke out:--

'A plot to kill the Duke--no more.'

The two stared at one another. She could see a pulse moving in his throat; but when at last he spoke, it was without emotion.

'Indeed, Madonna? They are so many. When is this particular one to be?'

'Do you not know?' she answered as derisively as she dared. 'I thought you had a tool for everything. Well, it is to be in Milan.'

'In Milan--as before,' he repeated ironically. 'And the heads of this conspiracy, Madonna?'

'Ah!' she cried, with a sigh of triumph; 'they are yours at the price of the ring.'

He canvassed her a little, but profoundly.

'After all,' he murmured, 'why should I seek to know?'

'Why?' she said, with a laugh of recovering scorn, 'why but to nip it in its bud, Messer?'

He was quick to grasp this implied menace of retaliation.

'Tell me,' he said, 'why are you so hot to retain this same ring?'

'For only a woman's reason,' she answered. 'Wouldst thou understand it? Not though I spoke an hour by St. Ambrose' clock. I would deal the blow myself, in my own way--that is all.'

'Thou wouldst ruin Bona?'

'Ay, and her saint, who robbed me of my love.'

'By her connivance? Marry, be honest, sweet lady. Was it not rather Messer Bembo who denied you Messer Bembo?'

'Will you have the names?'

'Hold a little. Here's matter black enough, but unsupported. I must have some proof. Tell me who's your informant?'

'And have you go and bleed him? Nay, I am learning my tools.'

'Bravo!' he said, and kissed his hand to her. 'Well, I see, we must call a truce awhile.'

'And I will keep the ring,' she said.

He beamed thoughtfully on her. No doubt he was considering the possibility of improving the interval by rooting out, on his own account, details of the secret she held from him.

'Provisionally,' he said pleasantly--'provisionally, Madonna; so long as you undertake to make no use of it until you hear from me my decision.'

'The longer that is delayed, the better for your purpose, Messer,' she dared to say.

He smiled blankly at her a little; then courteously advancing, and raising her hand, imprinted a fervent kiss on it.

'Though I fail to gather your meaning,' he said, 'it is nevertheless certain that you would make a very imposing Duchess, Monna Beatrice.'

*CHAPTER XVI*

'Father Abbot, we thank you for your trust. We were less than human to abuse it. O, it flew with white wings to shelter in our bosom! Shall we be hawks to such a dove! Take comfort. It hath ruffled its feathers on our heart; it hath settled itself thereon, and hatched out a winged love. Pure spirit of the Holy Ghost, whence came it? From a star, they say, born of some wedlock between earth and sky. I marvel you could part with it. I could never.... The pretty chuck! What angel heresies it dares! "Marry," saith the dove, "I have been discussing with Christ the subtleties of dogmatic definition, and I find he is no Christian." This for intolerance! He finds honesty in schism--speaks with assurance of our Saviour, his discourses with Him by the brook, in the garden, under the trees--but doubtless you know. How can we refute such evidence, or need to? Alas! we are not on speaking terms with divinity. But we listen and observe; and we woo our winsome dove with pretty scarves and tabbards embroidered by our fingers; and some day we too hope to hear the voices. Not yet; the earth clings to us; but he dusts it off. "Make not beauty a passion, but passion a beauty," says he. "Learn that temperance is the true epicurism of life. The palate cloys on surfeit." O, we believe him, trust me! and never his pretty head is turned by our adoring.... "By love to make law unnecessary,"--there runs his creed: the love of Nature's truths--continence, sobriety, mate bound to mate like birds. Only our season's life. He convinces us apace. Already Milan sweetens in the sun. We curb all licence, yield heat to reason, clean out many vanities; have our choirs of pure maidens in place of the Bacchidae--hymns, too, meet to woo Pan to Christ, of which I could serve thee an example.... All in all, we prepare for a great Feast of the Purification which, at the New Year's beginning, is to symbolise our re-conversion to Nature's straight religion. Then will be a rare market in doves--let us pray there be at least--which all, conscious of the true virgin heart, are to bring. Doves! Alack! which of us would not wish to be worthy to carry one that we know?'

So wrote the Duchess of Milan to the Abbot of San Zeno, and he answered:--

'Cherish my lamb. The fold yearns for him. He would leave it, despite us all. My daughter, be gracious to our little dreamer, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.'