I sought to break the spell of it, and turned the pages.
"Let me read something else," said I. "Something more gay, to dispel the sadness of this."
But her hand fell suddenly upon mine, enclasping and holding it. "Ah, no!" she begged me gently. "Give me the book. Let us read no more today."
I was trembling under her touch—trembling, my every nerve a-quiver and my breath shortened—and suddenly there flashed through my mind a line of Dante's in the story of Paolo and Francesca:
"Quel giorno piú non vi leggemo avanti."
Giuliana's words: "Let us read no more today"—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 She had withdrawn her hand, and had taken the volume to restore it to its shelf.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 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.
CHAPTER III
PREUX-CHEVALIER
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 nonetheless 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 lasciv
ious 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 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 sh
e 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 Phœbus 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.
The Strolling Saint (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Page 10
