Little Novels of Italy Part 29

"Era gia rosso tutto l'oriente, E le cime de' monti parien d'oro," etc.

Borso, neither approving nor disapproving, kept his head disposed for more. At

"Quando fui desto da certi rumori Di buon sonagli ed allettar di cani"

he began to blink; with the quick direction to the huntsman--

"Deh, vanne innanzi, presto Capellaio,"

he stifled a smile. But the calling of the hounds by their names broke down his guard. Angioletto shrilled them out in a high, boyish voice--

"Chiama Tamburo, Pezuolo e Martello, La Foglia, la Castagna e la Guerrina, f.a.giano, f.a.gianin, Rocca e Capello, E Friza, e Biondo, Bamboccio e Rossina, Ghiotto, la Torta, Viola e Pestello, E Serchio e Fuse e'l mio Buontempo vecchio, Zambraco, Buratel, Scaccio e Pennecchio...."

Every muscle of the keen old hunter was now quivering; his eyes were bright, his smile open and that of a child. To the last word of the poem--and it has length--he followed without breath the checks, the false casts, the bickering of the huntsmen, the petty incidents of a breezy morning in the marshes, nodding at every point, missing nothing, cracking his fingers, cheering under his breath, with delight undisguised and interest unalloyed. The moment it was ended he seemed prime for a burst of heedless comment; but he stopped, shut his lips with a snap, and became the inscrutable ruler of a fief of the Empire once more. But Angioletto knew that he had pleased him, for all that he walked off as he had come, without word or sign.

He had pleased every one. Homing to his nest in the Borgo, he caught his little Bellaroba in his arms with a rapture none the less because it had been earned at a stretch. It was long before he could find time and breath to lead her into the garden and have the story out. Olimpia, coming down to look for them in the dusk, found that a seat for two would easily hold one more. It should be added of Angioletto that he suppressed the incident of the Countess Lionella's salute.

At supper there were evidences that, whatever had been Angioletto's fate, all had not gone so well with the Captain of Lances. Not that appet.i.te failed him; indeed, he ate the more for his taciturnity. Yet not repletion made him sigh, for he sighed consumedly before he began and rather less when he had finished, as though the kindlier juices of our nature had got to work to disperse the melancholic. Angioletto rallied him upon his gloom, but to no purpose. The meal was a silent one; almost the only conversation was that of the minstrel's foot with Bellaroba's under the table.

The truth was, that of conversation the Captain had had enough before supper--a very short colloquy with his Olimpia. In it he was brought to confess that he had seen his patron that morning. "Well?" had been Olimpia's commentary--a shot which raked the Captain fore and aft. Well, he desperately admitted, there was nothing actually arranged: _patienza_! His most n.o.ble master had been greatly hara.s.sed with affairs--the Duke's approaching visit to Rome, the precise forms which must be observed, the punctilios, the hundred niceties of etiquette; "Ah, _patienza_!" urged the sweating Mosca.

Patience, she saw, was the only wear; but, per Bacco, he should learn it too! She was in a high rage. The Captain was given to know that Ferrara was a great city, with more houses in it than one; in fine, he was shown the door. Supper first was an extreme and contemptuous condescension of Olimpia's, urged by the thought that a fed Mosca might be a more desperate Mosca, while a lean one would be desperate only for a meal.

A true relation of what pa.s.sed in the Palazzo Guarini may serve to show how just she had been. The Count had received news of his henchman's attendance with a nod, had kept him waiting two hours in the _cortile_, then remembered him and bid him upstairs.

"Well, dog," said the young lord, from his dressing-table, "and why the devil are you so late to report yourself?"

"Ah, Excellence, believe me--" began to stutter the Captain.

"That is exactly what I will not do, my man. Who was that wench at your back yesterday?"

The Captain rubbed his hands. "Excellence, a wench indeed! A golden Venetian--glorious! Dove-eyed, honey-tongued, and very much your lordship's servant, I do a.s.sure you."

"You are so completely and at such length a fool, Mosca," said Count Guarini, with a yawn, "and strive so desperately to be rascal in spite of it, that I am almost sorry for you. Tie me these points, my good fellow, get me my sword, and go to the devil with your golden Venetian."

That, believe me, had been all. Therefore Captain Mosca, as he slunk out into the dark after supper in obedience to his inexorable Olimpia, felt that he must be more ingenious than he had supposed. At the same time it is only fair to say that when he had spoken so hopefully of his affair to the lady on the pillion he had believed every word of his own story.

A man puts on spectacles to suit his complexion: the Captain's was sanguine.

V

FORTUNE WITH THE DOUBLE BLADE

"Similemente agli splendor mondani Ordin general ministra e duca, Che permuta.s.se a tempo li ben vani, Di gente in gente, e d'uno in altro sangue."--_Inf._ vii. 77.

Angioletto had cause to believe in that star of his, for it never wavered in the course it held. Borso's court found him much to its taste. The men, however tall, of looks however terrible, bent their height and unbent their scowls to him; he was the pet of all the women; the very Fool, saturnine as he was (with a bite in every jest), had no gibe to put him to the blush withal. He made money, or money's worth, as fast as friends. A gold chain with a peregrine in enamel and jewels came to him by the hands of the Chamberlain; nothing was said, but he knew it was from the Duke. Countess Lionella could not reward him enough--now a jewel, now a gold cup, at one time a purse, at another a crystal phial filled with Jordan water. And so it went, the star waxing ever. He could have maintained the discreet house by Porta Angeli out of his earnings, and he did; but you have to pay for your luck somehow, and it very soon happened that he could not maintain himself in it. He was only too popular. The Count Guarino wanted him at the Palazzo Guarini; the Countess insisted that he should remain in bond at the Schifanoia; the august couple wrangled publicly over his little body.

"What, Madam," cried the Count, "is it not enough that you absent yourself from my house? Must you keep my friends out of it also?"

"He was accredited to me, my lord," said the lady, "to me, therefore, he shall come."

"Good madam," returned Guarini, "I admire your taste as a man, but deplore it as a husband. I think the little poet will do better with me."

"Stuff!" cried the Countess, "I might be his mother."

Said the Count: "Madam, I need not deny it; yet it is very evident that you are not his mother." He spoke with some heat.

Lionella was mightily amused. "Jealousy, my lord?" She arched her fine brows.

"I don't know the word, Madam," he answered her, touched on a raw.

Jealousy appeared to him as the most vulgar of the vices.

"Prove that to me!" the Countess pursued him. Guarini made her a bow.

"Perfectly, Contessa," said he. "You shall have your poet, and he shall be my friend." Wherein the Count showed that to be a gentleman it may sometimes be necessary to appear a fool.

The matter was thus settled, and Angioletto ravished from his nest.

His last night at home--_a casa_, as he loved to call it--need not be dwelt upon. Bitter-sweet it was, yet his courage made it more sweet than bitter. Bellaroba was tearful, clung to him, kissed and murmured incoherently because of sobbing. He loved her more than ever for that, but as became a prudent husband, thought to say a word in season.

"My dear," he said in her ear, as he held her close, "you are very young to be a wife, and too young to be properly left alone with such companions as your Olimpia, whom I distrust, and Monna Matura, whom I abhor. But what can I do? I must make our fortunes, and pray to G.o.d that your beauty do not mar them. Follow my advice, my injunctions even, and it will not. Keep much at home, go not abroad unattended or uncovered.

Your hooded head makes you surpa.s.singly beautiful; you need not fear to be a figure of fun. At the same time it shields most of your sacred person from profane eyes. The great shield of all, however, is to have business before you when you are from house. Go briskly about this--whether it be market, ma.s.s, or mischief--and no one will look at you twice. At home it should be the same. There may be visitors; if Monna Olimpia can contrive it, there will be a good many. You may judge of their quality by her anxiety to receive them. Be guarded then, my dear, and go by contraries. They will not find the pattern of the carpet so interesting as you should do. Give them prose for their poetry, vinegar for their sweet wine, bitter herbs when they look to you for cane of sugar. Keep your honeycomb for him who is trying to earn it.

Think where I am going, my Bellaroba! To what temptations, blessed Lord! to what askings, to what suggestion of wanton dealing! Remember that in all this I shall have your honour to keep, as you have mine. Say a great many prayers, my little heart, for the welfare of my soul and of yours; lock your door at night; let Monna Matura go with you to ma.s.s and confession; and--and--oh! my wife, my little wife, but I love not the leaving of you!" And so these poor children cried on each other's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and so fell to the unspoken tongue of Love's elect. Next morning he went early, leaving her kissed in bed.

He saw her once again, spent a most blissful two hours in her company, before the Countess Lionella took it into her head to shelter from the summer heats in a villa she had above Monselice. Thither Angioletto was forced to go in her train. He found it intolerable, went with a heart of lead; for so cheerful a soul he was what he looked, parched and wan.

This lasted a week. Then came a paper, scrawled with brown ink marks, which, after much study, he took to imply--

"MY LOVE ANGILETO, I love you more every day. I cry a good deal for lack of you. I kiss you two hundred times, and will be good and happy, "Your dutiful BELAROBA."

This revived him amazingly: he went singing about the gardens which hung upon the side of the grey hill, and composed a pastoral comedy to be acted by the Countess's ladies in the Temple grove.

Lionella very openly and without afterthought made love to him. He was a charming little lad, it is true; but quite apart from that, he was the only male creature above servant rank in the household. I describe him so because I cannot bring myself to call him a man; but he was quite man enough for the lady's intent. It is a surprising instance of the tact there was innate in the youth that he checked every undue liberty on the part of his mistress without endangering her self-respect or his own high favour. Perhaps he allowed matters to go a little too far. His were times of artless Art and of franchise--immoral, yet mainly innocent.

Children call each other pet names, hold hands, kiss, and no one is hurt. So it was in Ferrara when Borso ruled it. _Praeteriere Borsii tempora!_ True enough. There were those who saw that tuneful time in the shaping; we, alas! look down on the splintered shards. But we know that if a.s.syrian balm was ever for the world's chaffer it was in the days of Borso, the good Duke.

Angioletto loved his Bellaroba with all his heart: no debonair Lionella could decoy him to be untrue. But he was debonair himself, of high courage, and mettlesome; and he may have gone a little too far. He was now become her confidant, secretary, bosom friend. Whence came the shock of crisis.

One morning Lionella called for him in a hurry. He found her, an amused frown on her broad brows, pacing the terrace walk, holding an open letter in her hand. The moment he came in sight the Countess ran towards him, drew his arm in hers, and began to speak very fast.