'I don't know what you mean! Leave me alone. It was his own fault, I
say. Why did he insult me?'
'Restore thou this image of God his sight,' said Bembo quietly.
'You know I cannot!'
'Thou canst not? Then an eye for an eye, as it was spoken. Take ye
this wicked thing, good officers, and blind him even as he blinded the
poor armourer.'
A vibrant sound went up from the spectators, and died. Messer Ludovico
veiled his sight, and, it might be said, his laughter. Tassino was seen
struggling and crying in the half-fearful clutch of his gaolers.
'Thou darest not! Dogs! Let me go, I say. What! would ye brave
Madonna? Lord Duke, lord Duke, help me!'
'To repentance, my poor Tassino,' cried Galeazzo, leaning lustfully
forward. 'I trow thy part on earth is closed.'
The little monster could not believe it. This instant fall from the
heights! He was flaccid with terror as he fell screeching on his knees.
'Mercy, good stranger! Mercy, dear lord saint! The terror! the
torture! I could not suffer them and live. O, let me live, I pray
thee!--anywhere, anyhow, and I will do all; make whatever restitution
you impose.'
As he prayed and wept and grovelled, the Saint looked down with icy pity
on his abasement.
'Restitution, Tassino!' he cried, 'for that murthered vision, for that
ruined virtue? Wouldst thou even in thine impiousness arrogate to
thyself such divine prerogatives? Yet, in respect of that reason with
which true justice doth hedge her reprisals, the Duke's mercy shall
still allot thee an alternative. Sith thou canst not restore his honour
or his eyes to poor Lupo, thou shalt take his shame to wife, and in her
seek to renew that image of God which thou hast defaced. Do this, and
only doing it, know thyself spared.'
A silence of stupefaction fell upon the court. What would Bona say to
this arbitrary disposal of her pet, made husband to a common gipsy he
had debauched? True, the sentence, by virtue of its ethical
completeness, seemed an inspiration. But it was a disappointment too.
None doubted but that the popinjay would subscribe to the present letter
in order to evade the practice of it by and by. Already the paltry soul
of the creature was struggling from its submersion, gasping, and
blinking wickedly to see how it could retort upon its judge and
deliverer. It had been better to have trodden it under for once and for
good--better for the moral of the lesson, as for all who foresaw some
hope for themselves in the crushing of an insufferable petty tyranny.
Galeazzo himself frowned and bit his nails. He would have lusted to see
heaven pluck off this vulgar burr for him. Only his brother, sleek and
smiling, applauded the verdict. He had a far-seeing vision, had
Ludovico, and perhaps already it was alotting a more telling role to the
little aristocrat of San Zeno than had ever been played by the cockney
parvenu down in the arena.
Suddenly the Duke was on his feet, fierce and glaring.
'Answer, dog!' he roared; 'acceptest thou the condition?'
Tassino started and sobbed.
'Yes, yes. I accept. I will marry her.'
The Duke took a costly chain from his own neck, and hung it about the
shoulders of the Parablist.
'Wear this,' he said, 'in earnest of our love and duty.'
Then he turned upon the mob.
'These judgments stand, and all that shall be spoken hereafter by our
dear monitor and proctor. It is our will. Make way, gentlemen.'
He took Bernardo's arm and descended the steps. A cloud of courtiers
hovered near, acclaiming the boy Saint and Daniel. Messer Ludovico
saluted him with fervour. He foresaw the millennium in this association
of piety with greatness. Galeazzo sneered.
'Remember that three spoils company, brother,' said he. 'Keep thou
thine own confessor, and leave me mine.'
It was then only that Bernardo learned the rank of his accoster.
'Alas! sweet lord,' said he, 'is piety such a stranger here that ye must
entertain him like a king?'
The Duke laughed loudly and drew him on. He was extravagant in his
attentions to him--eager, voluble, feverish. He would point out to him
the lavish decorations of his house--marbles, sculptures, paintings, the
rising fabric of a new era--and ask his opinion on all. A word from the
child at that period would have floored a cardinal or a scaffolding,
have clothed Aphrodite in a cassock, have made a _fete champetre_ of all
Milan, or darkened its walls with mourning. Messer Lanti, following in
their wake, was amazed, and dubious, and savage in turns. Earlier in
the day the Duke had had from him the whole story of his connection with
the Parablist, up to the moment of their interference in Montano's
punishment.
'_Meschino me!_' he had said, greatly laughing over that episode; 'yet I
cannot but be glad that the old code beat itself out on his back. 'Twas
a reptile well served--a venomous, ungrateful beast. A mercy if it has
broken his fang.'
That remained to be seen; and in the meantime Carlo, the old auxiliary
in debauch, was taken again into full favour. He accepted the
condescension with reserve. The oddest new attachment had come to
supplant in him some ancient devotions that were the furthest from
devout. He found himself in a very queer mood, between irritable and
gentle. He had never before felt this inclination to hit hard for
virtue, and it bewildered his honest head. But it made him a dangerous
watchdog.
By and by the Duke carried his protege into the Duchess's privy garden.
There was a necessary economy of ornamental ground about the castello,
though the most was made of what could be spared. In a nest of green
alleys, and falling terraces, and rose-wreathed arches, they came upon
the two ladies whom Bembo had already seen, themselves as pretty,
graceful flowers as any in the borders. The young Catherine sat upon a
fountain edge, fanning herself with a great leaf, and talking to a
flushed, down-looking page, who, it seemed likely, had brought news from
the court of a recent scandal and its sequel. Her shrewd, pretty face
took curious stock of the new comers. She was a pale slip of a girl,
lithe, bosomless, the green plum of womanhood. Her thin, plain dress was
green, fitting her like a sheath its blade of corn, and she wore on her
sleek fair head a cap of green velvet banded with a scroll of beaten
gold. A child she was, yet already for two years betrothed to a Pope's
nephew. His presents on the occasion had included a camera of green
velvet, sewn with pearls as thick as daisies in grass. It seemed
natural to associate her with spring verdure, so sweet and fair she was;
yet never, surely, worked a more politic little brain under its cap of
innocence.
Hard by, on one of the walks, a woman and a child of seven played at
ball. These were Bona, and her little son Gian-Galeazzo. As the other
was spring, so was she summer, ripe in figure and mellowed in the
passion of motherhood. Her eyes burned with the caress and entreaty of
it--appealed in loveliness to the fathers of her desires. Her beauty,
her stateliness, the very milk of her were all sweet lures to increase.
She loved babies, not men--saw them most lusty, perhaps, in the glossy
eyes of fools, the breeding-grounds of Cupids. She was always a mother
before a wife.
The Duke led Bernardo to her side. Pale as ivory, she bent and embraced
her boy, and dismissed him to the fountain; then rose to face the
ordeal.
'Hail, judgments of Solomon!' she said, with a smile that quivered a
little. 'O believe me, sir, thy fame has run before!'
'Which was the reason thou dismissedst Gian,' said Galeazzo, 'in fears
that Solomon would propose to halve him?'
He did not doubt her, or wing his shaft with anything but brutality. It
was his coward way, and, having asserted it, he strolled off, grinning
and whistling, to the fountain.
Bona shivered and drew herself up. Her robe was all of daffodil, with a
writhed golden hem to it that looked like a long flicker of flame. On
her forehead, between wings of auburn hair, burned a great emerald. She
seemed to Bernardo the loveliest, most gracious thing, a vision
personified of fruitfulness, the golden angel of maternity, warm,
fragrant, kind-bosomed. He met the gaze of her eyes with wonderment,
but no fear.
'Sweet Madonna,' he said, 'hail me nothing, I pray thee, but the clear
herald of our Christ--His mouthpiece and recorder. We may all be played
upon for truth, so we be pure of heart.'
'And that art thou? No guile? No duplicity? No self-interest?'
He marvelled. She looked at him earnestly.
'Bernardo, didst know this Tassino was my servant?'
'Nay, I knew it not.'
'Wouldst have spared him hadst thou known?'
'How could I spare him the truth?'
'But its shame, its punishment?'
'Greater shame could no man have than to debauch innocence. His
punishment was his redemption.'
'Ah! I defend him not. Yet, bethink thee, she may have been the
temptress?'
'He should have loathed, not loved her, then.'
'Madreperla, mother-of-pearl,' cried Catherine, with a little shriek of
laughter, from the fountain; 'come and help me! I have caught a
butterfly in my hand, and my father wishes to take it from me and kill
it!'
*CHAPTER VII*