"Then the priest must do it. Father Corrado must do it."
"He dare not."
"A convent--?"
"No, never! That is worse than this. But--oh, Nannina! if I dared I
would do such a thing."
"Well, let me hear. If it can be done it shall be done."
"Ah," sighed Ippolita, with a hand on her heart, "ah, but it cannot be
done!"
"Then why speak of it?"
"Because I want so much to do it. Listen."
Then Ippolita, clinging to her friend's neck, whispered her darling
thought. The goatherds on the hills! There was freedom--clean,
untrammelled freedom! No philandering, for no one would know she was a
girl; no ceremony, no grimacing, no stiff clothes; no hair-tiring--she
must cut off her hair--no bathing, ah, Heaven! If she might go for a few
months, a few weeks, until the hue and cry was over, until the signori
had thought of a new game; then she would come back, and her father
would be so glad of her that he would not beat her more than she could
fairly stand. It was a great scheme; indeed it was the only way. But how
to do? How to do?
"I suppose it is a dream of mine," sighed she, knotting her fingers in
and out of the gold chains.
Annina said nothing, but frowned a good deal. "I see that you are not
safe in Padua," she said in the end. "You are really too handsome, my
child. You couldn't show your nose without being known and reported. You
must go outside if you are to be in peace."
"But I can't go, Nannina; you know it as well as I do."
"I am not so sure. Do you mean what you say, Ippolita?"
"Ah, Nannina!"
"Then you shall go. It so happens that I know one of those goatherds--a
rough lout of a fellow called Petruccio. I could tell him that a
youngster had got into trouble in the city and wanted to lie quiet for a
week or two. I can do it, Ippolita."
"Oh! And will you, will you?"
"Corpaccio! If you mean business."
"I mean nothing else."
"Then it is done."
They clung together and kissed. Annina was to return the next evening at
the same hour.
That night it was remarked on all sides that Ippolita's beauty had never
been so disastrous, her eyes so starry bright, her colour so
fire-flushed. Messer Alessandro, who loved her like a maniac, went
shivering out alone into the moonlit garden to expostulate with Nature.
"Thou hast formed, most cruel Mother," cried he, "an image of thy fatal
self, whose eyes are sharp swords, and her breath poison of ineffable
sweetness; whose consummate shape killeth by mere splendour; to whose
tint of bright fire every arm must stretch as moth to flame, and by it
be blasted. All this thou hast done, and not yet content, hast set this
glory so low that all may reach for it, and yet so remote that none can
touch. Burning-pure is my Beloved, at whose approach I faint. What hard
miracle is this of thine, Goddess, that all must love and none be found
worthy?" Thus we may reflect, as Alessandro beat his resounding
forehead, to what a pass poetry may bring a youth, who buys for twenty
ducats what twenty thousand cannot give him the use of. Pygmalion made a
woman one day, moulding all her gracious curves as his experience
taught him. There went his twenty ducats. But not he could warm that
image into glowing flesh, however much he sang to it and hymned. That
was another's affair. So here.
Annina came on the morrow full of secrecy and other things more
equivocal still in appearance. Her burden proved, however, to be a
bundle of rags which, she assured Ippolita, represented all that was
necessary to the perfect goatherd.
"We will do what we can here, child," said she, "in the way of staining
your skin, cutting off your hair, and such like. Then you shall veil and
come into the garden with me; but whereas you shall come in as the
Madonna of these heathens, you shall leave, per Dio, as Silvestro, who
murdered the Jew in the Via della Gatta and has to hide in the hills. Do
you remember him, Ippolita?"
"Of course I do," said Ippolita. "Have I killed that Jew, Annina?"
"It is to be understood, my dear. Now come, there is everything to
arrange."
There was indeed. Del Dardo would have swooned to see how Annina handled
his Unapproachable. Her burnished hair was off with a clip or two of the
great shears; a mixture of soot and walnut-juice hid up her roses, and
transformed her ivory limbs to the similitude of a tanner's. Ippolita
did not know herself. Veiled up close, she crept into the garden with
her confidante, and in a bower by the canal completed her
transformation. Not Daphne suffered a ruder change. A pair of ragged
breeches, swathes of cloth on her legs, an old shirt, a cloak of patched
clouts, shapeless hat of felt, sandals for her feet, shod staff for her
hand--behold the peerless Ippolita, idol of half Padua, turned into a
sheepish overgrown boy in tatters, whose bathing could only have been in
sweat, and the scent of his garments the rankness of goats. On the floor
in a shining heap lay the silk robes, the chains and jewels, only
witness with Annina of what had been done. That same Annina clasped in
her arms the tall boy.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she said, half sobbing, "if any ill should come
of this I shall kill myself."
"No ill will come, Nannina, believe me," replied Ippolita, quite calm.
"You are sure they expect me?"
"I see them on the riviera now. Slip into the boat. I will put you
across."
On the other bank, Ippolita was received by the herd-boys, all agog to
see the champion who had killed the Jew.
"Addio, Silvestro," said Annina, keeping up the play.
"Addio, Nannina," said Silvestro, with a chuckle.
"Are we ready, boys?" Petruccio called out, turning about him. "We must
be careful what we're doing."
"Hist, Silvestro," whispered one, with a nudge; "did he bleed much?"
"Cosa terribile--a flood!" Silvestro spread out his hands.
"Cristo! The glory of it!"
"Valentino, I scrag you, my man, if you speak of the Jew till we are out
of the Porta San Zuan," growled Petruccio, the leader: "Avanti!" And the
drab-coloured crew moved off towards the sunset.