"Similemente agli splendor mondani
Ordinò general ministra e duca,
Che permutasse 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 God 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 surpassingly 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, mass, 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 mass 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
breasts, 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. _Præteriere 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 Assyrian 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.
"My dear boy," she said, "I am in a fix. You shall advise me how to act,
the more willingly I hope, as you are in a sense the contriver of all
the mischief. You know the Count my husband well enough to agree with
me that he is a man of gallantry. He has proved it, for it is plain that
he would never have left me (to my great content) to go my own gait
unless it had been worth his while. I do him perfect justice, I believe.
He has never thwarted me, nor frowned, nor raised an eyebrow at an act
or motion of mine. Never but once, and that was when I proposed to take
you into my service. Don't blush, Angioletto, it is quite true. He then
raised, not his eyebrows--at least I think not--but some little
objections. I said that I was old enough to be your mother--no, no, that
also is true, my dear! He answered, 'No doubt; but it is very evident
that you are not his mother.' That again may be true, I suppose?
However, the affair ended in great good-humour on both sides, and here
you are, as you see! But now the Count sends me this letter, in which he
says--let me see--ah! 'Your ladyship will remember my not ungenerous
conduct in the matter of the little poet, Angioletto, on whose account
you had certain benevolent dispositions to gratify'--neatly turned, is
it not? 'I have now to propose to you, turn for turn, a like favour to
myself, which is that you shall take into your service a young
gentlewoman of Venice, who is but newly come to Ferrara'--What is the
matter, Angioletto? You put me out. Where was I? Oh, yes--'She is
respectably bred, very modest, very diligent, very pious, moderately
handsome.'--My dear boy, if you want to sit down, by all means say so.
We will sit together here.--'The name she goes by with those who know
her is Bellaroba.'--Bellaroba, indeed! Well--'I am very sure that you
will have no reason to regret my excellent choice on your behalf; and it
is the more timely because I learn from Fazio that one of your women has
fallen sick of the small-pox'--and so on. The Count is occasionally
sublime. I like particularly the list of the young lady's qualifications
and the reference to his own kindness to myself. Now, what am I to say?
I see you are puzzled. Well, I will give you time."
What Angioletto himself was to say is more to the purpose. I think it
much to his credit that his first ascertainable emotion after the buffet
of assault was one of wildest exultation at the prospect. It shows that
he had never for a moment distrusted the meek little partner of his
fortunes. Whisps of such doubt did afterwards float across his pretty
morning picture, but he put them away at once. Next came worldly wisdom.
True Tuscan that he was, his instinct was to decline perilous rapture if
waiting might bring it on easy terms. For a long time he weighed instant
joy against policy. Finally, as he was more Italian than Tuscan, and
more boy than either, he decided to jump the danger. The vision of
Bellaroba shy in the rose-garden, of himself crowning her soft hair,
bending over her, kissing her upturned face; of the Countess behind one
thicket looking for him, and the Count behind another looking for
Bellaroba--it was too much to resist!
"Madama," he said, "it is hardly for me to advise in such delicate
matters. I should not, by right, dare say what I am about to say upon
your invitation. Yet if I were his nobility, Count Guarino Guarini, not
the least of my pleasant moments would be that in which I could say, 'I
have a noble lady to wife, for she honours me as I have honoured her.'"
That was a very dextrous remark, vastly pleasing to the Countess. She
kissed the speaker then and there, wrote her letter hot-head, talked
about it all that day, and worked herself into such a fever of curiosity
that she cut short her villeggiatura by six weeks, so as the sooner to
see the girl who could inspire her with such admirable ideas of her own
magnanimity. She even grew quite enthusiastic upon her husband's
account, almost sentimental about him. This much the wily Angioletto
(who did not study character for nothing) had allowed for in his
calculations.
It is by no means certain that the Countess was as wise as her guide.
The facts which induced the letter were these. Guarini had chanced upon
an early mass at San Cristoforo and Bellaroba kneeling at her prayers.
She, all unconscious of any presence but her own and her Saviour's, was
looking up to the Mother who had made Him so, dim-eyed, and smiling
rather tenderly. Her lips framed petitions for the coming home of
Angioletto. She had hooded her head as he commanded, and it became her
as he had foreseen. With her added cares of wifely duty this gave a
sober look to her untameable childish bloom; she was almost a
business-like beauty now. To Guarino the pathetic appealed more nearly;
to him she seemed a pretty nun, a wood-bird caged. He never took his
eyes off her--she caught him in a soft mood and ravished him. A little
saint in bud, he swore; a wholesome, domestic little household goddess,
meek and very pure, who would carry home her beauties unaware and oil
the tousled heads of half a dozen brothers and sisters. Homeliness is
neither Italian word nor virtue; but just as it describes Bellaroba, so
an inkling of its charm thrilled the young lord who saw her. Could one
cage such a gossamer thing? Fate had done it, why not he? At least he
could not lose sight of her. He tracked her to the house under the wall,
saw the door scrupulously shut upon her, wandered up and down the street
for half an hour, returned a laggard to his palace--and yet had her full
in vision. She possessed him until mass-time following: the same things
happened. Guarino was hit hard; he took certain steps and got
information which tallied with his better instincts. It guided also his
subsequent efforts, for obviously the more direct remedies would not
meet his case. Therefore, he wrote to the Countess, as you have seen.
Her reply delighted him, and the rest was very easy. Borso signed the
order of appointment, boggling only at her name. "Buonaroba I know,"
said he. "What am I to think of Bellaroba, Guarino?"
"Your Grace shall be pleased to think that his daughter has chosen her
for her own person," said the Count.
"Hum," said Borso, and signed the parchment.
Then came another scrawl for "my love Angilotto," in which the
miraculous news was told.
"Olimpia took it very ill," she wrote, "but the Signor Capitano
talked her happier--at least, he stayed a long time. I hope you
will think it all for the best. I am very good, and kiss you many
times,
"Your BELAROBBA."
Olimpia had indeed been very cross, as Captain Mosca would have
testified. She had not, at any rate, talked _him_ any happier: that he
would have upheld with an oath. The experienced man knew the whip of
sleet on his bare skin; but this was worse than any winter campaign; it
left him dumb and without the little ease which shivering gives you. It
had not been a question so much of talking as of keeping his feet.
Olimpia, when the news came, had raged like a shrieking wind about the
narrow house. "My dearest life! Soul of my soul!" was all the Captain
had to fend the blast. It was no time for endearments--Olimpia raved
herself still. Tears, floods of them, followed, whereat the Captain
melted also and wept. He did foolishly. Demoniac gusts of laughing
caught and flung him to the rafters, chill rages froze him where he
fell. He lost his little store of wit, sagged like a broken sunflower,
and was finally pelted from the door by a storm of Venetian curses, in
which all his ancestors, himself, and any descendants he might dare to
have, were heavily involved. Bellaroba, trembling in her bed, heard him
go with a sinking heart. "Olimpia will come and murder me now," she said
to herself.
But Olimpia slept long where she fell, and next morning decided to
garner her rage.