The Nuncio departed amidst a tremendous clatter of hoofs and rumbling of
wheels, after being accompanied to his coach by the Legate of Ferrara
himself. The second coach was occupied by his chaplains, and a third by
his body-servants; in his own he took only his secretary; each vehicle
carried a part of his voluminous luggage. After the coaches rode the
footmen, mounted on all sorts of beasts, such as could be had, but
wearing good liveries and all well armed. A dozen papal troopers
commanded by a sergeant brought up the rear.
The wizened little Legate bowed to the ground as the noisy procession
started, for though he wore a clerical dress he was only a layman, and
the Nuncio was Archbishop of Kerasund, 'in partibus infidelium,' and
returned the Governor's salutations with a magnificent benediction from
the window of his coach. The papal halberdiers of the castle, all drawn
up in line outside the moat, saluted by laying their long halberds to
the left at a sharp angle.
The Legate put on his three-cornered hat as the escort trotted away
after the coaches, and he stood rubbing his hands and watching the
fast-disappearing procession of travellers, while the guard formed in
double file and awaited his pleasure, ready to follow him in.
He had scarcely reached middle age, but he looked like a dried-up little
old man, with his wrinkled face, his small red eyes, and his withered
hands. No one who did not know him would have taken him to be the
tremendous personage he really was in Ferrara, invested with full powers
to represent his sovereign master, Pope Clement the Tenth; or rather the
Pope's adopted 'nephew,' who was not his nephew at all, Cardinal Paluzzo
Altieri, the real and visible power in Rome. The truth was that the aged
Pontiff was almost bedridden and was scarcely ever seen, and he was only
too glad to be relieved of all care and responsibility.
Monsignor Pelagatti, for that was the Legate's name, was a man of no
distinguished extraction; indeed, it would be more true to say that he
had extracted himself from his original surroundings. For it was by dint
of laudable hard work as well as by virtue of certain useful gifts of
mind and character that he had raised himself above his family to a
really important position. It was commonly said in Rome that his father
had been a highway robber and his mother a washerwoman, and that his
brother was even now a footman in service; but it is quite possible that
the Roman gossips knew more of his people than he did, seeing that he
had declined to have anything to do with his family ever since he had
got his first place as assistant steward in the Paluzzo household,
before that family had been adopted and had received the name of Altieri
from the Pope; and this is all that need be said about his beginnings
for the present.
In due time he went upstairs again, installed himself behind the long
oak table in his office, and took up the business of the day. A brown
wooden crucifix stood before him, and at the foot of it was placed his
large leaden inkstand, well provided with pens, ink, and red sand for
blotting. At each end of the table sat a clerk; of these two, one was an
untidy old man with a weary face and snuff-stained fingers, the other
was a particularly spruce young fellow, with smug pink cheeks and
carefully trimmed nails. The room had one high window to the north, from
which a cold and dreary light fell upon the table and the three men.
The Legate proceeded to transact current business, receiving in turn a
number of officials and citizens who came of their own accord, or were
summoned, for various reasons, mostly connected with the revenue. When
he had dismissed them all, more or less satisfied or dissatisfied, as
the papal interests required, he ordered the officer at the door to send
for the prisoner who had been taken at the inn that morning.
'Let us see this famous Sicilian coiner,' he said, rubbing his hands and
screwing up his little red eyes. 'Bring up his effects, too, and send
for a goldsmith with his touchstone and acids.'
He leaned back in his high chair to wait, and mentally ran over the
questions he meant to ask. The shabby old clerk took snuff, and
sprinkled a liberal quantity of it on his spotted black clothes and on
the edge of the paper before him. His colleague at the other end
occupied himself in improving the point of his quill pen. In the
silence, a huge spotted cat sprang upon the table and calmly seated
itself upright beside the crucifix, facing the Legate, who paid no
attention whatever to it. From time to time it blinked and slowly moved
the yellow tip of its tail.
Presently Stradella was led in by the gaoler and his assistant. On his
wrists there were manacles, joined with each other by a strong chain
which was highly polished by constant use. He was bare-headed, of
course, and he seemed perfectly cool and self-possessed. Immediately
after him, two men entered bringing his luggage, which was set down on
the floor before the table. The cat did not even turn to look at the
people who had entered.
'What is your name?' asked the Legate, eyeing him sharply.
'Alessandro Stradella.'
Instead of writing down the answer the two clerks looked at their
superior for instructions.
'His name is Bartolo,' the Legate said, in a decided tone.
'By your worship's leave, my name is Stradella,' protested the musician.
'You may note that this fellow Bartolo persists in calling himself
Stradella,' said the Legate, looking first at one clerk and then at the
other.
'I am not Bartolo!' cried the musician indignantly. 'I am Alessandro
Stradella, the singer, well known to hundreds of people in Rome.'
'You see how he persists,' answered the Legate with an ironical smile.
'Write down what he says as correctly as you can.'
Stradella saw that it was useless to protest, and that vehemence might
be dangerous.
'By your leave,' he said more quietly, 'if you will loosen my hands and
let me have my lute there, I will prove what I say, by singing and
playing to you.'
'Anybody can sing,' retorted Monsignor Pelagatti with profound contempt,
and without even looking at him. 'Write down that he has insulted this
tribunal by offering to sing to the Legate and his clerks--which low
jesting is contempt of court, and nothing else. The man is either drunk
or insane.'
Stradella was speechless with anger and disgust, and his face grew very
pale.
'Open his effects,' the Legate said, when the clerks' pens stopped
moving.
Two of the sbirri at once unstrapped the valises, and laid out the
contents on the long table on each side of the Legate, neatly and in
order. One of the bags contained clothes and personal effects, but the
other was almost entirely filled with manuscript compositions and a
supply of paper ruled for writing music. It also contained a leathern
pouch stuffed full of gold ducats.
'There we have it!' exclaimed Monsignor Pelagatti. 'Is the goldsmith
come?'
'He is waiting, your worship,' answered the officer at the door.
The goldsmith was ushered in, a grey-haired man, who still stooped when
he had finished his bow to the Legate. The latter ordered him to sit at
the table and test the gold coins one by one.
'This fellow,' said Monsignor Pelagatti, by way of explanation, 'is the
famous Sicilian coiner of counterfeit money, Bartolo. Push the good
ducats towards me, if you find any, and the false coin towards the clerk
at your elbow.'
The goldsmith glanced curiously at Stradella, and then took his small
block of basalt and a stoneware bottle of nitric acid from a leathern
bag he carried, slung on his arm. The spotted cat seemed interested in
these objects, and after having gazed at them placidly for half a
minute, rose with deliberation, walked along the edge of the table, and
sniffed at the stone and the goldsmith's fingers. It then crossed to the
Legate and sat down on his left, surveying the prisoner with apparent
satisfaction.
The Legate's eyes followed with keen interest the operations of the
expert, who took one coin after another from the pouch, rubbed it on the
basalt, poured a drop of acid on the yellow mark made by the gold, and
then examined the wet spot closely to see how the colour changed; and he
shook his head each time and pushed ducat after ducat towards Monsignor
Pelagatti, but not a single one towards the clerk. The Legate's crooked
fingers played absently with the coins as they came to his side,
arranging them in little piles, and the piles in patterns, almost
without glancing at them. The goldsmith worked quickly, but the ducats
were many, for Stradella had supplied himself plentifully with money
before leaving Venice, and had drawn the whole balance of the letter of
credit he had brought with him from the banking-house of Chigi in Rome.
The sbirri and the two clerks eyed the gold longingly. Stradella stood
motionless between his keepers, wondering what would happen next, and
never doubting but that the whole proceeding had been inspired by
Pignaver.
But what had really happened can be explained in a dozen words, and will
show that the sharp little Legate was acting in perfectly good faith.
The truth was that a notorious Sicilian counterfeiter who was described
as a pale young man with black hair, and who went by the name of
Bartolo, was really travelling in the north of Italy, and had been heard
of at Vicenza, whence it was reported that he had set out in haste for
Padua. The spies who were in pursuit of him learned in the latter city
that a dark young man with a pale complexion had hired an extra post for
Rovigo, in a very great hurry, and was spending money liberally, and
after that it had been easy to trace Stradella to the inn at Ferrara.
One of the spies had ridden in before daybreak and had warned the
innkeeper not to let the musician have horses at any price, and had then
given information at the castle, which the Legate had received before
sunrise, for he was an early riser. For the rest, he always followed the
time-honoured custom of considering every prisoner guilty till he was
proved innocent. In his opinion any criminal could call himself a
singer, and could very likely sing, too, if his life depended upon it.
Moreover, a hundred gold Apostolic florins had been offered for the
capture of Bartolo, and the Legate meant to have a share of the prize
money.
By the time the goldsmith had tested all the coins and found these good,
Monsignor Pelagatti had also counted them over several times.
'Three hundred and ninety-one ducats,' he said, dictating to the clerks,
'were found amongst the criminal's possessions, and were confiscated to
the Papal Treasury.'
'But they are all good,' objected Stradella.
'Precisely,' answered the Legate. 'If anything was wanting to prove you
guilty, it was this fact. Could any one but an expert counterfeiter have
in his possession three hundred and ninety-one ducats without a single
false one, in these dishonest days? But a coiner, whose nefarious
business it is to exchange counterfeit coin for genuine, is not to be
deceived like an ordinary person.'
'But I drew the money from an honest bank in Venice----'
'Silence!' cried the Legate in a squeaky voice.
'Silence!' roared the gaolers and the sbirri with one accord, all
looking at the musician together.
The spotted cat rose sleepily at the noise, arched its back and clawed
the oak table, by way of stretching itself.
'The counterfeiter Bartolo is duly committed for trial and will be sent
to Rome in chains with the next convoy of prisoners,' said the Legate,
dictating. 'Till then,' he added, speaking to the officer, 'put him into
one of the cells at the foot of the Lion Tower. He is a criminal of some
note.'
It was worse than useless to attempt any further protest; the gaolers
seized the singer by his arms again, one on each side, and in ten
minutes he was left to his own reflections, locked up in a pitch-dark
cell that smelt like a wet grave. They had brought a lantern with them,
and had shown him a stone seat, long enough to lie down upon, and at one
end of it there was a loose block of sandstone for a pillow, a luxury
which had been provided for a political prisoner who had passed some
months in the cell under the last of the Este marquises, some eighty
years earlier, and which had doubtless been forgotten.
After he had been some time in the dark, Stradella saw that a very
feeble glimmer was visible through a square grated opening which he had
noticed in the door when the gaoler was unlocking it before entering.
Even that would be some comfort, but the unlucky musician was too
utterly overcome to think of anything but Ortensia's danger, and his own
fate sank to insignificance when compared with hers; for he was sure
that Pignaver's agents must have seized her as soon as he himself had
been taken away, and he dared not think of what would happen when they
brought her back to Venice and delivered her up to her uncle. That they
would murder the defenceless girl he did not believe, and besides, it
was much more likely that Pignaver would prefer to torment her to death
at his leisure, after assassinating her lover. Stradella guessed as much
as that from what he knew of the Senator's character.
As for himself, when he was able to reflect soberly after being several
hours alone in the dark, the singer came to the conclusion that he was
in no immediate danger of his life, though he owed his present
imprisonment to his enemy. It looked as if he stood a good chance of
being sent to Rome, as Bartolo the counterfeiter, to be tried; but once
there, he would have no difficulty in obtaining his liberation, for he
was well known to many distinguished persons, including Cardinal Altieri
himself. Pignaver had cleverly cut short his flight in order to take
Ortensia from him, but to accomplish this the Senator had been obliged
to put off the murder he doubtless contemplated. Stradella's life would
probably be attempted in Rome, as soon as he was free, but meanwhile he
could not but admit that the Senator had succeeded in making him
exceedingly uncomfortable, merely from a material point of view. It was
not likely that prisoners were sent to Rome more than once a month, and
the last convoy had perhaps left yesterday. He might have to spend
thirty days in the cell.
As the hours passed he forgot himself again, and thought only of
Ortensia. In his imagination he fancied her already far on her way to
Rovigo in the jolting coach with her captors; in the very coach,
perhaps, in which he had brought her to Ferrara only last night. He
called up her face, and saw it as pale as death; her eyes were half
closed and her lips sharp-drawn with pain. He could hardly bear to think
of her suffering, but not to think of her he could not bear at all.
He did not know how long he had been locked up, when he noticed that the
faint glimmer at the grated hole was almost gone, and suddenly he felt
horribly hungry, in spite of his misery, for it was nearly twenty-four
hours since he had tasted food. The gaolers had brought a little bread
and a jug of water, and had set them down on the ground at one end of
the bench. He felt about till he found them, and he gnawed the tough
crust voraciously, though it tasted of the damp earth on which it had
lain since morning.
After a long time he fell asleep with the stone pillow under his head.