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Stradella

by F. Marion Crawford · English · Gutenberg #23299 · 640,948 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Stradella

Author: F. Marion Crawford


        
Release date: November 3, 2007 [eBook #23299]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23299

Credits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Barbara Kosker, Jeannie Howse
        and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRADELLA ***




Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Barbara Kosker, Jeannie Howse
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net









STRADELLA

[Illustration: 'But Ortensia did not even hear him, and sat quite still
in her chair' (_See p. 271._)]

STRADELLA



BY

F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "FAIR MARGARET,"
ETC., ETC.




_ILLUSTRATED_





New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1909

_All rights reserved_




COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.


COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.


COPYRIGHT, 1909.
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.


Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909.



Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

'But Ortensia did not even hear him, and sat quite still
  in her chair'                                     _Frontispiece_

                                                       FACING PAGE

'"This is the celebrated Maestro Alessandro Stradella
  of Naples"'                                                   11

'The footman came back at last with a white face'               87

'The two Bravi faced the watch side by side'                   243

'"The profession has two branches. We take lives, you
  take purses"'                                                282

'He began to look about for lodgings'                          307

'Trombin advanced upon him slowly, looking more like an
  avenging demon than a man'                                   373

'She sat up in his arms and framed his face in her hands'      406




CHAPTER I


The Senator Michele Pignaver, being a childless widower of several
years' standing and a personage of wealth and worth in Venice, made up
his mind one day that he would marry his niece Ortensia, as soon as her
education was completed. For he was a man of culture and of refined
tastes, fond of music, much given to writing sonnets and to reading the
works of the elegant Politian, as well as to composing sentimental airs
for the voice and lute. He patronised arts and letters with vast credit
and secret economy; for he never gave anything more than a supper and a
recommendation to the poets, musicians, and artists who paid their court
to him and dedicated to him their choicest productions. The supper was
generally a frugal affair, but his reputation in aesthetic matters was so
great that a word from him to a leader of fashion, or a letter of
introduction to a Venetian Ambassador abroad, often proved to be worth
more than the gold he abstained from giving. He spoke Latin, he could
read Greek, and his taste in poetry was so highly cultivated that he
called Dante's verse rough, uncouth, and vulgar--precisely as Horace
Walpole, seventy or eighty years later, could not conceive how any one
could prefer Shakespeare's rude lines to the elegant verses of Mr. Pope.
For the Senator lived in the age when Louis XIV. was young, and Charles
II. had been restored to the throne only a few years before the
beginning of this story.

Pignaver was about fifty years old. There is no good reason why a
widower of that age, robust and temperate, and hardly grey, should not
take a wife; perhaps there is really no reason, either, why he should
not marry a girl of eighteen, if she will have him, and where neither
usage nor ecclesiastical ordinances are opposed to it, the young lady
may even be his niece. Besides, in the present case, the Senator would
appear to his peers and associates to be conferring a favour on the
object of his elderly affections, and to be crowning the series of
favours he had already conferred. For Ortensia was the penniless child
of his brother-in-law, a scapegrace who had come to a bad end in Crete.
The Senator's wife had taken the child to her heart, having none of her
own, and had brought her up lovingly and wisely, little dreaming that
she was educating her own successor. If she had known it, she might have
behaved differently, for her lord had never succeeded in winning her
affections, and she regarded him to the end with mingled distrust and
dislike, while he looked upon her as an affliction and a thorn in his
side. Yet they were both very good people in their way. She died
comparatively young, and he deemed it only just that after enduring the
thorn so long, he should enjoy the rose for the rest of his life.

When Ortensia was seventeen and a half her uncle announced his
matrimonial intentions to her, fastened a fine string of pearls round
her throat, kissed her on the forehead, and left her alone to meditate
on her good fortune.

Her reflections were of a mixed character, however, and not all
pleasant. The idea that she could disobey or resist did not occur to
her, of course, for the Senator had always appeared to her as the
absolute lord of his household, against whose will it was useless to
make any opposition, and she knew what an important person he was
considered to be amongst his equals.

But in her inmost heart she knew that he was not really what he made
people think he was. She had a ready sense of humour, and she felt that
under his ponderous disguise of importance he was quite a ridiculous
person. He was miserly to meanness; he was as vain as an ape; he was a
man who had flattered himself, and had been flattered by others, into a
sort of artificially inflated doll that imposed on many people and
deceived almost all. And yet Ortensia was aware of something in him that
frightened her a little, though she could not quite tell what it was.
Possibly, like many externally artificial people, there was a cruel side
to his character. There are men who become ridiculous as soon as they
cease to be dangerous, and who are most dangerous when they fear that
they are just going to become a laughing-stock.

Ortensia reflected on these things after her uncle had given her the
pearls and had kissed her on the forehead. The pearls were very
beautiful, but the kiss had been distinctly disagreeable. The Senator
waxed his moustaches to make them stay up, as many men did then, and
she thought that if a cold hard-boiled egg, surrounded with bristles
like a hair-brush, had touched her forehead, the sensation would have
been very much the same, and she shook her delicate shoulders in disgust
at the thought, and slowly rubbed the offended spot with two fingers,
while her other hand played with the string of pearls in her lap.

It would be a great thing, of course, to be a senator's wife and the
mistress of such a house as the Palazzo Pignaver, which she had first
entered as a little orphan waif ten years ago. But to be kissed daily,
even on the forehead, by her Uncle Michele, would be a high price to pay
for greatness. She supposed that he would kiss her every day when she
was married, for that was probably a part of marriage, which had always
seemed to her a mysterious affair at best. Young girls looked forward to
it with delight, and old women seemed to look back on it with
disappointment, while those who were neither old nor young never said
anything about it, but often seemed to be on bad terms with their
husbands.

But Ortensia was a fatalist, like most Venetian maidens of her time.
Whatever the master of the house and the head of the family decided
would be done, and there could be no question of resistance. In due
course she would marry her uncle, she would hold her tongue like other
married women while he lived, and when he was dead she would be at
liberty to tell her friends that her marriage had been a disappointment.
Of course Uncle Michele would die long before her--that was one
consolation--and the position of a rich widow in Venice was enviable.

Happily she had six months before her, during which time her education
was to be completed; happily, too, a large part of it now consisted in
music lessons, for she had a sweet voice, and the Senator meant that she
should astound Venetian society by singing his own compositions to them,
accompanying herself. She had great beauty, as well as some real talent,
and he judged that the effect of his verses and music, when rendered by
her, would be much enhanced by the magic light in her hazel eyes, by the
contrasted splendour of her auburn hair and ivory complexion, and by the
pretty motion of her taper fingers as they fluttered over the strings.
He looked forward to exhibiting the loveliest young woman in Venice, who
should sing his own songs divinely to an admiring circle of envious
friends. That would be a magnificent and well-deserved triumph, after
his long career as a gifted amateur and critic--and it would cost
nothing. Why should a wife be more expensive than a niece? His first
wife's brocades and velvets could easily be made over for Ortensia; and
for that matter the young girl expected nothing better, since she had no
family of her own to give her a great carved chest full of beautiful new
clothes and laces.

Uncle Michele did not condescend to honour her with another kiss, after
the formal occasion on which he had announced her betrothal to himself.
But he showed a growing interest in her music-lessons as the weeks
passed, and he frequently made her sing pieces of his own to him,
correcting each shade of expression most fastidiously, and occasionally
performing the more difficult passages himself, with many affected
gestures and self-approving waggings of his head, though his voice was
tuneless and harsh, and his ear anything but perfect.

'Of course,' he would say, 'it is only to give you an idea!'

The idea which he conveyed to Ortensia was that of a performing bear
eating strawberries; but she managed to keep her countenance, and not to
mimic him when she repeated the passage herself, profiting by his
instruction. It was the sort of music that rich amateurs used to write
by the ream, subject to the unacknowledged 'corrections' of a well-paid
professional; but the girl's sweet voice and genuine talent made the
airs sound passable, while her dreamy eyes and her caressing
pronunciation of the trivial words did the rest. It was mere talent, for
she hardly understood what she was saying, or singing, and she felt not
the least emotion, but she seemed to kiss the syllables as they passed
her lips.

The first bloom of young womanhood was already on her cheek, but the
frosts of childhood's morning had not melted from her maiden heart.

One day she was sitting just at the edge of the sunshine that poured
upon the eastern carpet from the high loggia. The room overlooked the
garden court of the palace, and the palms and young orange-trees, in
vast terra-cotta pots, laden with yellow fruit, had already been
brought out and set in their places, for it was the spring-time; the
sunshine fell slanting on the headless Ariadne, which was one of the
Senator's chief treasures of art, and the rays sparkled in the clear
water in the beautiful sarcophagus below. The lilies had already put out
young leaves too, that lay rocking on the ripples made by the tiny jet
of the fountain. There were long terra-cotta troughs full of white
violets, arranged as borders along the small paved paths, and red
flower-pots were set symmetrically in squares and rings and curves with
roses just blooming, and mignonette, and carnations that still lingered
in the bud. It was a formal little garden, but in the midst of its
regularity, neither in the centre, nor at any of the artificially
planned corners and curves, but out of line with all, one cypress reared
up its height. Even as Ortensia saw it, looking out from her loggia, it
overtopped the high wall that divided the garden from the canal and the
low houses on the other side, showing its dark plume sharp and clear
against the sunlit sky; but when the morning and the evening breezes
blew in spring and summer, it swayed lazily, and the feathery top waved
from side to side, and bent to the caressing air like a live thing.
Ortensia loved the tree better than anything else in the garden; even
better than the beautiful Greek Ariadne, which her uncle had himself
brought from Crete in one of his ships.

She was watching it now, and where the sunlight played in the tip, she
could see the golden and reddish lights of the cypress twigs through
the deep green. On her knees she held a large musical instrument all
made of ivory, and inlaid with black, a lute with eleven strings, but of
the shorter kind with the head of the keyboard turned back at a right
angle. It lay in her lap, in the ample straw-coloured folds of her silk
skirt, and its broad white ribband was passed over her shoulder, and
pressed on her lace collar on the left side of her neck.

At a considerable distance from her, a small, middle-aged woman in grey
sat in a high chair, bending forward over the little green pillow on
which she was making bobbin lace.

There was a good deal of furniture in the large room, and it belonged to
different periods; some of it was carved, some inlaid, some gilt in the
new French fashion. A great Persian carpet of most exquisite colours
softened and blended by age lay on the floor, and the curtains of the
doors were of rich old Genoa velvet, with palm leaves woven in gold
thread on a faded claret ground.

The time lacked about an hour of noon, and in the deep stillness the
trickling of the tiny fountain came up distinctly from the garden.

Something had just happened which Ortensia did not understand, and she
had let her lute sink in her lap, to lean back and think, and wonder,
watching the familiar outline of the dark cypress against the open sky.

She had been learning a song by a new composer, of whom she had never
heard till now, and the manuscript lay open on a cushioned stool beside
her. For a time she had followed the notes and words carefully with her
voice, picking out the accompaniment on her lute from the figured bass,
as musicians did in those days. At first it had not meant much to her;
it was difficult, the intervals were unexpected and strange, she could
not find the right chords, the words would not quite make sense, and
some of them were unfamiliar to her.

But she was patient, and she had talent, and she had tried again and
again, very soft and low, so that the woman in grey had nearly fallen
asleep over her lace, nodding visibly and recovering herself each time
with a little grunt.

Then, all at once, the breath of spring came in, like the breath of
life, with the warm scent of the garden below, and the sunlight had
stolen across the Persian carpet to her feet. She turned from the
manuscript she had been studying, and without it her fingers suddenly
found the chords, and her lips the words, and the melody floated out
with them into the stillness, low, trembling, and passionate as the
burden of a love-dream, a wonder to hear.

But she scarcely heard it herself, for it came unconsciously. The
meaning had dawned upon her unawares, and she understood without ears,
as if the music were all in her heart, and much nearer to her life than
it could come by hearing alone.

It stirred delicious depths within her; the spring and the sun and the
melody waked that in her which had slept the long sleep of childhood,
while her beautiful outward self was maturing to the blossom.

She understood, and yet she did not; it was a bewildering joy, but it
was a longing; it was an exquisite satisfaction, yet it was also a
secret, unspeakable wish; it was the first thrill of a feeling too
exquisite for words to describe, but with it there came a mysterious
forelightening of something unknown that troubled her maiden peace.

Her lips quivered, her voice died away to a whisper, while her body
vibrated still, like the last string she touched on the lute; a sudden
warmth came to her face then, and sank suddenly away, and all at once it
was all past, and she was gazing at the dark top of the cypress, and a
strange, listless, half-sweet loneliness had come upon her, wherein
nothing mattered any more, nor could anything ever matter again.

That was what had just happened. But the woman in grey had not noticed
it, though she was wide awake now and busily plying her bobbins.

Then the heavy velvet curtain before the door was lifted, and a man's
footstep was heard on the marble floor, and there was another step after
it. Ortensia turned her head carelessly against the back of the chair to
see who was coming, and then rose quickly to her feet.

The Senator had entered and was ushering in a man she had never seen, a
handsome young man of five-and-twenty or so, with a thoughtful face and
deep-set eyes, of a rather dark complexion, as if he came from the
south; his manner was grave, and he was soberly dressed in a black
velvet coat with purple silk facings, and wore a plain broad collar of
linen instead of the fashionable lace; he was a man of middle height and
well made, and he moved easily. In his left hand he carried a musical
instrument in a purple bag.

[Illustration: '"This is the celebrated Maestro Alessandro Stradella of
Naples"']

He bowed very low as soon as the Senator stood still before Ortensia.

'This,' said the master of the house, 'is the celebrated Maestro
Alessandro Stradella of Naples, by far the greatest musician and
composer in Italy, who has very kindly consented to hear you sing, and
to give you a few lessons if he finds you sufficiently advanced.'

Ortensia was surprised, and anything but displeased, but she showed no
emotion. The young man before her was the composer of the song she had
been studying, the very one that had so strongly disturbed her a few
minutes ago; this of itself would have been interesting, even if he had
not been such a singularly handsome young man.

The woman in grey, who was her nurse, had risen too, and was looking at
the musician with more curiosity than might have been expected in a
sober person of her years.

Ortensia bent her head a little, in acknowledgment of the introduction,
but said nothing. She saw, however, that Stradella had already noticed
the manuscript of his own music on the stool beside her.

'You may sing "Amor mi dice" to the Maestro,' said the Senator, taking a
seat. 'A little composition of my own,' he added, with a self-satisfied
smile, for the musician's information. 'I have taught it to my niece
myself.'

For one instant Stradella's eyes met the young girl's and she returned
their glance. It was enough; they already understood each other.
Doubtless the composer had met his patron more than once and knew his
weakness and what to expect now. Ortensia resumed her seat, and drew her
full skirt into folds on her knee, for her lute to rest on. Stradella
sat down at a little distance and looked at the Persian carpet, and she
could not help seeing that he had remarkably well-turned legs and
ankles, and wore very well-made shoes of soft purple leather with
handsome chiselled silver buckles. She felt inclined to raise her eyes
to his face again, but resisted the temptation, and turned resolutely
towards her uncle as she struck the opening chords of the accompaniment.

The musician now looked up and watched her. At first he put on the
amiable smile which professionals keep especially for amateurs, and as a
matter of politeness he listened attentively, till he had convinced
himself that the song, as he had expected, belonged to that large class
of which the chief characteristic is a general resemblance to everything
of the kind that was ever written before, and will ever be written
hereafter. This being settled after hearing a few bars, Stradella
quietly gave himself up to the pleasure of looking at the young girl,
though he often turned towards the Senator, who expected admiration at
every full close, and meant to get it.

He thought he did; for the effect of watching Ortensia was to bring to
the musician's own face an expression of such genuine delight that
Pignaver could not fail to be pleased, since he attributed it to the
charm of his composition. He was in the seventh heaven. Here, at last,
was a true genius, able to appreciate his talent as it deserved. Here
was a master fit to teach such noble music, as it should really be sung.
Ortensia should profit by the opportunity, even if Stradella asked a
silver ducat for each lesson. For once, money was no object to the
Senator. The triumph his young bride would certainly bring him, in
singing his songs after being taught by Alessandro Stradella, would be
worth much more than gold.

She sang the stuff as creditably as it deserved, her voice was fresh and
true, and her touch on the lute was at once light and sure. With such a
face, what did it matter that the song was exactly like a thousand
others? The musician praised it so enthusiastically that the Senator was
almost satisfied for once.

'You flatter me,' he said, bowing a little in his chair, spreading out
his hands in a gesture of deprecation and grinning like a pleased
monkey.

'Not in the least, my lord, I assure you,' answered Stradella with great
emphasis. 'If I were capable of flattering you, I should not deserve the
confidence you place in me, in desiring me to give this gifted young
lady a few lessons.'

Ortensia pretended to be busy with her lute, bending over it and softly
trying the upper strings, though they were already perfectly in tune.
But she was listening to the young master, and she thought she had
rarely heard a voice that had more winning tones in speaking, or an
accent that pleased her better. And as she bent down she could just see
his well-turned ankles and purple leather shoes.

'It would be my wish,' the Senator said, 'that you should give her some
hints as to the performance of a number of my songs. Yes, I have devoted
much time to your art as well as to poetry. Hitherto I have written
ninety-seven songs, both words and music. Yes, I have been industrious.
If my niece had my industry she would know them all by this time.'

Ortensia bent still lower, till her face almost touched the frets of the
instrument, and she was biting her lip; but Stradella was imperturbable.

'I trust you may be spared to contribute many more beautiful
compositions to the art treasures of our country,' he said politely.

'I hope so,' answered Pignaver with gravity.

And then--Ortensia looked up, and for the second time her eyes met the
musician's, and she felt that he and she already understood each other.

With many patronising smiles on the Senator's part, and many flattering
expressions of admiration and respectful salutations from Stradella, the
two parted and Pignaver took himself off, leaving his niece to take her
first lesson under the guardianship of the nurse, who moved her chair so
that she could watch the pair while she was busy with her lace.

For a few seconds neither spoke, and they looked at each other in
silence as if making better acquaintance through their eyes alone, by
which they had quickly reached a first degree of understanding.
Stradella's face was quite grave, while Ortensia's lips were just
parted, as if she were ready to smile, if he would. But he would not,
and he was the first to speak.

'How shall we begin?' he asked.

Ortensia hesitated and touched the strings of her lute idly, as it lay
across her knee, just kept from slipping down by the broad ribband.

'When you came,' she said at last, 'I had been trying to learn a song of
yours. It is beautiful. Will you show me how to sing it?'

She blushed faintly, and he smiled; but he shook his head.

'I saw it lying there as soon as I came in,' he said. 'But I understand
it to be the Senator's wish that we should study his music rather than
mine.'

She was disappointed, and did not try to hide it; but she was not used
to asserting her own will, and her uncle's word had always been law in
his house, to be obeyed whether he were present or not. As for
Stradella, he would have sung his own song for her with delight, but he
distrusted the woman in grey, who might be a spy for all he knew. He
carefully withdrew his lute from the purple bag and began to tune the
strings. It was a fine instrument, made in Cremona, but by no means so
handsome in appearance as Ortensia's ivory one. It was differently
designed, too, being much longer, with a double fret-board and no less
than nineteen strings.

'Let me see,' Stradella said, when he was ready. 'That song of the
Senator's you just sang--how was it?'

He struck chords, bent low over the lute, softly hummed a few snatches
of the melody, and then, to Ortensia's surprise, he began to sing the
piece as if he knew it well. He sang softly, without the least effort,
and his voice seemed neither high nor deep, but there was a tone in it
that the young girl had never heard before, and that sent a thrill to
her heart at the very first note. She bent forwards, watching him with
parted lips and eyes full of wonder, scarcely breathing till he finished
the stanza and spoke to her again.

'Is that it?' he asked quietly, and he smiled as he looked at her.

'But you know it!' she cried. 'If I had ever heard you I should not have
dared to try to sing before you!'

'I never heard it before,' Stradella answered, 'but I catch any tune
easily. Shall we study it a little?' he went on, before she could speak
again. 'I will accompany you at first, and I will stop you now and then,
where I think you might do better. Shall we?'

Again he smiled, but this time it was by way of encouragement, and he at
once began a little prelude on the lute.

'You will sing better if you stand up,' he suggested.

She rose, took her own lute from her neck, and stood resting one hand on
the high back of her chair, turning her face from him; for she was
afraid, now that she had heard him. It was as bad as the worst
stage-fright; her tongue was paralysed, her limbs shook under her, she
shivered with cold in the sunshine, and her forehead was damp. Yet she
had not felt the slightest shyness a quarter of an hour earlier, when
she had first sung the piece.

'Sing with me,' he said quietly, and he began the song again.

Presently she took courage and the notes came, unsteadily at first, but
then true and clear; and Stradella's own voice died to a whisper, and
she went on alone, to the accompaniment he played.

'You see,' he said, as she paused, 'it is better to stand. Now I will
show you how to make one or two little improvements.'

So the lesson went on, and she conscientiously tried to do exactly what
he taught her; and their eyes met often, but that could not be helped,
for he showed her how to vary the quality of her tone by movements of
the mouth, and to do this she had to watch his lips and he was obliged
to look at hers, which is sometimes a dangerous exercise for young
people, even at a first meeting. For acquaintance grows and ripens
precociously when two people are busy together so that they depend on
each other at every instant, as teacher and pupil, or as the chief actor
and actress in a play, or as a man and a woman who are suddenly thrown
together in adventure or danger.

When Stradella put his lute back into the purple bag at last, telling
Ortensia that she had sung enough for one morning and that she must not
tire her voice, she felt as if this could not possibly have been her
first meeting with him. His face, his tone, his gestures, the way he
held his lute, were all as familiar to her already as if he had given
her half-a-dozen lessons; and when he was gone and she sat once more in
her chair looking at the top of the cypress tree against the noonday
sky, she saw and heard all again, and then again; but she neither saw
nor heard her nurse, who had laid aside the lace-pillow and was standing
at her elbow telling her that it was time for the mid-day meal and that
her uncle did not like to be kept waiting. The nurse spoke three times
before Ortensia heard her and looked up.

'They say well that music is a thief,' observed the middle-aged woman in
grey, enigmatically, as she stood with her hands folded under her black
apron, gazing intently at Ortensia's face.

The young girl laughed as she rose.

'Poor old Pina!' she answered, tapping her forehead with one finger as
if to say that the nurse was weak-minded.

But Pina smiled, and made three gestures, without saying a word: first
she pointed to herself, then she shook her forefinger, and lastly she
jerked her thumb back in the direction of the door that led to the
Senator's apartments. The weak-minded body was not Pina, but her master,
since he had brought that handsome singer to teach Ortensia, who had
never before exchanged two words with any young man, handsome or plain,
except under the nose of the Senator himself; and that had always been
at those great festivals to which the Venetian nobles took their wives
and daughters, even when the latter were very young, to show off their
fine clothes and jewels, though it meant comparing them publicly with
quite another class of beauties.

For the Venetian maxim was that women and girls were safe in public or
under lock and key, but that there was no salvation for them between
those two extremes.

But, in the eyes of Pignaver, a musician was not a man, any more than a
servant or a gondolier could be. Where a Venetian lady was concerned,
nothing was a man that had not a seat in the Grand Council; that was the
limit, below which the male population consisted of sexless creatures
like domestics, shopkeepers, and workmen.

Furthermore, the vanity of Pignaver raised him above all other
competitors as high as the Campanile stood above Saint Mark's and the
Ducal Palace, not to mention the rest of Venice, and the idea that
Ortensia, who had been informed that she was to be the wife of his
transcendently gifted and desirable self, could stoop to look at a
Sicilian music-master, would have struck him as superlatively comic,
though his sense of humour was imperfect, to say the least of it.

Even if the great man could have set aside all these considerations for
a moment, so as to look upon Stradella as a possible rival, he would
still have believed that the presence of Pina during the lessons was a
trustworthy safeguard against any 'accident to Ortensia's affections,'
as he would have expressed the danger. He had unbounded faith in Pina's
devotion to him and in her severity as a chaperon. On the rare
occasions when the young girl was allowed to leave the palace without
her uncle, Pina accompanied her in the gondola, and sometimes on foot as
far as the church of the Frari, where she went to confession once a
month; but, as a rule, she had her daily airing with the Senator
himself, meekly sitting on his left, and pretending to keep her eyes
fixed on an imaginary point directly ahead, as he insisted that she
must, lest she should look at any of the handsome young nobles who were
only too anxious to pass as near as possible on her side of the gondola.

For, though she was not eighteen years old, the reputation of her beauty
was already abroad; and as it was said that she was to inherit her
uncle's vast wealth, there were at least three hundred young gentlemen
of high degree who desired her now, since no one knew that the Senator
had determined to marry her himself. Their offers were constantly
presented to him, sometimes by their fathers or mothers, and sometimes
by ingenious elderly friends who undertook such negotiations for a
financial consideration. But Pignaver always returned the same answer,
politely expressing his thanks for the honour done his niece, but saying
that he had 'other views for her.'

Pina, however, hated him for reasons of her own, which he had either
forgotten, or which he disregarded because, in his opinion, she was
under the greatest obligation to the house. Pina's hatred of her master
was more sincere, if possible, than her affection for Ortensia, and her
contempt for his intelligence was almost as profound as his own belief
in its superiority over that of other men.

These facts explain why Pina acted as she did, though they could not
possibly excuse her evil conduct in the eyes of righteous persons like
the Senator and others of his class, who would have thought it a
monstrous and unnatural thing that a noble Venetian girl should fall in
love with a music-master, though he were the most talented and famous
musician of his day.

This was what Pina did. In the middle of the fourth lesson she
deliberately laid aside her lace-pillow and left the room, well knowing
that her master would have her thrown out of the house at once, and
ducked in the canal besides, if he ever heard of it. But he was a man of
unchanging habits. Each time that Stradella came he led him in, sat
down, listened while Ortensia sang one of his own pieces, and then went
away, not to return that morning. So when Pina was quite sure that his
coming and going had settled to a habit, she boldly ran the risk, if it
was one, and left the two together.

Alessandro Stradella was a Sicilian on both sides, though he had been
born in Naples, and he wasted no time when his chance came. He tried no
little trick of word or glance, he did not gaze into Ortensia's eyes and
sigh, still less did he boldly try to take her hand and pour out a
fervid declaration of his love; for by this time, without the exchange
of a word, the girl had taken hold of his heart, and he saw her eyes
before him everywhere, in the sunlit streets and canals, and at night,
in the dark, and in his dreams.

He did none of these things. He was the master singer of his age, and he
himself had made divine melodies that still live; he knew his power, and
he trusted to that alone. The velvet curtain had scarcely fallen behind
Pina as she went out, when he bent over his lute, and with one look at
Ortensia began to sing. But it was not one of those ninety-seven
compositions on which the Senator prided himself: it was a love-song of
Stradella's own that he had made within the week in the secrecy of his
own room, and no one had heard it yet; and it was his masterpiece.

Ortensia felt that it was hers. That strange voice of his that was not
deep, yet never seemed high-pitched, breathed softly through and through
her being, as a spring breeze through young leaves, more felt than
heard, yet a wonder to hear. The notes vibrated, but did not tremble;
they swelled and grew strong and rang out fiercely, but were never loud;
and again they died away, but were not quite silent, and lingered
musically in the air, though a whisper would have drowned them.

The girl's eyes grew dark under their drooping lids, and her face was
luminously pale; her delicate young lips moved now and then
unconsciously, and they were icy cold; but she felt a wild pulse beating
at her throat, as if her heart were there and breaking to be free.

She felt his look on her too, but she could not answer it, and when the
song ended she turned from him and laid her white cheek against the high
back of the chair, looking out at the cypress against the sky. She
could not tell whether it was pain or pleasure she felt, but it was
almost more than she could bear, and her hands strained upon each other,
clasped together just on her two knees.

In the silence the velvet curtain was lifted and fell again, and Pina's
step was heard on the marble floor.

'I have brought you some water to drink,' said the nurse quietly; and
speaking to both, 'Your throats must be dry with so much singing!'

Ortensia took one of the tall glasses and drank eagerly before she
turned her face from the window.

'Thank you,' she said, recovering herself and smiling at Pina.

'And you, Maestro?' asked the latter, offering Stradella the drink.

'Thank you,' he said, 'but it is too much. With your permission!'

And then, with the effrontery of youth in love, he deliberately took the
almost empty glass from which Ortensia had drunk, poured a little into
it from the other, and drank out of it with a look of undisguised
gratitude on his handsome face. Thereupon a little colour came to
Ortensia's ivory-pale cheek, and Pina smiled pleasantly. Instead of
setting down the salver, however, she took it away, leaving the room
again.

'How beautiful that song is!' Ortensia said in a low voice, and glancing
at Stradella almost timidly, when they were again alone. 'How more than
beautiful!'

'It is yours,' answered the musician. 'I made it for you--it is not even
written down yet.'

'For me!' The exquisite colour deepened twice in her face and faded
again as her heart fluttered.

'For you,' Stradella answered, so softly that she barely heard.

The nurse came back just then, having merely left the salver outside to
be taken away. In her judgment things had gone far enough for the
present. Then the mid-day bells clanged out, and it was time to end the
lesson, and Stradella put his lute into its purple bag and bowed himself
out as he always did; but to-day he kept his eyes on Ortensia's, and
hers did not turn from him while she could see his face.




CHAPTER II


Love-dealings and Deceit, says an ancient poet, were born into the world
together, daughters of Night; and several dry-hearted old critics, who
never were in love and perhaps never deceived anybody in their lives,
have had so much trouble in understanding why these divinities should
have made their appearance in the world at the same time, that they have
suspected the passage and written pages of learned trash about what
Hesiod probably wrote instead of 'Love-dealings,' or the pretty word for
which I can think of no better translation.

Pignaver was not a particularly truthful person himself, but he exacted
strict truthfulness from others, which is good business if it is bad
morality; and Ortensia had been brought up rigidly in the practice of
veracity as a prime virtue. She had not hitherto been tempted to tell
fibs, indeed; but she had always looked upon doing so as a great sin,
which, if committed, would require penance.

Yet no sooner had she fallen in love with Alessandro Stradella than she
found herself telling the most glaring untruths every day, with a
readiness and self-possession that were nothing short of terrifying. For
instance, her uncle often asked her to tell him exactly what she had
been studying with the music-master, and he inquired especially whether
the latter ever sang any of his own music to her. To these questions she
answered that she was too anxious to profit by the lessons she was
receiving, through her uncle's kindness, to waste the precious time in
which she might be studying his immortal works.

She used those very words, without a blink, and Pignaver swallowed the
flattery as a dog bolts a gobbet of meat. She added that the Maestro
himself was so enthusiastic about the Senator's songs that he now cared
for nothing else.

Yet the truth was that Stradella had summed up his criticism in a few
words.

'They are all so much alike that they almost produce the impression of
having been written by the same person.'

That was what he had really said, and Ortensia had laughed sweetly and
cruelly; and even Pina, busy with her lace-pillow, had smiled with evil
satisfaction in her corner, for she was a clever woman, who had been
educated above her present station, and she understood.

Further, the Senator asked whether Stradella ever attempted to enter
into conversation with his pupil, between one piece of music and the
next.

'Conversation!' cried the young girl indignantly. 'He would not dare!'

If Pignaver noticed the slight blush that came with the words, he set it
down to just anger at the mere suggestion that his future wife could
stoop to talk with a music-master. Yet, being of a suspicious nature,
he also made inquiries of Pina, whom he unwisely trusted even more than
Ortensia herself.

'Conversation, Excellency? Your Excellency's niece in conversation with
a fiddler, a public singer, a creature little better than a mountebank!
My lady Ortensia would as soon talk with a footman! Shame, my lord! The
suspicion is unworthy! I would scarcely answer to the young man himself,
if he spoke to me, though I am only a poor servant! A fiddler, indeed! A
lute-strummer, a catgut-pincher, and a Neapolitan into the bargain!'

Thus did Pina express herself, and while her rather hard grey eyes
seemed to flash with anger, her mouth, that had once been handsome,
curved in lines of scorn that were almost aristocratic.

It is as easy to deceive a very vain person in matters where vanity has
a part to play as it is to cheat a blind man, and Pignaver was
hoodwinked without difficulty by his niece and her nurse, and the love
that had sprung up between the two young people almost at first sight
grew at an amazing rate while they sang and looked at one another over
their lutes.

But the first word had not been spoken yet, though it had been sung many
times by both, separately and together. It was not that Stradella
doubted how it would be received, if he spoke it when Pina was out of
the room, nor was Ortensia not eager for it long before it came. Yet she
could not be the first, and he would not, for reasons she understood so
little that at last she began to resent his silence as if it were a
slight. Few Italian girls of her age have ever known that sensation,
which is familiar enough to many women of the world.

Stradella found himself faced by a most unexpected circumstance. He was
not only in love; that had happened to him at regular intervals ever
since he had been barely fourteen years old, when a beautiful Neapolitan
princess heard him sing and threw her magnificent arms round his neck,
kissing him, and laughing when he kissed her in return; and she had made
him the spoilt darling of her villa at Posilippo for more than three
weeks.

Since then he had regarded his love affairs very much as he looked upon
the weather, as an irregular succession of fine days, dark days, and
stormy days. When he was happily in love, it was a fine day; when
unhappily, it was stormy; when not at all, it was dull--very dull. But
hitherto it had never occurred to him that any one of the three
conditions could last. Like Goethe, he had never begun a love-affair
without instinctively foreseeing the end, and hoping that it might be
painless.

But to his amazement, though he had been prepared to be as cheerfully
cynical and as keen after enjoyment as usual, he now felt, almost from
the first, that there was no end in sight, or even to be imagined. The
beginnings had not been new to him; it was not the first time that
beauty had stirred his pulse, or that a face had awakened sympathy in
that romantic region of feeling between heart and soul which is as far
above the brute animal as it is below the pure spirit. Before now his
voice had brought fire to a woman's eyes, and her lips had parted with
unspoken promises of delight. That was what had happened on the first
day when Pina had left him alone with Ortensia and he had sung to her;
that had all been normal and natural, and only not dull because the
fountain of youth was full and overflowing; that might have happened to
any man between twenty and thirty.

He had gone away light-hearted after the first lesson, with music in his
heart and ears. Was not every beginning of new love a spring that
promised summer, and sometimes a rich autumn too, all in a few weeks,
and with only a dull day or two to follow at the end, instead of winter?

But the next time he saw Ortensia it was a little different, and after
that the difference became greater, and at last very great indeed, till
he no longer recognised the familiar turnings in light love's short
path, and the pretty flowers he had so often plucked by the way did not
grow on each side within easy reach, and the fruit of the garden seemed
endlessly far away, though he knew it was hidden somewhere, far sweeter
than any he had tasted yet. For it was a maiden's garden in which no man
had trod before; and the maiden was of high degree, and could not wander
along the path with him, yielding her will to his.

His light-heartedness left him then, his face grew grave, and his temper
became melancholy, for the first time in his life. He was only to give
her a few lessons, after all, and Pina would leave him with her for ten
minutes, scarcely more, each time he came. One minute would be enough,
it was true; if he spoke she would listen, if he took her hand she would
let him hold it. But what would be the end of that? A kiss or two, and
nothing more. When the lessons were finished he would be told by the
Senator that his teaching was no longer needed, and after that there
would be nothing. He might see her once a week in her gondola, at a
little distance; but as for ever being alone with her again in his life
for five minutes, that would be out of the question. Could he, a
musician and an artist, a man sprung from the people, even think of
aspiring to the hand of a Venetian senator's niece? In those days the
idea was ludicrous. And as for her, though she might be in love with
him--and he felt that she was--would she entertain for a moment the idea
of escaping from her uncle's house, from Venice, to join her lot with a
wandering singer's? That was still greater nonsense, he thought. Then
what could come of it all but a cruel parting and a heartache, since
this was real love and could not end in a laugh, like the lighter sort
he had known so well? She was a mere child yet, she would forget in a
few weeks; and he was a grown man, who had seen the world, and could
doubtless forget if he chose, provided there were never anything to be
forgotten beyond what there was already.

But if he should speak to her in one of those short intervals when they
were alone, if she stretched out her hand, if he clasped her to him, if
their lips met, things would not end so easily nor be so soon forgotten.
He had the careless knowledge of himself that many gifted men have even
when they are still very young; he knew how far he could answer for his
own coolness and sense, and that if he allowed himself to cross the
limit he would behave like a madman and perhaps like a criminal.

Therefore he set himself to be prudent till the lessons should be over,
and he even thought of ending them abruptly and leaving Venice. His
acquaintance with Ortensia would always be a beautiful recollection in
his life, he thought, and one in which there could be no element of
remorse or bitterness. He was not a libertine. Few great artists have
ever been that; for in every great painter, or sculptor, or musician
there is a poet, and true poetry is the refutation of vulgar
materialism. In all the nobler arts the second-rate men have invariably
been the sensualists; but the masters, even in their love affairs, have
always hankered after an ideal, and have sometimes found it.

When the Senator ushered in Stradella one morning and quietly announced
that the lesson was to be the last, Ortensia felt faint, and turned her
back quite to the open window, against the light, so that the two men
could not see how she changed colour. The nurse's hard grey eyes
scrutinised Pignaver's face for an instant, and then turned to
Stradella; he was paler than usual, but grave and collected, for the
Senator had already informed him that his services would be no longer
needed after that day.

Everything was to take place as usual. As usual, Ortensia was to sing
one of her uncle's ninety-seven compositions to him while Stradella
accompanied her; as usual, Pignaver would then go away; lastly, at the
customary time, Pina would go out for ten minutes and reappear with
water and sherbet.

Ortensia was shaking with emotion when the ordeal began, and for a
moment she felt that it was hopeless to try to sing. Some sharp
discordant sound would surely break from her lips, and she would faint
outright in her misery.

She was on the very point of saying that she felt a sudden hoarseness,
or was taken ill, when her pride awoke in a flash with a strength that
amazed her, the more because she had never dreamed she had any of that
sort. Stradella should not guess that she was hurt; she would rather die
than let him know that her heart was breaking; more than that, she would
break his, if there was time, and if she could!

She stood up by her chair and sang far better than she had ever sung
before in Pignaver's hearing; she threw life and fire and passion into
his mild composition, and she remembered every effective little trick
Stradella had taught her for improving the dull melody and for
emphasising the commonplace verses it was meant to adorn.

The Senator was surprised and delighted, and Stradella softly clapped
his hands. She hated him for applauding her, yet she was pleased with
the applause.

'What music, eh?' cried the Senator, with a grin of satisfied vanity.

'It is music indeed!' answered Stradella with a grave emphasis that
gave the words great weight. 'It has been my endeavour to do justice to
it, in instructing your gifted niece.'

'You have succeeded very well, dear Maestro,' Pignaver answered with
immense condescension. 'The world will be much your debtor when it hears
my melodies so charmingly sung!'

With this elephantine compliment the Senator nodded in a patronising way
and took himself off, while Stradella bowed politely at his departing
back.

When the curtain fell before the door, the singer turned to his pupil
and sat down in his accustomed seat, with great apparent
self-possession. Ortensia watched him, and her new-born resentment
increased quickly.

'What will it please you to study to-day?' he inquired, just as easily
as if it were not the very last time.

She felt much inclined to answer 'Nothing,' and to turn her back on him,
but somehow her pride found a voice for her, as indifferent as his own,
though she avoided his eyes and looked out of the window.

'It does not matter which song we take,' she answered. 'They are very
much alike, as you have often said!' She even laughed, quite lightly and
carelessly.

It was his turn to be surprised. Her tone was as natural and unstrained
as a child's. At the sound of it, he asked himself whether this slip of
a thing of seventeen years had not been acting emotions she had not
felt, and laughing at him while he had been singing his heart out to
her. Any clever girl could twist herself on her chair, and lay her cheek
to the back of it, turning away as if she were really suffering, and
twining her hands together till the little joints strained and turned
even whiter than the fingers themselves.

At the thought that she had perhaps made a fool of him, Stradella nearly
laughed, and he came near being cured then and there of his latest and
most serious love-sickness. His lute was lying on his knees; he began to
strum the opening chords of Pignaver's dullest composition, in the dull
mechanical way the music deserved. He thought the effect might be to
make Ortensia laugh and to change her mood.

But, to his annoyance, she rose, laid one hand on the back of the chair,
and proceeded to sing the song with the greatest care for details,
though by no means with the dashing spirit that had made him applaud her
first performance that morning. She was evidently singing for study, as
if she meant to profit by his teaching to the very last moment.

He accompanied her mechanically, wondering what was going to happen
next, and when she had finished he eyed her with curiosity, but said
nothing. She seemed completely changed.

'Why do you look at me in that way?' she asked with great calmness. 'Did
I make any bad mistake?'

He smiled, but not very gaily.

'No,' he answered, 'you made no mistakes at all. You are admirable
to-day! I quite understand that my services are no longer needed, for I
can teach you nothing more!'

'I have done my best to improve under your instructions,' answered
Ortensia primly.

She rested both her elbows on the back of the chair now and looked
calmly out of the window at her favourite tree. Stradella pretended that
his lute needed tuning, turned a peg or two and then turned each back
again, and struck idle chords.

'When you are rested,' he said, 'I am at your service for another song.'

'I am ready,' Ortensia answered with a calmness quite equal to his own.

Pina, watching them from a distance and neglecting her lace-pillow, saw
that something was the matter, and got up to leave the room at least
half-an-hour earlier than usual; but because the Senator might come back
unexpectedly during this last lesson, she went out through the other
door beyond which a broad corridor led to his own apartments, and she
stood where she could not fail to hear his steps in the distance if he
should return.

Ortensia was still standing by her chair when Stradella left his seat
and came towards her, holding his lute in one hand. It did not suit his
male dignity to take leave of her without finding out whether she had
been playing with him or not, though half-an-hour earlier he would not
have believed it possible that vanity could enter into any thought he
had of her.

He stood quite near her, and she met his eyes; she was rather frightened
by his sudden advance, and shrank back behind the chair.

'You will find me in your loggia to-night, outside that window,' he
said, pointing as he spoke. 'I shall be there an hour before midnight,
and I shall wait till it is almost dawn.'

He paused, keeping his eyes on hers. She had started back at the first
words, and now a deep colour had risen in her cheeks; he could not tell
whether it meant anger or pleasure.

'I shall be there,' he repeated; 'I shall be there to say good-bye, if
you will have it so, or to come again if you will. But if you do not
open the window, I will come twice again at the same hour, to-morrow and
the night after that, and wait for you till dawn.'

Ortensia turned from him without speaking and went out into the covered
loggia. It was her instinct to look at the place where he was to be, and
for the moment she could not answer him, for she did not know what to
say; she herself could not have told whether she was angry or pleased,
she only felt that something new was happening to her. Her mood had
changed again in a few seconds.

He followed her to the threshold of the window, and stood behind her in
the flood of sunshine, so near that he could whisper in her ear and be
heard.

'There is love between us,' he said. 'We have seen it in each other's
eyes ever since we first met, we have heard it in one another's voices
every day! I will not leave you without saying it for us both, just as
much for you as for myself! But I must say it all many times, and I must
hear it from you too. Therefore I shall be here an hour before midnight
to wait, and you will come, and you will open the window when you see
me standing outside, and we shall be together! And if you will, we need
never part again, for the world is as wide as heaven itself, for those
who love to find a safe resting-place.'

She raised one hand as if to stop him, without turning round. While he
spoke, she had turned pale again by soft degrees, and she drew her
breath sharply once or twice, with an effort. He caught the hand she put
out and kissed it slowly three times, as if he would leave the print of
his young lips on the smooth white skin for a memory. She let him have
his way, though she shook her head, and would not turn to him.

He was so near her that he could have bent and kissed her, just above
the broad lace collar, behind her little ear, where the strong auburn
hair sprang in silken waves from the ivory of her neck. The scent of
lavender and violets rose from her dress to his nostrils in the warmth.

'You will come,' he whispered.

'How can I?' she asked, very low.

Then they heard Pina's voice behind them, not loud, but sharp and
imperative.

'The Senator is coming back!' she called to them, as she dropped the
curtain after entering and hastened to her seat.

Stradella crossed to the other side of the window in an instant, raising
the lute he still carried in one hand.

'Sing!' he commanded, and he was already playing the accompaniment to
one of Pignaver's everlasting songs.

As pride had helped her before, sheer desperation strengthened her now,
and, without moving from her place, she began to sing, not very steadily
at first, for her heart was beating terribly fast, but carefully, as if
she were studying.

A moment later Pignaver noiselessly lifted the velvet curtain and looked
in, confident that he had surprised them, and perfectly satisfied with
the result. Beyond the fact that they were standing in the sunshine to
sing and play, on opposite sides of the great window, everything was
precisely as he had expected. When the song was ended, he revealed his
presence by a word of approbation, and he installed himself to hear the
rest of the lesson. When it was over, he himself accompanied Stradella
to the stairs.




CHAPTER III


Ortensia heard the bells strike midnight. She was lying on her back, her
eyes wide open, and staring at the rosette in the middle of the pink
canopy over her head. She could see it plainly by the dim light of the
tiny oil-lamp that hung above the kneeling-stool at which she said her
prayers. She had said them with great fervour to-night, and had gone to
bed with the firm intention of repeating the last one over and over to
herself till she fell asleep.

But in this she had not succeeded. She had heard the bells at eleven
o'clock and had been wide awake; at that moment Stradella was stepping
over the marble balustrade into the loggia. She tried to say her prayer
again, but it was of no use at all; she knew that he was standing there
just outside the great closed window, waiting, and that to see him she
had only to pass through her dressing-room, where Pina slept on a
trestle-bed, which was taken away every morning. There was only one door
to Ortensia's bedroom, which was the last on that floor of the house;
for it was proper that a noble Venetian girl should be safely guarded,
and every night the Senator locked both the outer doors of the
sitting-room where she had her lessons, and he kept the key under his
pillow. Pina and Ortensia were in prison together from ten o'clock at
night till seven every morning, and the girl could not leave her own
room without passing Pina.

To the Senator's insufficient imagination two things were out of the
question; he was convinced that no one could get up into the loggia from
below, and he was persuaded that Pina, unswerving in her devotion to his
interests and honour, would guard Ortensia as jealously as the dragon
guarded the Golden Fleece. Moreover, as to getting in by the window, a
man would first have to get access to the walled garden below, which
Pignaver regarded as another impossibility, for the wall was high, he
himself kept the key of the postern that opened on the canal, and the
gardener entered through the house.

Nevertheless Stradella was standing in the loggia at eleven o'clock;
Ortensia was sure he was there, and at midnight she was still lying on
her back, staring up at the canopy, with outstretched hands that
clutched the edges of the bed on each side. Her idea of what was
possible was quite different from her uncle's; the one thing which
seemed to her out of the question was that she should lie where she was
much longer, and she only succeeded by giving herself the illusion that
her own hands held her down by main force. By and by they would be
tired, she supposed, and then she would have to go to him.

She held fast and listened, hoping to hear the bells again, as if an
hour could slip by as in a moment while she was awake; and suddenly she
started, and one hand left its hold, for she heard a noise at her own
window, a sharp tap, followed by another and another. Then there came a
sharp rattling, and she knew that it was only raining, and tried to
laugh at herself. The first big drops of the squall had struck the panes
like little pebbles. Her hand went down to the edge of the bed again and
clutched the mattress desperately, while she listened.

He was in the loggia, and the rain was driving in upon him as it was
driving against her window. He would not move; he would wait there in
the wet till dawn, for he had said so and she believed him. It was hard
to hold herself down now, knowing that he was being wet through. He must
have left his cloak behind, too, for he could not have been able to
climb if hampered by the folds.

It was pouring now, and there was wind with the rain, since otherwise it
could not have made such a noise against the glass. She had often stood
inside the closed window of the sitting-room when it was raining from
the same quarter, and she had seen how the gusts drove the water in
sheets against the panes, till it ran down and made a river along the
loggia and boiled at the grated gutter-sinks through which it ran off.
He was perhaps nearly up to his ankles in the little flood by this time,
but he would not go away for that. She knew he would wait.

Her hands let go and she was suddenly sitting on the edge of the bed,
feeling for her slippers with her bare feet; with bare arms raised, she
instinctively put up both hands to her hair at the same time, to be sure
that it would not come down, for Pina always did it up at night in a
thick coil on the top of her head.

She heard the rain even more distinctly now; it was coming down in
torrents. She looked up at the little lamp burning quietly before
Robbia's blue and white bas-relief of the infant Christ, and she thought
of her prayers again; but it was positively wicked to let any one stand
outside in the rain for hours, to catch his death of cold.

She slipped a silk skirt over her thin night-dress and put on her
fur-edged dressing-gown over that, for those were the days of wonderful
dressing-gowns, quilted with down, bordered with sable or ermine, and
trimmed with lace. She drew the cords tightly round her slim waist, and
she was ready.

For a moment she hesitated; there was no night-light where Pina slept,
nor in the day-room beyond; the stormy night must be so dark that she
would not be able to find her way to the windows. That thought decided
her, and she stopped to light a small hand-lamp. Then she cautiously
opened the door, shaded the flame from Pina's face with one hand, and
passed quickly through the dressing-room. The nurse lay in her
trestle-bed, well covered up, and did not move, and Ortensia shut the
next door noiselessly.

She hastened to the window, and when she got there she started; his
dripping face was flattened against the pane, so white and ghostly that
it was like a vision of him dead, but his eyes were alive and were
watching her, and when she was quite near the window he smiled. She set
down her lamp on the floor at a little distance and began to undo the
fastenings with the greatest caution, fearing to make any noise; but as
soon as the bolt was drawn the wind forced the frame open so violently
that it almost knocked her down. Stradella sprang in with the driving
wet and only succeeded in shutting the window after several efforts,
during which the lamp was almost blown out.

He stood before her then bare-headed, and the water ran down upon the
marble floor from his drenched clothes. He had neither hat nor cloak,
and his dark hair was matted with the rain; but his face was radiant.

'You are frozen! you are soaked through and through!' she cried
anxiously. 'You will get an illness, and I can do nothing! There is not
even a little wine here to warm you.'

He smiled and shook his head.

'Never mind me,' he answered. 'Or let me take your hand in mine for a
moment and the chill will pass!'

He put out his own, and when she felt that it was cold and wet, she took
it in both of hers and tried to dry it, and chafed it between her palms,
till he drew it away rather suddenly with a low laugh.

'Thank you,' he said. 'That is enough!'

'No, let me warm it better, or give me the other!'

'There is too much fire in your touch,' he answered. 'It burns through
cold and wet. It would burn through ice itself!'

His tone made her forget her first anxiety for him; but she felt that
she must explain why she was there, if only to quiet her own conscience.

'I would not have come if it had not rained,' she said, avoiding his
eyes, 'and now I must not stay with you. As soon as it stops you must
let yourself out and go away. It was only when I heard the rain----'

'Blessings on the rain!' answered Stradella devoutly. 'I never loved it
before!'

'You should not have come on such a night--I mean----'

She stopped and he saw her blush in the faint light that came up from
the lamp on the floor.

'I had no choice, since I had promised,' he answered. 'And I promise you
I will come to-morrow again----'

'Oh, do not promise--please!' She seemed distressed.

'Yes, I will come to-morrow and every night, until you come away with
me. I will bring you a disguise in which you can travel safely till we
are over the Venetian border and free.'

'But I cannot--I will not!' she protested. 'You speak as if--as if----'

'As if we loved each other, heart and soul, for life or death,' he said,
not letting her go on, and taking her hand again. 'I speak as if we had
been born into the world only for that, to love and live and die
together! As if there were no woman for me but you in all the earth, and
no man for you but me! As if our lips had promised and had met!'

She was drinking his words, and her eyes were in his as he bent to her
face. But then she started, in returning consciousness, and tried to
draw back.

'No, no!' she cried, in sudden maiden distress. 'Not yet! It is too
soon!'

He drew her nearer to him in spite of herself, with both her hands in
his, till he could speak close to her ear.

'Tell me you do not love me, love! Tell me you will not feel one little
regret if you never see me again! Come, say it in my ear, sweetheart!
Say that if I fall and am killed in climbing down when I leave you, it
will make no more difference to you than if a dog were drowned in the
canal! Is it not true, dear? Then say it quickly! Only whisper it in my
ear, and I will go away and never come back. But you must say it----'

'Yes--please go!' she answered faintly. 'Go at once----'

'No, you must say the rest first,' he insisted, and his lips were almost
touching her ear. 'Say it after me: "I hate you, I despise you, I loathe
you, I do not care whether you live or die." Why do you not begin to
repeat the words, heart of my heart?'

She turned suddenly in his hold, holding her head far back, wide-eyed
and very pale. But she could not speak, or would not, foreknowing what
must happen now that had never happened to her before.

He smiled faintly, and when he spoke again it was a sweet breath she
felt, rather than a sound that reached her ear.

'Will you not say it?' he said, and his face came slowly nearer to hers.
'Would it not be true? No? Then say "I love you, love," or speak no word
aloud but let your lips make syllables on mine, and, like the blind, the
touch will tell me what you say.'

Her eyes closed of themselves, the speaking breath came nearer, and
then, as lightning flashes through a summer's night, flame ran from her
lips to her feet, and to her heart from her hands that lay in his and
felt his life stirring.

It was innocent enough, a girl's first love-kiss, and the kiss of a man
who loved in earnest for the first time, but it seemed a great and a
fearful thing to her, irrevocable as lost innocence itself; and he,
whose masculine light-heartedness made not much of mere kisses, and
laughed at the thought that love could do much wrong, felt that he had
given a pledge he must redeem and a promise he must honourably keep.

It was innocent enough. He held her by the hands as he bent and kissed
her, for the water was still trickling down his drenched clothes, and
her pretty dressing-gown would have been spoiled if he had even put one
arm round her waist. There was a dash of the ridiculous in that, which
would have made them both laugh if they had not been so simply and
utterly in earnest. And then when he let her hands go and she sank upon
a chair, he could not even sit down beside her, because the velvet seat
would have been ruined. So he stood bolt upright in the midst of the
little puddle the water had made round his feet.

She covered her face with her hands for a moment, not in any shame, but
trying to make herself think.

'You must go now,' she said presently, looking up at him. 'It is enough
to make the strongest man fall ill, to be drenched as you are. You will
lose your voice----'

'What does that matter, if I have found you?' he asked. 'But I will do
as you wish, for it has stopped raining at last, and it is growing
late--you will lose half your sleep to-night.'

'Or all of it!' she answered softly, thinking of his kiss. 'How did you
get up to the loggia? Have you a ladder?'

He had none. He had got over the outer wall by means of a rope with a
grappling-hook fastened to it, which he had thrown up from the canal.
Thence he had reached the loggia without much difficulty, for in the
short intervals during the lessons he had more than once looked down and
had seen that it was quite possible, and more a question of steady
nerves than of great strength and activity. At the level of the loggia a
stone ledge ran round the palace, and along this it was easy to creep on
hands and knees. He had drawn himself up to it from the top of the wall,
which joined the building at the corner of the garden.

'It is easy enough,' Stradella answered. 'And now good-bye. To-morrow
night again, love, an hour before midnight.'

She rose and they joined hands again.

'I ought to tell you not to come,' she said in a weak voice, like a
child's. 'But how can I say it--now--now that----'

If any other word would have followed, it could not. Once more her
closed eyes saw sweet summer lightnings, and the thrill of the flame ran
from her lips through every vital part.

He turned from her at last to unfasten the window, and for a moment she
was too dazed to stop him, though she would have kept him still. Then
she tried to follow him out into the loggia, but he would not let her.

'No, love,' he said, 'your wet shoes would tell tales.'

'But there is danger!' answered Ortensia, holding him by his drenched
sleeve. 'I must know you are safe!'

'When I reach my boat I will whistle softly,' he said.

He was gone in the dark, and she was listening by the open window, her
heart beating so that it seemed as if it must drown any other sound. But
he made no noise as he crept along the ledge to the corner, and then
cautiously let himself down upon the top of the wall, dropping astride
of it then to pull himself along in that position by his hands till he
found the grappling-hook of his rope. The wall rose perpendicularly from
the canal, and he had moored his little skiff to the only ring he could
find at the base of it, some distance from the corner.

Ortensia listened anxiously for the promised signal, and peered into the
darkness, her hand on the window, ready to close it as soon as she knew
he was safe.

But suddenly she heard the sound of oars striking the water, and a
yellow glare rose above the wall from the other side.

'Who goes there?' asked a deep voice.

No one answered, but instantly there was a heavy splash, as of a body
falling into the canal.

Half-an-hour later Ortensia was lying on her back again, staring up at
the rosette in the canopy. But her face was distorted with horror now,
and was whiter than the pillow itself.

In the day-room, by the light of Ortensia's little lamp, Pina was on her
knees, carefully mopping up the water that had run down from Stradella's
clothes, and drying the marble floor.




CHAPTER IV


Soon after sunrise the Senator came and unlocked the doors of Ortensia's
day-room. That had always been his custom, for he kept the key under his
pillow, as has been said, and he would as soon have thought of sending a
servant to liberate the girl and the woman in the morning as of letting
any one but himself lock them in at night.

'The master's eye fattens the horse,' he said to himself, quoting a
Spanish proverb without much regard for metaphors.

It was his wont to open the door, and to look into the large room before
going away, for he was sure that his eye would at once detect the
slightest disarrangement of the furniture, or anything else unusual
which might warrant suspicion.

But this morning he did more: he entered the room, shut the door behind
him and looked about. He went to the window and examined the fastenings
carefully, opened it wide, went out into the loggia and looked down into
the garden. Everything was in order there, not one flower-pot had been
upset by the squall, not a branch of the cypress-tree was broken or even
bent.

Then he came in again and tapped sharply at the door of the
dressing-room where Pina slept. She appeared instantly, already dressed;
but she laid one finger on her lips, to keep him silent, and came out
into the room before she spoke.

She said that Ortensia had been kept awake half the night by the storm,
and was now sound asleep.

'A thief tried to get into the house after midnight,' said Pignaver.
'Did you hear any noise?'

'I should think I did!' cried Pina promptly. 'I was going to tell your
lordship of it. I was up with the young lady, and when the first squall
was over and she was more quiet, I thought I would just come in here to
see if any water had run in under the window as it sometimes does. Just
then I saw a glare of light beyond the garden wall, and I opened the
window at once and heard the Signor of the Night challenging a thief,
and directly afterwards there was a splash in the canal, and then
silence, and the light went away slowly. I hope the man was drowned, my
lord!'

While she was speaking, Pignaver had nodded repeatedly, for her little
story bore the stamp of truth.

'I grieve to say that the villain got away,' he answered. 'At daybreak
an officer from the Signors of the Night was waiting downstairs to
inform me of the attempt. The Signors' boat searched the canal for the
body of the man during more than an hour, but found nothing. He must
have been on the garden wall when he was seen, and he threw himself into
the water to escape, leaving the rope by which he had climbed up.'

'Mercy!' cried Pina. 'We might have all been murdered in our beds!'

'No one shall get upon that wall again,' answered the master of the
house. 'I will have the coping stuck full of broken glass from end to
end before night.'

'Would it not be well to set a watch in the garden, too, my lord? We
should sleep soundly then!'

'We shall see, we shall see,' answered Pignaver, repeating the words
slowly, as he went off. 'We shall see,' he said once more, as he went
out.

As soon as he was gone, Pina hastened to Ortensia's room.

'He is safe!' she cried as she entered. 'They searched the canal for a
whole hour, and could not find him!'

Ortensia uttered a little cry and sat up in bed suddenly; but she could
scarcely believe the news, till Pina had repeated all that the Senator
had said. When she heard that the wall was to be crowned with broken
glass, however, her face fell, for she saw in a flash of imagination how
Stradella would climb up confidently in the dark and would cut his hand
to the bone when he grasped the jagged points on the top.

'You must warn him!' cried Ortensia. 'You must go out and find him, and
tell him not to come again!'

'I will find him,' answered Pina.

They had never spoken of Stradella before the night that was just past.
Day after day, while the lessons were going on, Pina had left the two
together, and Ortensia had silently accepted the nurse's conduct without
understanding its cause; she was too proud to speak of it when they were
together, or too shy, but she was sure from the first that Pina would
stand by her, though it was the woman's sole business never to let her
be out of her sight for a moment.

'And what shall I tell him?' Pina asked. 'What message shall he have
from you? I will faithfully deliver your words.'

Ortensia covered her eyes with one hand, leaning on the other behind
her, to steady herself as she sat up.

'Tell him that--that we must wait--and hope----'

'For what?' asked Pina bluntly. 'For the end of the world?'

Ortensia uncovered her eyes and looked up, surprised at the change of
tone.

'Will you wait till you are the Senator's wife?' Pina asked, her grey
eyes hardening suddenly. 'Will you hope that by that time the broken
glass on the wall will have softened in the rain till it will not cut
his hands? Or that you will be more free when you are married? You will
not be. That is not the way in Venice. I am a serving-woman, and,
besides, I am neither young nor pretty--I was once!--so I may go and
come on your business and walk alone from the Piazza to Santa Maria
dell' Orto. But you noble ladies, you are born in a cage, you live in
bondage, and you die in prison! Will you wait? Will you hope? What for?'

'What do you mean?' asked Ortensia in a frightened voice. 'Am I never to
see him again? Is my message to him to be a good-bye?'

'Good-bye is easily said,' Pina answered, shaking her head
enigmatically.

The young girl let herself sink back on her pillow, and turned her face
against her bare arm, so that at least her eyes were hidden from the
nurse.

'I cannot!' she whispered to herself, drawing a breath that almost
choked her.

'Yes,' Pina repeated harshly, 'it is easy to say farewell; and as for
any hope after that, the devil lends it us at usury, and if we cannot
pay on the day of reckoning he takes possession!'

'What cruel things you say!' Ortensia cried in a half-broken tone,
turning her head slowly from side to side, with her face hidden in the
soft hollow of her elbow.

'What hope will there be for you, child, when you are your uncle's wife?
The hope of dying young--that is all the hope you will have left!'

The woman laughed bitterly, and Ortensia felt that she was going to cry,
or wished that she could, she was not quite sure which.

'Therefore I say it is folly to send a man such a message. "Wait and
hope," indeed! How long? His lifetime? Yours? You are both young, and
you may wait and hope fifty years, till your hair and teeth fall out,
and you discover that there is nothing in hope after all! Better say
good-bye outright, though it kill you! Better try and forget than make a
martyrdom of remembering! Better anything than hope!'

The grey-eyed woman's voice shook with an emotion which Ortensia could
not have understood if she had noticed it, for she was dreadfully
miserable just then. Pina bent down over her, smoothed her hair and
patted her bare arm softly.

'Why hope for what you can take, if you have the courage?' she asked,
dropping her voice to a whisper, as she glanced behind her towards the
door.

Ortensia lifted her head and looked up, her lips parting in surprise.

'Why should you waste time in waiting?' Pina asked, still whispering.
'That is the message I would send if I were you,' she added. 'Shall I
take it?'

'But how?--I do not understand--he cannot come to me here.'

'We can go to him,' answered the nurse. 'Is it not easy? The next time
you confess at the Frari he will meet us. It is simple enough. Two long
brown cloaks with hoods, such as old women wear, a few hundred yards to
walk from the Frari to the Tolentini, his gondola there, and out by
Santa Chiara to the mainland and Padua--who shall catch us then? You are
young and strong, and I am tough; we shall not die of the fatigue; and
by the next morning we shall all three be out of Venetian territory.
What is easier?'

Ortensia listened to this bold plan in silence, too much surprised to
ask why Pina was so ready to propose it, and a little frightened too,
for she was a mere girl, and all the world beyond Venice was a
mysterious immensity of Cimmerian gloom in the midst of which little
pools of brilliant light marked the great and wonderful places she had
heard described, such as Rome, Florence, and Milan, and royal Paris, and
imperial Vienna.

'But my uncle would send men after us,' Ortensia objected. 'The Council
of Ten will do anything he asks! They will give him soldiers, ships,
anything! How can we possibly escape from him? We shall be caught and
brought back!'

Pina smiled at such fears.

'Beyond the Venetian border they can do nothing,' she said. 'Do we mean
to rob the Senator or murder him, that Venice should send an ambassador
to claim us for trial under the laws of the Republic? Is it a crime for
young people to love, and to run away and marry?'

'You do not know how powerful my uncle is,' Ortensia said.

Pina's face changed at once, and her expression became stony and
impenetrable.

'You are wrong,' she answered in a hard voice. 'I know he is powerful.
But if you fear him, as I do not, then wait and hope! Wait and hope!'

She laughed very strangely as she repeated the words, and her voice
cracked on the last one, with a discordant note that frightened
Ortensia, who was weary and overwrought.

'What is it, Pina?' asked the young girl quickly. 'What has happened?'

The nurse was already herself again, and pretended to cough a little.

'It is nothing,' she said presently. 'Something in my throat, just as I
was speaking. It often happens. And as for what we were speaking of,
there is no hurry. I will find the Maestro Alessandro before noon, and
warn him not to come near our garden wall again, and I will tell him
from you anything you wish, except that you do not care what becomes of
him, for that would not be true!'

She laughed again, but quite gently this time, and began to busy herself
about the room, making preparations for Ortensia to dress. The girl had
laid her head on her pillow again, looking up at the little pink silk
rosette in the middle of the canopy, and she was sure that it had a much
less sad look now than it had worn in the small hours by the flickering
night light. This seemed quite natural to Ortensia, for the familiar
little objects in a girl's own room have a different expression for
every hour of her life, to sympathise with each joy and sorrow, great or
small, and with every hope, and surprise, and disappointment.

But Ortensia herself could not have told what she felt just then, for it
was a sensation of startled unrest, in which great happiness and great
fear were striving with each other to possess her; and she knew that if
she yielded to the fear, she would lose the happiness, but that if she
opened her heart to the happiness, the fear would at once become a
terror so awful that she must certainly die of it.

She did not ask why her nurse was so ready to help her to run away. The
fact was enough. The plan looked easy, and Stradella was the man to
carry it out. She had only to consent, and in a week, or less, all would
be done, and she would be joined to him for ever. If she refused, she
must inevitably become the wife of Pignaver in a few months. She writhed
on her pillow at the mere thought.

Two hours later she was standing before the big open window, watching
three masons who were working on the top of the garden wall; they
spread thick layers of stiff grey mortar over the old coping, and then
stuck in sharp bits of broken glass, patting and pressing down the
cement against each piece, to make the hold quite firm. The murderous
splinters gleamed in the sunshine, and the men set them so near together
that one could hardly have laid a finger anywhere between them.

Ortensia watched the work, and now and then she looked at the top of the
cypress-tree, half-unconsciously wondering how many days would pass
before she saw it for the last time. But in the broad daylight she lived
over and over again every instant of that short night meeting that was
the greatest event in all her life. If she only drooped her lids a
little she saw Stradella there before her in his dripping clothes by the
rays of the little lamp, his face was close to hers again, her lips
touched his, and a delicate thrill ran through all her body and reminded
her faintly but very sweetly of what she had felt when he kissed her.

Meanwhile, Pina had found the musician's lodging, near Santa Maria dell'
Orto, which was a long way from the Senator's palace, for that quarter
lies on the extreme outer edge of Venice, looking across the lagoon
towards Murano. The door was opened for her by a hunchback, with a
large, intellectual face, beardless and strongly modelled, such a face
as Giotto would have taken as a model for a Doctor of the Church. The
sad blue eyes looked up to Pina's with cold gravity; but when she
explained that she came from the Palazzo Pignaver with a message, they
brightened a little, and the man at once stood aside for her to enter.

She touched his hump lightly for luck in passing, as every Italian woman
will to this day if she finds herself close to a hunchback in the
street, and this act is rarely resented. Pina thought it a piece of
unexampled good-fortune and of the best possible augury that the door
should have been opened by a 'bringer-of-fortune,' and the deformed
servant smiled gently at her touch, quite understanding. As he led the
way in, after shutting the outer door, Pina saw that nature had meant
him for a man of large proportions, and that his short stature was
chiefly due to the terrible deformity of his back and chest, for his
slightly bowed legs looked as sturdy as a street porter's, and his
powerful arms were so long that his hands swung well below his knees
when he walked. He wore plain brown clothes, and a broad white collar,
and Pina, who was observant, noticed the neatness of his dress.

Stradella received her with a politeness to which, as a serving-woman,
she was little accustomed, and he made her sit down in a comfortable
chair before asking for news of Ortensia. He himself was none the worse
for his wetting. The hunchback waited a moment as if expecting some
order, but Stradella only nodded to him, and he went out.

'My young lady is well, and greets you, sir,' Pina said in answer to the
Maestro's question, when the door was shut. 'She bids you be warned and
not try to climb the wall again, for it is already being crowned with
broken glass, which would cut your hands; and, moreover, the Senator
will probably set a watch in the garden, since you were fortunately
mistaken for a thief last night.'

Stradella listened to this business-like statement attentively, and
watched Pina's face while she was speaking. Her hard grey eyes met his
with perfect frankness.

'I see that you know everything,' he said. 'Tell me, then, how can I see
the lady Ortensia? Surely you are not come to tell me that I am not to
see her again.'

Pina unfolded her plan with a clearness and precision that first
surprised him, and then roused his suspicion. For a few moments after
she had ceased speaking he was silent, and examined his left hand with
thoughtful interest, gently rubbing with his thumb the callous places
made on the tips of his fingers by playing on stringed instruments. The
woman puzzled him, for he understood well enough from her tone that she
was not moved to help him merely by affection for her mistress, and she
could certainly not be supposed to be actuated by any sudden devotion to
himself. Besides, she must be aware that he was not a rich man, and
could not requite with any large sum of money such a service as she
offered. Her motive was a mystery. At last he spoke.

'Listen to me,' he said, watching her eyes. 'Your plan is good, and
perfectly feasible. If you are in earnest, it can be carried out
to-morrow, or whenever the lady Ortensia is ready. I will reward you as
well as I can, but you must remember that I am a poor musician and not a
Venetian senator----'

Pina's grey eyes were like steel, and her tone was cold, and not without
a certain dignity.

'Have I asked money of you, sir?'

'Oh, no!' answered Stradella readily. 'I only wished----'

She interrupted him, as if she were his equal.

'Even a servant may love something better than a bribe!' she said.

'I beg your pardon,' Stradella found himself saying, a good deal to his
own surprise, for he had not expected to hurt a serving-woman's feelings
by speaking of money. 'I misunderstood you.'

'You did indeed, sir!' answered Pina. 'All I ask of you is that you will
take me with you in your flight, for the Senator will certainly have me
murdered if I am left behind. Afterwards, if my lady does not want me, I
will look for another place, or live by lace-making.'

Stradella did not like the answer. The Sicilian character has grave
defects: it is revengeful, over-proud, violent, and sometimes cruel; but
it is generally truthful, and it is, above all, direct.

'You talk lightly of leaving your mistress,' said the musician. 'It is
not for love of her that you are ready to help us.'

Pina faced him fearlessly.

'You are right,' she answered. 'And yet she is the one living being I
love at all. Affection is not the only motive one may have, sir.'

'Nor love of money either,' Stradella said thoughtfully. 'The third is
hate. Last of all comes charity!'

'I am not a saint, sir,' said Pina. 'So you are answered. I hate my
master, and I have the right to hate him. That is my affair. If I dared
kill him, I would, but I should not have the courage to bear being
tortured if I were arrested and tried. I am only a woman, and I fear
bodily pain more than anything. That is why I did not kill the Senator
twenty years ago.'

The musician watched the cold, resentful face that had once been so
handsome, and though he could not guess her story he partly understood
her.

'You are frank,' he said. 'I see that you are in earnest, and that I can
trust you.'

'Trust me for anything, sir, except to resist torture,' Pina answered.
'I know what it is,' she added in a low voice, and avoiding his eyes as
if she were suddenly ashamed. 'As for my master,' she went on, turning
to Stradella again a moment later, 'I believe he would rather die than
be made a laughing-stock. I know that he yesterday announced to his
friends his betrothal to his niece, which has been a secret for several
weeks. I can hear the fine ladies and gentlemen laughing at him when
they learn that she has run away with her music-master on the eve of her
marriage! I can fancy the jests and the sarcasms the Senator will have
to put up with!'

She laughed herself, rather savagely, and Stradella smiled. Provided he
could carry off Ortensia, he did not even object to becoming the
instrument of a serving-woman's vengeance.

They agreed upon the details of the flight. On the next day but one,
being the feast of one of the many Franciscan saints, Stradella was to
sing an air at Vespers in the Church of the Frari. It was therefore
arranged that Ortensia and Pina should go to the church at that hour on
pretence of confession. At the monument of Pietro Bernardini, near the
main entrance, Stradella's hunchback servant would be waiting for them
with two brown cloaks and hoods, which they were to put on immediately.
They were then to kneel down quietly in the shadow and to wait till
Stradella had finished singing, when they were to leave the church
without waiting for him; his man would lead them through by-ways to the
gondola, which was to wait on the farther side of the Tolentini.
Stradella himself would slip away from the loft as soon as the
Benediction began, after Vespers, just when all the other musicians
would be very busy. He would probably reach the gondola almost as soon
as Ortensia and the two servants, and in five minutes they would be well
out of the city.

'And pray, sir,' asked Pina, 'what is your man's name?'

'Cucurullo,' Stradella answered.

'What a strange name!' Pina exclaimed.

'It is common enough in Naples.'




CHAPTER V


The Benediction was over, and the music had died away; the deep colours
of the ancient windows already blended into luminous purple stains, like
red wine spilt on velvet just before dusk; on the altar of the Sacrament
and all about it hundreds of wax candles were burning steadily, arranged
in dazzling concentric rings and shining curves. A young Dominican monk
had prostrated himself before the shrine, a motionless figure, half
kneeling and half lying on the steps.

The service was ended and the priests were gone. Some five hundred feet
shuffled slowly away from the blaze of light into the gloom and out
through the western door, and the brighter part of the church was
already deserted; but the young monk remained motionless, prostrate upon
the steps.

Two men stood by the choir screen, the broad-brimmed black hats they
held in their hands hanging so low that the draggled feathers swept the
pavement, their eyes directed towards the retiring crowd. They were two
shabby gentlemen of thirty years or under; though their clothes were not
yet actually torn or patched, most of their garments were already in
that premonitory state which warns the wearer of old breeches to sit
down with deliberation and grace, rather than with rash haste, and to
make no uselessly quick movements whereby an old sewing may rip open, or
the silk or cloth itself may split and gape in an unseemly manner,
furnishing a cause for mirth in better-clad men.

These two poor gentlemen were very unlike in appearance, except as to
their well-worn clothes and in respect of their rapiers, which were so
exactly similar that they might have been made for a duelling pair. Each
had a beautifully chiselled and polished bell-guard, with the Italian
cross-bar for the middle finger; each was sheathed in a good brown
leather sheath, with a chiselled steel shoe to drag on the pavement, and
each weapon hung from the wearer's shoulder-belt by two short chains of
well-furbished steel. The weapons looked serviceable, though they made
little pretence to beauty, in an age when most things worn by men and
women were adorned too much rather than too little.

But the men themselves were not alike. The shorter of the two was very
fair, with the complexion of a Saxon child, and unnaturally pink cheeks;
his nose turned up to a sharp point in the most extraordinary manner, so
that the pink openings of the nostrils seemed to stand upright above the
flaxen moustache, reminding one of the muzzles of certain wild cats. His
blue eyes were large, perfectly round, and often aggressively fixed, and
the long yellow lashes that bristled all round them might have passed
for rays. He wore a short pointed beard, and his very thick fair hair
was parted exactly in the middle and hung down below his dingy collar on
each side, perfectly straight and completely hiding his ears. There was
something both comic and disturbing in his aspect.

His companion was much less extraordinary in appearance, though any one
would have noticed him in a crowd as an unusual type. Instead of being
fair, he was as dark as a Moor; instead of turning up, his immensely
long and melancholy nose curved downwards over his thin lips like a
vulture's beak as if trying to peck at his chin. His eyes were shadowy
and uncertain under his prominent forehead and bushy eyebrows. His beard
was a mere black wisp, and the points of his scant moustaches were waxed
and stood up stiffly. He was the taller of the two, but his hat hung
lower in his hand than his friend's, for he had unnaturally long arms,
with a long body and short legs, whereas the fair man with the turned-up
nose was remarkably well-proportioned.

'Who says we have no good music in Venice?' inquired the latter at last,
fixing his round eyes on the other's face angrily, and pressing down the
hilt of his sword so as to make the point stick up behind.

His mouth looked ridiculously small, and his pink cheeks were very large
and round. His companion had long ago come to the conclusion that he was
very like one of those rosy cherubs that roll about the clouds in the
religious pictures painted in those times, blowing their trumpets till
they look as if their red cheeks must burst. Accordingly, he had
nicknamed his friend 'Trombin,' short for 'trombino,' a 'little
trumpeter.'

The dark man had always gone by the name of Gambardella, and seemed
quite satisfied with the appellation. The two had been companions in
their profession for several years, but neither knew much of the other's
antecedents, and both were far too proud, or too tactful, or too
prudent, to ask questions. They wore the dress and weapons of gentlemen,
and were extremely ticklish as to the point of honour; but they did not
now sit in the Grand Council of the Venetian Republic, though each
perceived that the other had once enjoyed that privilege, and had
forfeited it for the good of his native city. They travelled a great
deal, always together, and their friends knew that they met with
frequent and sudden changes of fortune. Their clothes were shabby now,
yet scarcely six months ago they had been seen strolling arm in arm in
Florence, in the Piazza della Signoria, arrayed in silks and satins and
fine linen. Only their weapons were never replaced in prosperity by
handsomer swords with gilded hilts, nor exchanged in adversity for
others of less perfect balance and temper.

'This Stradella sings like an angel,' said Gambardella after a moment.
'I hear that he composes good music himself, and that his new oratorio
will be performed before the Doge in Saint Mark's next Sunday.'

'If we had any money,' observed Trombin regretfully, 'we would hire a
house and ask him to supper.'

'Yes,' answered Gambardella in a melancholy tone. 'Our Venetians do not
understand these things. To them a man of genius like Alessandro
Stradella is just a music-master, and nothing else, a mountebank or a
strolling minstrel, to be hired and paid for his work, and dismissed
with a cool nod, like a servant. Trombin, let us leave Venice.'

'After we have heard the oratorio on Sunday----'

'Of course! Do you think I would miss that? But there is nothing for us
to do here just now, whereas in Genoa, or Florence, or even Rome, we
should not be always idle.'

'Venice is a dull place, compared with what it used to be,' Trombin
admitted, and he raised his right forearm, turning it till he could
examine the threadbare elbow of his coat in the glare of the candles.
'Another week will do it,' he added, after a careful examination. 'I can
already perceive the direction which the split will take.'

'I never sit down, if I can help it,' said Gambardella mournfully.

'It is a strange fact,' answered Trombin thoughtfully, 'that only those
nations that wear breeches sit upon chairs; the others squat on their
heels, though they have no breeches to save. This is a most
contradictory world.'

'I never could see any sense in it myself,' returned the other. 'Shall
we go to supper?'

'It pleases you to be humorous,' Trombin observed, and they moved away
from the great choir screen.

As they passed the blazing chapel of the Sacrament, each bent his knee
and crossed himself devoutly. The young monk was still prostrate before
the altar. Trombin looked at him sharply, and the two went on towards
the open door, through which the fading twilight outside admitted
barely enough light to distinguish the great pillars and tombs.

The two shabby gentlemen left the church and strolled slowly along the
edge of the canal. In the open air it was quite light still, and the
warm afterglow of the sunset had not quite paled yet.

'Supper!' said Trombin presently, dwelling on the one word in a musical
tone, and with the deepest feeling.

'That is the worst of Venice,' answered Gambardella, gloomily pulling
his soft hat over his eyes. 'One cannot even eat here without paying.
Now in Florence or Rome the people are more simple, and when you have
made your necessary debts, and creditors talk of imprisoning you, why,
then, you need only appeal to the Venetian Ambassador for protection,
and you are perfectly safe! But here! On the word of a gentleman, it is
enough to drive a man to highway robbery!'

Trombin laughed softly.

'Supper!' he said again, as musically and feelingly as before.

'You will make me mad with your whining!' cried Gambardella angrily.
'You will drive me to commit a crime!'

'One more will make no difference,' returned Trombin, with great
coolness. 'After the first, which sullied the virgin lustre of your
spotless soul, my dear friend, it is of no use to count the others, till
you come to the last--and may you enjoy many long years of health,
activity, and happiness before that is reached!'

'The same to you!' answered the melancholic man morosely, for he was
hungry, and in no humour for banter.

They stopped where a wooden bridge spanned the narrow canal, for all
bridges in Venice were not yet built of stone in the year 1670.

They had only one thought, and Trombin had already expressed it twice
with longing and regret. So far as mere hunger and thirst went, they
could satisfy themselves with bread, salt fish and cheese, and a draught
of water. They were not such imprudent gentlemen as to risk absolute
starvation in their native city, where they could get no credit, and
though they often lived riotously for months together, they invariably
set aside a sum which would furnish them with the merest necessities for
a considerable time. There was a system in their way of living, and they
stuck to it with a laudable determination which would have done honour
to better men. Enough was not as good as a feast, and since their income
was always uncertain, the only way to get any real enjoyment out of life
was to feast recklessly while they could, though only for a few days,
and then to pay for extravagance with the strictest asceticism, till a
rain of gold once more gladdened the garret to which they had retired to
fast.

They stood by the end of the bridge in silence a long time while it grew
dark, Gambardella gazing sadly at the dark water of the still canal at
his feet, while Trombin, who was of a more hopeful disposition, looked
at the evening star, just visible in the darkening west, between the
long lines of tall houses on each side of the canal. The reason why
they stopped just then with one accord was that to cross the bridge
meant to go home to their wretched lodging, though it was still so
early; and the prospect was not attractive. But they knew their
weakness, and long ago had bound themselves together by promises they
would not break. If they turned away from the bridge and followed the
narrow street, they would come in time to Saint Mark's Square, and they
would breathe the intoxicating air of pleasure that hung over it as the
scent of flowers over a garden at evening, and temptation would assail
them in one of at least twenty delightful shapes; and then and there the
little sum that stood between them and starvation would melt away in a
night, leaving them in a very bad way indeed.

Yet now they lingered just a few moments by the wooden bridge, dreaming
of riotous nights and glorious suppers, before going home to bread and
cheese and cold water. And just then fate sent to them the young
Dominican monk they had left prostrate before the altar in the church
when they came out; at all events it seemed natural to suppose that it
was he, though they had hardly caught sight of his youthful face before
and now could not see it all, for he had pulled his white hood well down
over his eyes.

He was evidently about to cross the bridge, when he unexpectedly found
Trombin in front of him, stopping the way. The street and the canal were
deserted, and not a sound broke the stillness. The monk stood still. He
was short and slight, and could have slipped through a very narrow
space, but Trombin seemed to swell himself out till he filled the bridge
from side to side, and kept his hand on the hilt of his rapier.

Gambardella looked on indifferently, supposing that his companion meant
to indulge in some witticism or practical joke at the expense of the
young monk.

'Your reverence must pay toll at this bridge,' said Trombin.

'Toll?' cried a youthful voice from under the cowl.

'The decree has just been passed by the Ten,' answered Trombin. 'My
friend and I are stationed here by the Signors of the Night to exact
payment.'

Gambardella did not clearly understand, but he moved up behind the monk,
so that the latter could not get back.

'I understand,' said the Dominican in his sweet voice, after a moment's
hesitation. 'But I have no money. I am only a poor monk----'

'The Fathers of the Order of Preachers do not take vows of poverty, your
reverence,' said Gambardella in deep tones, behind the youth.

'That is true, but I have no money with me,' protested the latter.

'That emerald ring you wear on your left hand will do quite as well,'
answered Trombin. 'We shall not ask you for anything else this evening.'

Now the monk's hands were thrust deep into the two slits in the front of
his frock, as in a muff; but Trombin's eyes were good, and they had
caught sight of the jewel unwarily exposed while the young man was
performing his devotions in the church. He seemed disturbed, hesitated,
and hung his head.

Standing behind him, Gambardella laid a heavy hand on the slight
shoulder, while Trombin, in front, grasped his left wrist roughly, to
draw it out of his frock.

At this the young monk suddenly burst into a flood of tears under his
cowl, and began to sob bitterly.

'What fish have we caught here?' asked Gambardella, laughing for the
first time that day, and he seized the point of the hood at the back to
pull it off the head and face.

But instantly the monk's right hand went up and held it down in front
desperately.

'No, no! Please--you shall have the ring--anything--only let me go!'

There was no mistaking the feminine voice now, broken as it was with
sobbing, and Trombin made one step backward on the bridge and bowed to
the ground.

'Madam,' he said, with a grand air, 'we are not ruffians, but Venetian
gentlemen. We will respect your disguise, and shall be delighted and
honoured to see you safely to your own door. For this little service we
shall be more than rewarded if you will leave us your ring in
recollection of our auspicious meeting!'

'As a further return for your kindness,' added Gambardella, speaking
over the disguised lady's shoulder, 'we are at your service, to rid you
of any obnoxious friends or relations.'

'I see that you are Bravi,' the lady said, keeping her face closely
concealed under the hood. 'I am the less unwilling to part with my ring
since I may have need of you. But where can I find you in that case?'

'When we are unoccupied, you will find us at our devotions in the Church
of the Frari during the Benediction, any day,' answered Trombin,
receiving the ring from the delicate white fingers that held it out to
him.

He bowed as he took it, and flattened himself against the rail of the
wooden bridge, hat in hand, to let the disguised lady go by.

'Shall we follow you, Madam, for your greater safety?' asked
Gambardella.

'No, I pray you! I will go alone. I live near here.'

'We wish your ladyship a very happy night,' Trombin answered.

'The same to you,' said the young voice.

She was out of sight in a few seconds in spite of her white monk's
frock, which might have been seen at a considerable distance even in the
gloom of the narrow lane beyond the bridge. Trombin, who tried to follow
her with his sharp eyes, was sure that she had turned into a cross alley
that led to the large court in which the Palazzo Pignaver then stood.

But that was a matter of speculation, whereas the emerald ring was a
matter of fact, and could be converted into a number of things which the
two adventurous gentlemen very much wanted just then. Their vow of
economy now no longer bade them cross the bridge and return to their
wretched lodging and frugal supper. The ring would pay for many suppers,
and for good clothes too. They did not even exchange a word as they
turned in the direction of the Rialto with a light step, and they felt
that delightful sensation which fills the being of a man who loves
eating at the moment when brutal hunger, that has expected only prison
fare, turns into keen appetite at the sudden vision of boundless good
things to eat in half an hour.

Gambardella's melancholy face relaxed in the dark, and the lines that
had before turned down now all turned upwards, except those of his long
hooked nose; and the formidable beak seemed to stand sentinel over his
thin lips, so that no good thing should enter between them on the way to
his stomach without sending up its toll of rich savour to his nostrils.

Trombin's small pursed-up mouth also widened to a set smile, and he
softly hummed snatches from the beautiful air Alessandro Stradella had
sung during the Benediction service. It was a mere thread of a squeak of
a falsetto voice, but it had at least the merit of being perfectly in
tune, and his musical memory was faultless.

'You are a great man,' said Gambardella thoughtfully, when they had
walked some distance and were nearing their destination.

'You flatter me!' laughed Trombin. 'What is easier than to guess that a
Dominican monk with a small white hand and an emerald ring may be a lady
in disguise? Besides, my dear friend, with your exquisite sense of all
that is feminine, you must surely have noticed her walk as she came up
to the bridge. I am not a judge of women myself, but as soon as I saw
the monk walking, I was sure of the truth.'

'I did not see her coming, but she has a delicious voice,' answered
Gambardella thoughtfully. 'I wish I had seen her face.'

'Perhaps you may, some day. Here we are.'

They stopped before a low arched door not fifty yards from the Rialto. A
large dry bush, sticking out of a narrow grated window beside the
forbidding entrance, showed that wine was sold within. The faint yellow
light from the lamp of a shrine, built in the wall on the opposite side
of the street, just overcame the darkness. Trombin tried the door and
found it ajar; both men entered, and Gambardella pushed it back to its
original position.

It was quite dark within, and the place smelt like a wine-cellar, but
the two evidently knew their way and they walked quickly forward, half a
dozen paces or so, till a wide space suddenly opened on the right, and a
wretched little earthenware oil-lamp appeared, high up, dimly lighting
the first landing of a damp stone staircase. The friends began to mount
at once.

As they went up the air became drier, the smell of the cellar turned
into a complex odour of grilled meats, savoury sauces, rich wine, and
spring fruits, which the companions snuffed and breathed in with greedy
delight; sounds of laughing voices were heard, the stairs were better
lighted, and now and then the idle tinkling of a lute or of a
deep-voiced, double-stringed guitar made an improvised accompaniment to
the cheerful echoes.

Gambardella and Trombin entered a brightly lighted vestibule at the head
of the stair and were greeted by the host in person, a broad-shouldered,
black-haired Samian with brilliant red cheeks; he was showily dressed in
blue cloth trimmed with gold braid, wore a tall fez and spotless linen,
and had a perfect arsenal of weapons stuck in his belt, all richly
ornamented with silver work, in which were set pieces of coral,
carbuncles, and turquoises. He had a look of tremendous vitality and
health, and the tawny light danced and played in his eyes when he
laughed. He spoke the Venetian dialect fluently, but with a strong Greek
accent, and an evident difficulty in pronouncing the letter B.

'Welcome, young gentlemen!' he cried in a formidably cheerful voice, as
he rose from the little table at which he had been busy with his
accounts. 'Here is old Markos, your faithful friend! What can Markos do
for your lordships to-day? Do you desire money of Markos? It is yours,
all his poor store! Or do you come for supper, to taste a real pilaf and
a brace of quails roasted in fig leaves, with a jar of old wine of Samos
and a sweetmeat, and some liquor brewed by the monks of Mount Athos?
Markos is here to serve you!'

He looked as broad as he was long as he stood there bawling out his
noisy greetings, his thumbs stuck into his broad red leather belt, his
legs apart, and his white teeth gleaming like a young boar's tusks in
the midst of his shiny black beard.

Trombin nodded gravely at each phrase, keeping his hat on his head, and
making his rapier stick up behind him. From the rooms beyond the
vestibule the rich steam of good things floated through the half-closed
door, and the ring of merry voices, clinking glasses, and tinkling
strings was delightful to the ears of men who had supped in a garret on
bread and salt fish for three weeks.

'Markos,' said Trombin, 'apply your excellent sight and your
money-lender's intelligence to this marvellous ring, with which
unfortunate circumstances now oblige me to part. It belonged to my
sainted aunt, the Abbess of Acquaviva, who left it to me with her
blessing when I was young and innocent. It was once blessed by His
Holiness Saint Pius the Fifth, who thereby endowed it with efficacious
power to protect the virtue of those who should wear it. My sainted aunt
wore it for forty years, and she was indeed virtuous to the end of her
life. I remember that she was cross-eyed and had bad teeth and a sallow
complexion. For my own part, I must confess that I have not always----'

'How much do you want on it?' interrupted Markos, who had been examining
the stone as well as he could by the light of the oil-lamp, while
Trombin was talking in his grand style.

'A hundred ducats down, and no wine,' answered Gambardella, without
hesitation, in his deep voice.

'We would accept half a dozen jars of Samos, to be drunk here,'
suggested Trombin, 'if we sealed them ourselves.'

Markos grinned from ear to ear.

'Twenty ducats,' he said quietly, 'and a hogshead of "rezinato," worth
ten ducats more! That is all I can give.'

'Rezinato at ten ducats!' sneered Gambardella.

'It costs me that,' retorted the money-lender, 'so it must be worth it.
Possibly I might make the cash twenty-five ducats, but that would only
be out of old friendship. I shall lose by it if you do not redeem the
ring.'

'I wish you might lose something for once!' cried Trombin devoutly.

They bargained long. In those days, and long before and afterwards, the
money-lenders of Venice were Greek and Eastern eating-house keepers and
sellers of wine, and it was impossible to pawn any object with them
without accepting at least one-third of the advance in the shape of wine
more or less sour, or watered, or both.

But the two shabbily-dressed gentlemen who had taken the emerald ring
from the disguised lady were not ordinary customers. Trombin inspired
present terror, and Gambardella apprehension for the future, and though
Markos was as broad as he was long and had a dozen pistols and knives in
his belt, his courage was not equal to his ferocious appearance. From a
business point of view, the Venetian Bravi were children in his hands;
but when they came quite near to him, one on each side, and spoke slowly
and clearly in their determined way, the tremendous Markos felt his
bravery shrink within him till it seemed to rattle like a dry pea shaken
in a steel cuirass, and the amount of money he actually advanced on the
ring was considerable; he even consented to let Gambardella seal the six
jars of Samos wine, which formed part of the loan, with the heavy brass
seal ring the Bravo wore, on which was engraved the Bear of the Ursuline
Order of Nuns, with a few words in Gothic characters. One of many things
which Trombin did not know about his companion was the story of that
ring and how Gambardella had become possessed of it.

So the transaction was duly terminated, and when Markos had at last
parted with his money and his fine old wine, his jolly face cleared once
more; for, after all, he had not lost by the bargain, though he had not
made much, and the good-will of the two most famous and dangerous
cut-throats in all the Venetian territory was worth something to a man
who always lived more or less on the outer edge of the law.

Half-an-hour later bliss descended upon the companions as they sat at
table in their favourite place, a sort of alcove or niche in the general
hall of the eating-house, whence they could see and hear all that went
on, without being too much disturbed in their enjoyment of the good
things set before them. The place was brightly lighted by several scores
of lamps fed with mingled oil, tallow, and camphor, and fastened on
large wooden rings that hung from the high ceiling. The smoke floated up
to the blackened beams, and found its way out through a small
clere-story window at one end, and the light below was clear and soft.
Thirty or forty guests were seated at tables of different sizes, and
amongst them was a fair scattering of handsome women, mostly dressed in
silks and satins of bright colours, and wearing jewels that sparkled
when they moved. The men were of all sorts: there were a few
good-looking young Venetian nobles, who had laid aside their cloaks and
outer coats, and sat in their doublets and lace collars; there were two
rich English travellers, in dark velvet, their long fair locks carefully
combed and curled in the manner of the cavaliers, their hands
conspicuously white, and their fingers adorned with magnificent rings;
with them sat two auburn-haired Venetian beauties, radiant and laughing,
and sipping Eastern wines from tall goblets of Murano glass. At one long
table near the wall a serenading party was installed, their pretty
instruments hanging on pegs behind them, together with their hats and
cloaks. Beyond, in a corner, a pale young Florentine, with a spiritual
profile, was supping with a lady who turned her back to the hall, and
whose head and shoulders were almost hidden in a cloud of priceless
lace. These two spoke little and ate delicately, and now and then their
dark eyes met and flashed upon each other.

The air was hot, and heavy with the fumes of Greek wines and savoury
dishes. At the farther end of the hall a large door opened now and then,
and showed the bright kitchen where the host's wife presided, and whence
neatly dressed youths brought dishes to the guests. Considering what the
place was, an eating-house kept by a foreign money-lender, there was an
air of luxury about it, and an appearance of orderly and temperate
behaviour among the guests, that would have surprised a stranger who
knew nothing of Venice, if he had been suddenly introduced by the gloomy
entrance from the street through which Trombin and Gambardella had made
their way.




CHAPTER VI


The lady who chose to go about Venice at dusk in the disguise of a monk
encountered no further adventures after the loss of her ring; but she
met with a very grave disappointment, of which the consequences directly
concern this tale. After leaving the Bravi who had robbed her, she
threaded the narrow ways northwards with a quick step till she came to a
point near to the Fondaco dei Turchi on the Grand Canal. There she took
the gondola that waited for passengers at the old traghetto, and she was
quickly ferried over to the landing by the Palazzo Grimani. A few
minutes later she was knocking at the door of Alessandro Stradella's
lodgings near Santa Maria dell' Orto.

She knocked firmly and confidently, like a person quite sure of
admittance. But no one came to open, and she heard no sound from within;
so she knocked again, and after a shorter interval a third time. There
was no answer, and nothing broke the stillness. With small regard for
her disguise, the lady stamped twice in a most feminine way, then tried
to shake the solid door with her hands, and finally turned away in
disgust. It was almost dark in the staircase, and she descended the two
flights slowly, drawing her hand along the wall to steady herself. The
exercise of some caution, to avoid a fall, momentarily cooled her anger
a little, and when she reached the entrance of the house she reflected
that she had perhaps been hasty, and that the Maestro had possibly been
detained by the other musicians, and would come home before long. She
waited some time under the shadow of the archway, though several persons
passed her, some going in, others going out. No one is ever surprised to
see a monk waiting at the door of a large house. The disguised lady
walked slowly up and down, her hood drawn well over her eyes, and her
hands hidden in the slits of the frock.

But when the clocks struck the hour, and it had grown quite dark, she
gave up all hope, and went away, returning in the direction whence she
had come, and revolving plans of vengeance on the ungrateful singer as
she walked.

She could not call him faithless, even in her mortification, for she had
never exchanged a word with him in her life; and if that seems strange
to any who read this story, let them learn something, if they can, of
what constantly happens nowadays to popular operatic tenors. The
disguised lady was of a romantic disposition; she was the respected wife
of a rich citizen, by no means noble; her husband was absent in the
East, and she had foolishly fallen in love with Alessandro Stradella's
voice. She had written him the most silly letters he had ever received,
setting forth the searing passion that devoured her, and apparently
certain that he already shared it and only wanted an opportunity in
order to tell her so. As he never answered her letters, she made up her
mind that he feared her husband, though she had repeatedly assured him
that the latter was absent and had left no Argus-eyed relation in charge
of her and responsible for her acts. She wrote again and again, and even
descended to promising that she would make him a rich man if he would
only take courage and answer her pressing invitation.

Still he did not answer; and at last, despairing of any other means of
moving him, she had written that she would come disguised to his
dwelling on that evening, after the music in the Frari. For she always
knew where he was to sing, and she never missed an opportunity of
hearing him. She had accordingly gone to the church, and before leaving
it she had prostrated herself and offered up the most sincere prayers
for the success of her amorous enterprise, as if Saint Francis and Saint
Anthony of Padua had power to suspend the rule of the Ten Commandments
for her benefit during the evening.

These, in few words, are the facts which had preceded her visit to
Stradella's lodging, and which resulted in the maddening disappointment
and humiliation she felt when she turned her steps homewards.

At the same hour no one at the Palazzo Pignaver had yet noticed the
absence of Ortensia and Pina. The gondolier waited by the landing at the
Frari till it was dark, and then returned to the palace, supposing that
the two had walked home and had forgotten to dismiss him, for this had
happened once or twice already. He ran his gondola in between the
painted piles by the steps of the palace, without inquiring whether his
mistress and the nurse had entered by the postern; for almost every
Venetian palace has two entrances, the main one being on the canal and
approachable only in a boat, while the other opens upon the street at
the back.

Ortensia was not missed till supper-time, and that was fully two hours
after sunset; for it was the Senator's custom to leave his niece to
herself or to Pina's company from the time when he brought her home, if
she had been out with him in the gondola, until the evening meal; and if
she asked leave to go to confession, as she had to-day, she returned
before dark and retired to her own rooms without seeing him until she
joined him at supper.

He required the most extreme punctuality of her and of all his
household. Excessive exactness in regard to time is often the delight
and the torment of people who have nothing to do of any importance. The
time which some punctual persons waste in waiting for others would be
enough to make them notable men if they used it better.

The Senator waited for Ortensia at least two minutes with equanimity,
but after that his brow darkened, he paced the room impatiently, and he
began to compose the scolding he meant to give her as soon as she came.
This occupied him satisfactorily for at least five minutes, for he was
always very nice in the choosing of his words on such occasions. His
scoldings were administered in classical Italian, and not in the
Venetian dialect of everyday life; they were constructed like short
orations, with an exordium, an exposition of the fault committed, and a
peroration, and they were followed by a long silence, during which they
were supposed to work and take effect on the mind of the delinquent.
Pignaver mentally reached the end of the intended admonition, and yet
Ortensia did not come.

[Illustration: 'The footman came back at last with a white face']

Then he lost his temper and sent one of the two servants to call her;
and at the same time it occurred to him that he was making himself
ridiculous in the eyes of the others by waiting for a mere chit of a
girl. He therefore sat down rather hastily at the supper-table in the
middle of the room and attacked the preliminary appetisers, shrimps,
caviare, and thin slices of raw ham, and the chief butler poured a light
white wine of Germany into his large glass; for the Senator was fond of
good eating and drinking.

But to-night he was not to enjoy his supper, though the caviare had
arrived that very day from Constantinople, and the shrimps were
precisely of the right size, which is very important to a true epicure.
The footman came back at last with a white face and said, in a trembling
tone, that neither the young lady nor Pina were in the house.

The Senator dropped his two-pronged fork, his jaw fell at the same time,
and at least four seconds passed before he recovered his breath. Then he
sprang up, overturned his heavy chair in his excitement, and rushed from
the room, followed by both the servants.

He searched the palace himself, he stormed, he raved, he cursed, he
threatened, but Ortensia was not to be found. Everything in her rooms
was in order, just as usual; she had gone to confession with her nurse
as she had gone scores of times before, but she had not come home. That
was all there was to be said about it.

At first no suspicion of the truth crossed Pignaver's brain. He believed
she had been kidnapped either for her beauty, or by miscreants who would
hold her for a ransom. Then he remembered the gondola and asked if it
had come back. Yes, it was below; the old head gondolier had taken
Ortensia to the Frari as usual, but he said she had returned on foot.
The Senator sent for him, but no one could find him now, though the
porter had been talking with him only ten minutes ago.

Nothing remained but to search Venice, and to inform the Signor of the
Night that the girl and her nurse were missing from the palace. Pignaver
forgot his supper altogether in his anxiety to lose no time.

The Signor was in his office, and was a distant cousin of the Senator's;
for the Signors of the Night were noblemen who served in turn,
superintending the police from sunset to sunrise. Only forty-eight hours
had passed since this same gentleman had sent word to Pignaver of the
attempt made by a supposed thief to get over the garden wall.

'He was not a burglar, my friend,' the Signor now said with conviction.
'If you will allow me to say so, with the most profound respect for your
honour, I am sure that the man was your niece's lover, and that he has
now succeeded in carrying her off, with the help of the serving-woman.'

Pignaver groaned and turned pale. But the Signor, who knew his business,
asked him questions, and elicited enough information about Stradella
and the singing lessons to convince him that the famous singer was at
the bottom of the mischief. He said so plainly.

'A music-master!' cried Pignaver in a black rage, for he saw that the
other was probably right. 'A singer! A catgut-pincher! A villainous low
lute-strummer! No, sir, no! A thousand times no! The niece of Michele
Pignaver is incapable of demeaning herself with a mountebank, sir! I
must assure you----'

'The young lady,' interrupted the Signor, with a faint smile, 'is not
your own niece, Senator, but the daughter of your late wife's brother.'

'No matter!' cried the Senator. 'Do you mean to imply, sir, that my late
honoured wife would have been capable of demeaning herself with----'

'Heaven forbid!' ejaculated the other, interrupting again. 'You might as
well suggest that Eve was herself a murderess because one of her sons
killed the other. I suggest nothing, Senator--certainly nothing in the
least derogatory to the honour of your house.'

'What do you advise me to do?' asked Pignaver, suddenly appeased.

He had changed his tone and spoke almost calmly, for his anger, like
most things he did, was a matter of acting. The Signor understood, and
again he smiled faintly. Before he answered he carefully snuffed and
trimmed the three wicks of the tall brass lamp on the table. It had a
big metal shade in the shape of a butterfly, which he turned so that it
screened the light from his eyes and reflected it into his visitor's
face.

'You will naturally wish to avoid a scandal,' he said, watching the
Senator. 'Yes, I thought so. Very well, if Stradella has carried off
your niece, as I am almost sure he has, they are beyond pursuit by this
time. They have reached the mainland and are riding away as fast as they
can towards the frontier. There is not the slightest chance of catching
them. You must say that you have sent the young lady to the country for
her health.'

At this Pignaver made a dramatic gesture. He raised both his hands on
each side of his head, clenched his fingers, turned up his eyes, and
pretended to be trembling with almost uncontrollable fury. The Signor
knew his weakness and looked on with quiet amusement.

'I will have the city thoroughly searched during the next few days for
two persons resembling your niece and the woman,' he continued. 'But if
they have already fled, and if you insist upon finding them, you will
have to employ private agents.'

'Yes, yes,' answered Pignaver thoughtfully. 'That will be best. Can you
recommend any person to undertake such a delicate business, sir? I
suppose that, in your position, you are acquainted at least with the
names of some such men.'

The Signor, who was an amiable man, smiled pleasantly now.

'The truth is,' he said, 'we have some of them under supervision, and I
chance to know of two who would suit your purpose well, and are
unemployed at present, and badly in need of money. I have no doubt but
that they will be glad to serve you. They have earned the reputation of
being conscientious in carrying out their engagements, and intrepid in
danger.'

Pignaver had listened attentively, and at once asked for the names and
the address of the Bravi.

'They are known as Trombin and Gambardella,' said the Signor; 'they are
now in Venice, and are generally to be heard of at the eating-house of
Markos, the Samian money-lender and wine-dealer. I dare say you know
where his place is? Not far from the Rialto, on this side----'

'In what is left of the old Quirini Palace, where they sell poultry
downstairs?' asked Pignaver.

'Precisely. I see you are acquainted with the resort. I have, in fact,
been there myself--on a matter of duty, of course.'

'Of course,' echoed the Senator. 'I have only heard of it, but I think I
can find it.'

'I am sure you can,' assented the Signor, without a smile.

Pignaver had not only heard of the eating-house, but he had been there
more than once, and knew the taste of the famous pilaf and the flavour
of the old wine of Samos as well as anybody. He had even sat in the
recess where the two gentlemen of fortune were at that moment supping.
He had worn a mask, it is true, and by some mistake a lady had sat down
at the same small table a moment after he had come, and he had fallen
into conversation with her. But it was not necessary to tell this to the
Signor.

The latter promised again to have a thorough search made through the
city for Ortensia and Pina, and wrote down the descriptions Pignaver
gave him. The nurse was described as 'a serving-woman, with grey eyes,
and black hair turning grey at the temples, whose manners were rather
above her station, and who had once been handsome. Age: forty-three.
Mark: the thumb of the right hand had been broken and was distorted.'

'By the thumb-screw, I suppose,' observed the Signor in a business-like
tone.

'It certainly looks like it,' answered the Senator indifferently.

He took his departure after a few more words and went out by the back
door; he then walked in the direction of the Rialto, muffling himself in
his great cloak, of which he threw one corner over his shoulder, so that
it almost covered his face. He had left his gondola waiting in the
narrow canal, and if he chose to come back and take it again, he could
reach it without going through the low building in which the Signors of
the Night had their office, and the city watch its headquarters.

The Signor had promised to continue the search during three days, and to
inform him of any clue he found. Meanwhile, Pignaver thought it would be
as well to find the two gentlemen who had been so highly recommended to
him, and he hastened to the half-ruined Palazzo Quirini. He went in by a
more convenient entrance than the two Bravi had chosen for reasons of
their own, but he found Markos where they had found him, still busy with
his accounts in the bright little vestibule. When the Senator entered,
he had already slipped on the little velvet mask which most Venetians
carried about them in the evening, but the Samian either recognised his
voice or knew instinctively that his visitor was a person of quality,
for he bowed to the ground, rubbed his large hands as if washing them
before serving his guest, and answered the Senator's brief salutation in
a profoundly obsequious tone.

Pignaver now laid one finger on his lips and spoke in a whisper, asking
whether Markos was acquainted with two honest gentlemen named
respectively Signor Trombin and Signor Gambardella.

By an almost miraculous coincidence the two honest gentlemen were at
that very moment supping within. Markos offered to call them out.

'Unless,' he added, 'your lordship is in need of supper, and will join
them.'

The Senator remembered that he had eaten only a few mouthfuls since
dinner, and the savoury fumes from the hall further sharpened his
appetite.

'The gentlemen are eating together at the little table in the recess,'
Markos added, as he detected signs of hesitation. 'You can turn your
back to the room, my lord, if you do not wish to be watched.'

Pignaver nodded and followed the host, who at once led the way in. Some
of the people who had been supping when the Bravi had entered were gone
away, but others had taken their places. The young Florentine and his
beautiful guest had disappeared, and their table was occupied by a
noisily gay party, of whom more than half wore masks. The two fair
Englishmen in velvet were still gravely drinking with their laughing
companions, but their eyes were growing rather dull. The serenaders had
finished their meal, and were making soft music in their corner, trying
over the songs they were going to sing.

'Gentlemen,' said Markos to the Bravi, 'allow me to introduce a highly
respectable personage who has business with you, and would like to join
you at supper.'

Trombin and Gambardella rose with a courtesy which showed where they had
been bred, in spite of their present profession. Though they had been at
supper two hours and had done well by a jar of old Samian, they were as
cool and steady as when they had sat down, a fact which predisposed
Pignaver in their favour.

'Will you do us the honour to be our guest, sir?' asked Gambardella at
once.

'But you have already supped, gentlemen,' answered the Senator.

'That is a trifle, sir,' Trombin said. 'We have not quite finished, and
if you will join us we shall be delighted to begin again from the
beginning. A clean cloth, Markos,' he went on at once, turning to the
host, 'and the same dishes over again!'

'Your hospitality confounds me, sirs,' protested the Senator. 'I can but
accept your gracious invitation.'

He sat down at the end of the small table, turning his back to the hall.
Markos was already making preparations, and in a few minutes the board
was set again, and with the very same delicacies which the Senator had
just begun to taste at his own supper when Ortensia's flight had been
discovered. He ate in silence, with solemn greediness, while his two
companions each took one shrimp and a taste of the caviare, and
exchanged an occasional glance. When he had consumed everything except
the bread, Pignaver spoke.

'I believe I am not mistaken in thinking that you two gentlemen
occasionally undertake little matters of private business,' he began.
'If I am wrong, pray correct me.'

'You are rightly informed, sir,' answered Trombin; 'we do, though only
on certain conditions, which, again, so far as they are favourable or
unfavourable, depend on circumstances; and these circumstances
themselves, as your experience of life has made you well aware, sir, are
often the result of that element of chance, which, under Providence,
plays such an important part in the affairs of men.'

This was rather vague, and Pignaver, who read the classics and prided
himself on his memory, was reminded of those Lacedaemonians who answered
the wordy fugitives from Samos by saying that they had already forgotten
the first half of their speech and did not understand the second. When
Trombin had finished speaking, he waited for an answer and looked
steadily at the Senator, opening his eyes wider and wider till they were
perfectly round and the lashes stood out in a circle like yellow rays,
and he puckered his lips in the most ridiculous manner, as if he were
just going to whistle. Gambardella, on the other hand, took a minute
quantity of caviare on the end of his fork and tasted it delicately,
looking unconcernedly at the guests in the hall.

Pignaver reflected a moment and drank wine before speaking.

'I attribute my presence here,' he said, 'to the direct intervention of
Providence.'

'We share your view,' answered Gambardella with gravity.

'In fact,' added Trombin, 'the elements of acquaintance all agree
admirably well--the circumstances, the conditions, chance, and
Providence itself. For if, as I gather from your own words, sir, you
stand in need of a little friendly assistance from us, we, on our side,
are weary of wasting our wits in conversation and our strength in
luxurious idleness. It is our mission to benefit mankind both here and
hereafter, by despatching useless persons to Paradise and thus cheering
the lives of the friends they leave on earth. Assured of this, as we
are, all inactivity is unbearable to us. At the present moment we are,
so to say, unemployed philanthropists; we are but a potential and
passive blessing to our fellow-creatures, though we burn to be doing
good to all! I appeal to my friend, Count Gambardella, here. Is this not
the exact truth?'

'Absolutely,' answered the other, toying with a shrimp. 'What my friend,
Count Trombin, says is always strictly true.'

'How could it be otherwise?' asked Pignaver. 'But I must apologise for
not having addressed you gentlemen by your proper titles, which are
foreign, though I had taken you both for Venetian nobles.'

'We are, sir,' Trombin answered, 'but it pleased his Majesty the King of
France to confer titles of French nobility on us, after we had rendered
him a trifling service. We should likewise esteem ourselves your
debtors, sir, if you would inform us of your own name, since we are
fortunate enough to be entertaining you as our guest.'

Again the round eyes opened wide, like those of an angry cat, and the
mouth was all puckered in the midst of the cherubic face, while Trombin
waited for the answer. The Senator saw that he had no choice.

'My name is Pignaver,' he said slowly, and dwelling proudly on each
syllable, 'and I am a Senator. You will understand at once why I wear a
mask here. I am well known by sight to many, and I have many
friends----'

'One too many, I presume,' suggested Gambardella, interrupting softly.

'I shall communicate my business at once,' said Pignaver, 'for the
person in question could never have been my friend any more than he
could be my enemy.'

'We understand your meaning,' said Gambardella; 'he is of low birth.
Shall we say that he is "superfluous"?'

'A weed,' suggested Trombin, 'a parasite, a wart, an overgrowth, a thing
to be eradicated before it does greater harm! Do you take me, my lord?
Have I fitted the word to the definition and suited the definition to
the man?'

'Admirably, Count,' assented Pignaver. 'Your command of language fills
me with envy. "Eradicate" is good, very good!'

'Does the weed flourish in Venice, my lord?' asked Gambardella, who was
bored and wished to settle the preliminaries of the business at once.

'If I did not detest false metaphors,' said Pignaver, 'I should say that
the weed has just flown, or, as I might say, fled, taking with it the
finest flower of my garden. But since elegant speech must not be
submitted to such outrages, I will speak plainly.'

At this point the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the
steaming pilaf, brought on by a neatly clad youth, whose companion set
down beside it a dish of quails roasted in young vine leaves, and
emitting a deliciously aromatic odour. Trombin and his friend helped the
Senator generously, and filled his glass again. He was so hungry by this
time that he ate several mouthfuls before he spoke again.

'I have always found the emotions to be great appetisers,' observed
Trombin, watching him. 'Men feast at a wedding, and gorge themselves
after a funeral. A fit of anger whets the appetite, for I have seen a
man fly into a towering passion with the cook and then immediately
devour the very dish he has found fault with, to the last scraping. As
for the passion of love, a French proverb says well that happiness makes
an empty stomach. I can only hope, my lord, that in a week's time you
may enjoy your supper as much, with satisfaction for a relish instead of
annoyance. As for me, the mere thought of doing some good in the world
makes me hungry.'

And as he spoke he began to eat another quail which he had already taken
on his plate. But Gambardella was more and more bored, and went to the
point, as soon as the Senator looked up from his plate.

'We understand,' he said, 'that some low-born fellow has carried off a
lady of your lordship's household. Do you know where they are?'

'No. I know nothing, except that they have either left Venice already or
will escape before morning.'

'That means a wide search,' said Gambardella.

'But an easy one,' the Senator replied. 'The man is Alessandro
Stradella, the singer, and may the devil get him!'

'He will be safer in our hands, my lord. The lady's name, and some
description of her, if you please.'

'Ortensia is her name. She is only seventeen years old, but is very
beautiful, for she is fair, and her hair is of a true auburn colour,
such as the lamented Titian often painted. Indeed, the young lady much
resembles that master's "Bella," though younger and thinner. With her is
fled also her nurse, a woman called Filippina, of middle age, with grey
eyes and greyish hair, once not bad-looking, and whose manners are above
her station.'

'I suppose she is commonly called Pina,' observed Gambardella. 'Let us
understand each other, my lord. I presume you wish the young lady and
the woman to be brought back to you, when the singer is dead.'

'Precisely. I shall say that she has been spending a week with a
relation of her mother's who is the Abbess of the Ursuline Nuns in
Ravenna.'

'Did you say the Ursulines in Ravenna, my lord?' asked Gambardella
slowly.

'Yes,' answered Pignaver, at first a little surprised by the question,
for he had spoken clearly, although the whole conversation was carried
on in low tones. The Bravo saw his expression, and hastened to explain.

'My left ear is a little deaf,' he said, turning his head so as to
present the other. 'Nothing remains but to agree on the price of the
service,' he continued in a business-like tone. 'When we are told
exactly where we shall find our man, it is simple enough. But in this
case we may have to travel far. We shall require two gold ducats daily
for our expenses till we find the opportunity we need for such a
difficult business, and five hundred gold ducats when we hand over to
you the young lady and her nurse. One hundred gold ducats must be
advanced before we start, on account of expenses.'

Pignaver's sour face twitched at the mention of such sums.

'You set a high price on your services, gentlemen,' he said.

'"Service" is not precisely the word, my lord,' said Trombin, desisting
from picking the leg of a quail, and staring intently at the masked
Senator. 'It is, as I may say, a false metaphor, which is an outrage
upon elegant speech--forgive me for borrowing your own expressions!'

And suddenly Trombin's eyes glared in such a way that the Senator was
cowed.

'I assure you, I had no intention of giving you offence, Count,' he
said. 'If you will, choose the word you prefer; I will use it with
pleasure.'

'"Benefit," my lord, or, if you prefer the longer form, "benefaction."
Either will do very well.'

Trombin thereupon resumed operations on the leg of the quail, and when
his absurd little mouth showed his teeth the Senator observed they were
as white and sharp as a cat's. It was clear that he was the talker in
the partnership, and left all business arrangements to his companion.

'I have named the sum we require, my lord,' the latter said calmly, 'and
we are not accustomed to argue such matters. You would give ten times as
much for your own life any day, and Alessandro Stradella would certainly
find a thousand or two to save his, if the matter were laid before him.'

Pignaver saw that he must agree to the demand, for if he refused and
sought help elsewhere the Bravi would warn the musician and offer the
latter their protection. The Senator was uncomfortable in their company,
as many of his friends would have been; for if a born coward ever comes
into contact with such men, he regards them much as a timid woman looks
on a loaded gun. Though the two cut-throats behaved with the outward
courtesy of gentlemen, there was something terrifying in their looks
which it would have been hard to define, and the highly refined Venetian
noble, who admired the elegant works of Politian and composed scores of
polished inanities, shuddered from time to time as he glanced at
Gambardella's sinewy brown hand or Trombin's strong pink fingers and
thought of the stains that must often have been on both.

A silence followed the Bravo's last speech, during which Trombin
consumed more pilaf, and his companion thoughtfully salted a small bit
of bread-crust, ate it slowly, and then sipped the old Samian wine from
the blue and white glass beaker which he kept constantly quite full. And
immediately, though he had only drunk a few drops, he re-filled the
glass exactly to the brim. Trombin drank at much longer intervals, but
always emptied his tumbler before replenishing it. Nor were these
opposite habits of the two men mere matters of preference or taste; for
the nose of the one turned up in such a convenient manner that he could
drain the smallest glass or cup with ease, but the other's portentous
beak turned down and then hooked itself in towards his lips, so that
wherever his mouth went, there it was also, always in the way; and if he
ever tried to drink like ordinary people, its tip was wetted before he
had tasted the wine.

The Senator was reflecting before giving an answer which must be final.
Was Ortensia worth the six or seven hundred ducats which the whole
affair would cost him? That was really the question, for he looked upon
the murder of Stradella merely as a necessary and just consequence of
his niece's capture, and though the thought of vengeance was agreeable
to his nature, he would not have been willing to pay such a price for
it. Ortensia herself was certainly not worth so much, in his estimation,
for the sake of her beauty, seeing that he could buy a Georgian girl
almost or quite as pretty, in the Fondaco dei Turchi, for much less.
Besides, though Stradella would be dead and buried, it would always be
humiliating to feel that she had belonged to him first, though the truth
need never be known in Venice.

But there was another consideration, which turned the scale in her
favour. Pignaver had heard her sing his own compositions, after having
been taught by Stradella, and he had dreamed of electrifying Venetian
society at last by her rendering of his immortal works. Hitherto, even
his most industrious flatterers had not given him the very first place
among living poets and musicians; but he was sure that when they heard
Ortensia they would exalt him above all his predecessors and all his
contemporaries; at last he would enjoy that absolute supremacy which is
the prime birthright of genius in all ages, and to which he firmly
believed himself entitled. Ortensia alone could assure to him that final
victory, and beside it all objections, all scruples, all petty questions
of technical honour sank away to nothing. He must marry her himself, of
course, so that he might order her to perform his works whenever he
pleased, and she must be a married woman before propriety would allow
her to sing to his assembled friends; but marriage was a detail and of
no consequence compared with the triumph he expected to gain by it; the
girl's flight with the musician was a childish escapade of little
importance, since it could be kept quite secret, and she might be
supposed to have been spending a few days in a convent in Ravenna to
complete her education. As for any resistance on her part, it was
absurd to think of such a thing; no doubt she would cry her eyes out for
a few weeks, after Stradella was despatched to a better world, but she
would soon see the error of her ways and be only too glad to accept the
magnificent position the Senator offered her, instead of being murdered
herself, or forced to spend her life in a convent.

The two Bravi did not hurry their new acquaintance to a decision, though
Gambardella had flatly declined to discuss the terms of the bargain;
they only made it clear that their offer must be accepted or declined as
it was, and they seemed quite indifferent as to Pignaver's decision.
Trombin continued to eat pilaf in a leisurely way, as if he could go on
for ever, and Gambardella sipped his wine, filled his glass again, and
ate several little morsels of salted crust, while the Senator turned the
matter over in his mind and plied his knife and fork in silence.

'The truth is,' he said at last, 'I should not wish you to start till
the city has been thoroughly searched by the police. As you wisely
observed, I think, a man of Stradella's reputation cannot remain long
concealed, and will be more easily found next week than to-morrow.'

'I believe,' answered Gambardella politely, 'that the remark was yours,
and it is a wise one. Are we then to understand that if the Signors of
the Night do not find the pair, you desire our help on the terms I have
stated?'

'Exactly so,' said Pignaver. 'That will give you time to make your
preparations for the journey at your leisure. Where shall I find you
three days hence, gentlemen?'

'At Benediction in the Church of the Frari, my lord, for the day will be
a Sunday. If you desire it, we will call for paper and pen and set down
the terms of our agreement at once.'

'That will not be necessary, sir,' replied the Senator, who did not care
to put his name to such a document. 'I have confidence in you.'

Trombin at once raised his head and fastened his eyes on Pignaver.

'As between gentlemen, my lord,' he observed, 'it would be more fitting
to say that we have confidence in each other. With your permission I
shall complete your statement by saying that we are willing to trust you
without any written promise. We will leave such sordid dealings to the
lawyers and notaries. You give your word, we give ours, and the matter
is safer for accomplishment than if a contract were engrossed on a dozen
sheepskins and sealed with the Fisherman's Ring!'

'Certainly, certainly,' assented the Senator, who did not like the
Bravo's eyes. 'You have my word, I have yours, and that is enough.'

'My lord,' said Trombin, his manner suddenly becoming extremely affable,
'I have the honour to drink your health!'

'Your health, Count,' responded Pignaver, raising his glass.

'Your health,' said Gambardella, bowing politely, and then sipping his
wine with all the caution required to keep his long nose out of it.

Having settled matters in this way and, moreover, satisfied his appetite
with a good supper, Pignaver took leave of the Bravi with considerable
ceremony, for he perceived that they were as exigent and punctilious as
to all points of courtesy as any noble in Italy, France, or Spain; and
it would not be good to fall out with such touchy gentlemen on a point
of manners. Indeed, as he retraced his steps to the office of the
Signors of the Night, where his gondola was waiting, he really
congratulated himself on having escaped without a quarrel, and hoped
that the next interview would pass off as well.

The three days went by, and at noon on Sunday he received a note from
the Signor of the Night informing him that the runaway pair and the
serving-woman had been in Padua early on the morning after they left
Venice, and had immediately taken an extra post to Rovigo and Ferrara.
They had excited no suspicion, and the spy who had brought the news had
not obtained the information without considerable difficulty, for many
travellers were going and coming, and in a time of peace like the
present more attention was bestowed by the authorities on foreign
travellers than on Italians. But Stradella had brought some of his
belongings with him, which his man had carefully concealed in the
gondola, and amongst other things there was his favourite long lute; the
instrument had been noticed by the ostlers at the postern-house in Padua
on account of its unusual size, and they remembered the four travellers
after hearing the spy's description of three of them, for he knew
nothing of Stradella's servant.

There was therefore no doubt but that the fugitives were now far beyond
the Venetian border in the States of the Church, and Pignaver resolved
to keep the appointment at the Frari, taking with him the hundred gold
ducats which were to be paid in advance.

The Bravi were already there indeed, but he did not see them at once,
and as Vespers were over and the Benediction was about to begin, he
selected a spot a little apart from the common herd and knelt down to
his devotions, for it was of no use to waste time that could be so
profitably employed.

But while he was thus engaged, it being already sunset and the light in
the church failing, the men he sought were earnestly conversing in low
tones with a young Dominican monk in a distant corner; and the monk, it
is needless to say, was the lady whose ring they had taken, and who had
knocked so long in vain at Stradella's door three days earlier.

'Madam,' Gambardella was saying, 'the search may be a long one, but we
will do our best. We shall require two gold ducats daily for our
expenses in travelling, and the payment of five hundred gold ducats in
cash when we deliver to you Master Alessandro Stradella, bound hand and
foot, at your villa on the Brenta.'

'But the woman must die!' protested the lady earnestly.

'That goes without saying, madam,' answered Gambardella. 'You may
regard her as already dead and buried, for you have our word for it.
Nothing remains but that you should place in our hands a hundred gold
ducats on account, which we shall require in order to start.'

The lady was evidently prepared for such a demand, and produced a small
leathern bag from within her monk's frock. But she was evidently a woman
of business.

'Since we are now friends,' she said, putting the bag into Gambardella's
hand, 'you ought to give me back my ring when the thing is done!'

'Madam,' said Trombin, in his grand manner, 'you have our word for that.
In fact, we only meant to borrow it for a day or two, and for your great
kindness in allowing us to do so we have the honour to tender you our
sincerest thanks.'

'It is impossible to be more polite, sir,' answered the lady.

So they parted, for she slipped away into the dusk and soon left the
church by a side door. But Trombin and his companion went forward, and
finding the Senator on his knees, they knelt down, one on each side of
him. He glanced to the right and left, and was surprised at the
improvement in their appearance since he had seen them at supper. They
had been distinctly shabby then, and he would not have liked to be seen
in their company by his friends; but to-day they were dressed with
excellent taste and neatness, in perfectly new clothes. Gambardella wore
a suit of dark purple cloth slashed with velvet of the same colour; but
Trombin wore black velvet and silk, which he considered most becoming to
his infantile complexion and yellow hair. Both had new hats, too, and
their feathers, purple and black respectively, were nothing short of
magnificent. Only their rapiers were unchanged, the same serviceable,
business-like weapons that Pignaver had seen before.

The three men knelt side by side, putting on an air of devotion; and no
one else was very near them.

'_Tantum ergo_ ...' began the choir, somewhere out of sight.

'I presume you mean business, my lord,' said Gambardella so that the
Senator could just hear him.

'They passed through Padua, and took post to Rovigo and Ferrara,'
answered Pignaver. 'You cannot miss them if you go that way.'

'A very convenient place, Ferrara, if they would wait for us there,'
observed Trombin.

'... _veneremur cernui_,' the choir sang, and many of the people were
joining in the ancient hymn.

'When can you start?' inquired Pignaver.

'As soon as we have funds for the journey,' answered Gambardella
promptly.

'You said one hundred ducats, did you not? Your expenses are to be
counted at two ducats per day, and as much of the first hundred as is
left when you have finished is to be deducted from the final payment of
five hundred. Is that it?'

'Precisely,' said Gambardella.

'It is impossible to be more accurate,' observed Trombin, without
turning his head, and preserving the expression of a devout, fat-cheeked
seraph, which he always put on when at his prayers.

'I have the money with me, gentlemen,' continued Pignaver. 'As soon as
the Benediction is over I will hand it to you, and I hope you will find
it convenient to start at once.'

'We are ready,' Gambardella replied. 'To-morrow night we shall be in
Ferrara, and if your friends are still there, we may be here again on
the third day.'

'Heaven grant us all its favours and a speedy return!' prayed Trombin.

'Amen,' said the Senator, calculating that if only three days were
consumed, the Bravi would have ninety-four ducats in hand, and he would
have to pay them only four hundred and six.

In his pocket his hand grasped the heavy little bag containing the gold,
and he wished that private vengeance and justice were not so dear; but
he was not a miser, though he had a real Venetian's understanding of the
value of money, and did not like to part with it till he was sure that
he was to receive a full equivalent. For the rest, what he was doing was
perfectly justifiable in his eyes: if the couple had been caught within
the territory of the Republic, Alessandro Stradella would have had to
answer to the law for the atrocious crime of carrying off a Senator's
niece and affianced bride who was a minor, and the law would not have
been tender to the Sicilian; the least penalty he would have suffered
would have been to be chained to an oar on a government galley, and it
was quite possible that he might have been hanged. Most people would
prefer to be run through with a rapier, and it was therefore clear that
Stradella ought to be satisfied. As for such weakness as a qualm of
conscience, Pignaver was as far above such childishness as the Bravi
themselves.

He gave them the little bag of ducats and took leave of them by the
monument of Pietro Bernardini, almost on the spot where Ortensia and
Pina had put on their brown cloaks three or four days earlier.

When he was gone, Trombin and Gambardella looked at each other in
silence; the dark man's thin lips, visible on each side of the point of
his nose, but quite shaded by it in the middle, were smiling faintly,
but Trombin's cherubic countenance expressed, or caricatured, the utter
beatitude of one of those painted angels to which his friend always
compared him.

They walked slowly up the church towards the sacristy, and at the door
they met the sacristan, a lay brother, coming out with his long
extinguisher in his hand. They stopped him politely.

'We desire to offer two candles to Saint Francis,' said Gambardella,
'one for each of us. We also desire to leave a gold ducat for masses to
be said for the soul of a departed friend.'

'I will serve you at once, gentlemen,' answered the sacristan. 'What was
your friend's baptismal name, if you please, that I may write it on the
list?'

'Alessandro,' answered Gambardella.

'Do you wish to mention the date of his death, sir?'

'No. It is of no use.'

The lay brother took the money and went into the sacristy to deposit it,
and to fetch the candles, which the Bravi then lighted and put up
themselves.




CHAPTER VII


Trombin had rightly guessed that the fugitives would rest themselves in
Ferrara, where they would be safe within the Pope's dominions, and
beyond the reach of Venetian law. By the old road the city was nearly a
hundred miles from Padua, and it was only by a lavish use of money that
Stradella succeeded in reaching it at midnight, after leaving Padua soon
after sunrise. Ortensia was utterly exhausted, and even Pina, who was
very strong, was beginning to be worn out. They had trouble in getting
into the inn at that hour, and when they at last succeeded, they found
that there was only one room to be had, although, as the sleepy servant
who had let them in added, they might have the whole house to themselves
the next day, for all the travellers would be gone again long before
noon.

Pina slept with her mistress, while Stradella and his man rolled
themselves in their cloaks and lay down outside the door, with valises
for pillows; for they expected to be pursued, and though they had made
good time, they knew that mounted men, with frequent relays of horses,
might overtake them before morning. It was not Stradella's first
adventure, though it was his last, and he fully realised that Pignaver
would use every means to wreak his vengeance. It could not have occurred
to the runaways that three days would be wasted in searching Venice
before the pursuit actually began.

Even that knowledge could not have made Alessandro sleep more soundly,
since the fear of danger to Ortensia could not keep him awake, and he
slept as peacefully on the stone pavement of the corridor as ever he did
in the most luxurious bed.

But his man was awake and was watching for all the four, though he lay
quite still, rolled up in his brown cloak. For Cucurullo was one of
those people who sleep little at the best of times, and generally have
to content themselves with resting their bodies by lying motionless,
while they deaden thought as best they can with those melancholy devices
that are familiar to the sleepless.

The hunchback rested now, but was glad to lie awake, though he was well
aware that he deserved no especial credit for watching while his young
master slept soundly by his side. But he did not try to cheat time by
fancying that he was counting a flock of sheep that crowded through a
narrow gate into a field, or by saying the alphabet backwards, or by
repeating all the prayers he knew, which were many, for he was a
religiously inclined person, nor did he laboriously reckon how many
Apostolic florins there were in seventeen hundred and sixty-three and a
half Venetian ducats. On the contrary, he concentrated his mind to the
best of his ability on a problem which it seemed to him of the very
highest importance to solve at once; for it involved nothing less than
the salvation of Alessandro Stradella's soul.

Now Cucurullo, as I have said, was religiously inclined. He was not
devout in the same sense as the two cut-throats who lighted candles
before the image of Saint Francis for the success of their murderous
enterprise, and paid beforehand for masses to be said for the soul of
the man they were going to kill. He would not have denied that this was
a form of piety too, if any one had asked him his opinion. Everything,
he would have argued, was relative; and if you were going to stab a man
in the back, it was more moral to make an effort to save his soul than
to wish to destroy it with his body. He would have admitted this, for he
was charitable, even to such people as professional murderers. But his
own religion was quite of another sort; he was devotedly attached to his
master, he was deeply concerned for the latter's future welfare, and it
looked just now as if Stradella's chances of salvation would be slender
if any accident carried him off suddenly. Moreover, such an accident
might occur at any moment, for, like Stradella himself, he anticipated
that Pignaver would seek a speedy revenge.

Like the early Christians he was a pessimist about this world and an
optimist about the next; for that is usually the state of mind of those
who labour under any material or bodily disability, from slavery, which
is the worst, to blindness or deformity.

As a pessimist, therefore, Cucurullo thought that his master, Ortensia,
Pina, and himself had a most excellent chance of having their throats
cut within twenty-four hours, and he was rather surprised that it should
not have happened already.

As an optimist, on the other hand, he trusted that by his own exertions
he might so dispose matters as that his master and Ortensia should be
murdered while in a state of grace, and not in mortal sin; to be plain,
he was determined that they should be duly married before Pignaver's
agents despatched them. For he had been constrained to aid and abet his
master in more than one romantic adventure before now, and nothing had
come of any of them that was at all conducive to the young man's
salvation.

Poor Cucurullo knew the whole process of those affairs, as the
conjurer's assistant knows how the tricks are done. Even when Stradella
was at home, in his own room, his man had always been able to tell
whether he was in love or not. When he was not, he industriously
composed oratorios, or motets, or some other kind of serious music; but
when he was, he sang to himself, as a bird does in spring, improvising
both the words and the melody; or else he would sit still for an hour at
a time, doing nothing, but dreaming with open eyes and slightly parted
lips; or he would pace the floor impatiently, and go to the door every
five minutes to listen for a light footfall on the stairs. All this
Cucurullo had observed frequently; often, too, he had carried letters
and tokens, and had brought others back; and not a few times, by night,
he had held cloak and lute and rapier, while his master climbed up to a
balcony or a window high above. Many such things had Cucurullo done, and
had confessed them afterwards as misdeeds. Wretched sinner that he was,
he had even paid flattering compliments to a chambermaid to sweeten her
humour till she promised to take a message to her lady. This had seemed
to him particularly wicked, yet he had done it and would do it again, if
Stradella required such service, simply because he could not help it.

Now, however, all former adventures sank to nothing in comparison with
the present one. So far, the musician had lightly loved and ridden away;
but this time he had not ridden away alone, and, moreover, he was not
carrying off the buxom wife or daughter of some meek citizen who would
appeal in vain to the law and could do nothing without it, and who would
probably let the erring lady return to his home at the trifling price of
a sound beating when Stradella was tired of her. That would have been
bad enough, in all conscience; but this time the hare-brained singer had
done much worse, even from a worldly point of view; and looking at it
from another, Cucurullo thought that the irreparable nature of the deed
made it more wicked, besides the fact that all the persons concerned
might lose their lives by it. He was a very simple person in some ways.
Under the circumstances it seemed necessary before all things to convert
moral wrong into moral right by the simple intervention of a priest and
a wedding ring, after which the question of civil right, as the law
would regard it, would take care of itself well enough.

In the grey dawn Cucurullo's large unshaven face emerged from the ample
folds of his cloak, and his mild blue eyes seemed to review the
situation by daylight as he looked from his master's half-muffled
figure to Ortensia's closed door, and then towards the window at the end
of the passage. Then he sat up cautiously and drew his heels under him,
and because his body was so short and so completely covered up, he
looked as if he had none at all, and as if his big head were lying in a
nest of brown cloth on a pair of folded legs. Then, from just below his
chin, an immensely long arm stole out quietly, and his hand drew up
Stradella's cloak which had slipped from his shoulder; for the morning
air was chilly, though the spring was far advanced. Any one, coming on
him suddenly as he sat there, would have been startled as at the sight
of a supernatural being, consisting of a head, legs, and arms, all
joined together without any body.

The dawn brightened to day, and all sorts of noises began to come up
from below, echoing through the staircase and long passages of the
house; a distant door was opened and shut, then some one seemed to be
dragging a heavy weight over a rough floor; far off, some one else
whistled a tune; and then, all at once, came the clatter of many horses'
feet on the cobble-stones in the yard.

Cucurullo sprang up and ran on tip-toe to the window, instantly fearing
the arrival of mounted pursuers; but he only saw the stablemen leading
out the post-horses to be watered and groomed. When he turned to come
back he saw that he had waked Stradella, who was sitting up, yawning
prodigiously, and rubbing his eyes like a sleepy boy. He raised his hand
to stop his man, and then got up without noise and joined him near the
window.

'What is it?' he asked in a whisper, not without some anxiety.

'Only the post-horses, sir, but I was afraid of something else.'

'I wish we were already in Florence. This is too near Venice!'

'Better still in Rome,' said Cucurullo, gloomily. 'Still better in
Sicily, and altogether much better in Africa; but best of all in heaven,
sir, if you can manage to get there!'

'It is not the first time you and I have run a risk together,' observed
Stradella, slowly moving the back of his hand up and down against his
unshaven cheek.

'It is the first time you have risked the life of a lady,' answered
Cucurullo quietly, for he understood his master very well.

'We had better go down and see about getting horses,' Stradella
answered, and he led the way to the stairs, his man following in his
footsteps.

The sun was rising now, and there was much bustling and clattering in
the yard, and sousing and splashing of cold water about the fountain; a
dozen horses were tied up to rings in the wall on one side, and the
stablemen were grooming some of them industriously while others waited
their turn, stamping now and then upon the cobble-stones, and turning
their heads as far as they could to see what was going on behind them
and on each side. Three men were washing the huge coach that ran to
Rovigo one day and back the next, and several smaller conveyances stood
beyond it in a row, still covered with dust from yesterday, for the
weather had been dry.

As in many inns of that time, the innkeeper was also the postmaster.
Stradella found him under the arched entrance to the yard, giving
instructions to the cook, who was just going to the market accompanied
by a scullion; the latter carried three empty baskets on his head, one
inside of the other.

'You can have no horses to-day,' said the host, in answer to Stradella's
demand, and he shook his head emphatically.

'No horses! It is impossible! It is absolutely necessary that we should
go on at once.'

The innkeeper was a square-shouldered Romagnole with grey hair, red
cheeks, and sharp black eyes. He shook his head again.

'I have not a horse to give you,' he said. 'Everything in my stable was
engaged beforehand for the Nuncio. I cannot give you the Government's
horses from the Rovigo coach, can I? Patience! That is all I can say.'

Stradella began to ask questions. The Nuncio, on his way to Verona and
Austria, had spent three days in the inn, both to rest himself and also
to be sure of having enough horses ahead to go on with, and word had
been sent to Mantua to make all the necessary arrangements. He should
have gone by Modena, but the road was in a bad state. A bridge had
broken down, and he had been forced to pass through Ferrara.

'But surely,' said the musician, 'I can hire a pair of horses of some
sort in the town, by paying a good price for them!'

No. The Nuncio had hired everything. Did the gentleman suppose that a
Papal Nuncio could travel with as few as eight or ten horses? He needed
about fifty in all. That was why he proceeded so slowly. There was not
another animal to be had in the town, horse or mule, that could be put
to a wheeled vehicle--not one! The gentleman might hire a riding-horse
or two, but the innkeeper had been told that he had a lady and her
tire-woman with him. Patience! A day would soon pass, Ferrara was a fine
town, well worth seeing, and he could go on to-morrow morning in the
Bologna coach, which would arrive from that city at noon to-day.

Clearly there was not the smallest possibility of being able to get on
during the next twenty-four hours. Stradella's face was very grave as he
turned away, and Cucurullo was paler than before.

Upstairs Ortensia had wakened just then and had called Pina, who got up
and opened the window wide, letting in the air with the morning sun.
Utterly unprovided as the two women were, they had slept half-dressed,
and as Ortensia rose the nurse threw one of the two brown cloaks over
her bare shoulders and fastened it round her neck.

For a few moments after she had opened her eyes the young girl had not
quite understood where she was, for she had lain down exhausted, and
sleep had come to her as her head touched the pillow. Now, in the broad
daylight, when she had plunged her face into cold water, she realised
everything, and the colour rose slowly to her throat and cheeks. She
went to the window and stood there, turned away from Pina and looked
out. Below her lay the chief public square of the city; on the left rose
the huge castle, the most gloomy and forbidding she had ever seen. She
had never heard of Nicholas Third of Este nor of his wife Parisina,
fair, evil, and ill-fated, nor of handsome Ugo, who died an hour before
her for his sins and hers, in the dark chamber at the foot of the Lion
Tower; but if Pina had known the story and had told it to her in all its
horror, Ortensia would have felt that it must be true, and that only
such tragedies as that could happen within such walls. They were so
stern, so square, so dark; the towers rose so grimly out of the black
waters of the moat! It was of bad augury to look at them, she thought,
and she drew back from the window and sat down where she could see only
the sky.

Pina was making such preparations for her mistress's toilet as were
possible. Being a prudent woman she had brought in her pocket three
objects of the highest usefulness, a piece of white Spanish soap, a
comb, and a shabby little old rolling work-case of yellow leather, in
which there were needles and thread and pins. The figure of a wild
animal, which might have been meant for a bear, was embroidered in black
thread on the outer flap of the case. Pina had used it ever since
Ortensia could remember, and seemed to value it as much as any of her
few possessions. It was a very useful little thing, and she kept it
always well filled with sewing materials.

As the young girl did not move and showed no inclination to dress
herself, Pina came behind her and began to let down and comb her hair,
which she had not even taken down on the previous night, being far too
much exhausted to think of such a thing. She submitted her head
willingly to the skilled hands of her nurse.

'Where is he?' she asked after a time, and she felt that she was
blushing again.

'They slept on the floor in the passage,' Pina answered. 'Perhaps they
are asleep still. You shut your eyes as soon as you lay down, but I
opened the door again and looked out before I went to bed. Signor
Alessandro asked me if we needed anything, and then said good-night.'

'Will you go and see if they are still there, please?'

Pina crossed the room, drew back the bolt, and put out her head, looking
up and down the passage. There was no one to be seen, and she shut the
door again without bolting it. She came back and again began to comb out
the girl's hair.

'They are not there,' she said. 'Probably Signor Alessandro is ordering
the horses. He will come in a few minutes and tell us at what time we
are to start.'

A short silence followed.

'Have you ever been here before?' Ortensia asked presently.

'Yes,' Pina answered, 'I have been here before. I do not like Ferrara.'

'Why not? Have you any particular reason for not liking it?'

'It was here that my thumb was hurt,' said the nurse. 'That is a fair
reason, is it not?' She laughed rather harshly. 'To hate a place because
one has had an accident in it! The men would say that is just like a
woman!'

'I hope I may never come here again, either,' Ortensia answered. 'How
did you hurt your thumb?'

'That is a long story, my lady. But why do you also dislike the place
already? You have only looked out of the window once.'

'I saw the castle, and I thought it was of bad augury, for it looks like
a great prison.'

'There are prisons in it without any light, very deep down,' said Pina
quietly. 'The Pope's Legate lives in the upper part. The Legate is the
Papal Governor, you know, my lady.'

'I did not know. But the ugly castle is not the real reason why I do not
like Ferrara. I could not tell any one else, but I think I can tell you,
Pina.'

She turned her head half round under the nurse's hands, looked up
sideways, and then hesitated. It was not easy to explain.

'What is it, my lady?' asked the serving-woman. 'You can tell old Pina
anything.'

'It is all so different from what I thought it would be,' Ortensia said
in a rather low voice, and again a blush rose in her cheek.

'I think I understand,' Pina said, steadily combing out the heavy auburn
hair.

'You see,' Ortensia explained, 'we all four got into the gondola
together, and there was that long row to the land, and that dreadful
night in the cart on the road to Padua--and then the half-hour at
daybreak, while he was getting the carriage, and then the journey
here--and last night--and now----'

She did not finish the sentence, hoping that Pina would really
understand.

'Yes,' the woman said quietly. 'You have not been alone together for a
moment since we left Venice, and that is not what you expected.'

'No,' Ortensia answered in the hurt tone of a disappointed child, 'I
thought it was going to be quite different! And now we shall start again
and drive all day and half the night, and then it will be just the same,
I suppose!'

'Once in Florence, or even in Bologna, there will be no more hurry,'
said Pina in a consoling tone. 'Besides, my lady, you can be properly
married then.'

'Of course, of course! We shall be married as soon as we can, but all
the same----'

'All the same, it would be pleasant to spend half-an-hour together
without old Pina always listening and looking on!'

The nurse smiled and shook her head, but Ortensia could not see her, and
did not think her tone was very encouraging; it sounded as if 'old Pina'
thought it was going to be her duty to play chaperon two or three days
longer, which was not at all what Ortensia wished.

'If he had even shown that he was a little disappointed, too----' the
girl began, and then she stopped.

'That would not have been good manners, my lady,' Pina said primly.
'When a gentleman has carried off a young lady, with her own consent,
the least he can do is to look pleased, I am sure!'

'I thought you would understand better,' Ortensia answered in a tone of
disappointment.

Some one knocked at the door, not loudly but sharply, and as if in a
hurry; Pina went at once to see who it was, and found Stradella himself
outside.

'May I come in?' he asked quickly.

Beyond Pina, as he looked in, he saw Ortensia in her brown cloak, with
her hair down and all combed out over her shoulders, and without waiting
for an answer he pushed past the nurse and went to her. Instinctively
she drew the cloak more closely round her, but she looked up with a
bright smile, which vanished when she saw his expression in the strong
light. He spoke anxiously, without even a word of greeting.

'There are no horses to be had,' he said. 'I have done my best, but the
Pope's Nuncio is passing through and has engaged everything there was.
There is not even a public coach to Bologna till to-morrow morning. I am
more distressed than I can tell you! I have sent my man out to see if he
can find anything, and he will if there is a beast to be had. If not, we
shall have to wait here.'

While he was speaking, the door had closed softly and Pina was gone.
Ortensia saw her go out and put out one hand timidly between the folds
of the cloak, for her arm was bare, and she tried to cover it. At the
same time the glorious colour rose in her face, the third time since
she had opened her eyes that morning.

'I am glad,' she said simply, as soon as her hand was in his.

He glanced behind him and saw that Pina had disappeared. Then without a
word he drew the lovely girl up to him, and for a while they stood
clasped in each other's arms; and she forgot that hers were bare, and he
scarcely knew it; and if their faces drew back one from the other for a
few seconds, it was that their eyes might meet in one another's depths;
and the broad morning sun shone full upon the two through the open
window, making the girl's auburn hair blaze like dark red gold, and a
white radiance glowed in her pure forehead and snowy arms.

Stradella shivered a little, even in the sunshine, as he let her go, and
she sank upon her chair, finding his hand again and holding it fast as
if she feared lest he should leave her. It had been a strange wooing, in
which song had played a greater part than words; and as for anything
else, he had kissed her twice on that night when he had climbed into the
loggia, and not again till now. Had he loved her less, he would have
laughed at himself for the innocence of such a love-making; but it was
all unlike anything that had ever happened to him before, and, moreover,
he had no time for such reflections at the present moment, since every
hour of delay might mean the nearer approach of danger, not to him only,
but to Ortensia herself.

'We are not far enough from Venice,' he said, when he spoke at last. 'I
would give the world to have you safe in Florence!'

'My uncle will not even try to catch us,' Ortensia said calmly. 'You do
not know him. When he finds out that we are gone together he will fear a
scandal, and he fears ridicule still more. He will tell his friends that
he has sent me to the country, or to a convent, and by and by he will
tell them that I am dead. He dreads nothing in the world so much as
being laughed at!'

She was so sure that she laughed herself as she thought of him, and
almost wished that he might hear her, though he was certainly the very
last person she wished to see just then. But Stradella thought
otherwise.

'No one would laugh at him if he had you assassinated,' he said.

'I am not afraid of that!' Ortensia smiled at the mere idea of such a
thing. 'Why are you standing? Come, bring that chair and sit down beside
me, for we are alone at last!'

He was well used to women's ways, but the ways of grown women of the
world are not those of innocent maidens of seventeen; her perfect
simplicity and fearlessness were quite new to him, and had a wonderful
charm of their own. He drew a chair to the window and sat down close to
her, and afterwards he was glad that he had done as she wished.

It was all very strange, he thought even then. As yet, a love-affair had
mostly meant for him a round of more or less dangerous adventures by
night, such as climbing of balconies, unlocking of forbidden doors with
stolen keys, imprisonment in dark closets and wardrobes, and sometimes
flight in break-neck haste. That had usually been the material side,
whereas now, reckoning up his risks, he had only climbed once to a
loggia at night, and once he had been taken for a thief and chased, and
that was all, excepting the actual escape from Venice, which had been
without danger until now. On the other hand, there had stood to love's
credit, as against those insignificant perils, only two kisses and no
more, exchanged when he had been so drenched with rain that it had been
quite out of the question to put a dripping arm round his lady's waist.

And now, for the first time in his life, he was suddenly alone with an
innocent girl of seventeen who loved him, and whom he loved even to the
point of having carried her off out of her house; he was alone with her,
in her own room, when she had but just risen from sleep, and she was
sitting beside him in the early sunshine, that wove a blaze of glory
round her young beauty, and her soft white hand held his; and he was not
satisfied as she was, but wished it were night instead of day, and
wished the sun were the moon, and that there were sweet silence without
instead of the thousand cries and echoes of a waking Italian city. For
all he had ever known of joy on earth, or ever hoped for, he would not
have wished that Ortensia's face could change into any that had once
been dear to him under the summer moonlight of the south; yet he felt
strangely constrained and awkward, like a schoolboy in love, not knowing
what to do or say in the overwhelming daylight.

'You are not glad, as I am,' Ortensia said after the long silence.

At the sound of her voice he found himself again, and he lifted her hand
and pressed it to his lips.

'I am afraid for you,' he answered. 'When a man has taken the most
precious thing in the whole world, and carries it with him through an
enemy's country, he may well be afraid lest some harm come to it on the
way.'

'But this is not the enemy's country!' laughed Ortensia, too happy to be
serious. 'Are we not a hundred miles from Venice and my uncle?'

'They say the Republic has long arms, love, and the Senator can count on
every one of the Ten to help him. The law cannot touch us merely for
having run away together, it is true, but what if he invents a crime?
What if he swears that we have robbed him? The Pope's Government will
not harbour thieves nor shelter criminals against the justice of Venice!
We should be arrested and given up, that is all, and then sent back!
This is what I fear much more than that he should have us tracked and
murdered by assassins, as many Venetians would do in this civilised
age!'

'But we have taken nothing,' Ortensia objected, quite unable to be
afraid of anything while her hand was in his. 'How can he accuse us of
robbing him? Pina and I have a comb and piece of soap between us! As for
money, she may have a little small change, for all I know, but I have
nothing.'

'I have a good deal,' Stradella answered; 'quite enough to justify such
an accusation as that. But, after all, nothing can hinder such a thing,
if it is going to be. I dare say you are right--it is my anxiety for you
that makes me think of everything that might happen.'

'Nothing will happen,' Ortensia said softly, 'nothing will happen to
part us!'

Still holding his hand, she gazed into his eyes with an expression of
ecstatic happiness, and she could not have found another word, even if
she had needed speech; then suddenly her bare arm circled his neck like
a flash of white light, for he was very close to her, and she took him
unawares and kissed him first.

She laid her head upon his breast a moment later, and he pressed her to
him and buried his face in her sweet auburn hair. His heart overflowed
in many soft and loving words.

The door opened while he was speaking, and both started and sat upright,
expecting to see Pina, and ashamed to be surprised even by her. Then
Ortensia uttered a sharp cry and Stradella sprang to his feet.

Two big men in rusty black and long boots had entered the room, and were
advancing. They were broad-shouldered men, of a determined bearing, with
sinister faces, and both wore swords and kept their slouch hats on their
heads. Stradella was unarmed, and could only stand before Ortensia,
awaiting their onset, for he had not a doubt but that they were Bravi
sent by Pignaver to murder him. To his surprise they stopped before him,
and one of them spoke.

'You had better come quietly with us,' the man said.

Stradella understood at once that the two intruders were sbirri, come to
arrest him, and he was sure that Pignaver had pursued precisely the
course he had explained to Ortensia, and that he was going to be accused
of robbery.

'I am a Sicilian and a Spanish subject,' he said. 'By what right do you
dare to arrest me?'

'We know very well that you are a Sicilian, Master Bartolo,' answered
the man. 'And as for the rest, it is known to you, so come with us and
make no trouble, or it will be the worse for you.'

'My name is not Bartolo!' cried the musician indignantly. 'I am
Alessandro Stradella, the singer.'

'Any one can say that,' replied the man. 'Come along! No nonsense, now!'

'I tell you, I am Stradella----'

But the man glanced at his companion, and the two had him by his arms in
an instant, though he struggled desperately. They were very strong
fellows, and between them could have thrown a horse, and though
Stradella was supple and quick, he was powerless between them.

During the short exchange of words Ortensia had leaned back against the
window-sill in frightened surprise, but when she saw her lover suddenly
pinioned and dragged towards the door, she flew at the sbirri like a
tigress, and buried her fingers in the throat of the nearest, springing
upon him from behind. The fellow shook her off as a bull-terrier would a
rat, and, while keeping his hold on the prisoner with one hand, he
tripped her roughly with his foot and the other, by a common
professional trick, throwing her heavily upon the brick floor. Before
she could rise, the men had got Stradella outside, and as she struggled
to her feet she heard the key turned, and knew that she was locked in.
In wild despair she beat upon the solid panels with her small fists, but
no one answered her. Stradella's man was scouring the town for horses,
and Pina was not within hearing.

Meanwhile the singer had submitted, as soon as he realised that he had
no chance of escape, and that, unless the men were acting a part, he had
been taken for a man called Bartolo, and would be able to explain the
mistake as soon as he was brought before a responsible officer or
magistrate. Indeed, when this view presented itself to him, he was only
anxious to facilitate the course of events as much as possible, and
spoke civilly to his captors, while walking quietly downstairs between
them; but they did not let go of his arms for that reason.

Below, in the arched entrance, the innkeeper was waiting, in
conversation with three other sbirri, dressed and armed much in the same
manner as the two who had made the arrest.

'It is a mistake,' Stradella said to the host. 'I am taken for another
man, and as soon as I have explained who I am, I shall return. I shall
be obliged if you will attend to the wants of the lady and her
serving-woman.'

'Guests who quit the house without paying their score generally leave
their luggage as security,' answered the host with an insulting sneer,
and pointing towards the entrance.

There, to his surprise, Stradella saw two sturdy porters, laden with his
valises, his cloak, and his lute, and evidently waiting to accompany
him.

'What are you doing, you scoundrels?' he cried. 'Put down my things!'

But they only grinned and began to move on, and as he was hurried out of
the door into the square, they jogged across the square at a trot with
their burdens. A few moments later he followed them across the
drawbridge of the castle and in under the great gate where a papal
soldier, armed with halberd and broadsword, was pacing up and down on
guard.

Just as he disappeared, Pina emerged upon the square from a narrow
street at its northern end, and hastened to the entrance of the inn. The
host was standing there, his legs apart, his arms crossed, and his small
black cap on one side of his head. He stopped Pina.

'Your master has changed his lodgings,' he said in a jocular tone, and
pointing with his thumb towards the castle. 'His Excellency the Legate
has just taken him in free.'

Pina understood instantly, and drew back a step in consternation.

'If you mean to stay here, you must pay in advance,' continued the host,
'for your master has taken all the luggage with him. Perhaps he expects
to spend some time with the Legate.'

'But we have no money of our own!' Pina cried in great distress. 'What
are we to do?'

'That is your affair,' answered the innkeeper. 'You have had your
night's lodging from me, and that is all you will get for nothing; so,
unless you can pay, take your mistress somewhere else.'

Pina bent her head, and went upstairs without more words. A quarter of
an hour later she and Ortensia left the inn, with the hoods of their
brown cloaks drawn over their heads. The young girl leaned on her
nurse's arm, and walked unsteadily.

Their worldly possessions, besides the clothes they wore, consisted of a
piece of Castile soap, a comb, and Pina's work-case.




CHAPTER VIII


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 quantit

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