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The Fool Errant

by Maurice Hewlett · English · Gutenberg #5755 · 624,114 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Fool Errant

Author: Maurice Hewlett


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5755]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOL ERRANT ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




THE FOOL ERRANT

BEING THE MEMOIRS OF

FRANCIS-ANTONY STRELLEY, ESQ.

CITIZEN OF LUCCA

EDITED BY
MAURICE HEWLETT

AUTHOR OF "THE QUEEN'S QUAIR," "NEW CANTERBURY
TALES," "RICHARD YEA-AND-NAY," "LITTLE
NOVELS OF ITALY," ETC., ETC.


Published July, 1905.


To

J. M. BARRIE

AFFECTIONATELY




CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I.      MY EXORDIUM: A JUSTIFICATORY PIECE
II.     AURELIA AND THE DOCTOR
III.    MY DANGEROUS PROGRESS
IV.     FATAL AVOWAL
V.      DISASTER
VI.     I COMMENCE PILGRIM
VII.    I AM MISCONCEIVED AT THE HOSPITAL
VIII.   THE PEDLAR OF CRUCIFIXES
IX.     I AM HUMILIATED, LIFTED UP, AND LEFT CURIOUS
X.      I FALL IN AGAIN WITH FRA PALAMONE
XI.     I EXERCISE COMMON SENSE, IMAGINATION AND CHARITY
XII.    I SEEK--AND FIND
XIII.   HAVING EMPTIED MY POCKET, I OFFER MY HAND, BUT RESERVE MY HEART
XIV.    MY HAPPY DAYS; THEIR UNHAPPY END
XV.     I AM IN BONDAGE
XVI.    VIRGINIA AND I FALL OUT, BUT ARE RECONCILED
XVII.   ERCOLE AT THE FAIR
XVIII.  FRA PALAMONE BREAKS THE LAW, AND I MY CHAIN
XIX.    I AM AGAIN MISCONCEIVED
XX.     SURPRISING CHANGE IN MY FORTUNES
XXI.    MY DIVERSIONS: COUNT GIRALDI
XXII.   I WORK FOR AURELIA, AND HEAR OF HER
XXIII.  AURELIA FORGIVES
XXIV.   VIRGINIA VEXES
XXV.    I PREPARE FOR BLISS
XXVI.   I DISAPPOINT MY FRIENDS
XXVII.  I SLAY A MAN
XXVIII. VIRGINIA ON HER METTLE
XXIX.   I TAKE SANCTUARY
XXX.    I MARRY AND GO TO LUCCA
XXXI.   MY ADVENTURES AT THE INN
XXXII.  WE LIVE HAPPILY IN LUCCA
XXXIII. TREACHERY WORKS AGAINST US
XXXIV.  I FALL IN WITH THE PLAYERS
XXXV.   TEMPTED IN SIENA, BELVISO SAVES ME
XXXVI.  MY UNREHEARSED EFFECT AND ITS MIDNIGHT SEQUEL
XXXVII. I COMMIT A DOUBLE MURDER
XXXVIII. AN UNEXPECTED MESSENGER LIFTS ME UP
XXXIX.  VIRGINIA DECLINES THE HEIGHTS
XL.     I GET RID OF MY ENEMY AND PART FROM MY FRIEND
XLI.    I RETURN TO FLORENCE AND THE WORLD OF FASHION
XLII.   I STAND AT A CROSS-ROAD
XLIII.  AGITATIONS AT THE VILLA SAN GIORGIO
XLIV.   I CONFRONT MY ENEMIES
XLV.    THE MEETING
XLVI.   THE DISCOVERY
XLVII.  THE FINAL PROOF
XLVIII. THE LAST




INTRODUCTION


The top-heavy, four-horsed, yellow old coach from Vicenza, which arrived
at Padua every night of the year, brought with it in particular on the
night of October 13, 1721, a tall, personable young man, an Englishman,
in a dark blue cloak, who swang briskly down from the coupe and asked in
stilted Italian for "La sapienza del Signer Dottor' Lanfranchi." From
out of a cloud of steam--for the weather was wet and the speaker
violently hot--a husky voice replied, "Eccomi--eccomi, a servirla." The
young man took off his hat and bowed.

"Have I the honour to salute so much learning?" he asked courteously.
"Let me present myself to my preceptor as Mr. Francis Strelley of
Upcote."

"His servant," said the voice from the cloud, "and servant of his
illustrious father. Don Francis, be accommodated; let your mind be at
ease. Your baggage? These fellows are here for it. Your valise? I carry
it. Your hand? I take it. Follow me."

These words were accompanied by action of the most swift and singular
kind. Mr. Strelley saw two porters scramble after his portmanteaux, had
his valise reft from his hand, and that hand firmly grasped before he
could frame his reply. The vehemence of this large perspiring sage
caused the struggle between pride and civility to be short; such faint
protests as he had at command passed unheeded in the bustle and could
not be seen in the dark.

Vehement, indeed, in all that he did was Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi,
Professor of Civil Law: it was astonishing that a bulk so large and
loosely packed could be propelled by the human will at so headlong a
speed. Yet, spurred by that impetus alone, he pounded and splashed
through the puddled, half-lit street of Padua at such a rate that Mr.
Strelley, though longer in the leg, fully of his height, and one quarter
his weight, found himself trotting beside his conductor like any
schoolboy. The position was humiliating, but it did not seem possible to
escape it. The doctor took everything for granted; and besides, he so
groaned and grunted at his labours, his goaded flesh protested so
loudly, the pitfalls were so many, and the pace so severe, that nothing
in the world seemed of moment beyond preserving foothold. Along the
winding way--between the half-discerned arcades, palace gateways, black
entries, church portals--down the very middle of the street flew master
and pupil without word spoken. They reached the Pra, skirted its right-
hand boundary for some hundreds of yards, and came to the door of a
tall, narrow, white house. Upon this door the doctor kicked furiously
until it was opened; then, with a malediction upon the oaf who snored
behind it, up he blundered, three stairs at a time, Strelley after him
whether or no; and stayed not in his rush towards the stars until he had
reached the fourth-floor landing, where again he kicked at a door; and
then, releasing his victim's hand, took off hat and wig together and
mopped his dripping pate, as he murmured, "Chaste Madonna, what a
ramble! What a stroll for the evening, powerful Mother of us all!" Such
a stroll had never yet been taken by Mr. Francis Strelley of Upcote in
his one-and-twenty years' experience of legs; nor did he ever forget
this manner of being haled into Italy, nor lose his feeling of extremely
helpless youth in the presence of the doctor, his tutor and guardian.
But to suppose the business done by calculation of that remarkable man
is to misapprehend him altogether. Dr. Lanfranchi's head worked, as his
body did, by flashes. He calculated nothing, but hit at everything; hit
or miss, it might be--but "Let's to it and have done" was his battle-
cry.

The lamp over the door of his apartment revealed him for the disorderly
genius he was--a huge, blotch-faced, tumble-bellied man, bullet-headed,
bull-necked, and with flashing eyes. Inordinate alike in appetite, mind
and action, he was always suffering for his furies, and always making a
fine recovery. Just now he was at the last gasp for a breath, or so you
would have said to look at him. But not so; his exertions were really
his stimulant. Presently he would eat and drink consumedly, drench
himself with snuff, and then spend half the night with his books,
preparing for to-morrow's lecture. Of this sort was Dr. Porfirio
Lanfranchi, who had more authority over the wild students of Padua than
the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and Senate put together.

The same lamp played upon the comely and ingenuous face, upon the
striking presence of Mr. Strelley, and showed him a good-looking, good-
tempered, sanguine young man of an appearance something less than his
age. He was tall and supple, wore his own fair hair tied with a ribbon,
was blue-eyed and bright-lipped, and had a notable chin--firm, square at
the jaw, and coming sharply to a point. He looked you straight in the
face--such was his habit--but by no means arrogantly or with defiance;
seriously rather, gravely and courteously, as if to ask, "Do I take your
precise meaning to be--?" Such a look was too earnest for mere good
manners; he was serious; there was no laughter in him, though he was not
of a melancholy sort. He pondered the world and its vagaries and
examined them, as they presented themselves in each case, UPON THE
MERITS. This, which was, I think, his strongest characteristic, should
show that he lacked the humorous sense; and he did. He had no time to
laugh; wondering engaged him. The life of the world on its round showed
him miracles daily; he looked for them very often, but more frequently
they thrust themselves upon him. Sunrise now--what an extraordinary
thing! He never ceased to be amazed at that. The economy of the moon,
too, so exquisitely adapted to the needs of mankind! Nations, tongues
(hardly to be explained by the sublime folly of a Babel), the reverence
paid to elders, to women; the sense of law and justice in our kind: in
the leafy shades of Upcote in Oxfordshire, he had pondered these things
during his lonely years of youth and adolescence--had pondered, and in
some cases already decided them UPON THE MERITS. This was remarkably so
in the matter of Betty Coy, as he will tell you for himself before long.
Meantime, lest I keep Dr. Lanfranchi too long upon the threshold of his
own house, all I shall add to my picture of his pupil now is that he was
the eldest son and third child of Squire Antony Strelley of Upcote, a
Catholic, non-juring, recusant, stout old gentleman of Oxfordshire, and
of Dame Mary, born Arundell, his wife; and that he was come to study the
moral and civil law at this famous University of Padua, like many an
Englishman of his condition before him. He was twenty-one years of age,
had as much money as was good for him and much more poetry than enough
in his valise--to say nothing of the germ of those notes from which he
afterwards (long afterwards) compiled the ensuing memoirs.

Dr. Lanfranchi had not said "Accidente!" more than twice, nor kicked his
door more than half a dozen times, before it was opened by a young and
pretty lady, who held a lamp above her head. She was, apparently, a very
young and very pretty, rather little, lady, and was dressed with some
care--but not more than her person deserved--in black and white. Her
dark hair, which was high upon her head, was crowned with a large
tortoiseshell comb. She held the lamp, as I say, above her as she
curtseyed, smiling, in the way. "Be very welcome, sir," she said, "and
be pleased to enter our house." It was charming to see how deftly she
dipped without spilling the lamp-oil, charming to see her little white
teeth as she smiled, her lustrous eyes shining in the light like large
stars. It was charming to see her there at all, for she was charming
altogether--in figure, in face and poise, in expression, which was that
of a graceful child playing housewife; lastly, in the benevolence,
curiosity and discretion which sat enthroned upon her smooth brow, like
a bench of Lords Justices, or of Bishops, if you prefer it. This was
none other than Dr. Porfirio's wife, as he then and there declared by
grunts. "Mia moglie--a servirla," he was understood to say; and pushed
his way into his house without ceremony, while Mr. Strelley, with much,
kissed the hand of his hostess. The salute, received with composure, was
rendered with a blush; for this, to be truthful, was the very first hand
ever saluted by the young gentleman. The fact says much for his
inexperience and right instinct at once.

Quite at her ease, as if she were the mistress of a well-kissed hand,
was Signora Aurelia Lanfranchi, for that was her name, and had been so
for rather more than two years--quite at her ease and most anxious to
put Strelley there. Relieving him of his cloak and hat, of his sword,
pistols and other travelling gear, in spite of all protestations on his
part, she talked freely and on end about anything and nothing in a soft
voice which rose and died down like a summer wind, and betrayed in its
muffled tones--as if it came to him through silk--that she was not of
the north, but of some mellower, more sun-ripened land. She was in fact
of Siena, a Gualandi by birth, and extremely proud of it. Strelley was
so informed before he had been four-and-twenty hours in her company. But
now, having spoiled him of his defences, she invited him into the
salone, wooed him thither, indeed, with that sidelong head and sort of
sleek smile with which you coax a cat to come to your knee. Mr. Francis
would have followed her singing to the bonfire on such terms.

At the table, which was liberal, was the learned doctor seated already,
napkin to chin. Mr. Strelley was shown his place, and expected to take
it while the fair housewife waited upon the two; and when he seemed
timid, she raised a wail of pretty protest and dragged him by the arm
towards the chair. It was absurd, it was preposterous, he was robbing
her of her pride. She had eaten long ago--besides, it was the woman's
place, and Nonna was in the kitchen, ashamed to appear in the state she
was in. Signor Francesco must please her in this--she would be vexed--
and surely he would not vex his hostess. To this wilful chant the doctor
contributed his burden of "Che! che! S'accommodi!" and rapped with his
knife-handle upon the table. Old Nonna, toothless, bearded and scared,
popped her head beyond the kitchen door; to be short, insistence went to
a point where good manners could not follow. Mr. Francis sat himself
down, and Donna Aurelia, clapping her little hands, cried aloud that
victory was hers. "Quick, quick, Nonna, these signori are at table!" She
stormed into the kitchen, and speedily returned with a steaming and
savoury dish. She dispensed the messes, she poured the wine, she hovered
here and there--salt? pepper? cheese? yet a little bread? Madonna
purissima, she had forgotten the mustard! No! it was here--it was here!
There must have been more rejoicings over the recovery of the mustard
than were made for the victory of Lepanto. Betweenwhiles she talked
gaily or pathetically or intimately of things of which the guest had
known nothing, but immediately felt that he now knew all; the moral
lapses of this professor or that, the unparalleled slight offered to
Signora Pappagallo by Donna Susanna Tron, the storm of rain and thunder
on Tuesday week--no, it must have been Monday week; a scandal in the
Senate, a duel in the Pra, how the Avvocato Minghini was picked up dead
in Pedrocchi's--a meat-fly in his chocolate! Sparkling eyes, a delicate
flush, quick breath, a shape at once pliant and audacious, flashing
hands with which half her spells were woven--all these, and that
wailing, dragging, comico-tragic voice, that fatal appeal of the child,
trained by the wisdom of the wife, completed the rout of our youth.
Before supper was over he was her loyal slave.

She insisted upon showing him his quarters. They were not, it seemed,
upon this floor, nor the next below--no, but on the next below that.
Signor Francesco must follow her as, lamp in hand, she went downstairs,
her high heels clattering like Spanish castanets. She opened his door
with a key which she then handed over to him: she showed him his
bedroom, his saloon. "Your citadel, Don Francis," she said, "your refuge
from my heedless tongue. Your chocolate shall be brought to you here,
but we hope you will give yourself the trouble to dine with us.
Generally my husband sups too late for your convenience. He is always at
the cafe till nine o'clock. He sits there with his friends and hears the
news, which he knows beforehand as well as they do. And when they have
done, he tells it all over again to them. This is the way with men; and
I sit at home and make my clothes. This also is the way with women, it
seems. There is no other." She stayed a few more minutes, chattering,
laughing and blushing; then with a sudden access of shyness wished him
"felicissima notte," and held him out her hand. Mr. Francis stooped over
it, and saluted it once more with profound respect.

He was long in going to bed. He wrote furiously in his diary after a
space of restless contemplation, when he roamed across and across the
room. But now I must leave his raptures and himself to his own pen,
having got him inmate of a household where by ordinary he might have
lived a blameless three years. If, however, he had done that, I don't
suppose the singular memoirs which follow would ever have been written.




CHAPTER I

MY EXORDIUM: A JUSTIFICATORY PIECE


If we soberly reflect upon the part which the trappings and mantlings of
men have played in their affairs, we shall not hesitate, I believe, to
put into that category many things which have hitherto been considered
far less occasional. What is honour but a garment? What money but a
walking-stick? What are fine manners but a wig? If I professed, instead
of abhorring, the Cynic school of philosophy, I might go on to ask what
were love but an ointment, or religion but a tinted glass. I can thank
my Redeemer, as I sit here in my green haven, with the stormy sea of my
troubles afar off, beating in vain against the walls of contentment,
that through all my vicissitudes I was never tempted to stray into such
blasphemous imaginations. Fool as I have been, and fool as I have
declared myself upon the forefront of this very book, I have never said
in my heart, THERE IS NO GOD; but much and loudly have maintained the
affirmative. And although I have been sadly, wickedly, detestably errant
from His way, there is one divine precept which I have never failed to
keep, and that is, LOVE ONE ANOTHER. All other affections, additions,
accidents, accessories of men, however, from the lowest, which is Money,
to the highest, which is Polite Education, I have been able to discard
without concern or loss of self-respect. This fact alone should furnish
good reason for my Memoirs, and commend them to the philosopher, the
poet, the divine, and the man of feeling. For true it is that I have
been bare to the shirt and yet proved my manhood, beaten like a thief
and yet maintained myself honest, scorned by men and women and yet been
ready to serve my fellows, held atheist by the godly and yet clung to my
Saviour's cross. In situations calculated to excite the contemptuous
ridicule of the meanest upon earth I have been satisfied that I was
neither contemptible nor reasonably ridiculous, and that while I might
herd with ruffians, and find in their society my most comfortable
conversation, I was the richer, partly for that I had lost in choosing
to consort with them, and partly for what I had gained. As having
nothing, yet possessing all things; as poor, yet making many rich--the
boast of St. Paul, the hope of St. Francis of Assisi! in those pithy
antitheses is the summa of my experience.

Eldest son, but third child, of my parents, I was born upon the 4th of
October, in the year 1700; and for that reason and another (to which I
shall shortly allude) was named Francis, after the great Champion of our
faith commemorated upon my birthday. The other reason was that, oddly
enough, my mother, before my birth, had dreamed of him so persistently
and with particulars so unvaried that she gave my father no option but
to change the settled habits of our family and bestow upon me the name,
which he despised, of a patriarch whom he underrated. Her dream,
repeated, she told me, with exact fidelity and at regularly recurring
periods, was that she could see St. Francis standing on a wide sea-shore
between sand-dunes and the flood of waters--standing alone there with an
apple in his hand, which he held lightly, as if weighing it. By and by,
said my mother, she saw three women come slowly over the sandhills from
different points, one from the south, one from the north, and one from
the west; but they converged as they drew near to St. Francis, joined
hands, and came directly to him. The midmost of the three was like a
young queen; she on the side nearest the sea was bold and meagre; the
third was lovely, but disfigured by a scar. When they were come before
St. Francis, after reverences, they knelt down on his right hand and his
left, and the queenly woman in front of him. To her, courteously, he
first offered the apple, but she laughingly refused it. She of the scar,
when it was held before her, covered her face with her hands and shrank
away; but the hardy woman craned her head forward and bit into the apple
while it was yet in the saint's hand. Then the young queen would have
had it if she might, but was prevented by the biter, and the two
clamoured for it, silently, by gestures of the hands and eyes, but with
haste and passion. At this point, said my mother, her dream always
ended, and she never knew who had the apple. She fretted greatly because
of it, and was hardly recovered after I was born.

My father, who disliked all women except my mother, and, Catholic as he
was, had scant respect for the mendicant orders, hated this dream, hated
to be reminded of it, hated the name which he had been persuaded into
giving me, and, as a consequence, I believe, never loved me. For
unnumbered generations of our family we had been Antonys, Gerards,
Ralphs, Martins; the name of Francis was unknown to the tree; he never
ceased to inveigh against it, and foretold the time when it would stand
out like a parasite upon its topmost shoot. "Your Italian ecstatic," he
told my mother, "began life by running away from his father and only
came back for the purpose of robbing him. He taught more people to live
by singing hymns than ever were taught before, and preached the virtues
of poverty, by which he intended the comfort it was for the blessed poor
to be kept snugly idle by the accursed rich. It never occurred to him to
reflect that, if everybody had been of his opinion, everybody would have
starved, the world would have stood still, and neither St. Ferdinand of
Spain, nor St. Edward the Confessor, nor Don John of Austria could have
become famous. As for your women and apples, the conjunction is
detestable. Cain was the result of one woman's desire for an apple, and
the siege of Troy that of another's. I don't wish this boy to grow up
either murderer or pretty Paris."

The like of this speech, often repeated--indeed, never omitted when so I
happened to fall into some childish disgrace--may be imagined. It made
an outcast of me, an exile from my nursery days. I grew up lonely,
sullen, moody. I could not meet my father with any comfort to either of
us; and though I loved my mother, and she me, that cold shadow of his
prejudice seemed to be over my intercourse with her, to chill and check
those emotions which should glow naturally when a son stands in the
presence of his mother. To be brief, I was an unhappy, solitary lad,
with sisters much older and brothers much younger than himself; cut off,
too, by reason of religion, from the society of neighbours, from school
and college. Such companions as I could have were far below me in
station, and either so servile as to foster pride, or so insolent as to
inflame it. There was Father Danvers, it's true, that excellent Jesuit
and our chaplain; and there were books. I was by nature a strong,
healthy, active boy, but was driven by sheer solitariness to be
studious. If it had not turned out so, I know not what might have become
of me, at what untimely age I might have been driven to violence, crime,
God knows what. That there was danger of some such disaster Father
Danvers was well aware. My faults, as he did not fail to remind me week
by week, were obstinacy and pride of intellect; my weaknesses, lack of
proportion and what he was pleased to call perversity, by which I
suppose he meant a disposition to accept the consequences of my own
acts. I freely admit a personal trait which will be obvious as I
proceed. Trivial as it may seem, and does, at this time of writing, I
must record an instance of it, the last I was to exhibit in England.
Never vicious, I may sincerely say convinced, rather, that women are as
far above our spiritual as they are fatally within our material reach,
it was by my conduct to a woman that I fell into a way of life which
nobody could have anticipated. In my twentieth year, in a moment of
youthful ardour, I kissed Betty Coy, our dairymaid, over the cheese-
press, and was as immediately and as utterly confounded as she was. I
remember the moment, I remember her, a buxom, fresh-coloured young
woman, rosy red, her sleeves above her elbows, her "La, Mr. Francis,
what next?"--I remember all, even to my want of breath, suddenly cooled
passion, perplexity and flight. It is a moot point whether that last was
the act of a coward, but I can never allow it to be said that in what
followed I showed a want of courage. I devoted a day and night to
solitary meditation; no knight errant of old, watching his arms under
the moon, prayed more earnestly than I; and when I had fully made up my
mind to embrace what honour demanded of me, I sought out the girl, who
was again in the dairy, and in solemn form, upon my knees, offered her
my hand. Father Danvers, walking the terrace, was an accidental witness
of my declaration, and very properly told my father. Betty Coy,
unfortunate girl, was dismissed that evening; next day my father sent
for me. [Footnote: I need only say further of Betty that she, shortly
afterwards, married James Bunce, our second coachman at Upcote, and bore
him a numerous progeny, of whose progress and settlement in the world I
was able to assure the worthy parents.]

It would be idle to rehearse the interview between an angry father and
an obdurate son. The more I said the angrier he got: the discrepancy
between us made a reasonable conclusion hopeless from the first. When he
cried, Did I mean to disgrace my name? and I replied, No, but on the
contrary I had been wishful to redeem it--"How, you fool," said he, "by
marrying a dairymaid?" "Sir," I answered, "by showing to the world that
when a gentleman salutes a virtuous female it is not his intention to
insult her." I was too old for the rod or I should have had it. As it
was, I received all the disgrace he could put me to--dismissed from his
presence, confined to my room, forbidden any society but that of Father
Danvers and my own thoughts. My infatuation, however, persisted, and
threatened to take the dangerous form of FRAUD. I could not for the life
of me see what else I could do to recover the girl's fair fame,
hopelessly compromised by me, than exhibit to the world at large the
only conceivable motive of my salute. I knew, immediately I had done it,
that I could not love Betty Coy, but I believed that I could prove the
tender husband.

Correspondence to this effect--all on my side--with her parents decided
mine to hasten my removal abroad. It had always been intended that I
should study in Padua, rather than in Paris or Salamanca, if for no
better reason than that that had been Father Danvers' University, and
that he knew many of the professors there--among others, Dr. Porfirio
Lanfranchi, who became my host and guardian, and had been class-mate and
room-mate of our chaplain's. These things matter very little: I was not
consulted in them, and had no objections, as I had no inclinations, for
any particular residence in the world. Before my twenty-first birthday--
I forget the exact date--the hour arrived when I received on my knees my
mother's tearful blessing, embraced my brothers and sisters, kissed my
father's hand, and departed for Oxford, where I caught the London mail;
and, after a short sojourn in the capital, left England for ever.

I conceive that few further prolegomena are necessary to the
understanding of the pages which follow. Before I touched the Italian
soil I was, in the eyes of our law, a grown man, sufficiently robust and
moderately well-read. I was able to converse adequately in French,
tolerably in Italian, had a fair acquaintance with the literatures of
those countries, some Latin, a poor stock of Greek. I believe that I
looked younger than my age, stronger than my forces, better than my
virtues warranted. Women have praised me for good looks, which never did
me any good that I know of; I may say without vanity that I had the
carriage and person of a gentleman. I was then, as I have ever been,
truly religious, though I have sometimes found myself at variance with
the professional exponents of it. In later years I became, I believe,
something of a mystic, apt to find the face of God under veils whose
quality did not always commend itself to persons of less curious
research. On the other hand, I do not pretend to have kept the Decalogue
of Moses in its integrity, but admit that I have varied it as my
occasions seemed to demand. I have slain my fellow-man more than once,
but never without deliberate intention so to do. If I have trespassed
with King David of Israel, I feel sure that the circumstances of my
particular offence are not discreditable to me; and it is possible that
he had the same conviction. For the rest, I have purposely discarded
many things which the world is agreed to think highly necessary to a
gentleman, but which I have proved to be of no value at all. I will only
add this one observation more. For my unparalleled misfortunes in every
kind of character and dangerous circumstance I am willing to admit that
I have nobody to thank but myself. And yet--but the reader must be
judge--I do not see how, in any single case, I could have acted
otherwise than as I did. What, then! we carry our fates with us from the
cradle to the grave, even as the Spinning Women themselves wind that
which was appointed them to wind, and ply the shears and make fruitless
their toil when they must; and all that we acquire upon our journey does
but make that burden more certainly ours. What was I but a predestined
wanderer--and fool if you will--burdened with my inheritance of
honourable blood, of religion, of candour, and of unprejudiced enquiry?
How under the sun could I---? But let the reader be judge.

I left England early in September, made a good passage to Genoa, and
from thence proceeded by easy stages to Padua. Arriving there by the
coach on the night of October 13, I was met by my host and tutor, Dr.
Porfirio Lanfranchi, and by him taken to his lodgings on the Pra della
Valle and introduced to the charitable ministrations of his young and
beautiful wife--the fair, the too-fair Donna Aurelia, with whom, I shall
not disguise from the reader, I fell romantically and ardently in love.




CHAPTER II

AURELIA AND THE DOCTOR


It was, I know very well, the aim and desire of this beautiful lady to
approve herself mother to the exile thus cast upon her hands, and it was
so as much by reason of her innate charity as of her pride in her
husband's credit. To blame an ambition so laudable would be impossible,
nor is blame intended to lie in recording the fact that she was a year
my junior, though two years a wife. Such was the case, however, and it
did not fit her for the position she wished to occupy. Nor indeed did
her beauties of person and mind, unless a childish air and sprightly
manner, cloudy-dark hair, a lovely mouth and bosom of snow, a caressing
voice, and candour most surprising because most innocent, can be said to
adapt a young lady to be mother to a young man. Be these things as they
may--inflaming arrows full of danger, shafts of charity, pious
artillery, as you will--they were turned full play upon me. From the
first moment of my seeing her she set herself to put me at ease, to make
me an intimate of her house, to make herself, I may say in no wrong
sense, an inmate of my heart--and God knoweth, God knoweth how she
succeeded.

Aurelia! Impossibly fair, inexpressibly tender and wise, with that
untaught wisdom of the child; daughter of pure religion, as I saw thee
at first and can see thee still, can that my first vision of thee ever
be effaced? Nay, but it is scored too deeply in my heart, is too surely
my glory and my shame. Still I can see that sweet stoop of thy humility,
still thy hands crossed upon thy lovely bosom, still fall under the
spell of thy shyly welcoming eyes, and be refreshed, while I am stung,
by the gracious greeting of thy lips. "Sia il ben venuto, Signer
Francesco," saidst thou? Alas, what did I prove to thee, unhappy one,
but il mal venuto, the herald of an evil hour? What did I offer thee in
exchange for thy bounty but shame and salt tears? What could be my
portion but fruitless reproach and footsore pilgrimage from woe to woe?
But I forget myself. I am not yet to disinter these unhappy days.

It is not to be supposed from this apostrophe that when I fell at once
to love my master's wife I saw in her more than my lamp and my saint,
the gracious presence which should "imparadise," in Dante's phrase, my
mind. I was an honest lad, very serious and very simple. Perhaps I was a
fool, but I was a pure fool: and he had been a very monster of depravity
who could have cast unwholesome regard upon a welcome so generous and
modest as hers. I declare that she was never anything to me but a holy
emanation, not to be approached but on the knees, not to be looked upon
but through a veil. So from this page until near the end of my long
history she will appear to the reader. I never had an unworthy thought
of her, never an unworthy desire. I never credited her with more than
charity towards myself; and if I gloried in the fact that I was
privileged to love so wondrous a being, the thought humiliated me at the
same time. I was conscious of my nothingness before her worthiness, and
desperate to fit myself for her high society. A noble rage for
excellence possessed me; like any champion or knight of old I strove to
approve my manhood, only that I might lay the spoils of it at her sacred
feet.

By origin Aurelia was a Sienese, the daughter of the ancient, noble but
reduced family of Gualandi, and had, without knowing it, caught the
fancy of Dr. Lanfranchi when he was in her native city upon some
political question or another. At the age of eighteen she had been made
the subject of a marriage treaty between her mother and this learned man
of fifty--a treaty conducted by correspondence and without any by-or-
with-your-leave of hers. It may be doubted whether she had done much
more than see and quiz her husband until she was brought to his house,
to be mistress of that and slave of its master. Doing violence to the
imaginations of a lover, I can look back upon her now with calmness, and
yet see no flaw upon her extraordinary perfections. I can still see her
lovely in every part, a bright, glancing, various creature, equally
compounded of simplicity and common sense. Her greatest charm was
precisely what we call charm--a sweetly willing, pliant disposition, an
air of gay seriousness, such as a child has, and a mood which could run
swiftly, at the touch on some secret spring, from the ripple of laughter
to the urgency of tears. She was very devout, but not at all in our way,
who must set our God very far off if we are to consider His awful
nature; she carried her gaiety with her into church, and would laugh in
the face of the Blessed Virgin or our Saviour just as freely as in that
of the greatest sinner of us all. Her carriage and conversation with
Heaven were, indeed, exactly those which she held towards the world, and
were such that it was impossible not to love her, and yet, for an honest
man who desired to remain one, equally impossible to do it. For although
she was made in shape, line and feature to be a man's torment and
delight, she carried her beauties so easily, valued them so staidly, and
considered them so unaffectedly her husband's property, that he would
have been a highway thief who had dared anything against her.

Here, indeed, was to be reckoned with that quality of strong common
sense, without which she had been no Tuscan girl. She had it in a
remarkable degree, as you may judge when I say that it reconciled her to
her position of wife to a vast, disorderly, tyrannical man nearly old
enough to be her grandfather. It enabled her to weigh the dignity, ease
and comfort of the Casa Lanfranchi against any romantic picture which a
more youthful lover could paint before her eyes. I am convinced--the
conviction was, it will be seen, forced upon me--that not only was she a
loyal, obedient and cheerful, but also a loving wife to this huge and
blusterous person, of whom nevertheless she was a good deal afraid. For
if he fondled her more than was becoming, he stormed at her also in a
way not tolerable.

When Dr. Lanfranchi met me on my arrival, I remember that he took my
hand in his own and never let go of it until he had me in his house.
This made me feel like a schoolboy, and I never lost the feeling of
extreme youth in his eyes. I believe now that his terrific silence, his
explosive rages, mock ceremoniousness, and startling alternations were
all parts of his method towards his pupils, for my experiences of them
were not peculiar. I have seen him cow a whole class by a lift of his
great square head, and most certainly, whatever scandalous acts may have
disgraced the university in my time, they never occurred where Dr.
Lanfranchi was engaged. Burly, bulky, blotched as he was, dirty in his
person, and in his dress careless to the point of scandal, he had the
respect of every student of the Bo. He was prodigiously learned and a
great eater. The amount of liquid he could absorb would pass belief: it
used to be said among us that he drank most comfortably, like a horse,
out of a bucket. His lectures were extraordinary, crammed with
erudition, which proceeded from him by gasps, jerks, and throttled cries
for mercy on his failing breath, and illustrated by personalities of the
most shocking description--he spared no deformity or defect of any one
of us if it happened to engage his eye. Sometimes a whole hour's lecture
would be consumed in a scandalous tale of Rome or Naples, sometimes
indeed it would be a reminiscence of his own youthful days, which
policy, if not propriety, should have counselled him to omit. Yet, as I
say, he never lost the respect of the class, but was feared, served, and
punctually obeyed.

It was much the same at home--that is, his methods and their efficacy
were the same. In private life he was an easy, rough, facetious
companion, excessively free in his talk, excessively candid in the
expression of his desires, and with a reserve of stinging repartee which
must have been more blessed to give than to receive. Terrible storms of
rage possessed him at times, under which the house seemed to rock and
roll, which sent his sweet wife cowering into a corner. But, though she
feared him, she respected and loved the man--and I was to find that out
to my cost before my first year was out.

Meantime that year of new experience, uplifting love and growth by
inches must ever remain wonderful to me--with Aurelia's music in my ears
and Love's wild music in my heart. Happy, happy days of my youth!

"Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos, a quien los antiguos pusieron
nombre de dorados!" cried the knight of La Mancha; and I may call that
Paduan year my age of song. It ran its course to the sound of flutes,
harps, and all sweet music. I never knew, until I knew Aurelia, that
such exulting tides of melody could pour from human throat.

When Aurelia rose in the morning and threw open her green shutters, if
the sunlight was broad upon the Pra, flecked upon the trees, striking
the domes and pinnacles of the Santo with fire, she sang full diapason
with that careless fling of the voice, that happy rapture, that bravura
which makes the listener's heart go near to burst with her joy. If rain
made the leaves to droop, or scudded in sheets along the causeways, she
sang plaintively, the wounded, aggrieved, hurt notes of the nightingale.
Her song then would be some old-remembered sorrow of her land--of
Ginevra degli Almieri, the wandering wife; of the Donna Lombarda, who
poisoned her lover; or of the Countess Costanza's violated vow. So she
shared confidences with the weather, and so unbosomed herself to nature
and to God. Meantime she was as busy as a nesting-bird. She made her
doctor's chocolate, and took it in to him with the gazette or the news-
sheet; she would darn a hole in my stocking, on my leg, without pricking
me at all, look me over, brush me, re-tie my hair, pat me into order
with a critical eye, and send me off to my classes or study with a sage
counsel to mind my books, and a friendly nod over her shoulder as we
each went our ways. She would go to mass at the Santo, to market in the
Piazza; she would cheapen a dress-length, chat with a priest, admonish
old Nonna, the woman of the house--all before seven o'clock in the
morning; and not before then would she so much as sip a glass of coffee
or nibble a crust of bread. On Sundays and Festas she took her husband's
arm and went to church as befitted, wearing her glazed gown of silver
grey, her black lace zendado. She took a fan as well as a service-book--
and happy was I to carry them for her; she had lace mittens on her hands
and a fine three-cornered hat on her head. She looked then what she
truly was, the thrifty young housewife, who, if she was as lovely as the
summer's dawn, was so only by the way. And thrifty she proved herself.
For when she had kneeled and crossed herself twice towards the altar,
she pulled up the shining silk gown all about her middle and sat down
upon her petticoat.

Exquisite, fragrant, piteous Aurelia! Is it wonderful that I loved her?
And who was I--O heaven! What sort of lover was I to disturb her sweetly
ordered life? To that I must next address myself, cost me what it may.




CHAPTER III

MY DANGEROUS PROGRESS


I was fairly diligent during my year of study at Padua, fairly punctual
in attendance at my classes and lectures, fairly regular in my letter-
writing home. I acquired no vices, though there were plenty to be got,
was not a wine-bibber, a spendthrift, nor a rake. I was too snug in the
Casa Lanfranchi to be tempted astray, and any truantry of mine from the
round of my tasks led me back to Aurelia and love. To beat up the low
quarters of the town, to ruffle in the taverns and chocolate houses with
sham gentlemen, half frocked abbes and rips; to brawl and haggle with
vile persons and their bullies, set cocks a-fighting or rattle the dice-
box in the small hours--what were these pleasures to me, who had Aurelia
to be with? From the first she had taken her duties to heart, to mother
me, to keep me out of harm's way, to maintain her husband's credit by
making sure of mine. These things she set herself to do with a generous
zest which proved her undoing. Slowly, and from the purest of motives,
her influence upon me, her intercourse with me grew and spread. Slowly
the hours I spent with her extended--unperceived by her, exquisitely
perceived by me--until, at the date to which I am now come, near a year
after my entering the university, I may say there was not a spare moment
of the day, from my rising to my going to bed, which was not passed with
Aurelia.

To make the full import of this plain to the reader I must particularise
to some extent. My own rooms, I have explained, were in the same house,
two storeys below the Lanfranchi apartment. In them I was served with my
chocolate by old Nonna the servant, and was understood to leave them at
seven o'clock in the morning and not to return until midday, when I
dined with my hosts. The afternoons were my own. I was at liberty to
take horse exercise--and I kept two saddle-horses for the purpose--or to
make parties of pleasure with such of my fellow-students as were
agreeable to me. At six I supped with Aurelia alone, and at seven I was
supposed to retire--either to my own room for study and bed, or into the
town upon my private pleasures. These, I say, were the rules laid down
by Aurelia and her husband at the beginning of my residence in Padua. By
almost imperceptible degrees they were relaxed, by other degrees equally
hard to measure they were almost wholly altered.

The first to go was the practice of taking my chocolate abed. One
morning Nonna was late, and I rose without it. The same thing happened
more than twice, so then I went upstairs to find out what had hindered
her. There I found my Aurelia fresh from Mass and market, drinking her
morning coffee. Explanations, apologies, what-not, ensued; she invited
me to share her repast. From that time onwards I never broke my fast
otherwise than with her. So was it with other rules of intercourse. The
doctor was a machine in the ordering of his life. His chocolate at six,
his clothes at eight; he left the house at nine and returned at noon. He
left it again at two in the afternoon and returned at nine in the
evening; he supped; he went to bed on the stroke of ten. Except on
Sundays, high festivals, the first, the middle, and the last day of
carnival, through all the time of my acquaintance with him, I never knew
him break these habits but once, and that was when his mother died at
Mestre and he had to attend the funeral. On that occasion he must rise
at six, and miss his dinner at noon. He was furious, I never saw a man
so angry.

I cannot tell how or when it was that I first spent the whole of my
afternoons in Aurelia's society, nor how or when it was that, instead of
leaving her house at seven in the evening, I stayed on with her till the
stroke of nine, within a few minutes of the doctor's homecoming. It is a
thing as remarkable as true that nothing is easier to form than a habit,
and nothing more difficult to break. Formed and unbroken these habits
were, unheeded by ourselves, but not altogether unperceived. There was
one member of the household who perceived them, and never approved. I
remember that old Nonna used to shake her finger at us as we sat
reading, and how she used to call out the progress of the quarters from
the kitchen, where she was busy with her master's supper. But my beloved
mistress could not, and I would not, take any warning. It became a sort
of joke between Aurelia and me to see whether Nonna would miss one of
the quarters. She never did; and as often as not, when nine struck and I
not gone, she would bundle me out of doors by the shoulders and scold
her young mistress in shrill Venetian, loud enough for me to hear at my
own chamber door. Aurelia used to tell me all she had said next morning.
She had an excellent gift of mimicry; could do Nonna and (I grieve to
say) the doctor to the life.

The end of this may be guessed. Privilege after privilege was carelessly
accorded by Aurelia, and greedily possessed by me. At the end of six
months' residence those three still evening hours existed, not for the
blessedness of such intercourse alone, but to be crowned by the
salutation of an adorable hand; and when I retired at last, it was not
to my bed, but to my window; to the velvet spaces of the night, to the
rustling trees, the eloquent congress of the stars; to sigh my secret
abroad to those sympathetic witnesses, to whisper her name, to link it
with my own; to tell, in a word, to the deep-bosomed dark all the daring
fancies of a young man intoxicated with first love. And from privilege
to privilege I strode, a fine conqueror. A very few months more, and not
only was I for ever with Aurelia, but there was no doubt nor affectation
of concealment on my part of how I stood or wished to stand before her.
I postulated myself, in fine, as her servant in amours--cavalier I will
not say, for that has an odious meaning in Italy, than which to describe
my position nothing could be wider of the truth. I did but ask liberty
to adore, sought nothing further, and got nothing else. This, upon my
honour, was ever the sum of my offence--up to my last day of bliss.

You would have supposed that she could hardly have misunderstood the
state of my affairs, had I said or done nothing. So quick-witted was
she, it is inconceivable. But as time went on, and success with it, I
quite got out of the way of concealment, and spoke of myself openly as
her slave. She used to laugh at me, pretend to think me an absurd boy;
and now and then threatened (and that half in jest) to tell her husband.
I know very well that she never did. The padron, we used to call him to
each other, having taken the name from old Nonna. It was one of our
little foolish jokes to pretend the house an inn, he the landlord, and
ourselves travellers met there by hazard. We had a many familiar,
private sayings and nicknames of the sort, secret cues to look across
the table when he was there, and smile at each other--as when he railed
(as he was fond of doing) at Tuscan ways and speech, at the usage of
Siena, her own country, or when (after his meal) he made a noise,
sucking his teeth. Sweetly pleasant, dangerous days--were they as lovely
to her as to me? How can I tell? There was no doubt but she knew me
thoroughly. The little pleasant encroachments of mine, stolen upon her
unawares, were now never checked--I am speaking of the end of my first
year, when I could hold her hand unreproved, and kiss it as often as I
pleased. I took and kept, and exhibited to her without embarrassment,
little trifles of hers--a hair-ribbon, a garter, a little trodden Venice
slipper; if she asked for them back, it only provoked me to keep them
closer to my heart. She saw no harm in these foolish, sweet things: she
felt herself to be my senior; by comparison with her position, mine was
that of a child. To the very end she maintained the fiction that she was
my foster-mother, responsible to my parents for my advancement in
education and morals. Assuredly she taught me her tongue and kept me out
of gross iniquity; but equally certain is it that I learned more than
Italian.

I learned, however, to be very fluent in that, for, inspired by love of
Aurelia, I attacked it with extraordinary passion. All Italy, and above
all Tuscany, took sacred air from her; there grew to be an aureole about
everything which owned kinship with her. I was a severe ritualist, as
every lover is: it became a blasphemy in me to think of Aurelia in any
form of words but those of her own honey tongue. And that was of the
purest in the land. She had very little Venetian at any time, and kept
what she had for her husband and household management. To me she
employed her native speech, not the harsh staccato of Florence, a
stringent compound of the throat and the teeth, but the silken caressing
liquids of Siena, the speech of women to their lovers, of St. Catherine
to her Spouse. So I became expert in Tuscan, and after the same fashion
in Tuscany also. She was deeply and burningly proud of that land of art
and letters; she knew something of its history, something (if not much)
of its monuments. Such as it was it sufficed me. Inspired by her, I
began the study of literature, and if at first I read disingenuously, I
went on to read with profit. The "Vita Nova" of Dante enabled me,
perhaps, to touch upon topics with her which I could not have dared to
do without its moving text; but it won me to the heart of the great
poet. I walked the dire circles of Hell, I scaled the Mount of
Purgatory, I flew from ring to ring of the Heaven of pure light. Aurelia
was my Beatrice; but the great Florentine and his lady were necessarily
of the party. And then I began, as men will, to take the lead. Aurelia
had exhausted her little store when she had named Giotto and Dante: I
took her further afield. We read the Commentaries of Villani,
Malavolti's History of Siena, the Triumphs of Petrarch, his Sonnets
(fatal pap for young lovers), the Prince of Machiavelli, the Epics of
Pulci and Bojardo, and Ariosto's dangerously honeyed pages. Here Aurelia
was content to follow me, and I found teaching her to be as sweet in the
mouth as learning of her had been. I took enormous pains and consumed
half the night in preparation for the morrow's work. I abridged
Guicciardini's intolerable History, I hacked sense out of Michael
Angelo's granite verses, weeded Lorenzo of disgustfulness, Politian of
pedantry. The last thing we read together was the Aminta of Tasso; the
last thing I had of her was the "Little Flowers of St. Francis," a
favourite book of her devotion. My Saint, she called St. Francis of
Assisi--as in one sense no doubt he was; but, "Aurelia," I had replied,
kissing both her hands, "you know very well who is my saint. I should
have been named Aurelius." She had said, "It is a good name, Aurelio.
There are many who have it in my country." "You shall call me nothing
else, "said I then; but she shook her head, and hung it down as she
whispered softly, "I like best Francesco," and then, so low as to be
hardly audible, "Checho," the Sienese diminutive for my name of Francis.
Old Nonna came in to hound me from the room. That night--it was my last
but one--Aurelia came to the door with me, and let me kiss her two hands
again.

I have come to the hour of my destruction--the 16th of June, 1722. The
smouldering fires which had laboured in my breast for nine months burst
into a flame which overwhelmed both Aurelia and me. I committed an
unpardonable sin, I endeavoured to repair it with an act of well-nigh
incredible temerity. What occurred on that night is, in fact, the origin
of these Memoirs and their sole justification. The dawn of that
momentous day found her a loving and honoured wife; and its close left
her, innocent as she was, under the worst suspicion which can fall upon
a good woman. It found me a hopeful gentleman of means and prospects;
and I went out of it into the dark, a houseless wanderer, to consort
with profligates, thieves and murderers.




CHAPTER IV

FATAL AVOWAL


I shall not deny that the overnight's tenderness may have wrought in me
the dangerous ecstasy which was to prove so cruel a requital of it; for
it is of the nature of love to be inflamed by the least hint of a
neighbouring, answering fire. I believe that I could have been for ever
Aurelia's mute, adoring, unasking slave, but for the fact that she had
sighed, and whispered me "Checho," and twice suffered me to kiss her
hands. Fatal benevolence that lifted suddenly the meek! Fatal wealth
bestowed that made the pauper purse-proud! I had passed the night in a
transport of triumphant joy; throughout the day succeeding it I felt my
wings. "Nunc," I could exclaim with Propertius.

"Nunc mihi summa licet sidera contingere plantis." And that exalted
strain, which was my perdition, alas, was hers also!

That which followed was a very hot still night, with thunder in the
Euganean hills; and Aurelia may have been lax or languid, or in my
miserable person some of the summer's fire may have throbbed. It was
late, near nine o'clock; already old Nonna had given three warnings of
the hour, and was only delaying the last while she stirred the
ingredients of the doctor's minestrone over the fire. The knowledge that
she must come in, and I go out, shortly, at any moment, fretted my quick
senses to fever. I looked for ever at Aurelia with a wildly beating
heart; she, on her side, was aware of my agitation, and breathed the
shorter for the knowledge. She sat by the open window mending a pair of
stays; at her side was her work table, upon that her three-wicked lamp.
I leaned over a chair exactly in front of her, watching every slight
tremor or movement, just as a dog watches a morsel which he longs for
but is forbidden to touch. Thrice a dog that I was! I felt like a dog
that night.

We had read little and spoken less; the airless night forbade it; for
the last half hour no words had passed between us but a faint, "Ah, go
now, go now, Checho," from her, and from me my prayer of "Not yet, not
yet--let me stay with you." Aurelia was tired, and now and again put
down her work with a sigh, to gaze out of the window into the soft deeps
of the night, gemmed as it was with fireflies and wavering moths. How
prone is youth to fatuous conceits! I imagined that she suffered with
me; I identified her pains with mine; I thought that she loved me and
had not the heart to bid me begone. That new wicked feeling of triumph,
that new exultation in manly strength, that delirium, that poisonous
frenzy, came flooding over me. Some gesture of hers more than commonly
eloquent may have set me on fire; I may have seen her tremble, I may
have guessed a tear. More insensate folly than mine can be lent by youth
on less security than this. For there sat I quivering with love, and
there before me, unlaced, in loose attire, in all the luxury of
lassitude, breathed and sighed the loveliest of women. I cannot explain
what I dare not extenuate: dowering her with my own madness, I forgot
her honour, my own, the world, and God. I leaned forward towards her,
took her languid hand, and, holding it in my own, said quietly--very
quietly, "I love you--you are my soul."

She laughed gently, then sighed. "You must not say so to me, even if it
is true," she said. I repeated the words, "I love you--you are my soul,"
and she was silent.

I said, after a pause, during which I could hear the furious beating of
my heart, "I am at my prayers, in my church, before my altar. Your eyes
are the candles, your heart is the altar stone. I kneel--" and I did
kneel. Then she grew alarmed, and was for stopping me.

"Checho," she said, "this is foolish, and I must not listen. I beg you
to get up; I know it is late. Please to ask Nonna what's o'clock. I am
serious."

"And I," I said, "am serious. The time is full--the time is now. Oh,
Aurelia," I said urgently, "my saint and my lamp--"

"Hush, hush," she said, and tried to regain her hand. "No, but you must
be quiet. Listen!" But I could not now be stopped.

"Oh," I cried out, "I have been silent too long, and now I must speak.
For six months I have been silent; but now there is death in silence. I
shall die of love, and it will be you that will have killed me." I knelt
again, and again said, "I love you."

"Oh, no, no," she said, but her protest was fainter. I repeated it, and
now she made no protest. God help me, I thought her won. I flung myself
violently near, and in my agitation knocked over my chair. As that fell
backwards, so fell I forwards to her knees. I clasped them closely,
studded kisses on her hands, I raised my face to hers, and saw her the
lovelier for her pale terror. She was speechless.

"Listen to me, Aurelia, youngest of the angels," I began, and just then
old Nonna burst in upon me crying "Ruin!" I sprang to my feet, and
Aurelia away, her work table went down, the lamp with it; we were all
three in darkness.

"Ruin!" said Nonna, "I tell you, ruin! That wretched boy--the padron is
on the stair."

Aurelia shrieked that she was undone; Nonna, who had flown back into the
kitchen, returned with a lamp. I saw my beautiful mistress distraught
and ran forward to comfort her. She shrank from me with horror, as well
she might. "Farewell, lady," I said, "I will go to meet what I deserve."

I took my cloak, hat and sword, and went to the door, but Nonna caught
me by the skirt, and, "Is he mad then?" she cried; and, "What are you
about, Don Francis? Will you meet the padron on the stair and let him up
to see this wreckage? Madonna purissima, what is one to do with a boy of
this sort?"

"Let me go," said I, "to my proper fate. I know very well what I have
done." It may be that I did, and I hope that I did; but very certainly I
did not know what to do next; nor did Aurelia. Sobbing and trembling she
lay upon Nonna's breast, imploring her to save us both. I heard the
professor clear his throat upon the floor below, and knew that I was too
late. Nonna took the command.

She flung open the door of the clothes-press, and, "In with you," says
she to me. "Little fool! a pretty state of things!" She turned to her
mistress, "Mistress, go you down and meet him. Keep him at the door--
hold him in talk--hug, kiss, throttle, what you will or what you can,
while I set this to rights." Aurelia, drying her eyes, flew to the door;
and Nonna then, taking me by the shoulders, fairly stuffed me into the
clothes-press, among Aurelia's gowns, which hung there demurely in bags.
"Keep you quiet in there, foolish, wicked young man," said she, "and
when they've gone to bed maybe I'll let you out. If I do, let me tell
you, it will be because you have done so much folly and wickedness as no
one in his senses could have dared. That shows me that you are mad, and
one must pity, not blame, the afflicted."

All this time she was working like a woolcarder at the disordered room,
but could not refrain her tongue from caustic comments upon my
behaviour. "Wicked, wicked Don Francis! Nay, complete and perfect fool
rather, who, because a lady is kind to you, believes her to be dying for
your love. Your love indeed! What is your precious love worth beside the
doctor's? Have you a position the greatest in the university? Have you
years, gravity, authority, money in the funds? Why, are you breeched
yet? Have you tired of sugar-sticks? What next?" So she went on
grumbling and scolding until the doctor came grunting to the open door
with Aurelia upon his arm.

He was, as usual, out of breath and angry. He was also, I judged,
embarrassed and fretted by the ministrations of Aurelia.

"My curse," I heard him say, "my undying curse upon the man who built
this house. Twice a day am I to scale a mountain? Wife, wife, you
strangle me!"

"Oh, dear friend! Oh, dear friend!" 'Twas the voice of Aurelia. "Are you
come back to your poor girl?"

"Hey," cried he testily, "do I seem to be absent? I wish you would talk
sense. These infernal stairs rob us all of our wits, it seems."

"I am very foolish," said Aurelia, and I heard her trouble in her tones.
"I have been waiting so long--so very long."

"There, my child, there," said he, and kissed her. "Now be pleased to
let me into my house." With a sigh, which I heard, she released him, and
he came stamping into the room. I trembled in my shameful retreat.

The reflections of a young man of sensibility, ear-witness against his
will of the chaste and sanctioned familiarities of a man and wife, must
always be mingled of sweet and bitter; but when to the natural force of
these is added horror of a crime and the shame arising from discovery of
utter delusion, the reader may imagine the stormy sea of torment in
which I laboured. In a word, I was to discover a new Aurelia--Aurelia
the affectionate wife, the careful minister; not the adored mistress of
a feverish boy, the heroine of a Vita Nuova, the Beatrice of a, I fear
me, profane comedy, the beloved of Aminta and the Pastor Fido. I own
that I was dismayed, wounded in my tenderest part, at the discovery.
Aurelia had suddenly become a stranger to my heart. I was nothing, less
than nothing, to her now that she was alone with her husband. Beside the
care of his appetite for food, my labours upon Guicciardini--the toil of
a month of nights--was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her
interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street
corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of
school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy
caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence
of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic
discovery! How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine. I do not
feel equal to the task of relating all that I overheard; if I could have
stopped my ears, I would have done it. She tempted him, beguiled him to
eat, to praise her, to be at ease, to love her. With that liquid tongue
of hers, which would have melted a flinty core, she talked of his and
her affairs; she was interested in his commentary upon the Pandects, she
was indignant at the jealousy of Dr. This, she made light of the malice
of Professor That. With flying feet from table to kitchen and back, with
dexterous hands at bottle, platter or napkin, she ministered to his
slightest whims. She refused to allow Nonna to wait upon him; she must
do everything for him for this once.

And when, amid his flung ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his
"Non c'e male," his "Buono, buono!" his "Ancora un po'," or "Dammi da
here," he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers
meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice
I heard her reply, "It is because--it is because--I have not always been
good to you, Porfirio. It is because--of late--this evening--I have much
wished for you to be here. It is because---"

"Cospetto!" I heard the doctor cry, "what is the meaning of this? Come
here, my dear." And then, when she went to him and sat upon his knee, I
heard him murmur his endearments--ah, and I heard her soft and broken
replies! And I knew very well that in her heart she was reproaching
herself for what I alone had done, and by her humble appeal for kindness
was craving his forgiveness for offences for which I could never hope to
be forgiven.

These terrible discoveries, far from making me cease to love Aurelia,
increased incalculably while they changed and purged my love. Pity and
terror, says Aristotle in his Poetics, are the soul's cathartics. Both
of these I felt, and emerged the cleaner. By the tune Aurelia had coaxed
her husband to come to bed, and had gone thither, with a kiss, herself,
I was half way to a great resolve, which, though it resulted in untold
misery of body, was actually, as I verily believe, the means of my
soul's salvation. Without ceasing for a moment to love Aurelia, I now
loved her honestly again. I could see her a wife, I could know her a
loving wife, without one unworthy thought; I could gain glory from what
was her glory, I could be enthusiastic upon those virtues in her which
to a selfish lover would have been the destruction of his hopes. In a
word, I loved her now because she loved another.

There is nothing remarkable in my possession of feelings which no
honourable man should be without; nor can I see that what I was moved to
do, in consequence of having those feelings, was any way out of the
common. If the sweet subservience and careful ministry of Aurelia had
moved her husband's admiration, how much the more must they have moved
mine! And what is more natural to the ardent explorer than to announce
his discoveries? I had learned that I had loved an angelic being; what
wonder that I desired to inform the one person in the world who had a
right to know it, that such was my extreme privilege? Of this I am
content, reader, to be judged by thee. If my enthusiasm was extravagant,
surely it was pardonable. Judge me then as thou wilt, and as thou canst,
for the end of this chapter of my history is cardinal.

But there were these moving considerations also. If Aurelia had tacitly
reproached herself to her husband with what were my crimes, and only
mine--was it not my bounden duty to save her before it were too late?
Must I not avow what, as it seemed, she was on the point of avowing? If
she--pure innocent--believed herself guilty and needing forgiveness--
whereas I and I only was that monster--in a few moments' time, when she
should be with her husband in the innermost shrine of the Temple of
Hymen, I might be sure she would take upon herself the guilt, and alone
receive my punishment. Could I endure the thought of this, miserable
that I was? Could I suffer such a sacrifice and wear the livery of man?
I knew that I could not. "Out, therefore, of thy hiding-place, sinner,"
I bade myself, "and get the vice scourged out of thee."

These were a part of my reflections, this was my plain resolution.
Generous, honourable, they seemed to me then--honourable alike to
Aurelia and to her husband. The doctor had replenished his glass, and
was leaning back in his chair. He had released some of the buttons of
his vest, and they had flown to their repose. He was looking down at the
table, where he twisted the glass about; he was thinking of his wife, of
her sweet humour, innocence and purity--of everything which I so adored
and had dared to tarnish. He was frowning and smiling at once at his
thoughts. I heard him say to himself, "That's a good girl--that's a good
girl of mine"--when I walked out of the cupboard and stood, pale but
composed, before him at the opposite side of the table. Even then, so
absorbed he was in his mellow humours he did not hear me. "Eh, la
Madonna!" he mused--"as good as gold!" He stretched his legs out to the
full and glanced with lazy luxury round about his room. Then he saw me.




CHAPTER V

DISASTER


"Light of Light!" he said in a horrible whisper--and again, "Very God--"

"Doctor Lanfranchi," said I seriously, for my passion lifted me up,
"Doctor Lanfranchi, she is better than refined gold."

He did what I suppose he had not done for many years; he crossed himself
over the face. "Bless my soul!" he said.

"Sir, sir," I admonished him, "you little know of what excellent
substance that saint is compact. Sir--"

I might have continued I know not how long upon a theme so noble, but
for his astonishment, which, though it kept him stupid, must have a
vent. "Who the devil--" stammers he, "What the devil--" It amazed me,
and vexed me greatly, that I could not make him understand whom I
praised. I went close to him, I touched him on the shoulder.

"Hearken to me, doctor," said I, "Donna Aurelia, your lady, is as it
were an angel of Heaven--and I"--I said it with sorrowful grimness--"and
I have better reason to know it than you."

He felt my touch, and recoiled from it: he looked at me half askance,
from under knitted brows and between blinking lids, as if he thought me
a spirit. "Paradise of God," says he then, "who is this?" His glance
lighted upon the cupboard doors set open; he frowned and said, with
difference: "And who are you that speak of angels?"

"Sir," I replied, and my convictions were never more firmly in my words,
"my name is Wretch, and I am unworthy to live. I am that vile thing once
called Francis Strelley, now brought to confusion and conscious of his
horrible offence. Sir! Sir!" I said wildly, "Donna Aurelia is the
handmaid of high Heaven.--While I, while I--O God!" emotion poured its
hot flood over me. I fell to my knees.

In the painful silence which ensued, and no doubt seemed longer than it
actually was, I suppose that he collected some half of the truth, and in
the manner of him who sees but half, distorted it to be greater than the
whole. His manner towards me altered very materially; he resumed his
authority.

"Get up," he said, croaking like a raven; and at first I thought that I
dared not, and immediately after knew that I dared. I sprang to my feet,
and faced him, livid as he was. "Doctor Lanfranchi," said I, "I have
overheard you-by accident--as you praised her. I have heard you call her
good. Ah, and in agreeing with you I can testify that you spoke more
truth than you dreamed of. No saint in Heaven is so good as she, but it
has been required of me that I should grope in Hell before I could see
Heaven in her soul."

He held himself from me by doing violence to his own person--caught at
his cravat and gripped it with both hands.

"What are you saying? Say that again. Of what do you accuse yourself?"

"Of sin," I said. He looked at the cupboard, then with chilly rage at
me.

"What were you doing in there?" he asked; and that was a terrible
question, since there I never ought to have been.

I asked him would he hear me? He nodded his head and sat grimly down by
the table, at which of late he had so happily reclined. He covered his
mouth and nose with his hand, but kept his piercing eyes upon me.
Disconcerting! but even so, had he listened in silence I might have made
him see the truth.

"Sir," I began, "it is true that I love, and have always loved, your
wife; and it is true that I have been wicked enough to declare my
passion. But it is also true that by her, and by her alone, I have been
convinced of my presumption." Here he held up his hand.

"Stop there. You say you have been convinced. How were you convinced?
Where were you convinced? Let me understand you. Was it in there?" He
jerked his hand towards the fatal cupboard.

"Yes," I replied, "it was in there. I was forced to overhear your
conversation with Donna Aurelia, which proved to me that I am less than
nothing to her, and that you are all the world."

He snorted, scoffing at the thought. "We shall see soon enough," he said
bitterly, "who and what I am."

I continued: "If you think that I have injured YOU--I say nothing of my
lady or of myself--you are horribly deceived. On the contrary, I have
done you a service. You have the proof to your hand that you are the
husband of a pattern among ladies." Here, once more, he looked at the
cupboard, and "Ma!" he said, and shrugged. After this, so long as I
could speak to him, he tapped his foot.

"Punish me," I advised him; "use me as you will; kill me--I shall not
defend myself. I have never yet refused to take the consequences of my
acts. But over my dead body, if you are a true man, you will give thanks
to God for the gift of such a wife as you have."

I was indignant, honestly, and, as I think, rightly so; but again he
misunderstood me.

He got up and threatened me with his great forefinger. "Enough of your
sermons, sir," he said. "Have I lived and taught sucklings all these
years to be told my duty to God Almighty? Will you teach me, forsooth,
for what I am to give thanks, and whom I am to correct or chastise? Wait
you there, young gentleman--wait you there until I know more about you
and my pattern lady." He turned his back upon me, and, wrenching open
the chamber door, called harshly upon Aurelia. Immediately--and no doubt
she had been quaking for the summons--my adored mistress came trembling
out, her hair tumbled about her shoulders, her hands at her neck. Her
feet were bare upon the flags, her great and mournful eyes loomed hollow
in her face. They were my instant reproof, for now, and now to the full,
I saw a fatal consequence of my enthusiastic action. Unhappy Francis,
what hadst thou done? Thou hadst intended to abase thyself in her
service--and betrayed her. Thou hadst intended to honour, and condemned
her to dishonour! Alas, thou hadst gone near to ruining the purest and
loveliest of women by revealing those very things which proved her so.

The doctor, at his pitch of most savage and relentless calm, pointed to
me and the cupboard--to the criminal and his lurking den together. "Look
at those, woman," he said ominously, deliberately, but she could not or
would not; and, before she could collect her wits, what must need old
Nonna do but make bad worse, and, running, thrust herself in between,
and wag her hand under the doctor's nose.

"Eh, eh, eh, what a bother about nothing!" says this amiable old fool.
"Let us pray all together to the Madonna that you be not sorry for this.
She has done nothing, padron--nothing at all. He alone is wicked--by
Diana the Mighty I swear it--and it was I who put him in the cupboard,
and therefore know what I am saying. She--a lamb of our Saviour's flock!
Madness! Are you jealous of a boy without a beard? Do you conceive that
your lady could listen to a voice that sang among milk-teeth? Ah, do you
listen, rather, padron, to me and the truth, for we are at one together,
the truth and I." She stayed for breath.

"Hag," said the doctor, "you are lying. This fine young man has
confessed to me the agreeable truth. Madam," he turned to Donna Aurelia,
"here is a confessed lover of yours. Pray have you anything to say?"

"He is very foolish, he is very wicked; I have often told him so, often
and often," says Aurelia, twisting her hands about. "To-night he has
said what he should not--and I believe he knows that very well. I had
intended to tell you, if you had come sooner, as I wished--ah, and as I
asked you, Porfirio--you would have heard it all from me. That is all. I
was frightened--Nonna popped him in the cupboard--how he got out, how
you found him there, I know not. But he has done me no harm--nor you
neither, Porfirio. That I swear before the saints in Heaven." The doctor
glared at her--then took her by the wrist.

"Lies, lies, woman!" he said furiously. "He convicts you himself. He
came out of the cupboard of his own act."

She stared in amazement, and forgot the pain he was giving her. "He--
came--out? But----Is he mad?"

"No, madam," said I; and, "No, by Heaven!" cried the doctor, "for I have
no doubt at all but that he intended to provoke me to anger and then to
run me through the body with that sword of his."

I threw up my arms at such a monstrous suspicion. Aurelia, who had been
gazing at me as if she feared for my reason, now looked down.

"Please to let go of my wrist," she said, "you are hurting me, Porfirio.
I know no more than you do why he came out of the cupboard; but of
course you do him a wrong. He did not mean anything of the sort--he is
of a good heart--incapable of murder. And now, please, Porfirio, let go
of my wrist."

But he did not; his rage, gathering in volume, bade fair to convulse
him.

"I intend to have the truth from one of the three of you before I let
you go," said he. "From you I require to know why you put him into the
cupboard."

"It was very silly," said Aurelia, "since he had done no harm. Nonna,
why did you put him into the cupboard?"

"Diana!" cried the old woman, "where else was I to put the boy?" The
doctor's laughter was terrible to me. I took a step forward.

"I will tell you, sir, the reason of both your puzzlements," I said. "I
was put into the cupboard because Donna Aurelia was rightly ashamed of
me, and I came out because I was honestly ashamed of myself."

"Ha!" said he, "so now we have it."

"You shall have it now," I replied. "I was honestly ashamed of myself,
and honestly glorious that I had been rebuked by so noble a lady. Sir,
it is true that I love this lady." Aurelia gave a shocked little cry,
but I went on. "It is true that I kiss her feet. Sir, I worship the
ground she presses with them--it is holy ground."

He scoffed at me. I said, "My feelings overcame me--I sinned--I am
utterly unworthy. Punish me for my sin as you will, I shall not defend
myself. But do not, and do not you, madam, I entreat, punish me for the
one thing I have done this night of which I may be rightly proud."

"Bah," said he, "you are a fool, I see. And now, madam---"

"Yes, Porfirio," said she, poor soul.

"You, and that she-wolf over there--what have you to say?"

"I say," said Nonna, "that the young gentleman is out of his wits."

Aurelia said, "I am wretched. He was very foolish."

"You have deceived me," he thundered at her, "made a fool of me at your
ease. You spoke your wheedling words, and he was in there to listen, and
to laugh, by my soul! You coaxed, you stroked, you sidled, you
whispered, and he was in there laughing, laughing, laughing! Oh, madam,
you talk of his young foolishness, but you make your profit of my old
foolishness."

"It is false," said Aurelia. "I never did it."

"By my soul," says he, "I'll not be contradicted. I say that you do. O
Heaven, is this your duty, your gratitude, your thanks due to me? Why--
why--why--what did I take you from? What did I make of you? Your
wretched mother---"

She looked up with flashing eyes. There was danger to be seen on its
way. "She is not wretched."

"Then she should be, madam," he said. "She is parent of a wicked, false--"

Aurelia, crying, shook to get free. "No, no! Be silent. You shall not
say such things." She stamped her foot. "It is absurd, I won't have it,"
she said. He gave a strangling cry of rage and despair, released her and
rushed towards the cupboard. Dramatically, he flung his arms towards it
as if he would shake off his two hands and leave them there. "Explain
that, woman," he screamed. "Explain it if you dare---"

She was now equally angry, with patches of fire in her cheeks. "I shall
explain nothing more. You will not believe me when I do. My mother will
understand me."

"Then she shall--if she can," says the doctor, "and as soon as you
please." Aurelia peered at him. "What do you mean, sir?"

"Why, madam, that you shall go where you are best understood."

"What!" she cried, "you mean--? You cannot mean--Oh, preposterous!"

The doctor was looking at the cupboard. "Ay, and it is preposterous, and
I do mean it."

She stared at him for a moment, perplexed, then flew into a towering and
ungovernable rage. "Ah," she cried, and she shook in every member. "Ah,
now you may mean what you please, for I have done. Do you dare to
suspect me? Do you dare to treat me as an infamous woman? Oh, oh, do you
dare? You shall have no need to repeat it. I will go to my mother's
house--I will go now--now--now. Nonna, my cloak and shoes--at once. I
have been good--I have always tried to be good--and do you faithful
duty. I have known what I ought to do--I have been proud to be Dr.
Lanfranchi's wife. I thought I would show to my people that a girl of
Siena could be proud, even of a Venetian pig, if he were her husband.
Ah, but no more, no more. No, I will work elsewhere, for better wages--
you have seen the last of Aurelia." She was superbly beautiful as she
turned, pointing to me. "This youth--this mad, incomprehensible youth--
what harm has he done YOU compared to what he has now done to me? He
loves me, he says--I don't understand his love--but why should he not?
Am I to fall in love with everybody who says that? Do you think you are
the only one? And--and--why!--you have never said that you loved me: no,
you have not. You just took to me, and made me work--your servant or
your doll--your plaything when you were done with the cafe--me, a
Gualandi of Siena--and you, a pig of Padua. Good Heaven, for what do you
take me, sir? Did you find me in the street? Is my family one of
wretches? Oh, what a man you are; ungrateful, cruel, hard as the grave.
Yes, yes, Nonna, fold me close in my cloak; it will keep me from such
cold as this." She stood, cloaked and ready: we all stood--the doctor
like a rock, I like a man dead at his prayers.

She looked from one of us to the other, to me second. "You told me that
you loved me, Don Francis," she said. "I am going to my mother. Will you
take me?"

I never loved her so well as at this moment when I said, "Madam, I dare
not do it."

She blushed, I know she was mute with astonishment. I thought old Nonna
would have torn my eyes out. "Dog!" she called me, "son of a dog."

"I dare not go with you, madam," I repeated. "I love you too well. I
have done you so much wrong, meaning to do right, that I dare not now
risk an act which I know to be wrong. Oh," I cried, as my distress grew,
"oh, unsay those words, Aurelia! You could not mean them, they were not
yours."

She tossed her head, and shrugged. "I will be careful not to say them
again, at least," she said. "They evidently distressed you. Come, Nonna--
we will leave these gentlemen." The doctor never moved--I followed her
with my eyes. One more look from hers would have drawn us both to our
destruction. I thank God at this hour that she never showed it me. She
went out and shut the door behind her. Neither of us moved until we
heard the street door bang. We had been waiting for that.

"Now, Dr. Lanfranchi," said I, with a glance at my sword, "I am ready
for you how and when you please."

With a howl like that of a miserable maniac he leapt upon me, tripped
and threw me flat upon the flags. I remember the stunning shock of my
fall, but remember no more. I learned afterwards that he had pitched me
out on to the stairs, and that I fell far.




CHAPTER VI

I COMMENCE PILGRIM


I arose from bed, some two or three days after the terrible occurrence
related--and how I had got into it, except for the charity of the
doorkeeper, there's no telling. I arose, I say, to a new heaven and a
new earth: a heaven impossibly remote, an earth of sickly horror, an
earth of serpents and worms, upon which I crawled and groped, the
loathliest of their spawn. I surveyed myself in the glass, faced myself
as I was--I the wrecker of homes, the betrayer of ladies, love's
atheist! Pale, hollow-cheeked, with eyes distraught, there was good
ground for believing that when Dr. Lanfranchi threw me upon my worthless
skull he had jogged out my wits.

The facts were otherwise, however. Resolution came back upon the crest,
as it were, of the wave that brought me full knowledge; the more
disastrously showed the ruin I had made, the more stoutly I determined
to repair it.

The surgeon who attended me was perfectly discreet and told me nothing
more than that Professor Lanfranchi had left Padua and was gone to
Venice. Not so the custode of the house: it was from him I had the rest.
Dr. Lanfranchi had taken his keys with him and had left no directions.
Donna Aurelia had been twice to the house since her first departure from
it, and had been unable to get access. The second time of failing, said
the custode, she had "lashed into the street like a serpent from a cage.
And nobody," he added, "nobody in this town, and nobody under heaven's
great eye, can say where she has gone. Perhaps she is dead, sir; but I
believe that she is not. Pretty and snug lady that she was, it's my
belief she will fret after her comforts, and that if she get them not
from one, she will have them from another." Old Nonna had also
disappeared, he said, which was better than things might have been; but
the strongest ray of comfort shed upon me from this worthy fellow's
store was this, that Donna Aurelia had returned to her house. Plainly,
if she had been thither twice, she could be induced thither a third
time. It must then be my business to induce her, and to see to it, if
possible, that she was properly received upon that occasion.

Here was a duty plainly set before me--my first and greatest reparation,
which no other tie must hinder, to accomplish which I must shrink from
no hardship however severe, no humiliation however bitter. Another lay
closer to my heart, I'll allow, the words of pardon which I hoped to sue
forth from the dearest lips in all the world--for I could never hope to
be happy until the being whom, most loving, I had most offended could
consent to assure me of my peace. This, however, I resolutely put by as
a selfish pleasure which I must not expect to enjoy until I had earned
it. However natural might be the impulse which urged me to find Aurelia,
fall at her feet, anoint them with my tears, I must withstand it until I
could be sure of her honour saved. Now, was that surety to be gained
first from her or first from her wrathful husband?

I turned to the custode, who stood smiling and rubbing his chin in my
doorway. I said, "Beppo, I am in great perplexity. It is idle to deny
that I am the immediate cause of all this misery, for you know it as
well as I do."

He said that he had guessed something of what I was so good as to tell
him. "There was, as I understand, a little misadventure with a cupboard
door," he said; "but who can contend with Fate?"

"It has been my fate," I said, "to bring ruin upon the lady whom I
adore. My sin is worse than that of Hophni and Phineas, and I would that
the requital might be as theirs was, save that I can make it more bitter
yet."

"Why," says he, "what was done to those gentlemen?" I told him that they
were slain with the sword; to which he replied that, so far as he had
ever heard, the doctor was nothing of a swordsman, and that he knew I
had some proficiency in fence. "I hope then," he added, "that your
honour will succeed where those other gentlemen failed; but if you ask
my advice, I say, leave the doctor alone, and comfort the little lady."

His gross misapprehension of every merit of the case nettled me: I saw
it was useless to talk with a person of his condition, and that instant
action was my only safety. I must go, on my knees if must be, to the
feet of Donna Aurelia, I must put myself entirely at her service. Should
that lie in spurning me with her heel I must endure it; should she bid
me go and receive public chastisement from her dangerous husband, I
would assuredly go. Tears, stripes, hunger, thirst, cold, heat,
loneliness, nakedness, unjust accusation, ridicule, malicious
persecution--all these I would cheerfully undergo; and if one or any of
them could repair her misfortunes, then they would be repaired. The
custode said that he believed they could not, but I bade him be silent
and begone. "Wretched Venetian," I cried at him, "thou art incapable of
comprehending anything but victuals. If I tell thee that I have
lacerated an angel and deserve the sword, thou speakest of my skill in
fence! I waste my breath upon thee. Comfort the lady, dost thou dare to
say? What comfort can she have but in my repentance? What have I to
offer but devotion?"

"It is just that which I advise your honour-" he began, but I was now
embarked upon the waters of adventure, cheered with the prospect of
action, impatient to begin my voyage. Astonishment cropped his period
midway; he gaped as he saw what I did. I threw upon the floor my sword
and finely laced coat; I threw my vest, ruffles, cravat, watch, rings,
after them. I kicked into a corner with my foot my buckled shoes, my
silk stockings, my fine gilt garters. Upon the top of the heap I cast my
Paris hat, my gloves and brooch. "There lies," I said, "the sinful husk
of Francis Strelley. Let the swine nozzle and rout in it for what they
can find to their liking. And here," I cried, standing before him in
shirt and breeches, barefooted, bareheaded, without a coat to my back,
"here, good man, stands the naked soul of that same Francis, which shall
go shivering forth to declare his shame, to meet his penance, to stand
begging at the door of the Holy Place for the mercy which he has shown
himself unworthy of."

About my disordered hair I tied Aurelia's ribbon, round my upper arm I
placed her garter, to my neck, upon a silken cord, I hung her Venice
slipper. In the bosom of my shirt I placed the little book of devotion
which she had given me, and the "Aminta" of Tasso in which we had last
read together. "Farewell, Beppo," said I; "you may not see Francis
again."

"Where are you going, sir?" he asked me, wondering.

"To Siena--to Aurelia--to Heaven!" and he held up his hands.

"You are never going to Siena as you are," he cried; and I asked him how
else he would have me go.

"Your honour will take cold in the chest," says he, "that's very plain;
but long before that can declare itself your honour will be lodged in
the madhouse. And what is Madam Aurelia to say, by your leave, to an
undressed young gentleman which she declined to say to a dressed one?
Let me tell you, young sir," he added with a sneer, "Siena's not the
only city in Italy where there are madmen."

"Man," I said, "what is it to me, do you suppose, whether I am in a
madhouse or a prison this night? I intend for Siena, and shall certainly
get there in good time. Now I will ask you to leave me."

"Tis your honour is for leaving, not I," said he, "and though I shall be
taking a liberty, it's in a case of bad-is-the-best I do believe." He
took off his jacket and put it on the bed.

"What are you proposing, Beppo?" said I.

"A strait-waistcoat," said he, and came at me with determination.

I was his master in a very few minutes, for I was much stronger than he
reckoned for. When I had him at my discretion, I let him get up and thus
addressed him:

"I have every reason to be extremely offended with you," I said, "but I
believe that you have acted honestly. Let me, however, recommend you not
to interfere in the private and personal affairs of gentlemen until you
have fitted yourself to understand them. I am going upon a journey in a
manner which appears becoming to one who is responsible for these
lamentable troubles. I shall leave my property here in your charge, but
will ask you to accept such of those articles as are on the floor as may
be of use to you. When you see me again it will be as your indulgent
master; but he who now bids you farewell is unworthy to shake your
hand."

He nevertheless took my hand and kissed it devotedly immediately
afterwards he had fallen upon my discarded trifles.

"Excellency! Excellency!" he cried, gasping, "what bounty! what
splendour of soul!" He fingered my watch, listened to it. "It goes yet--
it is a famous watch!" He babbled like a happy child. "Mechlin stuff,
every thread of it!" He smoothed out the lace ends of my cravat. So he
ran through the silly things one after another--shoes which he could not
wear, a sword which he could not use, a coat which must exhibit him a
monkey--he grovelled before me and would have kissed my foot, but that I
shrank from him in disgust. "Horrible, venal Venetian," I said, "thou
hast shown me one more degraded than I." He was out of sight with his
bundle of treasures before I could finish my reproof, and I busied
myself with my last preparations.

I wrote two letters: the first was to Dr. Lanfranchi, the second to my
father. To the doctor I said what was, I think, becoming, namely, that
his wife was as spotless as the snow, and that the very blackness of my
guilt did but show her whiteness more dazzling. I added an expression of
my undying sorrow for having brought misfortune upon her whom I must
always love, and him whom I had once respected, and assured him that I
did not intend to rest until I had repaired it. This I addressed to the
university.

I explained briefly to my father the reason of my temporary absence from
Padua; and upon reconsideration of my plans, desiring to avoid any
affectation of extravagance, added a cloak, a small bundle of clean
linen, a staff and a few gold pieces to my thin equipment. At four
o'clock in the afternoon I went out into the street and directed my
steps towards the gate of San Zuan.

Leaving Padua, I turned and looked for the last time upon her domes and
towers. "Farewell, once proud city, now brought low by my deed," I said.
"Keep, if thou must, the accursed memory and name of Francis Antony
Strelley, gentleman--Poisoner of Homes, Stabber-in-secret, Traitor in
Love. I leave him behind me for the worst thou canst do. He that quits
thee now is another than he: Francesco Ignoto, Pilgrim, in need of
Grace."

Then I addressed myself stoutly to the hills; and it is a circumstance
worthy of remark that the further I pushed the more certainly I
recovered my spirits. I suppose there never was yet in this world a
young man to whom the future did not appeal more urgently than the
present, or who would not rather undertake an adventure without a
shilling to his name than in his post-chaise and four. It is, I take it,
of the essence of romance that the lady's castle-prison of enchantment
lies beyond the forest, across the hills or over sea; and most assuredly
that damsel who is to be won by means of a courier leading a spare horse
is as little worth your pains as she whose price is half a guinea. I, in
that commencement of my pilgrimage, then, was happy because I was doing
something, and hopeful because I could not see my way!




CHAPTER VII

I AM MISCONCEIVED AT THE HOSPITAL


I am conscious that the reader may find much to condemn in my last
chapter. He may think my schemes chimerical, my methods undisciplined;
he may say that I am perverse. I shall only urge in defence of what I
did that I deeply loved, and had deeply injured, the lovely Aurelia. She
had departed from me in misunderstanding and anger; she did not believe
in my devotion, she could not understand my behaviour. Was it
surprising, then, if I felt that I must find her at all costs? Was it
wonderful that I wished her to know of my repentance, or that I wished
to repair my wrong-doings? For eight months I had enjoyed daily and
hourly communion with her--and I don't pretend to say that the horrible
loss of that had a good deal to do with my precipitate departure, any
more than that the hope of finding her was what gave the spring to my
feet and brought back the young blood to my heart. No pilgrim to Loretto
or Compostella more longingly set his eyes to where he believed his
hopes to lie than did I watch for the first sign of the Apennines, which
barred my way to Siena. Having thus briefly defended myself against
misconception, I shall say no more on that head.

After my first night under the stars--wondrous night of wakefulness and
hopeful music, throughout which I lay entranced at the foot of a wooded
hill and was never for a moment uncompanioned by nightingale, cicala and
firefly--I began to suffer from footsoreness, a bodily affliction
against which romance, that certain salve for the maladies of the soul,
is no remedy, or very little. Crossing the hills, over burning roads,
through thorny brakes or by slopes of harsh grass, my heels and the
balls of my toes became alarmingly inflamed; and an acacia-spine,
lodging in the sole of one foot, made matters no better. That second day
of mine I could barely hobble twelve miles, and nothing but resolution
could do that much for me. The night came and found me ill; I slept not;
though I had provided myself with food, I could not touch it. Luckily, I
was discovered by some shepherd boys early in the morning and directed
to the town of Rovigo at some half a league's distance, where they said
there was a hospital.

Seeing that my foot was now so bad that the touch of a hand upon it was
torment, I think it had gone hard with me if Rovigo had stood another
half-league away. I shall not readily forget the noble charity of one of
those boys, who, seeing the inflammation set up by the thorn in my foot,
ripped off the sleeve of his shirt and bound it round the instep--my
first experience of the magnanimity of the poor, but by no means my
last.

I limped into Rovigo and learned the direction of the hospital, at whose
gate I was kept with a sorry crew of wretches for a mortal hour while
the brother-in-charge finished his siesta.

Two friars, a soldier disguised in drink, a young Jew, and myself
completed the company, which was allowed to make itself free of a
flagged and whitewashed hall, absolutely devoid of furniture, and
smelling at once sour and stale. I am sorry and ashamed to remember that
the Jew was the only person of my four fellows in misfortune who kept up
any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed,
markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which was at least
conformable, but in his appearance of alacrity and cheerful health.
Seeing that I suffered as much from the ribaldry of my fellow-guests as
from my bodily pains, he came and sat by my side, and encouraged me with
the assurance that it was far better to wait for the brother-in-charge
to awake in the course of nature than to disturb him out of his sleep.
"Mighty little chance for me, for example," he said, "if Brother
Hyacinth don't have his nap to the full. He'll be as savage as a starved
wolf, understand, and will send a man to hell sooner than to admit him
if he have a good foot left to take him there."

"Why, then," said I, "he will never send me for sure, for I have no
feet."

"Be not so sure, dear sir," returned the Jew. "You don't know Brother
Hyacinth as well as I do. There was a fellow came here on a day all
spent and bleeding. He had lost a toe under a coach-wheel. If you will
believe it, this dear host of ours bade him go walk on his hands, and
offered him the cloister to get perfect in. Now, with me, I know it will
go hard, unless those fools cease their din." The two friars had been
dicing with the soldier, and had won his boots. Each had taken one from
him, and were now wrangling who should have both. I was struck by the
sinister expression of one of them, a Capuchin of great strength, with a
long white beard. More than enough of him in due course. I told the Jew
that my case was so bad I cared not greatly whether I was received or
no. A man, I said, could die anywhere. "Why, yes," he said, "so he can--
and live anywhere also. One is as easy as the other, if you but give
your mind to it. But one thing I will tell you," he added, "it is not so
easy as you might think to live cheaply when you have the means of
living dear. I shall be lucky if I spend this night as I desire--but you
will see. Hush! here is our man." I had been about to ask him what was
his malady, for he appeared to me the picture of health, and shining
with it; but just then a square-headed religious, with small angry eyes
and prominent bones, came into the hall, attended by a clerk, a sleek
young fellow, who called out "Silence," and was instantly obeyed. The
two friars were on their knees in a trice, and chattering their Hail
Marys; the soldier, after some efforts to rise, had managed to lift
himself by the wall, and, being propped up against it, was saluting all
and sundry with great impartiality. The Jew only was good enough to help
me with the support of his arm.

His was the first case. "Your name?" said Brother Hyacinth, and was
answered "Giovanni-Battista-Maria-Bentivoglio."

"Write," said Brother Hyacinth to his clerk, "Jew, name unknown, active
liar." This done, he continued his questions.

"Your means?"

"Alas, none," replied the Jew.

"Search him," said Brother Hyacinth.

The clerk thereupon turned out his pockets, which were empty of
everything but holes. Not content with that, however, he felt all over
his body, and when he had, as I may say, drawn all the coverts blank,
knelt down and pulled off the man's shoes. The Jew was unable to repress
an exclamation, which I naturally set down to his disgust at the
indignity. But I found that this was not so. The clerk very neatly
picked out a small key from between his toes and held it up to his
master.

"I thought as much," said Brother Hyacinth. "Go." The young Jew sighed,
shrugged, and stood back without a word; and while I was considering
what his imposture could have been it was my turn.

Brother Hyacinth examined me with keen displeasure. "Who are you?" he
asked me. I told him "Francesco-Antonio Strelli"--and he bade the clerk
write these names down. "Nationality?" he asked next. I told him
"Inglese." One of the friars, that evil, bearded fellow, I noticed, had
drawn near and was listening with all his might. Now it was to be
noticed of him that he breathed very short and fast, and that his breath
struck like fire upon my skin. The interrogatory was renewed.

"Your place of immediate origin?" I was asked.

I said, "Padua."

"Your present occupation?"

"Repentance," I said, and spoke the truth.

"Your means of support?"

"Grace," said I, and he stamped on the ground.

"You are trifling with me--I advise you to take care. Answer me
truthfully of what you repent."

This angered me. I told him shortly that, like everybody else in the
world of my way of thinking, I repented of sin.

He turned to his amanuensis. "Write down that the young man refuses to
give an account of himself," he said harshly; and then asked me what I
wanted of the hospital.

I said with heat, "My brother, I had required of it what I now see I am
not to expect, charity, namely, both of judgment and act. I am
afflicted, as you ought to have seen at once; I need your wisdom--but
need most your sympathy--" To my amazement he cut me short, as he had
done with the Jew, by the brief command, "Search him." I recoiled as
well as I could in my fainting and helpless condition.

"Do you dare insult a sick man?" I cried; and to the clerk, who was
about to put me to this indignity, I said, "Touch me at your peril, sir;
for though I die for it, you will pay for your temerity."

The Jew, who had been looking on at my examination (quite unabashed at
the mortification of his own), here interposed by telling me that the
thing was a common form and must be gone through with. I was about to
shake him off for his impertinence when a chance phrase of his, "free
lodging," enlightened me. This, then, was not what I understood by a
hospital--using the applied sense of the word--but one of those original
institutions, so-called, which were, of course, guest-houses for the
poor. The moment I understood that, I saw that I and Brother Hyacinth
had been at cross-purposes. I pulled out my handful of money and spilled
some pieces upon the floor. Instantly the great friar behind me clapped
his foot upon them. The Jew hunted down the rest.

Brother Hyacinth now recoiled. "What does this mean?" he asked. "Are you
a fool, or a thief, or an impudent rascal?"

"You are mistaken," I replied, "I am none; but it is clear that I have
deceived you. Had I understood the real objects of your hospital--which,
I am compelled to add, you have most successfully concealed--I should
not have been before you. I am ill and in great pain. I supposed that
you could give me assistance. And even now, should that be possible, I
would accept it, and pay for it." Brother Hyacinth, with keen
displeasure, said that mine was a case for the police, and that, while
he should decline my money, he was minded to detain my person for their
consideration; but the Jew thereupon broke in with more assurance than I
should have thought him capable of. "Your pardon, very reverend," he
said, "but this is a case for the best physician in Rovigo, and the best
bed in the best inn. This gentleman, as I knew very well from the first,
is acting for a wager. Only your astuteness has prevented him from
winning it. He has failed, but not by much; it is an honourable defeat.
He very willingly bestows upon you two ducats for the beneficent
purposes of the hospital--those very two, in fact, which the reverend
frate behind him has covered with his foot. With the others he will
return to his noble parents, being furnished with a certificate from
your reverence to the effect that he has failed in his endeavour."

The clerk, who had by this time extracted the two pieces from beneath
the foot of the Capuchin (who loudly denied that they were there), was
now whispering with Brother Hyacinth. After a short time he drew me
apart and told me that but for him I should certainly be sent to prison.
The brother-in-charge, he said, believed me to be a highway thief--or
professed that he did--against all reason; for said the clerk, "As I
told his reverence, if your honour had been a thief it is very unlikely
that we should have had the pleasure of your company at the hospital.
His reverence has made difficulties--it has been hard to convince him,
though your honour's generosity to the hospital has not been without
effect. I flatter myself that my arguments have been useful. Any further
service I can do your honour, I shall very thankfully undertake."

I expressed myself obliged to him, and added that though it might be
very true that I deserved prison, I had other acts of penitence in view
which could only be properly performed in Tuscany. I said, "You would be
justified--if you knew the whole of my history--in declining what I
nevertheless urge upon your benevolence--this crown-piece namely---" He
assured me that no crime of mine, however unnatural, could cause him a
momentary scruple, took the coin, spat upon it, pocketed it, and said
that he was my servant and orator to the end of time. At this moment the
great Capuchin--he of the covering foot--took me by the arm and begged
the favour of a word in my ear. He was a hideous villain, broad-
shouldered, scarred, hugely bearded, and had a prominent tooth in his
lower jaw, rather loose, which stuck out like a tusk. I have spoken of
his breath, which was as the blast of a furnace.

"I see," he said with an odious leer, "that you are a game-cock. I knew
you by your ruffle. It was gallantly tried, and nearly successful. I
like your spirit much. Come with me, and you shall not fail again. You
and I will take the road together, live at our ease, and live for
nothing, and brave it with the best notwithstanding. What do you say?
Shall we shake hands upon it?" Monster that he was, as he hovered over
me there, grinning, moving his tooth, he inspired me with loathing. I
felt the blood tingle in my cheek.

"Better a Jew than a thieving renegade," says I. "That is my answer to
you. Go in peace."

He said, "As you will," and turned to his affairs. I left the hospital
with the benevolent Jew, whose name was Issachar.




CHAPTER VIII

THE PEDLAR OF CRUCIFIXES


Issacher, as well as being a cheerful, loquacious fellow and of ready
wits, was so exceedingly kind as to support my weight upon his sparer
frame. My arm was heavy, I am sure, upon his neck, as his was certainly
tight about my middle; but he uttered no complaints, indeed there was no
room for them in the voluble series of his comments, confessions,
promises and inquiries. He said, as we made our painful way down the
single street of Rovigo, "My dear friend, you and I have both failed in
our enterprise, and for much the same reason; but really you must be a
novice at the trade if you expect to get a free lodging with a pocketful
of gold about you. Confess that my invention of your wager was as happy
as it was apt. Done in a flash--on the wings of the moment as they
spread for a flight--but that is my way--I am like that. The lodging of
my key, however, was a folly of a sort I am never likely to commit
again. Another time I will swallow it. It was indolence on my part--my
besetting weakness--a child of a whim! Having bestowed my goods, what
but that hindered me from likewise bestowing the key? I am vexed with
myself, but I expected more company. Who was to know there would be time
for so much examination? But now, sir, let me see how I can serve you.
An inn? A meal? A decent bed? Medicaments? All these you can have for a
turn of your pretty golden key."

I thanked him for his services, but he would not hear a word of them.
Helping me through the town, he took me to a small inn outside the gate,
saw me put to bed, brought me a good broth, some wine and bread, and
left me to my meditations while he went for a doctor. The thorn was
extracted, poultices applied; I was given a soothing medicine, fell
asleep and slept heavily.

In the morning I found him by my side. After asking how I did, and
satisfying himself, by examination, that my feet were recovering, he
said that he wished to serve me without being indiscreet. "What your
private purposes may be," he said, "I neither know nor seek to inquire.
It is plain that you are a gentleman of some simplicity, or of a
subtlety far too fine for my eyes of every day. Whichever you may be, I
admire. If you are candid in calling yourself a pilgrim I appreciate
your candour. If you are not, I appreciate even more your discretion.
But you will still let me observe that for a young gentleman of personal
attractions to walk half naked through an inquisitive nation, and to
give oracular replies to questions put him by officials (to say the
least of it) is to excite remark. I have some recommendations to make,
which I hope you'll pardon--as first, stockings; second, a pair of stout
walking-shoes; third, a hat; fourthly, some apparent calling beside that
of penitent. Penitence is a trade open to many objections; but for
those, I am sure I should have tried it myself. Of what, for instance,
do you repent? Is it murder? Is it coin-clipping? Is it--but I spare
your blushes. Besides, it can always be objected that, as there is
nothing to hinder your penitent fishmonger from trading in fish and
being truly contrite at the same time, so also your honour has the same
privilege before you. To be short, I recommend you to choose some
calling more plainly commercial."

I replied that he was very right, and that I would gladly embrace any
calling which would not hinder my design. To this he answered that I had
not done him the honour of explaining my design, but that he conceived
it to be that of walking about the country with as much discomfort as
possible. To this superficial judgment I, very naturally, demurred.

"You are dry, my dear sir," I said, "nor do I wonder. Allow me to tell
you my story, and I shall make you sweat with indignation." Omitting
names of persons and places, I thereupon detailed the whole of my case,
and concluded thus solemnly: "I hope that you now understand how I am
placed. I am a gentleman who has behaved himself like a ruffian, a
Christian who has stultified his religion. I love a certain lady and
have insulted her; I was placed in a sacred relationship and betrayed
it. Still a lover, still a postulant for service, I have three objects
in life: (a) to bite and burn the vice out of myself; (b) to find my
mistress; (c) to make her amends. Whatever occupation you propose for my
consideration must subserve these three great ends."

Issachar listened with attention, and remained for some time after I had
finished speaking lost in thought. Then he said, "I see that yours is no
common case. Honour, Religion, and Love make a strong partnership and
hard taskmasters to a young journeyman. Perhaps I am too little of a
casuist to maintain that the lady will not be gratified by your efforts
to gain her esteem. My experiences have been few, and I am no lady's
man, but I own I should have thought that she would have preferred a
more dashing return to her feet--something on horseback, say, with a
hand on your thigh and a kiss of the finger-tips. Ha! you might say, ha!
fair enchantress, do we meet again? A nonchalant mien! I believe few
ladies can resist it. But it is not for me to say. I am, however,
convinced of one thing, which is that if you stray about the country at
random, proclaiming in a resolute voice that you are a criminal, in a
very short time you will be taken at your word and clapped into gaol--
there or in a madhouse. Either will be uncomfortable--but in neither
will you meet your lady. Of that I am positive." He grew warm, he grew
declamatory. "Why, this is extraordinary!" he cried. "Why, sir, how will
you get out of this State and into another without a passport? How will
you live when you have spent your money? How can you approach your lady,
or anybody's lady, without a coat on your back or a quattrino in your
pocket? I am ashamed to put you questions so elementary, but if you can
answer one of them I shall have done with them."

As I had no answer ready, Issachar proceeded--briskly, confidentially,
and with alacrity. "It is indeed lucky for you," he said, "that you have
fallen into my hands; Fra Palamone--that old tusker with the useful
foot--would have flayed you alive and sold the skin. Now, I have
everything here that a man of honour can want--a neat jacket"--he
produced it--"shoes, stockings, garters?"--he put them on the bed. "A
hat?" He held up a broad-brimmed felt, with a draggled feather which
conferred no benefit upon it. "And now," he continued, "for your trade.
Short of chivalry, which involves horse exercise and is to be condemned
on the score of expense, peddling is the very thing for you. I
understand your requirements perfectly: put shortly they are: (a) piety,
(b) travel, (c) gallantry; beyond those you need health, reasonable
protection from law or lawlessness, honest profit. Well, take peddling.
It is safe, it is easy; you have company, you may make money; you see
all the sights and hear all the news, and you may repent as diligently
as you please through all. But my assistance will be better than you can
dream of. I am myself a pedlar, with a small stock left, which (as I am
going home to Venice) I shall make over to you at cost price. In
addition to that, I will hand my passport over to you, just as I have
given you my coat and hat. Read it, and you will see how exactly your
wheels fall into my ruts." He produced his passport and put it in my
hands. I found myself about to be described as "Issacaro, Ebreo, vendor
of pious objects," licensed by the Sacred College and vouched for by the
Grand Inquisitor. My features were said to be fleshy, my nose pendulous,
my hair black and curly, my shoulders narrow, my manner assured. I
objected that the description would never pass me over the frontier; but
Issachar replied, "Have no concern on that score. Observe my shoulders,
they are as level as your own. Can it be said of my manner that it fails
of delicacy? That passport was no more mine than it is now. The fact is
that a passport is needed to distinguish one man from another; and if
the traveller have no particular features, these must be found for him.
These crucifixes will save you."

"That," I said, "as a Christian, I am not allowed to deny."

"I have a round score of them left," says he. "Let us figure up the
whole. The passport I could not let go for less than two ducats; upon my
soul and honour it cost me near three. The hat, the coat, shoes and
stockings--well, can we say less than a ducat and a half? Surely not.
The workmanship alone is worth the money. For the crucifixes, which are
very fine, and in the rococo manner now so much esteemed, I cannot say a
quattrino less than four ducats, nor can a Christian, I suppose, set any
bounds to the value he places upon that symbol. My price, therefore, is
nominal--an act of charity on my part, which my sympathy with your sad
story moves me to do. I believe you had in your breeches pocket some ten
ducats and a few broad pieces. Supposing I take seven ducats and
conclude the bargain--what do you say? Will you shake hands upon it?" He
looked pleasantly at me, holding out his hand.

The crucifixes were large--the image of plaster, the cross of white
wood. The price was exorbitant; but I felt the force of his argument,
that no Christian could set bounds to the value of such a symbol.
Moreover, the trade attracted me. To walk the world as a pedlar of
crucifixes--could one conceive a nobler employment? I, at least, could
not. The merchandise so noble that it could not be degraded by the
merchant, the merchant so ignoble that he must needs be dignified by the
merchandise--the cross, emblem of sacrifice, emblem of divine
compassion, divine providence and humility! I must be excused if I saw
here something more than happy coincidence, if I fell into a mood of
dangerous exaltation. I embraced my new career with fervour, I embraced
my stock-in-trade. "Oh, thou unique and venerable wood," I cried, "often
as thou hast been carried into men's affairs, in the forefront of red
battle, to preside over the consecrations of pontiffs and emperors, to
abase kings, to lend criminals a final hope, never yet hast thou
submitted thyself to a sinner in sorer need, but never also found
sincerer champion than Francis Strelley! Under this sign did Constantius
Caesar subdue Chosroes; under it shall riotous Francis tread down
himself!" I bade Issachar take his purchase-money; I thanked him warmly
for his friendly thoughts of me; and having put on the coat, hat, and
other garments he had sold me, set out once more, after a day's and
night's repose, which were complete enough to make further inactivity
impossible.

I found my passport an easy key into the States of the Church, which all
that rich alluvial country of Ferrara had now become. I sold no
crucifixes, but meditated profoundly upon them as I penetrated further
into the great Lombard plain, and drew nearer to the cloudy mountains
which seemed to me the guardians of my Land of Promise. I hung one of
them round my neck by a cord, and got much comfort and spiritual
assistance from it. My faith grew livelier as my needs increased; the
sacred figure received my confidences and seemed to impart ghostly
counsels. I had a superstitious care to keep it always towards Tuscany,
twisting the cord round so that the cross was on my back whenever I had
occasion to face north instead of south. Before going to sleep I was
careful to stand it up so that the image pointed its bowed head in the
right direction. I felt sure that all would go well with me whilst I
bore upon me this infallible mark of honest profession. I was like
Dante, it seemed to me, approaching the Mount of Purgation--for which,
in my own case, I put the Apennines. Like Dante, it was necessary that
all my stains should be done off, and that I should be marked by the
Guardian of the Gate. Well, here I bore my Sign--the only sign tolerable
for a Christian--and before I had reached the last ridge of the
mountains, before I could hope to look up to the shining eyes of my
Beatrice, my brands of sin must one by one be wiped out. Ah, that was
very true; and was proved to be so before I had done my journeyings; but
I knew not then in what manner.

A misfortune for me was that, playing a character, I could not refuse to
sell my wares. At Malalbergo, a small town between Ferrara and Bologna,
I came into a region where famine and pestilence between them had been
rife, stalking (dreadful reapers!) side by side, mowing as they went.
The people stormed the churches, and hung with wild cries for mercy
about the shrines on the wayside. They fell ravenously upon me--and as I
could not set a price upon my crucifixes, and it was soon known that I
had them to give away, it follows that within half an hour after
entering Malalbergo I was able to leave it with nothing to show for my
declared profession but the cross about my neck. So fearful was I of
losing that one, I concealed my passport, and travelled henceforward
under my own name and profession. I had very little money left--some
three or four ducats, I think. I determined to be careful of these, and
to endeavour after some employment in Bologna, at once congenial and
lucrative, which should not, however, deflect my designs from the speedy
accomplishment of my pilgrimage.




CHAPTER IX

I AM HUMILIATED, LIFTED UP, AND LEFT CURIOUS


It had been my hope to be able to buy, exercising great economy, a new
store of crucifixes in Bologna, and to find a country beyond it where I
might, without scruple, sell them for the means of bare subsistence--for
I asked no more than that. But even that much was not to be: the city of
St. Dominick's last rest would not allow long resting-place to me.

I was delighted with the first view of it, as, following the brown
street of entry, it revealed itself to me. Its towers and arcades,
squares and fountains and spacious churches made a strong impression
upon my excited senses. Having found a modest lodging, I wandered from
shrine to shrine enraptured, and, believing myself fondly in a city of
believers as ardent as myself, I took no trouble either to conceal my
crucifix, a most conspicuous ornament, I must allow, or my sentiments of
hopeful devotion. I suppose that by degrees I excited remark. I was a
stranger in a thinly populated, very idle, curious city. I think that I
meditated aloud--I may certainly have done so, since I had no desire to
conceal my ambitions. If I struck my breast, the action was sincere,
becoming to a contrite sinner; if I was inspired--and I was--I believe
that I was about to prove a cause of inspiration in others. It is
indubitable that I spoke to the crowd which gathered about me and
followed me from church to church, and that, under the stimulus of their
plaudits, I was moved to what may be called eloquence. I spoke of
charity, I remember, upon the steps of San Petronio--charity of
interpretation in matters of faith and morals and private conscience;
and I ended by declaring, what was perfectly true, that Christian as I
was, a Jew had put me in my present way of salvation.

At this singularly inopportune moment I was rudely interrupted. The
crowd parted and fell this way and that without my perception, and a
hand clapped upon my shoulder brought me to earth from those middle
regions of the aether, where I had seemed to be afloat. It was as if,
looking up at the stars, I had stumbled on a knotty root.

An officer of the Inquisition stood beside me, a tall, keen-eyed man,
cloaked in black.

"I have been watching you, young man, for two hours," he said. "You
perform your devotions somewhat publicly, and seem to have a great deal
to say about your spiritual state. The Church has appointed ways and
means for the consolation of the faithful, some of which are no doubt
open to you. Only scandal can ensue these kind of practices."

I was highly indignant, as who would not have been? "Upon my word, sir,"
I exclaimed, "if a sinner may not proclaim, his repentance so near the
throne of pardon, nor a faithful believer record his sincerity within
this shadow of the truth---"

"Such excesses as you use," he stopped me, "savour of private conscience
following its own bent. The Church is distrustful of such excursions.
That crucifix which you carry, for instance---"

I clasped it with fervour. "Ah, it is my passport!"

"Sovereigns and rulers of States," said the officer, "will require more
particulars, and so, for that matter, will the police of Bologna. This
is useless for any such purpose, and your pretence only adds urgency to
my desire of you. I don't wish to be severe with you. I ask you in a
friendly and reasonable way to give me the crucifix."

"Never," said I. "Without it I am lost to Tuscany."

"With it," replied the officer, "you are lost to the world for some
time. This indecent profession of opinion--What! a wooden cross as big
as a dagger! Give it to me at once, and follow me to the tribunal of the
police."

I confess that I grew cold before such irrational tyranny. "You are
going the way to work, sir," I said, "to make me an atheist. I shall
yield only to force."

Vain protest! "Have it as you will," said the officer, and signed to the
sbirri, who came forward at once, cleaving the crowd with their drawn
swords. "This young man is illuminated," said the officer; "take him to
the tribunal, and look into his papers." I saw that submission was my
only course, and took it. The police led me away.

A much more severe scrutiny of my miserable passport than had taken
place at Ferrara followed upon this. Nothing but the "assured manner" of
Issachar was allowed to stand up for me. My nose was fatally straight,
my hair fatally out of curl. I was asked was I a Jew? and had I dared to
pretend it, I know not to what extremes they might not have proceeded.
But I had never learned to lie; I admitted at once that I had bought the
passport. Instant action was taken upon this. My crucifix was burnt, the
passport confiscated. I was given six hours in which to leave Bologna,
and did not take three. I departed in a towering rage, which perhaps did
me good, and devoured the leagues between the city and the mountains at
a pace which I am sure did me credit. The lengthening shadows of these
engulfed and sobered me. Late at night I reached a village at the foot
of the mountains, whose name I don't know, and sought out the only inn
the place boasted--if any place could have been assured enough to boast
of so miserable a shelter. By this time I had walked off my fury and a
great part of my piety. I shall only add of Bologna, which I have never
revisited, that, if it is the duty of a city of the Church to freeze the
faith out of the heart of a son of the Church, then that haughty seat
may boast of having fulfilled it.

My inn was full of French and Savoyard soldiers, recruiting, it was
evident, for their cause or their pockets. War was said to be
threatening between the Holy See and the Grand Duchy: these were the
Pope's allies, roaring, drinking, carding, wenching, and impressing all
travellers who could not pay their way out. Saturnian revels! The
landlord was playing Bacchus, much against his will; the landlady and a
tattered maid were Venus and Hebe by turns; for my own part, shunning to
be Ganymede, I slunk into an outhouse and shared its privacy with some
scared fowls and a drover of the Garfagnana, who, taking me at first for
a crimp, ran at me gibbering with a knife. I pacified him, luckily,
before it was too late, and crouched with him until daylight, expecting
discovery at every outcry. Not until then did the house seem asleep. But
about cockcrow there was a silence as of the dead, and that time was
judged favourable by my companion-in-hiding to get clear away. Knife in
mouth he crept out of cover and went tiptoe by the house. The poor
fellow was crimped at the corner by some wakeful sentry and tied up to
fight the Grand Duke. So I stayed with the fowls until the maid came in
for a victim, which was to supply the lieutenant's breakfast.

Here was my chance. "Madam," says I, and the girl gave a little shriek.
Being desperate, I put an arm round her waist and covered her mouth with
my hand.

"Madam," I said courteously, "I deplore the necessity of laying violence
upon you, but pray you to believe, if you can, in my sincere respect for
you. I am travelling to Florence, but alone. Help me to avoid these
guests of yours, and I shall be eternally grateful." When I was sure
that she had understood me I released her; she sighed.

"Forgive me, sir," she said, "but I thought you were going to make love
to me."

"God forbid it," said I, perhaps a little too devoutly, for she seemed
to be piqued.

She said, "It's as you please, sir, of course. He never forbids what you
gentlemen have a mind to."

"You are wrong, my dear," I replied. "He does forbid it--but we don't
know it until too late."

"Sir," said she, "it's not too late yet." It was now for me to sigh.

"If you knew, or could read, one page of my story," I told her, "you
would understand how late I am, and how pressed for time. Will you not
help me? I am in your hands." She looked kindly.

"Stay here, sir," said she. "I'll do my best for you."

What means she took cannot be told; but after a short absence she
returned with bread and a jug of wine under her apron, and beckoning me
to follow her, took me by a back way behind the houses, up a stair cut
into the rock, and so to the upper street of the little town. Towering
above me then, I saw the broad green side of the mountain, whose summit
was wreathed in white mist.

"You are free to go now, sir," said she. "There lies your honour's way."
I thanked her warmly, offering her my hand. But she put hers behind her.

"Is that all you are going to give me?" she asked me, and made me blush
for my poverty.

"I would give you something very handsome if I had it," I said, "for you
have done me a real service. It would have been impossible for me to
fight the Grand Duke, feeling as I do towards one of his subjects. You
have saved me from a painful dilemma and deserve more than I can offer
you." Such as they were, however, I held out to her in one hand my last
gold ducat, in the other my "Aminta." The maid looked all about her,
shaking her head at the choice. Nobody was near--the narrow street was
asleep. "I would much rather take a kiss from your honour," said she.
"No girl likes to be disappointed--and you have a smooth chin."

I could not but tell her that in accepting a salute of the kind she
little knew what risk she was running; to which she at once replied that
a girl in her situation, with a houseful of French soldiers, was
indifferent to common dangers. I told her I was sorry to hear it, and
felt obliged to add that I was peculiarly accursed.

"Why," says she, mighty curious, "whatever have you done, a pretty
gentleman like you?"

"My dear," said I, "I have injured a spotless lady." Her reply was to
throw her arms about my neck and give me some three or four resounding
kisses. "Bless your innocence," she cried warmly, "I wish I had been
your lady. Injuries indeed!"

I was moved. "You are a kind and charitable soul," I said, "and put the
religious of Bologna to shame. Except from you and a Venetian Jew I
promise you that I have met with no humanity upon my travels." At this
moment she heard herself called from below, and bade me kindly adieu. "I
suppose you are after your lady?" she asked as she turned to leave me.
"Yes," says I, "that is my pilgrimage--to make her amends." "Well," says
the maid, "be bolder with her than you were with me, or you'll never do
it. Adieu, sir!" I saw her no more.

I felt myself touched in a lively part--so quickly is our nature
responsive to kindness. "The embrace of that warm-hearted girl," I
thought as I went on my way, "has put heart into me. A generous
forgiving soul! And, by a figure, she may stand for that compassionate
Aurelia for whom I shall seek until I fall. Is there no offence which
women will not forgive? Yes, there is one--the great offence of all:
Pride. Ah, Beppo, Beppo!" I cried, "my venal Paduan, I was happily
inspired when I left thee my purple and linen!" I laughed aloud, and
footed the long hill bravely. It may seem trifling to establish one's
uplifting by the kiss of a poor wench--but who can explain the ways of
the soul? The wind bloweth where it listeth! And if that of hers were
the kiss of peace? At any rate, it was kindly meant, and so I kindly
received it. Unknown, lowly benefactress, I salute thee again from afar,
after many years.

Breasting the last green steep of the hill, picking my way amid black
rocks and dripping fern, I soon came upon the high road whose entry had
been barred to me by the soldiers. I ate my bread, finished my jug of
wine, and pushed on so vigorously that by noon I was in the heart of the
mountains. To cut the narrative short, after one cold night in the open
and one more day's march, having surmounted the watershed of Lombardy
and Tuscany, I found myself within view of the frontier, saw the guard-
house with the red and white posts of the Grand Duchy, and two sentries
with muskets walking up and down--a sharp reminder of difficulties
ahead. Beyond the frontier the road curved about a great bluff of rock
and skirted the edge of an abyss. I could see dimly a far-stretching
blue plain with rivers and white villages showing faintly upon it; my
heart leaped at the thought that there below me, within a day's travel,
was the land that held Aurelia and Redemption; but even in that same
moment there surged up that bitter something which chilled the generous
feelings and staled the fluttering hopes. Cruel and vexatious thought!
There was not a rill of water on these mossy stones which did not race
unimpeded, or, if impeded, gathering force and direction from the very
obstacle, towards Aurelia; yet here was I, sentient, adoring, longing,
who had travelled so far and endured so much, unable to move one step
beyond a painted post. Such thoughts make rebels of us. Is man, then,
the slave of all creation? Is his the one existence framed by the
Almighty that cannot follow his nature? Better then to be a beast of
chase, darting mouse or blundering mole, than a man, if the more erect
posture is to be the badge of a greater degradation. If the sole merit
of two legs be that they take less hobbling, better far to go upon four.
Needless to say that these were the mutinous reflections of the young
Francis who suffered--not of him who now writes them down, who pays
taxes, wears a good coat and bows to the police with the best citizens
in the country. But that Francis of nascent rebellion--miserably
irresolute, truly indignant, not daring to go forward, not able to
retire--asked himself such burning questions in vain as he paced the
brown length of a beechen glade, within sight but out of hope of his
promise.

I must have wandered further than I reckoned; for so it was that I
presently became aware of a companion in my solitudes. This was a
Capuchin of great girth and capacity, who sat under a chestnut tree,
secluded from observation, and was at that time engaged in dyeing his
beard.




CHAPTER X

I FALL IN AGAIN WITH FRA PALAMONE


The Capuchin's employment was precisely what I have stated, though all
probability is against it. I was curious enough to watch him and could
make no mistake. He had a copious beard descending to his stomach, the
half snowy white, the half a lustrous black. Upon a depending twig he
had fixed a tin-edged mirror, in his hand was a small tooth-comb. With
this he raked his beard over and over again, occasionally dipping it in
a tin cup at his side. He looked in the glass, picked up a strand of
beard, examined it minutely underneath, dipped his comb and raked,
dipped and raked again. My gradual advance, due, as I have said, to
curiosity, not presumption, did not disconcert him at all; he began to
speak without so much as looking at me, whereby I was able to hope that
I was not recognised. On my side it had not taken long to ascertain that
I knew the Capuchin very well--if not by his white half-beard, then by
that jutting tusk of his--at once so loose and so menacing. It was that
very same who at the hospital of Rovigo had looked at me so hard, had
burnt my cheek with his hot breath and urged the value of his friendship
so clamantly against that of the Jew's; Fra Palamone, as I remembered
his name. Nor could I forget why I had decided against him, nor in what
terms. It had been because, when I had brought my handful of money
flooding out of my pocket, two ducats had been covered by this man's
foot and had been buried deep in his toes.

"Buon di," said he in cheerful Tuscan speech. "Are you come upon a like
errand of accommodation, by chance? You are welcome to a corner of my
dressing-room. We'll strike a bargain. If you dip my beard, I'll dip
yours."

I said that would be bad commerce on my part, since I had no beard.
"You, sir," I added, "have a remarkable one, which I confess I regret to
see coloured."

"A fig for your regrets, little man," said the other. "Politics is the
cry. If your passport described you as a middling-sized man with a black
beard and a running at the nose, you'd be doing as I am. But you'll
never have such a passport as that."

"My passport," I told him, "is destroyed. It described me as a young Jew
with an assured manner and a pendulous nose."

This caused the Capuchin to look upon his visitor. Whether he knew me or
not, then or before, he made no sign. "There's no flattery in that," he
said, "but you could have done it. A manner's a manner, and there's an
end; but I could swell any man's nose for him and say thank you. And
what does your present passport bear?"

I said, "I have none. The Holy Office having confiscated it, ejected me
from Bologna because I wore a crucifix and prayed to the Madonna."

"Ah," says he, "I've known a man hanged in that city for less. But what
you say convinces me of one thing: you will be all the better for
company."

"How so?" said I.

"Why," says the Capuchin, "you tell me you were talking to the Madonna."

"It is true that I was addressing her in her image."

"Very well; that's a proof positive to me that you had nobody else to
address--a most unwholesome state of affairs. How does my beard strike
you? Black as blackness, I fancy."

He was right. I assured him that it was now as black as Erebus and
pleased him extremely. I told him, however, that I thought he would have
more difficulty with the rest of his description, which gave him a
middle size and a cold in the head. He was, in person, gigantic, and in
health appeared to be as sound as a bell.

"I shall get through," said the friar, "on my beard, and where that goes
I can follow as easily as a tomcat his head. But I have a trick of
bending the knees which will serve me for some hundreds of yards--and if
you suppose that I can't snivel you are very much mistaken. Listen to
this." He hung his head, looked earnestly at the ground: then he
sniffed. Sniffed, do I say? It was as if all the secret rills of the
broad earth had been summoned from their founts. No noise more miserably
watery could have proceeded from a nose. He beamed upon me. "Am I a wet
blanket?" he cried. "Now, friend, shall we go?" He had packed up his
tools in his begging-bag and stood ready to depart. I reminded him that
I had no papers.

"That need not disturb you at all," he said. "You pass in as my convert.
All you have to do is to do nothing and keep your mouth shut. If you
cannot speak you cannot answer; that is good logic, I hope. We will
discuss our several affairs presently in the reasonable air of Tuscany.
I stifle in the Pope's dominions. You might say that there was not room
enough for two such men." He blew out his shining cheeks till his eyes
disappeared; he looked like a swollen tree-bole with a mossy growth
dependent; then he deflated them with a bang, and shouted with laughter
--a single expression of delight, sharply reverberant--and suddenly
stopped. "Poh! what a rattle you'll think me," he said. "Come--and
remember that you are a deaf-mute."

To get a thing granted it is no bad way to take it for granted. This is
what the Capuchin did. I was young and he was old, I undecided and he
perfectly clear in his intention. There was little more--even to my too
charitable eyes--in his favour, certainly not his looks. He was a huge,
straddling, positive kind of a fellow with an air of specious, bluff
benevolence about him which gave way to examination. He had a very ugly
mouth under his beard, cut up sideways by the pressure of his long tooth
to emerge; his eyes were small, greedy and near together; they looked
different ways. His nose was huge and glowing, broad-rooted as a tree
and pitted with the smallpox. On his left brow he had a savage scar. His
strength and determination were very extraordinary; I was to learn
within a few weeks how strong he was, how ferocious and dangerous. His
age might be guessed at near sixty for all his vivacity, for at close
quarters I could see unmistakably the senile arc in either eye, and, as
the reader knows, his hair and beard were very white. Debauchery may
have left these marks upon him, but had not worn out his force. That, at
any rate, was still enough to resolve the irresolute Francis, an
incurable believer in the native goodness of mankind, to obey him in
this instance. I am by nature pliant and easily led, and I have never
been one for half measures. Therefore I received upon my staff the
Capuchin's bundle in addition to my own, and followed my leader towards
the guard-house, within sight of which, crooking his knees together
under his frock, drawing in his shoulders, poking his head, the sturdy
rogue reduced his apparent size and expression more materially than
could be believed. His calculating eyes grew weak and watery, he
snivelled at the nose, drew his breath sharply as if it hurt him--almost
visibly shrank into himself. I looked at him with amazement, but the
officers seemed to know him very well.

"Ho, Fra Clemente," says one, "on the round again, it appears!" The
Capuchin quavered his admission, his hand shook as he proffered his
passport. Yes, yes, poor Brother Clement must live, find consolation if
he could. A festival at Prato called him, a great affair; but he was
getting very sadly, as his friends might see, could not keep the road
much longer. The Customs officers gave him back his papers with scarcely
a glance to spare for them, and had no ears for his maundering, so
occupied were they with me, his companion. "Whom have we here, Fra
Clemente?" said one presently, and sent my heart into my throat. But the
Capuchin sniggered and touched his nose with his finger; there was an
air of low cunning about him very unpleasant to observe. "This, Sor
Giacomo," says he with a cackle, "is a little surprise for the Grand
Duke--a specimen, a rarity, a pretty thing. This is a Scythian youth,
deaf and dumb from his birth, but very taking, as you can see. 'Tis the
best thing I've picked up on my travels for many a year, and a fortune
to me. Why, if I can present this handsome lad to his Highness, you may
have me back upon you in my bishop's coach and six! And there will still
be men of my religion who will have got more for doing less, let me tell
you. You're never going to spoil an old friend's industry for the sake
of a dumb heathen!"

"Heathen!" cries the fellow. "Is he a heathen? Do you suppose you may
offer the Grand Duke a heathen? You'll have the Inquisition upon you, my
man, for certain sure, and the Cardinal Archbishop for once on their
side. Into the water with him before you touch Florence, or out with
your knife. Make a Christian or a Jew of him."

"Ay," says his colleague, handling me as if I had been an Odalisque,
"Ay, and the prince, between you and me, is near his time. His menagerie
may go to the dogs for all he cares, Jews and infidels, blacks and
whites and all. He sees little but the doctors and the priests in these
days."

"What! Has it come to that?" says the Capuchin, peering through what
seemed to be rheumy eyes. "If it have indeed, then may Heaven be his
friend, for he'll need one. Tut! so I've spent my ducats for nothing, it
seems." He shook his pretended convoy roughly by the shoulder. "Accursed
Scythian, that ever I set eyes upon thee! Forty ducats, signori, of hard
money to a Venice ship's-chandler who had him, I know, from a Tripoli
merchant for half the sum. And a hardy, healthy, tall, propagating rogue
he is, by the looks of him. Well, well, you may keep him for me. I am
just a broken old man!" He spat upon the ground and appeared to ruminate
upon his hard fortune.

I was greatly disgusted by now at the false position in which I had been
put, and should assuredly have found my tongue had I not perceived that
the trick was succeeding. One of the officers said that he would go to
perdition rather than have a mute heathen on his hands, the other
encouraged the Capuchin to hope for the best. The Grand Duke might
rally; he had the strength of a cow and the obstinacy of an old woman.
In fact, I was pushed over the frontier after my supposed owner without
further ceremony, and soon joined him. The old scoundrel moved painfully
off, dragging one leg after the other; but no sooner had the winding of
the road concealed him than, erect and replete once more, he clapped me
heartily on the back and began to crow and caper his delight in the
mountain airs. I watched him with mingled feelings, half gratitude, half
disgust.




CHAPTER XI

I EXERCISE COMMON SENSE, IMAGINATION AND CHARITY


"Was not that fine comedy in an old grey-bearded Capuchin dog?" cried
the frate, leaping about and cracking his fingers. "Could you have
bettered it? Could any man living have bettered it? Confess me an old
rogue-in-grain, or I break every bone in your body."

"It is not for me to confess you one thing or another, Fra Clemente--to
call you so"--I replied; "except that you have made me party to some
abominable falsehoods. However, I have benefited by them, and am willing
to believe that you acted for the best, which is more than I can say for
your endeavours upon our last meeting at Rovigo. May I remind you of
that?"

If I had hoped to startle him I was very much mistaken. The Capuchin at
once sobered down, and became confidential and affectionate. He put his
arm round my neck and spoke with feeling. "You have as good a memory as
I have, I see," he said, laughing pleasantly. "I had not intended to
recall to your mind a time when I confess to having been the victim of
prejudice. And without going so far as to say that I followed you solely
to remove your suspicions--that would not be the truth--I shall own that
I had you much in my thoughts, and hoped more than once that we might
cross paths. My prayer is answered. I shall set to work to convince you
of my good intentions towards you. Perfect confidence of man to man--
shall it not be so? If I cannot help you it will be surprising: you have
seen how I can help myself."

I did not again remind him that I had seen that very clearly when, at
Rovigo, his foot had been clapped upon my coins; but Fra Clemente, if
that were his name, saw that it was remembered.

"Your money, let me say, would have been safer with me than with that
oily thief Issachar," he said calmly, "but let that pass. You saw fit to
trust him, and now you can judge how far I am to be trusted. I have
nothing to complain of and nothing to hide. I hope you can say the
same." I was silent.

"Let me tell you," he went on, "that my name in religion is Palamone--
Fra Palamone"--here his tones became lighter, as he soared from the
injured benefactor's into a jauntier suit. "Yes, I am that Fra Palamone,
known all over Tuscany for the most wheedling, good-natured, cunning,
light-fingered and light-hearted old devil of a Capuchin that ever hid
in St. Francis' wound. Hey! but I'm snug in my snuff-coloured suit. My
poor old father--God have him after all his pains!--put me there, to lie
quiet and nurse my talent, and so I do when times are hard. But the
waxing moon sees me skipping, and you will no more keep me long off the
road than your cur upon it. I must be out and about--in the kitchen to
tease the wenches, into the taverns for my jug of wine, off to the
fairs, where the ducats blow like thistle-down; under the gallows to see
my friends dance, at the gaol doors against delivery; the round of the
pillories, a glance at the galleys--with a nose for every naughty savour
and an ear for every salted tale. I have prospered, I was made to
prosper. This good belly of mine, this broad, easy gullet, these hands,
this portly beard, which may now get as white as it can, since I have
done with gossip Fra Clemente--a wrist of steel, fingers as hard as
whipcord, and legs like anchor-cables; all these were fostered and made
able by brown St. Francis' merry sons. Fra Palamone, dear unknown, Fra
Palamone, ever your servant! And now--"here, with another revolting
change, he turned his lips back to show his tooth--"And now," said he,
"you fish-eyed, jelly-gutted, staring, misbegotten bottle of bile, who
in the deuce's name lent you the impudence to listen to my confidential
histories without so much as letting me know your fool's name--hey?"

The ferocious invective of this peroration accorded so ill with his
prattling exordium that I was left with nothing but a gaze. This I gave
him liberally; but he went on, lashing himself into fury, to use every
vernacular oath he could lay tongue to. He swore in Venetian, in
Piedmontese, in Tuscan. He swore Corsican, Ligurian, Calabrian, Spanish,
Hebrew, Arabian and Portuguese. He shook his fists in my face,
dangerously near my astonished eyes; he leaped at me, gnashing his teeth
like a fiend; he bellowed injuries, shocking allegations impossible to
be proved, horrible guesses at my ancestry, he barked like a dog, bayed
at me on all fours; finally whirling his staff over his head, he rushed
at me as if to dash my brains out--then, cooling as suddenly as he had
boiled over, stopped short, looked quizzically at me, blew out his
cheeks and let his breath escape in a volley. "Poh!" says he, "Poh! what
an old Palamone we have here," threw down his staff and came towards me
all smiles, his arms extended.

"Admirable youth!" he cried heartily, "give me your hands. I love you
dearly; we shall be fast friends, I can see. Kiss me, boy, kiss me."

I should have resented this comedy of thunderstorms more hotly than I
did if I had not believed the friar to be mad. But I was very much
offended by the titles of dishonour most improperly bestowed upon me,
and was determined to have done with their inventor. "Sir," I said, "you
have done me a service, I allow, and I am much obliged to you; but I am
constrained to point out that I have carried your baggage on my shoulder
for some five or six miles. You gave me your confidences unasked and
undesired. It matters, no thing to me whether your name be Palamone or
Graffiacane, nor how far you choose to disgrace your habit or molest the
charitable. Now you have acted like a maniac, and if I did my duty I
should give proper information in the proper quarter. Instead of that, I
restore you your bundle, and wish you a good evening."

Fra Palamone had been watching me, studying my face intently as I spoke,
his arms folded over his labouring chest. He had, before the close of a
dignified, if somewhat sententious, address, recovered his breath, and
completely his gravity. "My dear young gentleman," he said, "I admire
your spirit as much as your person and manner. All three puzzle me, I
must say. So young and so rhetorical! So simple and so polished--an egg!
an egg! Are you English, Dutch, Irish? What the devil are you? You won't
tell me, and I don't know. But with all you say of my whirligig self I
entirely and heartily agree. That at least is to the good. I propose
that we sit down here and now, and discuss your affairs--for what better
can we do? A grassy bank! the scent of leaves! a fading sun--the solemn
evening air! Nature invites! Come, what do you say? We will eat and
drink of the best, for I and my sack are no mean caterers. We'll make
all snug for the night, and rise up betimes better friends than ever for
our late little difference of opinion."

Nothing could have been less to my taste; the man inspired me with
extreme disgust. "Fra Palamone," I said firmly, "our ways separate here.
I go to Pistoja, you where you please; or, do you go to Pistoja, I shall
take the other road. I commend you to God, I salute you, I thank you,
and hope I shall never see you again."

"English!" cried Fra Palamone, slapping his forehead. "Now I know with
whom I am dealing. Who else commends his enemy to God and hopes that the
devil will step in?" He looked me up and down triumphantly, grating his
upper lip with that fierce tusk of his. "If I were in the humour, boy,"
he said, "which you may thank Madonna I am not, I could have you on your
back in two ticks, and your hands tied behind you. I could take every
paul off you--ah, and every stitch down to your shirt. But no! you are a
gentleman. I prefer to take your hand, being confident that we shall
meet again in a few days' time from now. Hold your way to Pistoja, since
so you will have it. I am never deceived in my man. I know you and all
your concerns as well as if you were my own son--and better, a deal. You
have your troubles before you, brought upon you by your own headiness--
your own insufferable piety and crass conceit. And I, young sir, and I
am one of them. That you will find out."

"I bid you farewell, sir," says I very stiff.

"But I say, To our next meeting!" he cried, and plunged down the
hillside. I heard him for a long time shouting songs at the top of his
voice.

Resting no more on the road, I pressed my way southward, descending
through chestnut woods to the olives, the garlanded vines, the wonderful
husbandry of a generous land, amazed and enchanted by the profusion I
beheld. The earth seemed to well forth rich blood at the mere tread of a
foot. Boys and girls, young men and women, half naked but glowing with
beauty and vigour, watched their beasts on the woody slopes or drove the
plough through the deep soil, following after great oxen, singing as
they toiled. The ground sent up heat intoxicating to the blood of a
northern wanderer. It was the Land of Promise indeed, flowing with milk
and honey, a pastoral land of easy love and laughter, where man clove to
woman and she yielded to him at the flutter of desire, yet all was
sanctioned by the Providence which fashioned the elements and taught the
very ivy how to cling. Was there not deep-seated truth, methought, in
those old fables which told of the Loves of the Nymphs, the Loves of the
Fauns? Was there not some vital well-spring within our natures, some
conduit of the heart which throbbed yet at the call of such instincts? I
was more sure of it than I had ever been before. The Loves of the
Nymphs--the clinging ivy, the yielding reed! The Loves of the Fauns--
buffeting wind and kissing rain! These shy brown girls who peered at me
from between the trees; these musing shepherd lads calling them upon
oaten pipes--"Panaque, Silvanumque senem, nymphasque sorores." I saw
them, I saw them! I walked fast! my feet raced with my thoughts. My
heart was beating, my blood was hot, my inclinations were pastoral, but
enthusiastic. I was disposed to admire, and prepared to prove that I
admired. I could have embraced a sapling and swooned as I called upon
Dryas or Syrinx. Then, by-and-by, in the fulness of the time I saw a
slim solitary girl ahead of me in a glade, walking bolt upright with a
huge faggot of sticks upon her head. It was growing dusk. I could see
little of her save that she was tall and walked superbly well from the
hips, that her skirts were thin and close about her person, that she was
alone, young and over-burdened. I quickened my steps.

She stopped, she turned to face me; I saw her black hair close-
curtaining her whiteness; I saw her steady eyes under dark and level
brows; I saw she was very thin and as wild as a hawk. I was foolishly
agitated, she not at all.

"Buona sera," said she. She stood easily, upright, her burden on her
head. Her hands were on her hips, she was perfectly simple, as simple as
a nymph, and as handsome in her proud, calm, savage way.

I returned her greeting, and more for the sake of getting countenance
than for the answer, asked her to direct me to some lodging not too far
off. She took some time in replying, but her eyes never left mine. She
gave me a steady scrutiny, in which were neither vulgar curiosity nor
equally vulgar stupidity to be discerned. It seemed that she was busy
with her thoughts how she was to answer me, for when she had looked her
full she shrugged and turned her head stiffly, saying, "There is none,
for your excellency."

"God knows," said I, "how excellent I am, and that where there is
lodging for the meanest upon earth there is lodging for me."

"What God knows," she said, "He mostly keeps to Himself. I speak of what
I see. Your excellency is on a frolic."

"My excellency died three weeks ago," I told her. "Oblige me by not
referring to it again; and if you will not give me direction, let me
carry your faggot for you."

"Why, how will that help your excellency?" says she.

"By satisfying you that I have some title left to the name," I replied.
"Believe me, I need the good opinion of my fellow-creatures. Will you
not humour me?"

"I cannot, sir," she said. "I can cease to carry my faggot, but that
won't help you very much."

I insisted--I don't know why; she stared at me with raised brows, then
jerked the faggot to the ground.

"Try," she said, and folded her arms across her chest, waiting.

It is a fact that I tussled, laboured and wrought at the accursed thing,
an ineffectual Hercules. Its weight was really enormous; how her slim
neck could have borne it without cracking puzzles me still, though I
know how like a Caryatid she was formed. She did not laugh at me, or
smile, she merely watched me--and so goaded me to put out all my
strength, which was considerable. Knack, of course, was a-wanting. I got
it upon end, put my head against it, lifted it--and it fell behind my
back. Twice I did this, and grew dank with humiliation. Then I rushed at
it, lifted it bodily on high, and crammed it down on my head. Clumsy
malapert that I was! It slipped to my shoulder, thence upon the girl's
bare foot. "Hey!" she cried sharply, "now I hope you are satisfied." I
saw that her cheek was bleeding as well as her foot. I would have struck
off my fumbling hands at the wrists for this vexatious affair.

"Forgive me," I said, "forgive me, pray," and went to her. I implored
her pity, execrated my clumsiness; I was born, I said, to be fatal to
ladies. Hereupon she looked at me with some interest.

"You?" she said. I bore the brunt of her extraordinarily intent eyes
with great modesty. "Yes," she continued, "that may be true, for I see
that you are a signore. It is the prerogative of signori to ruin
ladies."

I was stabbed more deeply than she knew, and said at once, "It is true
that I was born a gentleman, it is true that I have ruined a lady, but I
repudiate your conclusion with horror. I beg of you to allow me to
stanch your wound."

She smiled. "Perhaps it may not need it. Perhaps I may not desire it.
But try--try." She offered me her cheek, down which a thin stream of
blood had wandered as it would. A ridiculous difficulty presented
itself; I hovered, undecided. "Suck the wound, suck the wound," said the
girl, "we shall not poison each other." I obeyed: the flow of blood
ceased. I knelt down and treated her foot in the same simple fashion.
When I stood up again she thanked me with what seemed shining eyes and
emotion in the voice.

"I don't know what sort of ladies you have ruined," said she, "but you
have a pleasant manner of reparation. The scratch on my cheek smarts,
but not unduly--my foot is as sound as ever it was." She helped me perch
the faggot on my head, and we walked on together. This last generosity
had touched me.

Her name, she told me, was Virginia Strozzi, and her people were very
poor folk of Condoglia. Condoglia was a village on a spur of the
mountains, the property, with the bodies and souls of its inhabitants,
of a great lord, a marchese. She was sixteen years old and had never
tasted meat. Condoglia was but a mile away; it was getting dark. Would I
spend the night there? "Your honour must not look for decency," she said
with a sad patience which was very touching to me; "you can judge of
what you will find by what you see of me. Rags cover my leanness and
wattles cover my rags. As I am, so are my father and mother, sisters and
brothers--and so I suspect were theirs. You will sleep on litter, you
will eat black bread, and drink foul water. It is what we do year in and
year out, except that sometimes we go without the bread. What do you
say?"

"I say," I replied, "that I am thankful for your kindness to one who has
used you ill. My maladroitness was horrible."

"Your amendment was, however, handsomely done," she said--and added
fiercely, "Let me tell you that nobody has ever touched my foot with his
lips before. I owe you for that."

"You are generous indeed, Virginia," I said; "I shall be proud to be in
your debt for a lodging." We were not long in reaching Condoglia, which,
so far as I could see, was no more than a row of hovels on the summit of
a crag; and then we entered the meanest dwelling I have ever seen.

It was like a gipsy's tent, made of mud, thatched with furze, and
consisted of a single room, on whose floor of beaten dung huddled a
family of starving wretches--hollow-eyed, pale, gaunt, and almost naked;
a round dozen of them. There were a man, bright and peaked with hunger;
a poor drudge of a woman, worn to a rag before her time, with a dying
child upon her empty breast; a grown son and seven children--all
crouched there close together like pigs in a yard to keep life in their
bodies. I saw no signs of food, and I reflected that outside this misery
and want the rich Tuscan earth was a-steam with fecund heat, and bore a
thousandfold for every germinating seed. To them, faint and desperate as
they were, the entrance of Virginia, herself as thin as a rod, and of
myself, a stranger, caused no surprise. They looked to the door as we
came in, but neither stirred nor spoke; indeed, it was Virginia who did
what was necessary. She brought from her bosom a loaf of rye-bread; she
fetched a flask of oil; she broke up the one and soaked it in the other
and distributed the victual--first to the guest, then to the children
and her parents, last to herself. The bread was musty, the oil rank; but
the children tore at it as if they had been young wolves--all but one,
who was too weak to hold its own, and might have died that night had I
not taken it upon my knee and put some food between its grey lips. No
one spoke; it grew dark; there was no candle or other light. I sat
awhile in the absolute silence, then fell fast asleep with the child on
my knees, wrapped in my cloak. In the morning, when I awoke, Virginia
was gone.

Deeply touched by what I had seen, and still more by the desperate
patience with which afflictions so bitter were borne, before I went away
I gave the husbandman all the silver money I had left, some few liras,
and reserved for my future needs one single ducat, the last gold piece I
had. The man thanked me exorbitantly in a voice broken with gratitude,
yet almost in the same breath admitted the insufficiency of the gift.

"We shall send Virginia into Pistoja to-morrow," he said. "It has come
to this, that her brothers and sisters are dying, and she must do what
she can."

I asked, "Will you send her to beg?"

The question was evaded. "She'll do well enough when she's been fed and
cleaned, for she's a well-made, handsome girl. There is a great man
there--we shall keep the wolf from the door by what she sends us-and
maybe have something over. Misery teaches all trades to a man, you see."

I trembled and turned pale. "I entreat you," I said, "to do no such
dreadful thing. I have serious reasons for asking--very serious. There
is one thing which we cannot afford to lose, even if we lose life itself
in keeping it. And it is a thing for which we pay so dear now and again
that we cannot value it too highly. I mean our self-respect."

The peasant looked round upon his hovel and sleeping brood with those
famine-bright eyes of his. "Must I keep my self-respect sooner than some
of them? Must I not throw one to the wolves sooner than a half-dozen?"
He gave over his unhappy survey with a shrug. "It seems I have nothing
to get rid of here," he said quietly, "except that valuable thing."

I pulled out my gold piece. "Will that keep it safe for you?" I asked.
The gleam of the man's eyes upon it was terrible to see. "Will you
engage the word of a man that, in exchange for this, you will never do
what you have proposed?"

"St. Mary help me, I will, sir," he said. The coin changed hands.

"Where is Virginia?" I asked him, and he told me that she and Gino her
brother had been up before the light and were spreading dung. "Now,"
said I, "it is proper that I should tell you that I am without a
farthing in the world. I say that, not because I grudge you the money,
but that you may see how entirely I trust you."

"You may trust me indeed, sir," said Virginia's father with tears, and I
took my departure.

The peasant escorted me some half-mile of the road to Pistoja. He
explained that Condoglia and all the country for ten miles square about
it belonged to the Marchese Semifonte, who had a palace in Pistoja,
another in Florence, several villas upon the neighbouring heights, and a
fine eye for a handsome girl. It would have been at his door first of
all, as to the proper and appointed connoisseur, that the young Virginia
would have knocked, with her sixteen years for sale. For, in every sense
of the word, said her father, she was his property--a chattel of his. I
thanked God heartily that I had found a use for my gold piece, and a
salve for his conscience into the bargain. I felt, and told myself more
than once, that any tragic fortune to that nymph of the wild wood, not
averted by me, would bring the guilt of it to my door.

I may as well confess, too, that her haggard beautiful face and thinly
gowned shape were seldom out of my thoughts upon my two days' further
journeying to Pistoja. On the other hand, with curious levity of fancy,
I was convinced that before I had been many hours in that my first
Tuscan city, I should be bedewing the feet of Aurelia with my tears. And
so the sweet rainbow vision of my adored mistress also danced before my
eyes as I fared, and disputed with that queen of rustic misery for the
mastery of me.




CHAPTER XII

I SEEK--AND FIND


The hopes of a young man upon his travels may be lighter than feathers
whirled about by the wind, but they soar as high and are as little to be
reasoned with. Going to Pistoja that fine summer's morning, my
convictions of triumph were sealed to me. And why, indeed! Because I had
confronted and discomfited my redoubtable adversary of the mountain, and
rescued a poor family from hateful sacrifice, I was, forsooth! to find
Aurelia in Pistoja, to fall with tears at her feet, to be pardoned and
absolved, to rise to the life of honour and respect once more. She was
to rejoin her husband, I my classes and all my former bliss: all was to
be as it had been. Most unreasonable hope! Yet I declare that these were
my convictions upon approaching Pistoja, and that, far from diminishing,
as I drew nearer and nearer to the city, so did they increase and take
root in my mind. It was therefore as a man prepared and dedicated that I
entered the gates, as a man under orders that I took my way through the
crowded street, as a man guided by an inner light, requiring not the
functions of his senses, that I paced steadfastly forward, neither
asking the way nor looking about for it, and only paused when I was
before the worn portal of a great red-brick church whose facade, never
finished, presented to the world the ragged ends of bricks and mortar.
Here, I say, I paused, but not for uncertainty's sake, rather that I
might take full breath for my high adventure: as a man may hold his
energies curbed on the entry into battle, or, with his hand at the
chamber door, upon his marriage night; or even at his last hour, when
the sands are nearly run and the priest has done his best, and before
him lies all that dark unexplored plain he must travel alone. I breathed
no articulated prayer, all my being prayed, every pulse and current in
my body, every urgency of my soul tended upwards to my advocate and
guardian in heaven. I bowed my head, I made the sign of the Cross, I
pushed the curtains and went in. Before me stretched a vast and empty
church, desolate exceedingly, at the far end of which, in the gloomy
fog, before a lamp-lit altar I saw a woman kneeling stiffly, with
uplifted head, as if she watched, not prayed--watched there and waited,
knowing full well the hour was come and the man.

Her head was hooded in a dark handkerchief; I could see her thin hands
clasped together--on the altar-rail; even as I realised these things
about her (which, besides her rigid, unprayerful pose, were all there
were to see) I must admit to myself that she bore no resemblance to my
lady. That one matter of devotion, and the devotional attitude were
enough to condemn her. For Aurelia was no bargainer in church, but lent
herself unreservedly to the holy commerce--her generous body, her ardent
soul--and asked no interest for the usufruct. Have I not seen her rain
kisses upon the tomb of St. Antony more passionately than I could have
dared upon her hand? Had she ever risen from the outpouring of prayer
without the dew of happy tears to bear witness in her eyes to her riven
heart? Her piety was, indeed, her great indulgence, so eager, so
luxurious, pursued with such appetite as I have never seen in England or
France, nor (assuredly) in Padua, where there is no zest, but much
decorum, in the practice of religion. To see her in church was, as it
were, to see a child in her mother's lap--able to laugh, to play, to
sulk and pout, ah, and to tell a fib, being so sure of forgiveness! No
secret too childish to be kept back, no trouble too light; the mustiness
of the season's oil, the shocking price of potherbs, the delinquency of
the milliner's apprentice who had spoiled a breadth of silk. She could
grumble at her husband, or impart and expect heaven to share her delight
at some little kindness he had done her. Since I have heard her speak
calmly to the Madonna about some young gentleman who had followed her
three days running to Mass, I am very sure that she and Our Lady were in
full agreement on my account. Thus it was that she, who had been early
parted from her earthly parents, nestled into the arms of her heavenly
parents. Upon what warm waves of feeling would Aurelia float into the
bosom of the Mother of Sorrows! With what endearments use her, with what
long kisses coax her for little mercies, with what fine confidence
promise her little rewards! And to compare this passionate flooding of
heart and mind, of corporeal and spiritual faculty with any incense
which that rigid watcher of mysteries had to offer up, were an absurdity
and a profanation impossible even to my deluded vision.

While I watched and compared, however, I did not turn away. I cannot
understand my interest or curiosity, which were very real; I knew that
Aurelia was not in this church, but for all that I stood rooted by a
pillar at the door and kept my gaze fixed upon the woman in the distant
chapel. She may have continued kneeling there, motionless, for some
quarter-hour more; in itself the act of suspense is an absorbing one. So
much was I possessed by it that I forgot all beside it--that I was a
lover, not of this shrouded unknown, that I was penniless and outcast,
that I was hungry, ignorant, uncertain, unforgiven. I think that, in
some indefinable way, the spirit of Aurelia may have been about me,
pervading this cold church, linking me and that other; I think that
Aurelia's soul may have whispered to mine, "Behold thy duty there." I
cannot tell. But this I may say with truth, that when the thin hands at
the rail unclasped and one made the cross over the form that knelt so
lonely there; when the woman lifted her head, and slowly rising, turned
and came up the church; when our looks met, and I found my eyes
searching the grave face and sombre eyes of Virginia, that unhappy child
for whom I had spent my last gold piece--I was neither startled nor
disappointed, but felt rather that I had known all along that it was
she.

I assume that I was in that exalted frame of mind which I have
endeavoured to describe. This young girl's eyes, fixed upon me, appeared
like beacons in that dark place, sullen fires lit at night to warn me
that I was still upon sentry duty about her person. "Money! Can a soul
be saved by money? The enemy is hungry about the wall," said the eyes of
Virginia, "be steadfast, on the watch." Neither of us gave recognition
of the other, neither of us spoke; but when she was level with me, I
turned and walked by her side to the door. I held the curtain back for
her to pass out; she bowed her head and accepted the service as
seriously as a princess. Together we went down the steps, side by side
we crossed the piazza, took the main street, turned to the right under
an archway and went down a steep and narrow lane--all this in perfect
silence. We reached a little piazza, a bay in the lane, raised upon a
parapet from the road level. Here, breaking our long and nervous
abstinence, Virginia stopped, saying, "I am tired; let us sit down."




CHAPTER XIII

HAVING EMPTIED MY POCKET, I OFFER MY HAND, BUT RESERVE MY HEART


We sat down upon the steps of a church--San Pietro was its name, a very
old church. For a while we were silent; Virginia, it was to be seen, was
now timid--timid to the verge of defiance; I was curious, and curiously
excited.

Mastering myself, I asked her in as redoubtable a voice as I could
summon, what she did here, in Pistoja. She then looked at me with her
tragic eyes--grey eyes they were, tinged with black; and looking
steadily always, without a trace of fear, she answered, "You know very
well why I am here."

"Indeed," I exclaimed, "I know nothing of the sort. I don't in the least
understand you." Her calmness, her unflinching regard were dreadful to
me. "Do you mean me to suppose that your father--?" I could not finish
with the horrid thought. She saved me that pain.

"My father has your money," said she, "and would have kept me at home if
he could. But there he reckoned without his daughter. I left home some
three hours after you, and got here before you, as you see."

I could not be indignant with her; there was that underlying her hardy
speech which forbade precipitate judgment.

"My child," I said, "what do you mean to do?"

She shrugged her thin shoulders. "It is misery at home. Here, in
Pistoja, there is not apparent misery, nor need there be any. Signer
Francesco," she said, "look at me. I am sixteen years old, a
marriageable girl, not ill-looking, not ill-made, starving, without a
lover or the portion to buy one. What is to be done with me? What is to
be the end of me? It seems that the world has to answer me that
question. Am I to stop at Condoglia, and gnaw my knuckles, and work to
the bone for another's benefit, and kennel with dogs and chicken? Why,
my going will benefit them. The chicken will have more to eat. Or say
that I do stop there--what then? Having nothing, needing much, I marry a
man of my own nation, who has even less than nothing, and needs more
than I do. In fact, he needs me only that I may fend for him. And then?
And then, Don Francesco? More knuckles to be gnawed, more starving
mouths to gnaw them, more dogs, more chicken to jostle for the pease-
straw which I and my man and the children we choose to beget shall
huddle on. Life in Condoglia! Ah, thank you for nothing, Don Francesco,
if this is what you have bought for me with your fine gold piece."

I was dismayed. I was dumb at such a callous summing-up of my honest
action. All I could stammer out was some feeble, trite protest against a
disordered life, which sounded insincere, but certainly was not that.
When I urged her in the name of religion to go home, she opened her eyes
with an expression of scornful incredulity. She was fully six years
younger than me, and yet strangely my senior. Without being told so, I
had the intuition that to appeal to her on the part of religion was to
invite failure.

"Do you ask me to agree with you?" she said slowly, "when I know what I
know, and you so evidently know nothing? Who, pray, are you to judge
whether it be unwholesome to the soul for the body to sleep in a good
bed--you, who have rarely had a bad one? And can you tell me that it is
a sin to wash the body, and feed and clothe it delicately, when all your
life long you have had ministers to yours, as of right? What do you know
of the inconvenience of the course I meditate when you have nothing with
which to compare it? You! to whom hunger and nakedness are an adventure--
yes, an adventure; undertaken for a whim or a frolic, I know not which.
For fifteen days of your life you have gone fasting, unwashen to bed--
but I for fifteen years of mine; consider me that, sir. Your
experiences, again, may be ended whensoever you choose; you have but to
write a letter, I suppose. But for me"--she touched herself on the
breast--"they have no end at all, save one--and I have never learned to
write. My good Don Francesco," said she lightly, "you don't know what
you are talking about."

This gave me the courage, if not the opportunity, to assure her that I
did. I entreated, reproached, exhorted her--to no purpose. Driven to it
at last, I alluded again to my unlucky expenditure, when she drew
herself up fiercely, and striking at me venomously, had me at her
discretion.

"I am perhaps in your debt for that magnificent outlay of yours, Don
Francesco," she said. "I am willing to admit it, if only to spare you
the trouble of reminding me of it any more; and if you ask me to
liquidate it, I cannot refuse you. I am at your disposition as soon as
you please, and in any manner that you think proper. But if you think I
am to be bought of my father and put in a cupboard like so much cheese,
and locked up with a golden key kept in some man's pocket, you are very
much mistaken."

Here, the reader may think, it would have been proper for me to have
told her that she was a worthless girl, who might go to the deuce for
all I cared; but if such is his opinion, it is not, and was not, mine. I
shall not set down all the talk between us; it was beating the air on my
side, and a steady trampling of solid earth on hers. My final argument,
and that only, produced a certain effect upon this remarkably clear-
headed girl. I told her that part of my story which dealt with Aurelia's
perfections and my own disastrous imperfections; I made her understand
that I was not the inexperienced man she had thought me; rather, I was
one with two examples ever before him--one shining with the pure
effulgence of Heaven, the other harsh, staring, horrible, like some
baleful fire at sea. "Ah, Virginia," I concluded, "you must not misjudge
me. It is a sinner who speaks to you, not a saint removed too far to
help you. A sinner indeed am I, yet not utterly lost. I have a guide, a
hope, a haven; I have a light whereby I may steer my poor barque.
Aurelia Lanfranchi--no! let me call her by her own name--Aurelia
Gualandi will save my soul alive. Oh, let her example be yours--and her
excellence your means of excellence!"

Virginia, I say, was struck by these moving words of mine. She hung her
head and seemed sunk in thought.

"I know nothing of this lady, nor of her nation," she said, more gently
than before, "but what you say of her pleases me very much. Evidently
you love her, and she you. But you must allow me to tell you now, what I
was timid to say before, that she showed much good sense in putting you
in the cupboard, and you remarkably little in jumping out of it. Half an
hour more cupboard and your learned doctor had been asleep. Next day you
could have made your plans with your lady. She would have rewarded you:
but so she would if, when she invited you to accompany her, you had
offered her your arm and put on your hat. What possessed you, then--what
inscrutable reasons had you? But there would be no end to my questions
and no satisfaction in your replies. Why, Heaven! the world was before
you two! You had happiness, adventure, all the rest of it. And if you
must needs wander this world, need I assure you that two are better
company than one?" Fra Palamone, I remembered, had been of that opinion
too. "As it is," she continued, "you may be years before you find
Aurelia, and you must be prepared for any step she may have been driven
to take in her extremity. I don't wish to wound you--but there can
hardly be any doubt about her plans." She rose to her feet and looked
kindly at me, saying, "I thank you for telling me your story. If I
understand it, I think you are rather mad; if I don't, then I must be.
But I admire you; I think I love you. I foretell happiness for you in
times to come, but not of the sort you seem to hope for at present." She
held out her hand to me. "Adieu, Don Francesco," she said, "we will part
here. Do you go to find Aurelia Gualandi, I to search for a lover like
you."

Deeply touched by this gentle conclusion of our argument, I held her
hand and made her sit down again. She resisted--faintly, not seriously.
I then told her that I did not intend her to leave me in this manner, or
in any manner which did not assure me of her honourable wellbeing; and
now it was she who pleaded feebly, now it was I who was convinced,
fiery, unanswerable. I said that I was resolved to protect her honour,
to work for her, to establish her firmly and comfortably in the world
which had used her so ill. I told her that, being devoted entirely to
the love of Aurelia, my company could do her no harm; that, on the
contrary, the world, putting the worst construction upon our alliance,
would actually respect her more and do her less injury than if she went
into it alone. "I charge myself with your future, Virginia," I said, "as
if you were my sister. I am young and able; I shall provide for you,
never fear, until you are honourably and happily married. And you shall
accept this service from me--the only one I can do you--upon my own
terms; and respect the bargain that you make with me more than you have
your father's."

She would not look at me, and said nothing; but she gave me both her
hands, and bending her head until she reached them, kissed mine
fervently and with humble gratitude. Thus began the most extraordinary
partnership between a young man and woman which the world can ever have
known.

For the plighting of it, Virginia took all the order and direction. I
remember that she left me for a short time sitting there on the church
steps, and returned with bread and salt, got I know not how or whence.
She broke the bread, sprinkled it with the salt, and initiated me into a
mystical meal of her own devising.

"This old church under which we partake our sacrament," she told me, "is
called San Pietro's. It is here that, in times gone by, the Bishop of
Pistoja went through the ceremony of a mystical marriage with the Abbess
of the Benedictines, which has now been stopped by the Jesuits, because,
more than once, it was not so mystical a business as it might have been.
But I think the place very suitable for what you and I have to do."

With certain rites, then, of her own contriving--certain sprinklings of
salt in a ring upon the ground about us, upon our heads and knees, with
certain balancing of flakes of bread, and many signs of the Cross,
Virginia and I celebrated a union which, I say with my hand on my heart,
was intended by both of us to be as mystical as possible, and was so
until, long afterwards, it was deliberately ended. At the end of her
observances she took my hands in each of hers, crosswise, and looking
earnestly at me, said, "We are now indissolubly bound together--by the
communion of bread and salt--my pure intention to your pure desire.
Together we will live until we find Aurelia--you as master, I as
servant--you vowed to preserve my soul, I to succour your body. Let
nothing henceforward separate us--but one thing."

"Amen to that, Virginia," I said, "and that one thing shall be a
prosperous marriage for you."

So the bargain was struck; and now again I looked at the girl. The hard
and bitter fires had burned themselves out of her eyes; nothing remained
there but a clear radiancy. She was like a new creature, earnest, frosty
cold, like a spirit set free. I have said she was handsome in a thin,
fine way. She was very pale, black-browed, with firm, pure lips, a sharp
chin, grey, judging eyes. She was lithe and spare like a boy, and very
strong. Her hair, which was abundant and loosely coiled upon the nape of
her neck, was nearly black; not of that soft, cloudy dark which made
Aurelia's so glorious, but as if burnt, with a hot, rusty tinge here and
there about it. Though not now in the rags in which I saw her first, she
was still poorly dressed, in the habit of the peasantry of that country,
in a green petticoat and red bodice, which, like that of all unmarried
girls here, was cut to display the bosom. Her feet were bare, and her
arms also to the arm-pits.

Such was Virginia Strozzi, for whom I had not then any symptom of what
the world calls love. I do not deny that she interested me extremely,
and was of great comfort and assistance, nor that, as the reader will
soon see, I gave her, and with good reason, respect, gratitude, a strong
affection--as much of these as a man can give to any woman born. Of her
feelings towards me at this time I shall not attempt any relation. She
herself had said that she loved me. Whether she meant by that more than
a sympathetic affection, a common cause, an adventure shared, a
comradeship, I know not--or at least I did not know then. All I have to
add is, that she never betrayed it.




CHAPTER XIV

MY HAPPY DAYS; THEIR UNHAPPY END


I lived in Pistoja for a month or more, very happily, without money in
my pocket or a house to my name, to the benefit of my health and spirits
and with no injury to my heart's treasure. I mean by that expression
that I by no means, in the interests of my new surroundings, forgot
Donna Aurelia; on the contrary, I assured Virginia every day that
expiation was extremely necessary for me, and Aurelia's restoration to
her husband a vital part of it. Virginia, without professing to
understand me, fell in with my convictions; but she replied to them that
my Aurelia must either have gone to Siena, or be about to go. If the
latter, we should be in the way to meet her by staying in Pistoja; if
she was already at home with her mother, the more time we left for the
soreness to subside the better it would be for all of us. I fell in with
this line of argument, which seemed to me unanswerable, because I was
not then aware that the shorter way to Siena from Padua was by Arezzo.

I was now to learn that it was very possible, in a country where all
classes save one were poor, to do away with the standard which obtains
all over the civilised world, and to measure men, not by what they have,
but by what they are. For a man to be without money where others have
much is to be without foothold--the goal for any fribble's shot of
contempt. It is as if he stood naked in a well-dressed assembly. But
where all are naked alike, no man need to be ashamed; and where all
pockets are empty, it is not singular to be without them; your wit
becomes your stock in the funds, and your right hand your ready money.
So, I say, I found it to be; but I believe that wit and ready hand were
alike Virginia's. I may have caught at the theory--hers was the
practice. Virginia's opinion was that work for hire was either done by
habit or on compulsion. An ox, said she, draws the plough, because his
race have always drawn it; a peasant works afield, because he is part of
the soil's economy. He comes from it, he manures it, tills it, feeds off
it, returns to it again. It is his cradle, his meat, his shroud, his
grave. But in cities the case is altered. Here man is predatory,
solitary, prowling, not gregarious. Here, for a man of wits, his fellows
are the field which he tills. He is the best husbandman who can tickle
the soil to his easiest profit, who can grow the finest crop at the
least pains, and get for little what is worth much. What, she would say,
do we need which the city will not give us for the reaching out of a
hand? Shelter? A hundred houses stand empty week by week. Take any one
of them; they are there to be chosen. Clothing? "Do you know, Don
Francesco, how small a part of the person the laws of morality compel
you to cover? There is not a dust-box in Pistoja but will give you a new
suit to that measure every day." Food? "Have you ever asked yourself,"
she would exclaim, "how many pounds of bread we throw to the dogs in the
week? Enough to feed fifty packs of hounds." Drink? "It streams at every
street corner." "Thus," she would conclude, "are our necessities
supplied. For luxuries we have the sun in sheltered cloisters, the rain
to cleanse the ways in which we walk, the splendours of the church to
feast our eyes, the chances and changes of the streets and taverns to
keep our minds alert. No, no, Don Francis," quoth she, "let them sweat
and grow thin who must. We are free."

I could not admit all the conclusions of this philosophy, though I was
not concerned to dispute them. But Virginia's theories of life
interested me extremely and her ability to apply them was extraordinary.
Perhaps I was by predestination a vagabond, and no doubt she was. All I
can say is that if I myself became strong and healthy on those terms,
Virginia bloomed like a wild rose and seemed to grow in grace under my
eyes. She devoted herself to me and kept me in excellent order; washed
my shirt and stockings at the fountain, kept my clothes neatly mended,
buttons on my vest; brushed my cloak, clouted my shoes. She was not
inattentive to her own person either. She put her hair up into a coil
and pinned it with a silver comb, kept herself clean, and wore shoes and
stockings. A pair of stays became her well, and a loose white kerchief
for her bare neck. She showed to be a beautiful girl. Her eyes lost
their sombre regard, her colour cleared, her cheeks took rounder curves.
Where she got her clothes, where the food which made her sleek, where
the happy light in her eyes, were mysteries to me. She seldom left me,
she showed no signs of having been at work; so far as I knew she had no
friends in Pistoja and asked no extraordinary charities. I believed that
she shared in the distribution of alms at the gates of certain
monasteries; I fancied once or twice that a look of recognition passed
between her and various persons as they met in the streets, but as she
said nothing to me on the subject I made no inquiries. There was no
doubt of her devotion to myself; she never left me or met me again
without kissing my hand; she always spoke of me by a title of respect--
as Don Francis, or your honour, or sir--and yet was entirely
unceremonious in what else she said to me, criticised my actions, and
quarrelled with me hotly upon many subjects. She took a plain view of my
feelings towards Aurelia, as the reader will have seen, and a very plain
view of Aurelia's towards me. But when she found that to have expressed
them would really have hurt me, she withheld the expression, but did not
change her view. One thing she never did: she betrayed not the slightest
symptom of love for me. I might have been her sister, or she my brother,
for any false shame she had--or for any sign of passion towards me. She
concealed nothing, she spared nothing, but she asked nothing that I was
not ready to give her--and this, as I then thought, was not because she
was determined to fulfil her bargain towards me, but because there was
nothing more that she wanted. She liked me, I suppose, very much; she
respected me--perhaps she might have been a little afraid of me. She
knew that I was a signore who could end my absurdities--so she freely
considered my conduct--whenever I chose; she thought me a little mad.
Meantime, as I was uniformly kind to her, she had never been so happy in
her life. On my part, I spent my time in the writing of great quantities
of poetry--which I read to Virginia in the evenings and which she
thought very fine--and in teaching her to read and write. She proved an
apt and willing pupil, quick to learn and with a retentive memory; but
she could never spell. I think it may be said that, on the whole, I gave
her as much as I got, for not only did she become happier and healthier,
but I was able to soften the harsh angles of her mind, to humanise,
reclaim her from savagery. I could not, however, make her religious
after my own fashion. She went to Mass with me, and once, when I
insisted upon it, confessed and took the communion. But she hated the
priests, though she would never tell me the reason, and could hardly
ever be drawn to confession again.

After trying various shelters from the weather and being driven from
each by unforeseen circumstances--a cloister or two, a church (where the
sacristan surprised us asleep one morning and turned us out into the
rain), an old family sepulchre, an empty palace, and a baker's oven
which had fallen to be let (and had been occupied by cockroaches)--we
finally discovered and took possession of a ruined tower near the church
of Sant' Andrea, which suited us excellently well. It had been the
fortress of a great old family in the Middle Ages, that of the
Vergiolesi, from whom sprang the beautiful Selvaggia, beloved by Cino of
Pistoja. The lower floor being choked with rubbish and fallen masonry,
the only access to our retreat was by a broken beam projecting from the
original doorway. You jumped for this, caught it if you were expert
enough, and must swing yourself up to straddle it. You could then gain
the string-course of brick which encircled the tower, and, edging along
that, reach the lower sill of a window. That window was our front door.
The interior was perfectly dry, rainproof and (from all quarters but
one) windproof. Enchanting occupancy to me! fit household for a poet
without pence; and to Virginia, who had never known a dry lodging, a
very palace. Here by the light of candle ends, got for the asking from
the churches, I made her acquainted with letters; I held her fingers at
the charcoal until they could move alone. I pointed my own along the
page until her eye could run true. The greater part of the walls of our
chamber was covered with her sprawled lettering: and, for all I know to
the contrary, may reveal to this day the names of Francis Strelley, of
Aurelia Gualandi and of Virginia Strozzi. It is a fine proof of her
loyalty to our bargain that the first name which Virginia essayed to
write was mine, but the second, Aurelia's. She took her own in hand
last. The verb chosen for these easy essays was as usual amare: but its
application to the walls was again the pupil's device. I allowed her
willingly to write "Don Francesco ama Donna Aurelia," but forbade her to
reverse the names. One day when I was out she put "Virginia Strozzi ama
Don Francesco." I did not know it till long afterwards.

I gave her the rudiments of literature also: I grounded her in letters
as well as in lettering. Amongst my few possessions were still my
"Aminta" and my "Fioretti": and I knew much of Dante's comedy by heart.
Virginia had a retentive memory and great aptitude for learning.
Whenever she did well I called her a good child, and she was so
dreadfully afraid lest I might withhold the praise that she toiled at
her ciphering and pothooks long after I was asleep. There is no doubt
that this was a happy time for both adventurers--full of interest for
me, and of extreme comfort for the girl whom I was able to befriend.

It is not to be pretended that we kept good company. We were outcasts,
and were thrown of necessity amongst those who had been cast out. But
the standards of life vary with those who live, and I never could see
that a man was less of a thief because he thieved from a throne, or less
a profligate because he debauched a princess. I was, no doubt, in
advance of my time; these are the ideas of Monsieur Voltaire. I believe
that I saw a great deal of iniquity, for the taverns and gaming-dens to
which I sometimes resorted for shelter or entertainment were filled with
desperadoes of all sorts--deserters from the army, thieves, coin-
clippers in hiding, assassins elect, women of the town, and even worse.
But while I expect my reader to believe that I never sinned with them, I
shall find him harder to convince that I was never invited to sin. Such,
however, is the fact, and of course it is open to the retort that you do
not invite a drunkard to be drunk. Be that as it may, I met these
unfortunates upon the common ground of civility, conversed with them as
equals, and was not only respected by them for what I was, but came
myself to respect them in spite of what they were. Virginia taught me
much here. With her it never was, "Such-and-such is a woman of infamous
life," but rather, "Such-and-such has a fine ear for music, or can make
a complicated risotto." I learned, with astonishment, that with the most
deplorable degradation of life there could consist an ability to share
the interests of the most refined persons. These associates of ours made
no secret of their avocations (except to the police), nor were they
abashed or confounded if I happened to meet them in the exercise of
them; but, business done, they were to be treated like Mr. Councillor or
My Lady. Nor was this an arbitrary exaction or a curious foppery on
their part; not at all, but as they expected to be taken, so they
behaved themselves. There was not, I am bound to say, one of those women
who did not hear Mass three times a week, recite the daily rosary,
confess herself, take the sacrament. Nor do I remember a single man of
those whom I met in various houses of call or thieves-kitchens in the
town who was without his mental activity of some honest kind, who had
not a shrewd interest in politics, a passion for this or that science--
as botany, mineralogy, or optics, or an appreciation keenly critical of
the fine arts. Philosophers, too, some of them were, acute reasoners,
sophists, casuists. We had no doubts, fears or suspicions of them, and
they thought no evil of us. Some of them we invited to a reading in our
tower; and once we enacted the "Aminta" with great applause: Beltramo, a
very engaging boy (afterwards hanged for highway robbery and prison-
breaking), Violante, an unfrocked priest called Il Corvo, Virginia and I
took parts. Beltramo I never saw again but once, and that against my
will. I saw him hanged at Genoa in 1742. A curious life indeed, which,
to one so addicted to research into the ways of men as I always was,
would have needed violence for its termination. Violence, indeed, did
end it, and with humiliating detail.

One day I sold my cloak to buy a book. That was a vellum-bound c

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