I was trembling under her touch—trembling, my every nerve a-quiver and my breath shortened—and suddenly there flashed through my mind a line of Dante's in the story of Paolo and Francesca:
Giuliana's words: "Let us read no more to-day"—had seemed an echo of that line, and the echo made me of a sudden conscious of an unsuspected parallel. All at once our position seemed to me strangely similar to that of the ill-starred lovers of Rimini.
But the next moment I was sane again. She had withdrawn her hand, and had taken the volume to restore it to its shelf.
Ah, no! At Rimini there had been two fools. Here there was but one. Let me make an end of him by persuading him of his folly.
Yet Giuliana did nothing to assist me in that task. She returned from the book-shelf, and in passing lightly swept her fingers over my hair.
"Come, Agostino; let us walk in the garden," said she.
We went, my mood now overpast. I was as sober and self-contained as was my habit. And soon thereafter came my Lord Gambara—a rare thing to happen in the afternoon.
Awhile the three of us were together in the garden, talking of trivial matters. Then she fell to wrangling with him concerning something that Caro had written and of which she had the manuscript. In the end she begged me would I go seek the writing in her chamber. I went, and hunted where she had bidden me and elsewhere, and spent a good ten minutes vainly in the task. Chagrined that I could not discover the thing, I went into the library, thinking that it might be there.
Doctor Fifanti was writing busily at the table when I intruded. He looked up, thrusting his horn-rimmed spectacles high upon his peaked forehead.
"What the devil!" quoth he very testily. "I thought you were in the garden with Madonna Giuliana."
"My Lord Gambara is there," said I.
He crimsoned and banged the table with his bony hand. "Do I not know that?" he roared, though I could see no reason for all this heat. "And why are you not with them?"
You are not to suppose that I was still the meek, sheepish lad who had come to Piacenza three months ago. I had not been learning my world and discovering Man to no purpose all this while.
"It has yet to be explained to me," said I, "under what obligation I am to be anywhere but where I please. That firstly. Secondly—but of infinitely lesser moment—Monna Giuliana has sent me for the manuscript of Messer Caro's Gigli d'Oro."
I know not whether it was my cool, firm tones that quieted him. But quiet he became.
"I... I was vexed by your interruption," he said lamely, to explain his late choler. "Here is the thing. I found it here when I came. Messer Caro might discover better employment for his leisure. But there, there"—he seemed in sudden haste again. "Take it to her in God's name. She will be impatient." I thought he sneered. "O, she will praise your diligence," he added, and this time I was sure that he sneered.
I took it, thanked him, and left the room intrigued. And when I rejoined them, and handed her the manuscript, the odd thing was that the subject of their discourse having meanwhile shifted, it no longer interested her, and she never once opened the pages she had been in such haste to have me procure.
This, too, was puzzling, even to one who was beginning to know his world
But I was not done with riddles. For presently out came Fifanti himself, looking, if possible, yellower and more sour and lean than usual. He was arrayed in his long, rusty gown, and there were the usual shabby slippers on his long, lean feet. He was ever a man of most indifferent personal habits.
"Ah, Astorre," his wife greeted him. "My Lord Cardinal brings you good tidings."
"Does he so?" quoth Fifanti, sourly as I thought; and he looked at the legate as though his excellency were the very reverse of a happy harbinger.
"You will rejoice, I think, doctor," said the smiling prelate, "to hear that I have letters from my Lord Pier Luigi appointing you one of the ducal secretaries. And this, I doubt not, will be followed, on his coming hither, by an appointment to his council. Meanwhile, the stipend is three hundred ducats, and the work is light."
There followed a long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grew first red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with his scarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomander and smiling almost insolently into the other's face; and some of the insolence of his look, I thought, was reflected upon the pale, placid countenance of Giuliana.
At last, Fifanti spoke, his little eyes narrowing.
"It is too much for my poor deserts," he said curtly.
"You are too humble," said the prelate. "Your loyalty to the House of Farnese, and the hospitality which I, its deputy, have received..."
"Hospitality!" barked Fifanti, and looked very oddly at Giuliana; so oddly that a faint colour began to creep into her cheeks. "You would pay for that?" he questioned, half mockingly. "Oh, but for that a stipend of three hundred ducats is too little."
And all the time his eyes were upon his wife, and I saw her stiffen as if she had been struck.
But the Cardinal laughed outright. "Come now, you use me with an amiable frankness," he said. "The stipend shall be doubled when you join the council."
"Doubled?" he said. "Six hundred...?" He checked. The sum was vast. I saw greed creep into his little eyes. What had troubled him hitherto, I could not fathom even yet. He washed his bony hands in the air, and looked at his wife again. "It... it is a fair price, no doubt, my lord," said he, his tone contemptuous.
"The Duke shall be informed of the value of your learning," lisped the Cardinal.
Fifanti knit his brows. "The value of my learning?" he echoed, as if slowly puzzled. "My learning? Oh! Is that in question?"
"Why else should we give you the appointment?" smiled the Cardinal, with a smile that was full of significance.
"It is what the town will be asking, no doubt," said Messer Fifanti. "I hope you will be able to satisfy its curiosity, my lord."
And on that he turned, and stalked off again, very white and trembling, as I could perceive.
My Lord Gambara laughed carelessly again, and over the pale face of Monna Giuliana there stole a slow smile, the memory of which was to be hateful to me soon, but which at the moment went to increase my already profound mystification.
CHAPTER III. PREUX-CHEVALIER
In the days that followed I found Messer Fifanti in queerer moods than ever. Ever impatient, he would be easily moved to anger now, and not a day passed but he stormed at me over the Greek with which, under his guidance, I was wrestling.
And with Giuliana his manner was the oddest thing conceivable; at times he was mocking as an ape, at times his manner had in it a suggestion of the serpent; more rarely he was his usual, vulturine self. He watched her curiously, ever between anger and derision, to all of which she presented a calm front and a patience almost saintly. He was as a man with some mighty burden on his mind, undecided whether he shall bear it or cast it off.
Her patience moved me most oddly to pity; and pity for so beautiful a creature is Satan's most subtle snare, especially when you consider what a power her beauty had to move me as I had already discovered to my erstwhile terror. She confided in me a little in those days, but ever with a most saintly resignation. She had been sold into wedlock, she admitted, with a man who might have been her father, and she confessed to finding her lot a cruel one; but confessed it with the air of one who intends none the less to bear her cross with fortitude.