CHAPTER XII
In a street of the quarter Giovia the armourer Lupo had his smithy. He had been a notable artisan in a town famous for its steel and niello work; but in his age, as in any, a plethora of fine production must cheapen the value of the individual producer. Therefore when a vengeful caprice blinded him, and his door remained shut and his chimney ceased to smoke, patronage transferred its custom to the next house or street without a qualm; and his achievements in his particular business were forgotten, or confounded with those of fellow-craftsmen, deriving, perhaps, in their art from him. It was a sample of that banal heartlessness of society, which in a moral age breeds collectivists, and desperadoes in an age of lawlessness. And of the two one may pronounce the latter the more logical.
In Milan men came quickly to maturity, whether in the art of forging a blade or using it. Life flamed up and out on swift ideals of passion. Parental love, high education, the intricate cults of beauty and chivalry, were all gambling investments in a speculative market. The odds were always in favour of that old broker Death. Yet the knowledge abated nothing of the zeal. It was strange to be so fastidious of the terms of so hazardous a lease. One might be saving, just, virtuous—one's life-tenancy was not made thereby a whit securer. The ten commandments lay at the mercy of a dagger-point; wherefore men hurried to realise themselves timely, and to cram the stores of years into a rich banquet or two.
Master Lupo, a sincere workman and a conscientious, was flicked in one moment off his green leaf into the dust. There, maimed and helpless, the tears for ever welling in his empty sockets, he cogitated tremulously, fiercely, the one sentiment left to him, revenge—revenge not so primarily on the instrument of his ruin, as on Tassino through the system which had made such a creature possible. He lent his darkened abode to be the nest to one of those conspiracies, which are never far to gather in despotic governments, and which opportunity in his case showed him actually at hand.
Cola Montano, it has been said, had been borne away after his scourging by some women of the people. Grace, or pity, or fear was in their hearts, and they nursed him. Scarcely for his own sake; for, democracy being impersonal, he was at no trouble to be a grateful patient. He took their ministries as conceded to a principle, and individually was as surly and impatient with them as any ill-conditioned cur.
Recovering betimes (the dog had a tough hide), he learned of neighbour Lupo's condition, and walked incontinently into that wretched artificer's existence. He found a blind and hopeless wreck, shelves of rusting armour, a forge of dead embers, and, brooding sullen beside it, a girl too plainly witnessing to her own dishonour. He heard the rain on the roof; he saw the set grey mother creeping about her work; and he sat himself down by the sightless armourer, and peered hungrily into his swathed face.
'Dost know me, Lupo? I am Montano.'
The miserable man groaned.
'Master Collegian? Stands yet thy school of philosophy? A' God's name, lay something of that on this hot bandage!'
'The school stands in its old place, armourer; but its doors, like thine, are shut. What then? Its principles remain open to all.'
The poor wretch put out a hand, feeling.
'Where art thou? Have thy wounds healed so quickly? Mine are incurable.'
'What!' croaked Montano jeeringly, 'with such a salve to allay them! I heard of it—logic meet to an angel—to renew thine image through her yonder. Marry, sir! conception runs before the law. Hast chased thy likeness down and taken it to church? Mistress Lucia there would seem a sullen bride. Hath her popinjay come and gone again? Well, you must be content with the legitimising.'
The armourer writhed in answering.
'What think you? There has been none. Mock not our misery. Is it the concern of angels to see their sentences enforced?'
'No, but to be called angels. Heaven is not easy surfeited with adulation.'
'He was glorified in his judgment; and there, for us, the matter ended.'
'Not quite.'
The pedagogue bent his evil head to look again into that woful face.
'Lupo, my school is closed; alumnus loiters in the streets. Shall he come in here?'
There was something so significant in his tone that the broken man he addressed started, as if a hand had been laid on his eyes.
'For what? Who is he?' he muttered.
'I will tell you anon,' answered Montano. 'No prelector but hath his favourite pupils. He, alumnus, is in this case threefold—three dear homeless scholars of mine, Lupo, needing a rallying-place in which to meet and mature some long-discussed theory of social cure. I have heard from them since—since my illness. They chafe to resume their studies and their mentor—honest, good fellows, confessing, perhaps, to a heresy or so.'
'Master,' muttered the armourer, 'you will do no harm to be explicit.'
'Shall I not? Well, if you will, and by grace of an example, such a heresy, say, as that, when the devil rules by divine right, the God who nominated him is best deposed.'
'Yes, yes, to be sure. That is blasphemy as well as heresy. But I think of Messer Bembo, who is still His minister, and I believe your pupils go too far.'
'Why, what hath this minister done for you?'
'Very much, in intention.'
'Well, I thought that was said to pave the other place; but, in truth, the issues of all things are confounded, since we have an angel for the Lord's minister and a devil for His vicegerent.'
'Pity of God! are they not? And ye would resolve them by deposing the Christ—by knocking out the very keystone of hope?'
'Nay, by substituting a rock for a crumbling brick.'
'What rock?'
'The people.'
'Might they not, too, elect a tyrant to be their representative?'
'How could tyranny represent a commonwealth?'
'A commonwealth! It is out, then! It is not God ye would depose, but Galeazzo. Commonwealth! Is that a name for keeping all men under a certain height? But the giant will dictate the standard, and any one may reach to him who can. Messer Montano, I seem to have heard of a republican called Cæsar.'
'Then you must have heard of another called Brutus?'
'Ay, to be sure; and of a third called Octavian.'
'Those were distracted times, my friend.'
'And what are these? Have you ever heard of the times when a man's interest was one with his neighbour's? Besides, the flame of art burns never so sprightly as under a despot. It finds no fuel in uniformity—each man equal to his neighbour.' He put out groping hands pitifully. 'I loved my art,' he quavered. 'They might have spared me to it!'
Montano bit his lip scornfully. It was on his tongue to spurn this spiritless creature. But he suppressed himself.
'What would you, then?' he demanded; 'you, the wretched victim of the system you commend?'
'Ah!' sighed Lupo, 'ideally, Messer, an autocracy, with an angel at its head.'
The philosopher laughed harshly.
'Why,' he sneered, 'there is your ideal come to hand. Be plain. Shall we depose a tyrant, and elect in his place this new-arrived, this divine boy, as ye all title him?'
'Why not?'
Montano started and stared at the speaker. There was suggestion here—of a standard for innovation; of a rallying-point for reform. A republic, like a despotism, might find its telling battle-cry in a saint. The boy, as representing the liberty of conscience, was already a subject of popular adoration. Why should they not use him as a fulcrum to the lever of revolution, and, having done with, return him to the cloisters from which he drew? There was suggestion here.
He mused a little, then broke out suddenly:—
'Brutus is none the less indispensable.'
'I do not gainsay it, master.'
'What! you do not? Then there, at least, we are agreed. Wilt have him come here?'
'Who is he, this Brutus? I grope in the dark—O my God, in the dark!'
During all this time the two women had remained passive and apparently apathetic listeners. Now, suddenly, the girl rose from her place by the chimney and came heavily forward, her eyes glaring, her hands clenched in woe, like some incarnated, fallen pythoness.
'Tell me,' she said hoarsely. 'I haven't his patience for my wrongs, nor caution neither. What's gained by caution when one stands on an earthquake? Let me make sure of him, my fine lover, and the world may fall in, for all I care.'
The pale mother hurried to her husband's side. He put out helpless, irresolute hands, with a groan. Montano stooping, elbow on knee, and rubbing his bristly chin, conned the speaker with sinister approval.
'Spoken like a Roman,' said he. 'Thou art the better vessel. If all were as you! Tyranny is hatched of the gross corpse of manliness—a beastly fly. Wilt tell thee my Brutus's name, girl, if thou wilt answer for these.'
He pointed peremptorily at her parents.
'Ay, will I,' she answered scornfully; 'though I have to wrench out their tongues first.'
He applauded shrilly, with a triumphant, contemptuous glance at the cowering couple.
'That is the right way with cowards. I commit my Brutus to thee. 'Tis a threefold dog, as I have said—a fanged Cerberus. Noble, too—as Roman as thou; and, in one part at least, like wounded. He, this third part, this Carlo Visconti, had a sister. Well, she was a flower which Galeazzo plucked; and, not content therewith threw into the common road. Another head is Lampugnani, beggared by the Sforzas; and Girolamo Olgiati is my third, a dear beardless boy, and instigated only by the noblest love of liberty.'
The girl nodded.
'And are these all?'
'All, save a fellow called Narcisso—a mere instrument to use and break—no principles but hate and gain. Was servant to that bully Lanti and dismissed—hum! for excess of loyalty. Fear him not.'
'Alas!' broke in the armourer: 'why should we fear him or anybody? There is no harm in this letting my shop to be thy school's succedaneum.'
Lucia laughed like a fury.
'No harm at all,' sniggered Montano, 'save in these heresies I spoke of. And what are they?—to reorganise society on a basis of political and social freedom. No harm in these young Catalines discussing their drastic remedies, perhaps in the vanity of a hope that some Sallust may be found to record them.'
'Nay, have done with all this,' cried the girl witheringly. 'I know nothing of your Catalines and Sallusts. Ye meet to kill—own it, or ye meet elsewhere.'
Her mother cried out: 'O Lucia! per pieta.'
She made no answer, only fixing Montano with her glittering eyes. He rose from his stool stiffly, with a snarl for his aching wounds. But his face brightened towards her like a spark of wintry sun.
'We meet to kill, Madonna,' he said, 'ruined, crippled, debauched—the victims of a monster and his system. And thou shalt have thy share, never fear, when the feast comes to follow the sacrifice.'
Bembo had fled, like one distracted, from the walls, his faithful shadow jumping in his wake. The two, running and following, never slackened in their pace until a half-mile separated them from the city; and then, in a gloomy thicket, under a falling sky, the boy threw himself down on the grass, and buried his face from heaven. Pitiful and distraught, the Fool stood over, silently regarding him. At length he spoke, panting and reproachful.
'Nay, in pity, master, wert thou not advised?'
The boy writhed.
'So lying, so wicked cunning, to make me his decoy and seeming abettor! O, I am punished for my faith! Is Christ dead?'
The Fool sighed.
'By thy showing, He lingers behind in the wood.'
'Tell Him I have gone on to my father.'
'Thou wilt?'
Bernardo sat up, a towzled angel. In the interval the tears had come fast, and his face was wet.
'God help you all!' he sobbed. 'You, even you, prevaricated to me. Whither shall I turn? I see everywhere a death-dealing wilderness, lies and lust and inhumanity.'
'I prevaricated,' said Cicada mournfully. 'I admit it. You once claimed my wit and experience to your tutoring. Well, do I not know the tyrant—the persistent devil in him? He had his teeth in that monk. Not Christ Himself would have loosened them.'
'Ah! what shall I do?'
'What, but go forward steadfast. This is but a jog by the way. Judge life on the broad lines of action, the ruts which mark the progress of the wheels. 'Tis a morbid sentiment that wastes itself on the quarrel between the wheels and the road.'
'Ah, me! if I could but foresee the end of that bloody mire—the sweet, crisp path again! I can advance no further. My weak heart fails. I will go back to the wood.'
'Then back, a' God's name, so I come too.'
Bernardo rose and seized the Fool's hand, the tears streaming down his cheeks.
'This dreadful race—monsters all!' he cried. 'Is there one kind deed recorded to its credit—one, one only, one little deed? Tell me, and if there is, by its memory I will persevere.'
'Humph! Should I wish thee to? Think again of that wood.'
'Tell me, kind, good Cicca, my nurse and friend.'
'Go to! Shalt not put a bone in my throat. Well, they are monsters, but made by that same brute Circumstance thou decriest. "Wavering out of chaos," says you? Very like, sir; but, after all, Circumstance is our head artist in a tuneless world. What a dull sing-song 'twould be without him—league-long choirs of saints praising God—a universe of chirping crickets! With respect, sir, I, though his Fool, would not have him caged in my time.'
'Alas, dear, for thine understanding! Love, that I would have depose him, is ten thousand times his superior in art—ay, and in humour. But go on.'
'I doubt the humour. However, as things are, I owe to him, as do you, and Galeazzo—the Fool, the Saint, and the Monster. Could love conceive such a trio? But to the point. Hast ever heard speak of our Duke's grand-dad?'
'Muzio?'
'So he called himself, or was called, pretending to trace his descent from Mutius Scævola the Roman. Flattery, you see, will make a braying ass of honesty. He was Giacommuzzo—just that; one of a family of fighting yeomen. But he had points. Hast been told how he began?'
'No.'
'Why, he was digging turnips by the evening star in his father's farm at Cotignola, when the sound of pipes and drums disturbed him. 'Twas some band of Boldrino of Panicale come to recruit from the fields; and they halted by the big man. "Be a soldier of fortune like us," says they; and he tossed his dusty hair from his eyes, and saw the glint of gold in baldricks. He looked at the evening star, and 'twas pale beside. Borrowers glean the real heaven of credit in this topsy-turvy world. Look at any pool of water: what a glittering prospectus it makes of the moon! Muzzo flung his spade into an oak hard by, leaving the decision to Circumstance. If it fell, he would resume it; if it stayed, a soldier he would be. It stuck in the branches.'
'Cicca!'
'Peace! I will tell thee. He fought up and down, but never back to Cotignola. He put his ploughing shoulder to his work, and dug a furrow to fame. Popes and kings engaged for and against this Condottieri. He took them all to market like his beans. He knew the values of fear and money and discipline—bought over honour; wrenched treason by the joints; flogged slackness for a rusty hinge in its armour; made warriors of his rabble. Sought letters, too, to spur them on by legend.'
'All this is nothing.'
'He went to Mass every day'
'Alas!'
'Cast his true plain wife, and took to bed the widow of Naples'
'Alas! Alas!'
'And lost his life at Pescara, trying to save another.'
'Ah! How was that?'
'He had crossed the river on a blown tide, when he saw his page a-drowning in the stream. "Poor lad," quoth he, "will none help thee?" And he dashed back, was overwhelmed himself, and sank. They saw his mailed hands twice rise and clutch the air. A' was never seen again. The waters were his tomb.'
Bernardo was silent.
'Was not that a creditable deed?' quoth the Fool.
The boy, pressing the tangled hair from his eyes, feverishly seized his comrade's hands in his own.
'God forgive me!' he cried; 'am I one to judge him, who have let my father's friend go under, and never reached a hand?'
The Fool looked frankly amazed.
'Montano,' cried Bembo, 'whom, in my pride of place, I have forgotten! I will go down among the people where he lies, and seek to heal his wounds, and sing Christ's parables to simple hearts. Love lies not in palaces. I will seek Montano.'
'Come, then,' said Cicada.
'Nay, in a little,' said the boy. 'Let the kind night find us first. I will flaunt my creed no longer in the sun.'
From behind the barred door of Lupo's shop came the sound of muffled laughter. The tragic incongruity of it in that house of ruin was at least arresting enough to halt a pedestrian here and there on his passage along the dark, wet-blown street outside. The mirth broke gustily, with little snarls at intervals, bestial and worrying; hearing which, the lingerer would perhaps hurry on his way with a shudder, crossing himself against, or spitting out like a bad odour, the influence of the fiend who had evidently got hold of the master armourer. Libera nos à malo!
The fiend, in fact, in possession was no other than Messer Montano's Cerberus, and its orgy, had the listener known it, had more than justified his apprehensions. The mirth which terrified his heart was perhaps even a degree more deadly in its evocation than anything he could imagine. It was really laughter so dreadful that, had he guessed its import, he had rushed, in an agony of self-vindication, to summon the watch. But guessing nothing, unless it might be Lupo's madness under the shock of his misfortunes, he simply crossed himself and hurried away.
Blood conspiracies are rarely successful. Perhaps a too scrupulous forethought against contingencies tends to clog the issues. If that is so, the recklessness of these men may, in a measure, have spelt their present security. A laugh, after all, is less open to suspicion than a whisper. Who could imagine a fatal thrust in a guffaw? Nevertheless, every chuckle uttered here punctuated a stab.
In rehearsal only at present, it is true; but practice, good practice, sirs. The victim of the attack was a dummy, contrived suggestively to represent Galeazzo. At least the habit made the man; and hate and a stinging imagination supplied the rest.
It stood in a dusky corner by the dead forge. Not so much light as would certainly guide a hand was allowed to fall upon it; for deeds of darkness, to be successful, must be prepared against darkness. Its stuffed, daubed face, staring from out this gloom, was like nothing human. To catch sudden sight, within a vista of dim lamp-shine, of its motionless eyes and features warped with stabs, was to gasp and shrink, as if one had looked into a glass and seen Death reflected back. Its suggestion of reality (and it possessed it) was to seek rather in velvet and satin; in a cunning, familiar disposition of its dress; in the sombre but profuse sparkle of artificial gems with which it was looped and hung. Thence came a grotesque and wicked semblance to a doomed figure. For the rest, in the bloodless slashes, gaping, rag-exuding, which had taken it cunningly in weak places—through the neck, under the gorget, between joints of the mail with which Lupo's craft had fitted it—there was a suggestiveness almost more horrible than truth.
It was in actual fact a sop to Cerberus, was this grisly-ludicrous doll, fruit of the decision (which had followed much discussion of ways and means) to postpone its prototype's murder to some occasion of public festivity, when the sympathies of the mob might be kindled and a revolution accomplished at a stroke. Politic Cerberus must nevertheless have something to stay the gnawing and craving of a delayed revenge which had otherwise corroded him. He took a ferociously boyish delight in fashioning this lay-figure, and, having made, in whetting his teeth on it; in clothing it in purple and fine linen; in addressing it wheedlingly, or ironically, or brutally, as the mood swayed him. And to-night his mood, stung by the tempest, perhaps, was unearthly in its wildness. It rose in fiendish laughter; it mocked the anguish of the blast, a threefold litany, now blended, now a trifurcating blasphemy. There were the roaring bass of Visconti, Lampugnani's smooth treble, the deadly considered baritone of Olgiati. And, punctuating all, like the tap of a baton, flew the interjections of Messer Montano, the conductor:—
'Su! Gia-gia! Bravo, Carlo! That was a Brutus stroke! Uh-uh, Andrea! hast bled him there for arrears of wages! a scrap of gold-cloth, by Socrates! A brave sign, a bright token, Andrea!'
He chuckled and hugged himself, involuntarily embracing in the action the long pendant which hung from his roundlet or turban, and half-pulling the cap from his skull-like forehead.
'Death!' he screeched in an ecstasy, and Lampugnani, glancing at him, went off into husky laughter, and sank back, breathed, upon a bench.
'Cometh in a doctor's gown,' he panted. 'Nay, sir, bonnet! bonnet! or the dummy will suspect you.'
He might have, himself, and with a better advantage to his fortunes, could he have penetrated the vestments of that drear philosophic heart. There was a secret there would have astounded his self-assurance. Montano wore his doctor's robe, meetly as a master of rhetoric, not the least of whose contemplated flights was one timely away from that political arena, whose gladiators in the meanwhile he was bent only on inflaming to a contest in which he had no intention of personally participating. He had a fixed idea, his back and his principles being still painfully at odds, that the cause would be best served by his absence, when once the long train to the explosion he was engineering had been fired at his hand. And so he hugged himself, and Lampugnani laughed.
'Look at Master Lupo, with the sound of thy screech in his ears! As if he thought we contemplated anything but to bring slashed Venetian doublets into vogue!'
He was a large, fleshly creature, was this Lampugnani, needing some fastidious lust to stir him to action, and then suddenly violent. His face was big and vealy, with a mouth in its midst like a rabbit's, showing prominently a couple, no more, of sleek teeth. His eyes drooped under lids so languid as to give him an affectation of fatigue in lifting them. His voice was soft, but compelling: he never lent it to platitudes. An intellectual sybarite, a voluptuary by deliberation, he had tested God and Belial, and pronounced for the less Philistine lordship of the beast. Quite consistent with his principles, he not hated, but highly disapproved of Galeazzo, who, as consistently, had pardoned him some abominable crime which, under Francesco the father, had procured him the death sentence. But Messer Andrea had looked for a more sympathetic recognition of his merits at the hands of his deliverer than was implied in an ill-paid lieutenancy of Guards; and his exclusion from a share in the central flesh-pots was a conclusive proof to him of the æsthetic worthlessness of the master it was his humility to serve.
The Visconti, at whom he breathed his little laugh, was a contrast to him in every way—a bluff, stout-built man, with fat red chaps flushing through a skin of red hair, a braggadocio manner, and small eyes red with daring. There was nothing of his house's emblematic adder about him, save a readiness with poisons; and after all, that gave him no particular distinction. He took a great, stertorous pull at a flagon of wine, and smacked his lips bullyingly, before he answered with a roar:—
'Wounds! scarlet scotched on a ground of flesh-tint—a fashion will please our saint.'
Montano chuckled again, and more shrilly.
'Good, good!' he cried: 'scarlet on flesh!' and he squinted roguishly at the blind smith, who sat beside him on a bench, nervously kneading together his wasted hands.
'Messers,' muttered the poor fellow; 'but will this holy boy approve the means to such a fashion? For Love to exalt himself by blood!'
He turned his sightless eyes instinctively towards Olgiati, where the boy stood, a dark, fatalistic young figure, breathing himself by the forge. He, he guessed, or perhaps knew, was alone of the company actuated by impersonal motives in this dread conspiracy. But he did not guess that, by so much as the young man was a pure fanatic of liberty, his hand and purpose were the most of all to be dreaded.
Olgiati gave a melancholy smile, and, stirring a little, looked down. He was habited, as were his two companions, for the occasion—a recurrent dress-rehearsal—in a coat and hose of mail, and a jerkin of crimson satin. It was not the least significant part of his undertaking that he, like the others, was court-bred and court-employed. The fact, at its smallest, implied in them a certain anatomic-cum-sartorial acquaintance with their present business.
'Offerimus tibi, Domine, Calicem salutaris!' he quoted from the Mass, in his sweet, strong voice. 'Hast thou not a first example of that exaltation, Lupo, in the oblation of the chalice?'
Revolution knows no blasphemy.
'Bah!' grumbled Visconti.
'He died for men: we worship the sacrifice of Himself,' protested the armourer.
'And shall not Messer Bembo sacrifice himself, his scruples and his reluctances, that love may be exalted over hate, mercy over tyranny?' asked Olgiati.
'I know not, Messer,' muttered the suffering armourer. 'I cannot trace the saint in these sophistries, that is all.'
'True, he is a saint,' conceded Lampugnani, yawning as he lolled. 'Now, what is a saint, Lupo?'
'O, Messer! look on his mother's son, and ask!'
'Why, that is the true squirrel's round. We are all born of women'—he yawned again.
'They bear us, and we endure them,' he murmured smilingly, the water in his eyes. 'It is so we retaliate on their officiousness.'
Montano tittered.
'Lupo,' Lampugnani went on, lazily stirring himself, 'you suggest to me two-thirds of a syllogism: I am my mother's son; therefore I am a saint.'
'Ho! ho!' hooted Visconti.
'Messer,' entreated the bewildered armourer, 'with respect, it turns upon the question of the mother.'
'The mother? O dog, to question the repute of mine!'
'I did not—no, never.'
'Well, who was his?'
'None knows. A star, 'tis said.'
'Venus, of course. And his father?'
'Some son of God, perchance.'
'Ay, Mars. He was that twain's by-blow, and fell upon an altar. I know now how saints are made. Yet shall we, coveting sanctity, wish our parents bawds? 'Tis a confusing world!'
He sank back as if exhausted, while Montano chirped, and Visconti roared with laughter.
'Saints should be many in it, Andrea,' he applauded. 'Knows how they are made, quotha!' and he stamped about, holding his sides till, reeling near to the dummy, he paused, and made a savage lunge at it with his dagger. His mood changed on the instant.
'Death!' he snarled, 'I warrant here's one hath propagated some saints to his undoing!' and he went muttering a rosary of curses under his breath.
Lampugnani, smilingly languid, continued:—
'Well, Lupo, so Messer Bembo is the son of his mother? It seems like enough—what with his wheedling and his love-locks. He shall be Saint Cupid on promotion. I think he will regard scarlet or pink as no objectionable fashion, does it come to make a god of him.'
The armourer uttered an exclamation:—
'Some think him that already. It is the question of his coming to be Duke that hips me. I can't see him there.'
'Nor I,' said Visconti, with a sarcastic laugh.
Olgiati interposed quietly:—
'Have comfort, Lupo. We are all good republicans. The exaltation of Messer Bembo is to be provisional only, preceding the consummation. He is to be lifted like the Host, to bring the people to their knees, and then lowered, and'
'Put away,' said Lampugnani blandly.
The armourer started to his feet in agitation.
'Messers!' he cried, 'he poured oil into my wounds; I will consent to no such wickedness.'
'You won't?' roared Visconti; but Lampugnani soothed him down.
'When I said "put away," I meant in a tabernacle, like that sacred bread. I assure you, Lupo, he is the rose of our adoration also; he shall cultivate his thorn in peace; he shall wax fat like Jeshurun, and kick.'
'And in the meantime,' grumbled Visconti, 'we are measuring our fish before we've hooked him.'
Lampugnani's face took on a very odd expression.
'What the devil's behind that?' hectored the bully.
'O, little!' purred the other. 'I fancy I feel him nibble, that's all. Perhaps you don't happen to know how he hath cut his connection with the palace?'
'What! When?'
They all jumped to stare at him.
'This day,' he said, 'in offence of some carrion of Galeazzo's which he had nosed out. The poor boy is particular in his tastes, for a shambles—ran like a sheep from the slaughter-house door, taking his Patch with him, and a ring her Grace had loaned him for a safe-conduct. I heard it said she would have been ravished of anything rather—by him. 'Twas her lord's troth-gift. The castle is one fume of lamentation.'
Montano, rubbing his lean hands between his knees, went into a rejoicing chatter:—
'We have him, we have him! Gods! who's here?'
Their intentness had deafened them some minutes earlier to a more mouthing note in the thunder of the rain, as if the swell of the tempest had been opened an instant and shut. The moment, in fact, and a master-key, had let in a new comer. He had closed the latch behind him, and now, seeing himself observed, stood ducking and lowering in the blinking light. The philosopher heaved a tremulous sigh of relief.
'Narcisso!'
The hulking creature grinned, and stabbed a thumb over his shoulder.
'Hist! him you speak of's out there, a-seeking your worship.'
'Seeking me? Messer Bembo?'
'Why not? A' met him at the town gate half-drowned, with his Patch to heel. The report of his running was got abroad, and, thinks I to myself, here's luck to my masters. To take him on the hop of grievance like'
Montano seemed to sip the phrase:—
'Exactly: on the hop of grievance. Well?'
'Why, I spoke him fair: "Whither away, master?" A' spat a saintly word—'twere a curse in a sinner—and sprang back, a' did, glaring at me. But the great Fool pushed him by. "You're the man," says he. "Desperation knows its fellows. Where's Montano?" "Why, what would you with him?" says I, taken off my guard. "A salve for his wounds," he answered. And so I considered a bit, and brought 'em on, and there they wait.'
Visconti uttered a furious oath, but Lampugnani hushed him down.
'Didst well, pretty innocence,' he said to Narcisso. 'The hop of grievance?—never a riper moment. Show in your friends.'
He was serenely confident of his policy—waved all protest aside.
'I see my way: the hook is baited: let him bite.'
'Bite?' growled Visconti. 'And what about our occupation here?'
'Why, 'tis testing mail, nothing more. Is a lay-figure in an armoury so strange?'
'Ay, when 'tis a portrait-model.'
'O glowing tribute to my art! I designed the doll, true. You make me look down, sir, and simper and bite my finger. Yet my mind misgives me thou flatterest. A portrait-model, yes; but will he recognise of whom?'
'The knave may—the shrewder fool of the pair.'
'The greater fool will testify to me? O happy artist! Well, if he do, I will still account him naught. He will take the bait also. The shadow swims and bites with the fish. Besides, should this befall, 'twill save mayhap a world of preliminaries. Remember that "hop of grievance." He comes, it seems, in a mood to jump with ours. Let them in.'
Like souls salvaged from a wreck they came—the Fool propping the Saint—staggering in by the door. Grief and storm and weariness had robbed the boy of speculation, almost of his senses. His drenched hair hung in ropes, his wild eyes stared beneath like a frightened doe's, his clothes slopped on his limbs.
Narcisso struggled with the door and closed it.
Suddenly Bernardo, lifting his dazed lids, caught sight of the shadowed lay-figure, recoiled, and shrieking out hoarsely:—'Galeazzo! Thou! O God, doomed soul!' tottered and slid through Cicada's limp arms upon the floor. Instantly Narcisso was down by his side, and fumbling with his hands.
'A's in a swound,' he was beginning, when, with a rush and heave, the Fool sent him wallowing.
'Darest thou, hog! darest thou! Go rub thy filthy hoofs in ambergris first!' and he squatted, snarling and showing his teeth.
Narcisso rose, to a chorus of laughter, and stood grinning and rubbing his head.
'Well, I never!' he said.