He returned to his own apartments, and whilst the preparations for his departure were toward, he bade Alvaro summon Martin Armstadt–the captain of his guard. To the latter his orders were short and secret.
“Take four men,” he bade him, “and remain in Urbino after I am gone. Discover the haunts of Peppe the fool. Seize him, and bring him after me. See that you do it diligently, and let no suspicion of your task arise.”
The bravo–he was little better, for all that he commanded the guards of the Duke of Babbiano–bowed, and answered in his foreign, guttural voice that his Highness should be obeyed.
Thereafter Gian Maria made shift to depart. He took his leave of Guidobaldo, promising to return within a few days for the nuptials, and leaving an impression upon the mind of his host that his interview with Valentina had been very different from the actual.
It was from Valentina herself that Guidobaldo was to learn, after Gian Maria’s departure, the true nature of that interview, and what had passed between his niece and his guest. She sought him out in his closet, whither he had repaired, driven thither by the demon of gout that already inhabited his body, and was wont to urge him at times to isolate himself from his court. She found him reclining upon a couch, seeking distraction in a volume of the prose works of Piccinino. He was a handsome man, of excellent shape, scarce thirty years of age. His face was pale, and there were dark circles round his eyes, and lines of pain about his strong mouth.
He sat up at her advent, and setting his book upon the table beside him, he listened to her angry complaints.
At first, the courtly Montefeltro inclined to anger upon learning of the roughness with which Gian Maria had borne himself. But presently he smiled.
“When all is said, I see in this no great cause for indignation,” he assured her. “I acknowledge that it may lack the formality that should attend the addresses of a man in the Duke’s position to a lady in yours. But since he is to wed you, and that soon, why be angered at that he seeks to pay his court like any other man?”
“I have talked in vain, then,” she answered petulantly, “and I am misunderstood. I do not intend to wed this ducal clod you have chosen to be my husband.”
Guidobaldo stared at her with brows raised, and wonder in his fine eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulders a trifle wearily. This handsome and well- beloved Guidobaldo was very much a prince, so schooled to princely ways as to sometimes forget that he was a man.
“We forgive much to the impetuousness of youth,” said he, very coldly. “But there are bounds to the endurance of every one of us. As your uncle and your prince, I claim a double duty from you, and you owe a double allegiance to my wishes. By my twofold authority I have commanded you to wed with Gian Maria.”
The princess in her was all forgotten, and it was just the woman who answered him, in a voice of protest:
“But, Highness, I do not love him.”
A shade of impatience crossed his lofty face.
“I do not remember,” he made answer wearily, “that I loved your aunt. Yet we were wed, and through habit came to love each other and to be happy together.”
“I can understand that Monna Elizabetta should have come to love you,” she returned. “You are not as Gian Maria. You were not fat and ugly, stupid and cruel, as is he.”
It was an appeal that might have won its way to a man’s heart through the ever-ready channel of his vanity. But it did not so with Guidobaldo. He only shook his head.
“The matter is not one that I will argue. It were unworthy in us both. Princes, my child, are not as ordinary folk.”
“In what are they different?” she flashed back at him. “Do they not hunger and thirst as ordinary folk? Are they not subject to the same ills; do they not experience the same joys? Are they not born, and do they not die, just as ordinary folk? In what, then, lies this difference that forbids them to mate as ordinary folk?”
Guidobaldo tossed his arms to Heaven, his eyes full of a consternation that clearly defied utterance. The violence of his gesture drew a gasp of pain from him. At last, when he had mastered it:
“They are different,” said he, “in that their lives are not their own to dispose of as they will. They belong to the State which they were born to govern, and in nothing else does this become of so much importance as in their mating. It behoves them to contract such alliances as shall redound to the advantage of their people.” A toss of her auburn head was Valentina’s interpolation, but her uncle continued relentlessly in his cold, formal tones–such tones as those in which he might have addressed an assembly of his captains:
“In the present instance we are threatened–Babbiano and Urbino–by a common foe. And whilst divided, neither of us could withstand him, united, we shall combine to his overthrow. Therefore does this alliance become necessary–imperative.”
I do not apprehend the necessity,” she answered, in a voice that breathed defiance. “If such an alliance as you speak of is desirable, why may it not be made a purely political one–such a one, for instance, as now binds Perugia and Camerino to you? What need to bring me into question?”
“A little knowledge of history would afford you an answer. Such political alliances are daily made, and daily broken when more profit offers in another quarter. But cemented by marriage, the tie, whilst continuing political, becomes also one of blood. In the case of Urbino and Babbiano it enters also into consideration that I have no son. It might well be, Valentina,” he pursued, with a calculating coldness that revolted her, “that a son of yours would yet more strongly link the two duchies. In time both might become united under him into one great power that might vie successfully with any in Italy. Now leave me, child. As you see, I am suffering, and when it is thus with me, and this evil tyrant has me in its clutches, I prefer to be alone.”
There was a pause, and whilst his eyes were upon hers, hers were upon the ground in avoidance of his glance. A frown marred her white brow, her lips were set and her hands clenched. Pity for his physical ills fought a while with pity for her own mental torment. At last she threw back her beautiful head, and the manner of that action was instinct with insubordination.
“It grieves me to harass your Highness in such a season,” she assured him, “but I must beg your indulgence. These things may be as you say. Your plans may be the noblest that were ever conceived, since to their consummation would be entailed the sacrifice of your own flesh and blood –in the person of your niece. But I will have no part in them. It may be that I lack a like nobility of soul; it may be that I am all unworthy of the high station to which I was born, through no fault of my own. And so, my lord,” she ended, her voice, her face, her gesture, all imparting an irrevocable finality to her words, “I will not wed this Duke of Babbiano–no, not to cement alliances with a hundred duchies.”
“Valentina!” he exclaimed, roused out of his wonted calm. “Do you forget that you are my niece?”
“Since you appear to have forgotten it.”
“These woman’s whims—-” he began, when she interrupted him.
“Perhaps they will serve to remind you that I am a woman, and perhaps if you remember that, you may consider how very natural it is that, being a woman, I should refuse to wed for–for political ends.”
“To your chamber,” he commanded, now thoroughly aroused. “And on your knees beg Heaven’s grace to help you to see your duty, since no words of mine prevail.”
“Oh, that the Duchess were returned from Mantua,” she sighed. “The good Monna Elizabetta might melt you to some pity.”
“Monna Elizabetta is too dutiful herself to do aught but urge you to dutifulness. There, child,” he added, in a more wheedling tone, “set aside this disobedient mood, which is unlike you and becomes you ill. You shall be wed with a splendour and magnificence that will set every princess in Italy green with envy. Your dowry is set at fifty thousand ducats, and Giuliano della Rovere shall pronounce the benediction. Already I have sent orders to Ferrara, to the incomparable Anichino, for the majestate girdle; I will send to Venice for gold leaf and—-”
“But do you not heed me that I will not wed?” she broke in with passionate calm, her face white, her bosom heaving.