They made a mock of his remonstrances, and when he emulated Francesco’s methods, addressing them with sharp ferocity, and dubbing them beasts and swine, they caught the false ring of his fierceness, which was as unlike the true as the ring of lead is unlike that of silver. They jeered him insults, they mimicked his tenor voice, which excitement had rendered shrill, and they bade him go thrum a lute for his lady’s delectation, and leave men’s work to men.
His anger rose, and they lost patience; and from showing their teeth in laughter, they began to show them in snarls. At this his ferocity deserted him. Brushing past Fortemani, who stood cold and contemptuous by the doorway, watching the failure he had expected, he returned with burning cheeks and bitter words to Madonna Valentina.
She was dismayed at the tale he bore her, magnified to cover his own shame. Francesco sat quietly drumming on the sill, his eyes upon the moonlit garden below, and never by word or sign suggesting that he might succeed where Romeo had failed. At last she turned to him.
“Could you—-?” she began, and stopped, her eyes wandering back to Gonzaga, loath to further wound a pride that was very sore already. On the instant Francesco rose.
“I might try, Madonna,” he said quietly, “although Messer Gonzaga’s failure gives me little hope. And yet, it may be that he has taken the keen edge from their assurance, and that, thus, an easier task awaits me. I will try, Madonna.” And with that he went.
“He will succeed, Gonzaga,” she said, after he had gone. “He is a man of war, and knows the words to which these fellows have no answer.”
“I wish him well of his errand,” sneered Gonzaga, his pretty face white now with sullenness. “And I’ll wager you he fails.”
But Valentina disdained the offer whose rashness was more than proven when, at the end of some ten minutes, Francesco re-entered, as imperturbable as when he went.
“They are quiet now, Madonna,” he announced.
She looked at him questioningly. “How did you accomplish it?” she inquired.
“I had a little difficulty,” he said, “yet not over-much.” His eye roved to Gonzaga, and he smiled. “Messer Gonzaga is too gentle with them. Too true a courtier to avail himself of the brutality that is necessary when we deal with brutes. You should not disdain to use your hands upon them,” he admonished the fop in all seriousness, and without a trace of irony. Nor did Gonzaga suspect any.
“I, soil my hands on that vermin?” he cried, in a voice of horror. “I would die sooner.”
“Or else soon after,” squeaked Peppe, who had entered unobserved. “Patrona mia, you should have seen this paladin,” he continued, coming forward. “Why, Orlando was never half so furious as he when he stood there telling them what manner of dirt they were, and bidding them to bed ere he drove them with a broomstick.”
“And they went?” she asked.
“Not at first,” said the fool. “They had drunk enough to make them very brave, and one who was very drunk was so brave as to assault him. But Ser Francesco fells him with his hands, and calling Fortemani he bids him have the man dropped in a dungeon to grow sober. Then, without waiting so much as to see his orders carried out, he stalks away, assured that no more was needed. Nor was it. They rose up, muttering a curse or two, maybe–yet not so loud that it might reach the ears of Fortemani–and got themselves to bed.”
She looked again at Francesco with admiring eyes, and spoke of his audacity in commending terms. This he belittled; but she persisted.
“You have seen much warring, sir,” she half-asked, halfasserted.
“Why, yes, Madonna.”
And here the writhing Gonzaga espied his opportunity.
“I do not call to mind your name, good sir,” he purred.
Francesco half-turned towards him, and for all that his mind was working with a lightning quickness, his face was indolently calm. To disclose his true identity he deemed unwise, for all connected with the Sforza brood must earn mistrust at the hands of Valentina. It was known that the Count of Aquila stood high in the favour of Gian Maria, and the news of his sudden fall and banishment could not have reached Guidobaldo’s niece, who had fled before the knowedge of it was in Urbino. His name would awaken suspicion, and any story of disgrace and banishment might be accounted the very mask to fit a spy. There was this sleek, venomous Gonzaga, whom she trusted and relied on, to whisper insidiously into her ear.
“My name,” he said serenely, “is, as I have told you. Francesco.”
“But you have another?” quoth Valentina, interest prompting the question.
“Why, yes, but so closely allied to the first as to be scarce worth reciting. I am Francesco Franceschi, a wandering knight.”
“And a true one, as I know.” She smiled at him so sweetly that Gonzaga was enraged.
“I have not heard the name before,” he murmured, adding:
“Your father was—-?”
“A gentleman of Tuscany.”
“But not at Court?” suggested Romeo.
“Why, yes, at Court.”
Then with a sly insolence that brought the blood to Francesco’s cheeks, though to the chaste mind of Valentina’s it meant nothing–“Ah!” he rejoined. “But then, your mother—-?”
“Was more discriminating, sir, than yours,” came the sharp answer, and from the shadows the fool’s smothered burst of laughter added gall to it.
Gonzaga rose heavily, drawing a sharp breath, and the two men stabbed each other with their eyes. Valentina, uncomprehending, looked from one to the other.
“Sirs, sirs, what have you said?” she cried. “Why all this war of looks?”
“He is over-quick to take offence, Madonna, for an honest man,” was Gonzaga’s answer. “Like the snake in the grass, he is very ready with his sting when we seek to disclose him.”
“For shame, Gonzaga,” she cried, now rising too. “What are you saying? Are you turned witless? Come, sirs, since you are both my friends, be friends each with the other.”
“Most perfect syllogism!” murmured the fool, unheeded.
“And you, Messer Francesco, forget his words. He means them not. He is very hot of fancy, but sweet at heart, this good Gonzaga.”
On the instant the cloud lifted from Francesco’s brow.
“Why, since you ask me,” he answered, inclining his head, “if he’ll but say he meant no malice by his words, I will confess as much for mine.”
Gonzaga, cooling, saw that haply he had gone too fast, and was the readier to make amends. Yet in his bosom he nursed an added store of poison, a breath of which escaped him as he was leaving Valentina, and after Francesco had already gone:
“Madonna,” he muttered, “I mistrust that man.”
“Mistrust him? Why?” she asked, frowning despite her faith in the magnificent Romeo.
“I know not why; but it is here. I feel it.” And with his hand he touched the region of his heart. “Say that he is no spy, and call me a fool.”
“Why, I’ll do both,” she laughed. Then more sternly, added: “Get you to bed, Gonzaga. Your wits play you false. Peppino, call my ladies.”
In the moment that they were left alone he stepped close up to her, spurred to madness by the jealous pangs he had that day endured. His face gleamed white in the candlelight, and in his eyes there was a lurking fierceness that gave her pause.
“Have your way, Madonna,” he said, in a concentrated voice; “but to- morrow, whether we go hence, or whether we stay, he remains not with us.”
She drew herself up to the full of her slender, graceful height, her eyes on a level with Gonzaga’s own.
“That,” she answered, “is as shall be decreed by me or him.”
He breathed sharply, and his voice hardened beyond belief in one usually so gentle of tone and manner.
“Be warned, Madonna,” he muttered, coming so close that with the slightest swaying she must touch him, “that if this nameless sbirro shall ever dare to stand ‘twixt you and me, by God and His saints, I’ll kill him! Be warned, I say.”
And the door re-opening at that moment, he fell back, bowed, and brushing past the entering ladies, gained the threshold. Here someone tugged at the prodigious foliated sleeves that spread beside him on the air like the wings of a bird. He turned, and saw Peppino motioning him to lower his head.
“A word in your ear, Magnificent. There was a man once went out for wool that came back shorn.”
Angrily cuffing the fool aside, he was gone.
Valentina sank down upon her window-seat, in a turmoil of mingled anger and amazement that paled her cheek and set her bosom heaving. It was the first hint of his aims respecting her that Gonzaga had ever dared let fall, and the condition in which it left her boded ill for his ultimate success. Her anger he could have borne, had he beheld it, for he would have laid it to the score of the tone he had taken with her. But her incredulity that he could indeed have dared to mean that which her senses told her he had meant, would have shown him how hopeless was his case and how affronted, how outraged in soul she had been left by this moment of passionate self-revealing. He would have understood then that in her eyes he never had been, was never like to be, aught but a servant–and one, hereafter, that, deeming presumptuous, she would keep at greater distance.