A Jay of Italy. Bernard Edward Joseph Capes
high, white towers of a monastery.
'There,' he said, signifying the spot to his companion with a grin; 'hast heard of Giuseppe della Grande, Beatrice, the father of his people?'
'And not least of our own little Parablist, Madonna,' put in the landlord, with a salutation.
'Plague, man!' cried Lanti; 'who the devil is this Parablist you keep throwing at us?'
'They call him Bernardo Bembo, my lord. He was dropped and bred among the monks—some by-blow of a star, they say, in the year of the great fall. He was found at the feet of Mary's statue; and, certes, he is gifted like an angel. He mouths parables as it were prick-songs, and is esteemed among all for a saint.'
'A fair saint, i'faith, to be carousing in a tavern.'
'O my lord! he but lies here an hour from the sun, on his way, this very morning, to Milan, whither he vouches he has had a call. And for his carousing, spring water is it all, and the saints to pay, as I know to my cost.'
'He should have stopped at the rill, methinks.'
'He will stop at nothing,' protested the landlord humbly; 'nay, not even the rebuking by his parables of our most illustrious lord, the Duke Galeazzo himself.'
Lanti guffawed.
'Thou talkest treason, dog. What is to rebuke there?'
'What indeed, Magnificent? Set a saint, I say, to catch a saint.'
The other laughed louder.
'The right sort of saint for that, I trow, from Giuseppe's loins.'
'Nay, good my lord, the Lord Abbot himself is no less a saint.'
'What!' roared Lanti, 'saints all around! This is the right hagiolatry, where I need never despair of a niche for myself. I too am the son of my father, dear Messer Ciacco, as this Parablist is, I'll protest, of your Abbot, whose piety is an old story. What! you don't recognise a family likeness?'
The landlord abased himself between deference and roguery.
'It is not for me to say, Magnificent. I am no expert to prove the common authorship of this picture and the other.'
He lowered his eyes with a demure leer. Honest Lanti, bending to rally him, chuckled loudly, and then, rising, brought his whip with a boisterous smack across his shoulders. The landlord jumped and winced.
'Spoken like a discreet son of the Church!' cried the cavalier.
He breathed out his chest, drained his glass, still laughing into it, and, handing it down, settled himself in his saddle.
'And so,' he said, 'this saintly whelp of a saint is on his way to rebuke the lord of Sforza?'
'With deference, my lord, like a younger Nathan. So he hath been miscalled—I speak nothing from myself. The young man hath lived all his days among visions and voices; and at the last, it seems, they've spelled him out Galeazzo—though what the devil the need is there? as your Magnificence says. But perhaps they made a mistake in the spelling. The blessed Fathers themselves teach us that the best holiness lacks education.'
Madonna laughed out a little. 'This is a very good fool!' she murmured, and yawned.
'I don't know about that,' said Lanti, answering the landlord, and wagging his sage head. 'I'm not the most pious of men myself. But tell us, sirrah, how travels his innocence?'
'On foot, my lord, like a prophet's.'
''Twill the sooner lie prone.' He turned to my lady. 'Wouldst like to add him to Cicada and thy monkey, and carry him along with us?'
'Nay,' she said pettishly, 'I have enough of monstrosities. Will you keep me in the sun all day?'
'Well,' said Lanti, gathering his reins, 'it puzzles me only how the Abbot could part thus with his discretion.'
'Nay, Illustrious,' answered the landlord, 'he was in a grievous pet, 'tis stated. But, there! prophecy will no more be denied than love. A' must out or kill. And so he had to let Messer Bembo go his gaits with a letter only to this monastery and that, in providence of a sanctuary, and one even, 'tis whispered, to the good Duchess Bona herself. But here, by the token, he comes.'
He bowed deferentially, backing apart. Messer Lanti stared, and gave a profound whistle.
'O, indeed!' he muttered, showing his strong teeth, 'this Giuseppe propagates the faith very prettily!'
Madam Beatrice was staring too. She expressed no further impatience to be gone for the moment. A young man, followed by some kitchen company adoring and obsequious, had come out by the door, and stood regarding her quietly. She had expected some apparition of austerity, some lean, neurotic friar, wasting between dogmatism and sensuality. And instead she saw an angel of the breed that wrestled with Jacob.
He was so much a child in appearance, with such an aspect of wonder and prettiness, that the first motion of her heart towards him was like the leap of motherhood. Then she laughed, with a little dye come to her cheek, and eyed him over the screen of feathers she held in her hand.
He advanced into the sunlight.
'Greeting, sweet Madonna,' he said, in his grave young voice, 'and fair as your face be your way!' and he was offering to pass her.
She could only stare, the bold jade, at a loss for an answer. The soft umber eyes of the youth looked into hers. They were round and velvety as a rabbit's, with high, clean-pencilled brows over. His nose was short and pretty broad at the bridge, and his mouth was a little mouth, pouting as a child's, something combative, and with lips like tinted wax. Like a girl's his jaw was round and beardless, and his hair a golden fleece, cut square at the neck, and its ends brittle as if they had been singed in fire. His doublet and hose were of palest pink; his bonnet, shoes, and mantlet of cypress-green velvet. Rose-coloured ribbons, knotted into silver buckles, adorned his feet; and over his shoulder, pendent from a strand of the same hue, was slung a fair lute. He could not have passed, by his looks, his sixteenth summer.
Lanti pushed rudely forward.
'A moment, saint troubadour, a moment!' he cried. 'It will please us, hearing of your mission, to have a taste of your quality.'
The youth, looking at him a little, swung his lute forward and smiled.
'What would you have, gracious sir?' he said.
'What? Why, prophesy us our case in parable.'
'I know not your name nor calling.'
'A pretty prophet, forsooth. But I will enlighten thee. I am Carlo Lanti, gentleman of the Duke, and this fair lady the wife of him we call the Count of Casa Caprona.'
The boy frowned a little, then nodded and touched the strings. And all in a moment he was improvising the strangest ditty, a sort of cantefable between prose and song:—
'A lord of little else possessed a jewel,
Of his small state incomparably the crown.
But he, going on a journey once,
To his wife committed it, saying,
"This trust with you I pledge till my return;
See, by your love, that I redeem my trust."
But she, when he was gone, thinking "he will not know,"
Procured its exact fellow in green glass,
And sold her lord's gem to one who bid her fair;
Then, conscience-haunted, wasted all those gains
Secretly, without enjoyment, lest he should hear and wonder.
But he returning, she gave him the bauble,
And, deceived, he commended her; and, shortly after, dying,
Left her that precious jewel for all dower,
Bequeathing elsewhere the residue of his estate.
Now, was not this lady