A Jay of Italy/Chapter 24

(Messer Bembo invitus) is the only absolute expression of automatic government. The fly-wheel moves, and every detail of the machinery, saw, knife, or punch, however distant, responds instantly to its initiative. Galeazzo, for example, had but to make, in Vigevano, the tenth part of a revolution, and behold, in Milan! Messer Jacopo—saw, knife, and punch in one—had 'come down,' automatically, upon the objectives of that movement. Within a few minutes of Tassino's return, Bernardo and his Fool, seized quietly and without resistance as they were taking the air on the battlements, were being lowered with cords into the 'Hermit's Cell.'

Sic itur ad astra.

The Duke of Milan re-entered his capital on the 20th of December. His Duchess met him with happy smiles and tears, loving complaints over his long absence, a sweet tongue ready with vindication of her trust, should that be demanded of her. The last week had done much to reassure her, in the near return to familiar conditions which it had witnessed; and she felt herself almost in a position to restore to her Bluebeard the key, unviolated, of the forbidden chamber. If only he would accept that earnest of her loyalty without too close a questioning!

And, to her joy, he did; inasmuch, you see, as he had his own reasons for a diplomatic silence. It would appear, indeed, that recent great events had altogether banished from his memory the pious circumstances of his departure to them. He had returned to find his duchy as to all moral intents he had left and could have wished to recover it. The fashion of Nature had shed its petals with the summer brocades, and Milan was itself again.

For the exquisite, who had set it, was vanished now some seven days gone; and that is a long time for the straining out of a popular fashion. He had departed, carrying his Fool with him, none—save one or two in the secret—knew whither; but surmise was plentiful, and for the most part rabid. That he had fallen out of home favour latterly was obvious and flagrant; now, the report grew that this alienation had received its first impetus from Piedmont. That whisper in itself was Nature's very quietus. Eleven out of a dozen presumed upon it, and themselves, to propitiate tyranny with a very debauch of reactionism to old licence. Moreover, scandal, in mere self-justification, must run intolerable riot. Nothing was too gross for it in its accounting for this secession. The pure love which had striven to redeem it, it tortured into a text for filthy slanders. The Countess of Caprona had her windows stoned in retaliation one day by a resentful crowd; the wretched girl Lucia was dragged from her bed and suffocated in a muddy ditch. The logic of the mob.

The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the boy no evil; had acted as she did merely in the interests of the State, she told herself. If, for a moment, her thoughts ever swerved to Tassino—now returned, as it was whispered, to his old quarters with the Provost Marshal, and abiding there a readjustment of affairs—she hid the treason under a lovely blush, and vowed herself for ever more true wife and incorruptible.

So for the most part all was satisfactory again; and there remained only to alienate the popular sympathy from its idol. And that the Church undertook to do. The moment the false prophet was exposed and deposed, it rose, shook the crumbs from its lap, and gave him his coup de grâce in the public estimation.

'He but sought,' it thundered, 'to turn ye over, clods; to cleanse your gross soil for the fairer growing of his roses.' A parable: but so far comprehensible to the demos in that it implied its narrow escape from some cleaning process, a vindication of its prescriptive rights to go unwashed, and therefore convincing. Down sank the threatening swine-monster thereon; and, being further played upon with comfits of a festal Christmas-tide, did yield up incontinent its last breath of revivalism, and kick in joyful reassurance of its sty.

So the whole city absolved itself of redemption, and set to making enthusiastic provision for the devil's entertainment against the season of peace and goodwill.

Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit: nor less Bona bona erit. Only there was a rift within the happy wife's lute, which somehow put the whole orchestra out of tune. She saw, for all her sweet chastened sense of relief, that the Duke was darkly troubled. The oppression of his mood communicated itself to hers; and she began to dream—horrible visions of cloyed fingers, and clinging shrouds, and ropey cobwebs that would drop and lace her mouth and nostrils, the while she could not fight free a hand to clear them.

Then, double-damned in his own depression, by reason of its reacting through his partner on himself, the Duke one day sent for the Provost Marshal.

'The season claims its mercies,' gloomed he. 'Take the boy out and send him home to his father.'

'His father!' jeered Jacopo brusquely, grunting in his beard. 'A's been safe in his bosom these three days.'

'What!' gasped the tyrant.

'Dead, Messer, dead, that's all,' said the other impassively; 'passed in a moment, like a summer shower.'

There was nothing more to be said, then. As for poor Patch, he was too cheap a mend-conscience for the ducal mind even to consider. It took instead to brooding more and more on the drawn whiteness of its Duchess's face, hating and sickened by it, yet fascinated. The air seemed full of portents in its ghostly glimmer. His fingers were always itching to strike the hot blood into it. A loathly suspicion seized him that perhaps here, after all, was revealed the illusive face of his long haunting. Constantly he fancied he saw reflected in other faces about him some shadow of its menacing woe. Once he came near stabbing a lieutenant of his guards, one Lampugnani, for no better reason than that he had caught the fellow's eyes fixed upon him.

So the jovial season sped, and Christmas day was come and gone, bringing with it and leaving, out of conviviality, some surcease of his self-torment.

But, on that holy night, Madonna Bona was visited by a dream, more ugly and more definite than any that had terrified her hitherto. Groping in a vast cathedral gloom, she had come suddenly upon a murdered body prostrate on the stones. Dim, shadowy shapes were thronged around; the organ thundered, and at its every peal the corpse from a hundred hideous wounds spouted jets of blood. She turned to run; the gloating stream pursued her—rose to her hips, her lips—she awoke choking and screaming.

That morning—it was St. Stephen's Day—the Duke was to hear Mass in the private chapel of the castello. He rose to attend it, only to find that, by some misunderstanding, the court chaplain had already departed, with the sacred vessels, for the church dedicated to the Saint. The Bishop of Como, summoned to take his place, declined on the score of illness. Galeazzo decided to follow his chaplain.

Bona strove frantically to dissuade him from going. He read some confirmation of his shapeless suspicions in her urgency, and was the more determined. She persisted; he came near striking her in his fury, and finally drove her from his presence, weeping and clamorous.

She was in despair, turning hither and thither, trusting no one. At length she bethought herself of an honest fellow, always a loyal friend and soldier of her lord, of whom, in this distracting pass, she might make use. She had spoken nothing to the Duke of her disposal of his favourite, Messer Lanti, leaving the explanation of her conduct to an auspicious moment. Now, in her emergency, she sent a message for Carlo's instant release, bidding him repair without delay to the palace. She had no reason, nor logic, nor any particular morality. She was in need, and lusting for help—that was enough.

The messenger sped, and returned, but so did not the prisoner with him. Bona, sobbing, feverish, at the wit's end of her resources, went from member to member of her lord's suite, imploring each to intervene. As well ask the jackalls to reprove the lion for his arrogance.

At eleven the Duke set out. His valet and chronicler, Bernardino Corio, relates how, at this pass, his master's behaviour seemed fraught with indecision and melancholy; how he put on, and then off, his coat of mail, because it made him look too stout; how he feared, yet was anxious to go, because 'some of his mistresses' would be expecting him in the church (the true explanation of his unharnessing, perhaps); how he halted before descending the stairs; how he called for his children, and appeared hardly able to tear himself away from them; how Madonna Catherine rallied him with a kiss and a quip; how at length, reluctantly, he left the castle on foot, but, finding snow on the ground, decided upon mounting his horse.

Viva! Viva! See the fine portly gentleman come forth—tall, handsome, they called him—in his petticote [sic] of crimson brocade, costly-furred and opened in front to reveal the doublet beneath, a blaze of gold-cloth torrid with rubies; see the flash and glitter that break out all over him, surface coruscations, as it were, of an inner fire; see his face, already chilling to ashes, livid beneath the sparkle of its jewelled berretino! Is it that his glory consumes himself? Viva! Viva!—if much shouting can frighten away the shadow that lies in the hollow of his cheek. It is thrown by one, invisible, that mounted behind him when he mounted, and now sits between his greatness and the sun. Viva! Viva! So, with the roar of life in his ears, he passes on to the eternal silence.

As he rides he whips his head hither and thither, each glance of his eyes a quick furtive stab, a veritable coup d'œil. He is gnawed and corroded with suspicion, mortally nervous—his manner lacks repose. It shall soon find it. He will make a stately recumbent figure on a tomb.

The valet, after releasing his master's bridle, has run on by a short cut to the church, where, at the door, he comes across Messers Lampugnani and Olgiati lolling arm in arm. They wear coats and stockings of mail, and short capes of red satin. Corio wonders to see them there, instead of in their right places among the Duke's escort. But it is no matter of his. There are some gentlemen will risk a good deal to assert their independence—or insolence.

In the meanwhile, the motley crowd gathering, the Duke's progress is slow. All the better for discussing him and his accompanying magnificence. He rides between the envoys of Ferrara and Mantua, a gorgeous nucleus to a brilliant nebula. This, after all, is more 'filling' than Nature. Some one likens him, audibly, to the head of a comet, trailing glory in his wake. He turns sharply, with a scowl. 'Uh! Come sta duro!' mutters the delinquent. 'Like a thunderbolt, rather!'

At length he reaches the church door and dismounts. He throws his reins to a huge Moor, standing ready, and sets his lips.

From within burst forth the strains of the choir—

Bowing his head, he passes on to his doom.