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Sir John Constantine, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 28. Genoa |
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_ CHAPTER XXVIII. GENOA "_Gobbo_. "_Launcelot_. "_Gobbo_.
We had laid this course of set purpose, intending to work up to the great harbour coastwise from the southward and enter it boldly, passing ourselves off for a crew from Porto Fino with a catch of fish for market. The others had discarded all that was Corsican in their dress, and the Princess had ransacked the quarters of the late garrison on Giraglia to rig us out in odds and ends of Genoese costume. For the rest we trusted to fortune; but an hour before starting I had sought out my Uncle Gervase and made him privy to the plot. He protested, to be sure; but acquiesced in the end with a wry face when I told him that the Princess and I were determined. This understood, at once my excellent and most practical uncle turned to business. Within ten minutes it was agreed between us that the _Gauntlet_ should sail back with General Paoli and anchor under the batteries of Isola Rossa to await our return. She was to wait there one month exactly. If within that time we did not return, he was to conclude either that our enterprise had come to grief or that we had re-shaped our designs and without respect to the _Gauntlet's_ movements. In any event, at the end of one calendar month he might count himself free to weigh anchor for England. We next discussed the Queen. My uncle opined, but could not say with certainty, that the General had it in mind to offer her protection and an honourable retirement on her own estates above the Taravo. I bade him tell her that, if she could wean herself from Corsica to follow her daughter, our house of Constantine would be proud to lodge her--I hoped, for the remainder of her days--for certain, until she should tire of it and us. The rest (I say) we left to chance, which at first served us smoothly. The breeze, though it continued fair, fell light soon after daybreak, and noon was well past before we sighted the Ligurian coast. We dowsed sail and pulled towards it leisurably, waiting for the hour when the fishing-boats should put out from Porto Fino: which they did towards sunset, running out by ones and two's before the breeze which then began to draw off the land, and making a pretty moving picture against the evening glow. When night had fallen we hoisted our lateen again and worked up towards them. These fishermen (as I reasoned, from our own Cornish practice) would shoot their nets soon after nightfall and before the moon's rising-- to haul them, perhaps, two hours later, and await the approach of morning for their second cast. Towards midnight, then, we sailed boldly up to the outermost boat and spoke her through Marc'antonio, who (_fas est ab hoste doceri_) had in old campaigns picked up enough of the Genoese patois to mimic it very passably. He announced us as sent by certain Genoese fishmongers--a new and enterprising firm whose name he invented on the spur of the moment--to trade for the first catch of fish and carry them early to market, where their freshness would command good prices. The fishermen, at first suspicious, gave way at sight of the Genoese money in his hand, and accepted an offer which not only saved them a journey but (as we calculated) put from three to four extra livres in their pockets. Within twenty minutes they had transferred two thousand fish to our boat, and we sailed off into the darkness, ostensibly to trade with the others. Doubtless they wished us good night for a set of fools. We did not trouble their fellows. Two thousand fish, artfully spread to look like thrice the number, ought to pass us under the eyes of all Genoa: so for Genoa we headed forthwith, hauling up on the starboard tack and heeling to our gunwale under the breeze which freshened and blew steadily off the shore. Sunrise found us almost abreast of the harbour: and the clocks from the city churches were striking seven as we rounded up under the great mole on the eastern side of the entrance and floated into the calm basin within. I confess that my heart sank as Genoa opened in panorama before us, spreading in a vast semicircle with its dockyards and warehouses, its palaces, its roofs climbing in terrace after terrace to the villas and flower-gardens on the heights: nor was this sense of our impudence lessened by reflecting that, once within the mole, we had not a notion to which of the quays a fishing-boat ought to steer to avoid suspicion. But here, again, fortune helped us. To the right, at the extreme inner corner of the mole, I espied half a dozen boats, not unlike our own, huddled close under a stone stairway; and I had no sooner thrust down the helm than a man, catching sight of us, came running along the mole to barter. Marc'antonio's conduct of the ensuing bargain was nothing short of masterly. The stranger--a fishmonger's runner--turned as he met us and trotted alongside, shaping his hands like a trumpet and bawling down his price. Marc'antonio, affecting a slight deafness, signalled to him to bawl louder, hunched his shoulders, shook his head vehemently, held up ten fingers, then eight, then (after a long and passionate protest from above) eight again. By this time two other traffickers had joined the contest, and with scarcely a word on his side Marc'antonio kept them going, as a juggler plays with three balls. Not until our boat's nose grated alongside the landing was the bargain concluded, and the first runner, a bag of silver in his fist, almost tumbled upon us down the slippery stairs in his hurry to clinch it. I stepped ashore and held out a hand to the Princess who, in her character of _paesana_, very properly ignored it. Luckily the courtesy escaped notice. Stephanu was making fast the boat; the runner counting his coins into Marc'antonio's hand. The Princess and I mounted the stairs and, after a pretence to loiter and await our comrades, strolled off towards the city around the circuit of the quay. We passed the great warehouses of the Porto Franco, staring up at them, but impassively, in true country fashion, and a little beyond them came to the entrance of a street which--for it was strewn with cabbage leaves and other refuse--we judged to lead to the vegetable market. "Let us turn aside here," said the Princess. "I was brought up in a cabbage-market, remember; and the smell may help to put me at my ease." Now along the quays we had met and passed but a few idlers, the hour being early for business; but in the market, when we reached it, we found a throng--citizens and citizens' wives and housekeepers, all armed with baskets and chaffering around the stalls. The crowd daunted me at first; but finding it too intent to heed us, I drew breath and was observing it at leisure when my eyes fell on the back of a man who, bending over a stall on my right, held forth a cabbage in one hand while with the other--so far as the basket on his arm allowed--he gesticulated violently, cheapening the price against an equally voluble saleswoman. Good heavens! That back--that voice--surely I knew them! The man turned, holding the cabbage aloft and calling gods, mortals, and especially the population of Genoa, to witness. It was Mr. Pett!--and, catching sight of me, he stared wildly, almost dropping the vegetable. "Angels and ministers--" here, at a quick sign of warning from me, he checked himself sharply. "_O anima profetica, il mio zio!_ . . . Devil a doubt but it sounds better in Shakespeare's mother-English," he added, as I hurried him aside; and then--for he still grasped the cabbage, and the stallwoman was shouting after him for a thief. "You'll excuse me, signora. Two soldi, I think you said? It is an infamy. What? Your cabbage has a good heart? Ah, but has it ever loved? Has it ever leapt in transport, recognizing a long-lost friend? Importunate woman, take your fee, basely extracted from me in a moment of weakness. O, heel of Achilles! O, locks of Samson! Go to, Delilah, and henceforth for this may a murrain light on thy cucumbers! "Though, strictly speaking," said Mr. Fett, as I drew him away and down the street leading to the quay, "I believe murrain to be a disease peculiar to cattle. Well, my friend, and how goes it with you? For me"--here he tapped his basket, in which the cabbage crowned a pile of green-stuff--"I am reduced to _buying_ my salads." He wheeled about, following my glance, and saluted the Princess, who had followed and overtaken us. "Man," said I, "you shall tell us your story as soon as ever you have helped us to a safe lodging. But here are we--and there, coming towards us along the quay, are two comrades--four Corsicans in all, whose lives, if the Genoese detect us, are not worth five minutes' purchase." "Then, excuse me," said Mr. Fett, becoming serious of a sudden, "but isn't it a damned foolish business that brings you?" "It may be," I answered. "But the point is, Can you help us?" "To a lodging? Why, certainly, as luck has it, I can take you straight--no, not straight exactly, but the devil of a way round--to one where you can lie as snug as fleas in a blanket. Oh--er--but excuse me--" He checked himself and stood rubbing his chin, with a dubious glance at the Princess. "Indeed, sir," she put in, smoothing down at her peasant-skirt, "I think you first found me lodging upon a bare rock, and even in this new dress it hardly becomes me to be more fastidious." "I was thinking less of the lodgings, Princess, than of the company: though, to be sure, the girls are very good-hearted, and Donna Julia, our _prima amorosa_, makes a most discreet _duenna_, off the boards. There is Badcock too--il signore Badcocchio: give Badcock a hint, and he will diffuse a most permeating respectability. For the young ladies who dwell at the entrance of the court, over the archway, I won't answer. My acquaintance with them has not passed beyond an interchange of winks: but we might send Badcock to expostulate with them." "You are not dealing with a child, sir," said the Princess, with a look at me and a somewhat heightened colour. "Be assured that I shall have eyes only for what I choose to see." Mr. Fett bowed. "As for the lodgings, I can guarantee them. They lie on the edge of a small Jew quarter--not the main _ghetto_-- and within a stone's-throw of the alleged birthplace of Columbus; if that be a recommendation. Actually they are rated in the weavers' quarter, the burgh of San Stefano, between the old and new walls, a little on the left of the main street as you go up from Sant' Andrea towards Porticello, by the second turning beyond the Olive Gate." "I thank you," I interrupted, "but at a reasonable pace we might arrive there before you have done giving us the direction." "My loquacity, sir, did you understand it," said Mr. Fett, with an air of fine reproach, "springs less from the desire to instruct than from the ebullience of my feelings at so happy a rencounter." "Well, that's very handsomely said," I acknowledged. "Oh, sir, I have a deal to tell, and to hear! But we will talk anon. Meanwhile"--he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step beside him--"permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had the pleasure of meeting her--a distinct lessening of _hauteur_--a touch of (shall I say?) womanliness. Would it be too much to ask if you are running away with her?" "It would," said I. "As a matter of fact she is in Genoa to seek her brother, the Prince Camillo." "Nevertheless," he insisted, and with an impertinence I could not rebuke (for fear of drawing the attention of the passers-by, who were numerous)--"nevertheless I divine that you have much either to tell me or conceal." He, at any rate, was not reticent. On our way he informed me that his companions in the lodgings were a troupe of strolling players among whom he held the important role of _capo comico_. We reached the house after threading our way through a couple of tortuous alleys leading off a street which called itself the Via Servi, and under an archway with a window from which a girl blew Mr. Fett an unabashed kiss across a box of geraniums. The master of it, a Messer' Nicola (by surname Fazio) had rooms for us and to spare. To him Mr. Fett handed the market-basket, after extracting from it an enormous melon, and bade him escort the Princess upstairs and give her choice of the cleanest apartments at his disposal. He then led us to the main living-room where, from a corner-cupboard, he produced glasses, plates, spoons, a bowl of sugar, and a flask of white wine. The flask he pushed towards Marc'antonio and Stephanu: the melon he divided with his clasp-knife. "You will join us?" he asked, profering a slice. "You will drink, then, at least? Ah, that is better. And will you convey my apologies to your two bandits and beg them to excuse my conversing with you in English? To tell the truth"--here, having helped them to a slice apiece and laid one aside for the Princess, he took the remainder upon his own plate--"though as a rule we make collation at noon or a little before, my English stomach cries out against an empty morning. You will like my Thespians, sir, when you see 'em. The younger ladies are decidedly--er--vivacious. Bianca, our Columbine, has all the makings of a beauty--she has but just turned the corner of seventeen; and Lauretta, who plays the scheming chambermaid, is more than passably good-looking. As for Donna Julia, her charms at this time of day are moral rather than physical: but, having married our leading lover, Rinaldo, she continues to exact his vows on the stage and the current rate of pay for them from the treasury. Does Rinaldo's passion show signs of flagging? She pulls his ears for it, later on, in conjugal seclusion. Poor fellow!--
I told him, briefly as I could, of my father's end. He laid down his spoon and looked at me for a while across the table with eyes which, being unused to emotion, betrayed it awkwardly, with a certain shame. "A great, a lofty gentleman! . . . You'll excuse me, cavalier, but I am not always nor altogether an ass--and I say to you that half a dozen such knights would rejuvenate Christendom. As it is, we live in the last worst ages when the breed can afford but one phoenix at a time, and he must perforce spend himself on forlorn hopes. Mark you, I say 'spend,' not 'waste': the seed of such examples cannot be wasted--"
"Not that I remember," said I. "Yet it is full of instruction as an egg is full of meat. My father, who (let me remind you) is a wholesale dealer in flash jewellery, had ever a passion for gardening, albeit that for long he had neither the time nor the money nor even the space to indulge his hobby. His garden--a parallelogram of seventy-two feet by twenty-three, confined by brick walls--lay at the back of our domicile, which excluded all but the late afternoon sunshine. As the Mantuan would observe--"
"This done, he had at once to consider how to dispose of the body. Our garden, as I have said, was confined within brick walls, two long and one short; and this last my father had screened with a rustic shed and a couple of laurel-bushes; that from his back-parlour window, where he sat and smoked his pipe on a Sunday afternoon, he might watch the path 'wandering,' as he put it, 'into the shrubbery,' and feast his eyes on a domain which extended not only further than the arm could stretch, but even a little further than the eye could reach. "In the space, then, intervening between the laurels and the terminal wall my father dug a grave two spits deep and interred the corpse, covering it with a light compost of loam and leaf-mould. This was on a Wednesday--the second Wednesday in July, as he was always particular to mention. (And I have heard him tell the story a score of times.) "On the Sunday week, at half-past three in the afternoon, my father had finished his pipe and was laying it down, before covering his head (as his custom was) with a silk handkerchief to protect his slumber from the flies, when, happening to glance towards the shrubbery, he espied a remarkably fine crimson hollyhock overtopping the laurels. He rubbed his eyes. He had invested in past years many a shilling in hollyhock seed, but never till now had a plant bloomed in his garden. "He rubbed his eyes, I say. But there stood the hollyhock. He rushed from the room, through the back-doorway and down the garden. My excellent mother, aroused from her siesta by the slamming of the door, dropped the Family Bible from her lap, and tottered in pursuit. She found my father at the angle of the shrubbery, at a standstill before a tangled mass of vegetation. Hollyhocks, sunflowers, larkspurs, lilies, carnations, stocks--every bulb, every seed which the dead man had failed to cultivate--were ramping now and climbing from his grave high into the light. My father tore his way through the thicket to the tool-shed, dragged forth a hook and positively hacked a path back to my mother, barely in time to release her from the coils of a major convolvulus (_ipomoea purpurea) which had her fast by the ankles. "Now, this story, which my father used to tell modestly enough, to account for his success at our local flower-shows, seems to me to hold a deeper significance, and a moral which I will not insult your intelligence by extracting for you . . . The _actions_ of the just? Foh!" continued Mr. Fett, and filled his mouth with melon. "What about their _passions?_ Why, sir, yet another story occurs to me, which might pass for an express epologue upon your father's career. Did you never hear tell of the Grand Duchess Sophia of Carinthia and her Three Wooers?" "Pardon me, Mr. Fett--" I began. "Pardon _me_, sir," he cut me short, with a flourish of his spoon. "I know what you would say: that you are impatient rather to hear how it is that you find me here in Genoa. That also you shall hear, but permit me to come to it in my own way. For the moment your news has unhinged me, and you will help my recovery by allowing me to talk a little faster than I can think. . . . I loved your father, Cavalier. . . . But our tale, just now, is of--"
"Her name was Sophia, and the charms of her young mind rivalled those of her person. Therefore suitors in plenty presented themselves, but only to be rejected by her Chancellor (to whom she left the task of preliminary inspection) until he had reduced the list to three, whom we will call Prince Melchior, Prince Otto, and Prince Caspar. The two former reigned over neighbouring states, but Prince Caspar, I have heard, came from the north, beyond the Alps. "A day, then, was fixed for these three to learn their fate, and they met at the foot of the avenue, at the far end of which, on her palace steps, stood the Grand Duchess to make her choice. Now, when Prince Melchior came to the golden road, he thought it would be a sin and a shame were his horse to set hoof on it and scratch it and perchance break off a plate of it; so he turned aside and rode up along the right of it under the chestnuts. Likewise and for the same reason Prince Otto turned aside and rode on the left. But Prince Caspar thought of the lady so devoutly and wished so much to be with her that he never noticed the golden pavement at all, but rode straight up the middle of it at a gallop. "When the three arrived, Sophia felt that she liked Prince Caspar best for his impetuosity; but, on the other hand, she was terribly annoyed with him for having dented her precious avenue with hoof-marks. She temporized, therefore, professing herself unable to decide, and dismissed them for three years with a promise to marry the one who in that time should prove himself the noblest knight. "Thereupon Prince Melchior and Prince Otto rode away in anger, for they coveted the golden road as well as the lady. Prince Melchior, who loved fighting, went home to collect an army and avenge the insult, as he called it. Prince Otto, whose mind worked more subtly, set himself by secret means to stir up disaffection among the Carinthians, telling them that their labour and suffering had gone to make the splendid useless avenue of gold; and he persuaded them the more easily because it was perfectly true. (He forbore to add that ho coveted it for his own.) But Prince Caspar, having seen his lady-love, could find no room in his heart either for anger or even for schemes to prove his valour. He could think of her and of her only, day and night. And finding that his thoughts brought her nearer to him the nearer he rode to the stars, he turned his horse towards the Alps, and there, on the summit, among the snows, lived solitary in a little hut. "His mountain overlooked the plain of Carinthia, but from such a height that no news ever came to him of the Grand Duchess or her people. From his hut, to which never a woodman climbed, nor even a stray hunter, he saw only a few villages shining when they took the sun, a lake or two, and a belt of forest through which--for it hid the palace--sometimes at daybreak a light glinted from the golden avenue. But one night the whole plain broke out far and wide with bonfires, and from the grand-ducal park--over which the sky shone reddest--he caught the sound of a bell ringing. Then he bethought him that the three years were past, and that these illuminations were for the wedding; and he crept to bed, ashamed and sorrowful that he had failed and another deserved. "Towards daybreak, as he tossed on his straw, he seemed to hear the bells drawing nearer and nearer, until they sounded close at hand. He sprang up, and from the door of his hut he saw a rider on muleback coming up the mountain track through the snow. The rider was a woman, and as she alighted and tottered towards him, he recognized the Grand Duchess. He carried her in and set her before his fire; and there, while he spread food before her, she told him that the Princes Melchior and Otto had harried her lands and burnt her palace, and were even now fighting with each other for the golden avenue. "Then," said Caspar, pulling his rusty sword from under a heap of faggots, "I will go down and win it from them; for I see my hour coming at last." But the Princess said, "Foolish man, it is here! And as for the golden avenue, that too is here, or all that was ever worth your winning." And thereupon she drew aside her cloak, shaking the snow from it; and when the folds parted and the firelight fell on her bosom, he saw a breastplate gleaming--a single plate of gold--and in the centre of it the imprint of a horse's hoof. "So these two, Cavalier--or so the story reached me--lived content in their silly hut, nor ever thought it worth their while to descend to the plain and lose what they had found. . . . But you were good enough just now to inquire concerning my own poor adventures." "Billy Priske," said I, "has given me some account of them up to your parting from my father--at Calenzana, was it not?" "At Calenzana." Mr. Fett sighed assent. "Ah! Cavalier, it has been a stony road we have travelled from Calenzana. _Infandum jubes renovare dolorem_ . . . but Badcock must bear the blame."
"That infernal _mufro_ chivvied us up the road to Calvi and into the very arms of a Genoese picket. The soldiers arrested us--there was no need to arrest the _mufro_, for he trotted at our heels--and marched us to the citadel, into the presence of the commandant. To the commandant (acting, as I thought, upon a happy inspiration) I at once offered the beast in exchange for our liberty. I was met with the reply that, as between rarities, he would make no invidious distinctions, but preferred to keep the three of us; and moreover that the _mufro_ (which had already put a sergeant and two private soldiers out of action) appeared amenable only to the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. . . . And this was a fact, Cavalier. At first, and excusably, I had supposed the brute's behaviour to express aversion; until, observing that he waited for the conclusion of a piece before butting at Mr. Badcock's stomach, I discovered this to be his rough-and-ready method of demanding an _encore_. "The commandant proved to be a _virtuoso_. Persons of that temperament (as you may have remarked) are often unequal to the life of the camp with its deadening routine, its incessant demand for vigilance in details; and, as a matter of fact, he was on the point of being superseded for incompetence. His recall arrived, and for a short while he was minded to make a parting gift of us to his late comrades-in-arms, sharing us up among the three regiments that composed the garrison and endowing them with a _mascot_ apiece; but after a sharp struggle selfishness prevailed and he carried us with him to the mainland. There for a week or two, in an elegant palace behind the _Darsena_, we solaced his retirement and amused a select circle of his friends, till (wearying perchance of Badcock's minstrelsy) he dismissed us with a purse of sequins and bade us go to the devil, at the same time explaining that only the ingratitude he had experienced at the hands of his countrymen prevented his offering us as a gift to the Republic. "We left the city that afternoon and climbed the gorges towards Novi, intending our steps upon Turin. The _mufro_ trotted behind us, and mile after mile at the brute's behest--its stern behest, Cavalier-- Mr. Badcock fluted its favourite air, _I attempt from love's sickness to fly_. But at the last shop before passing the gate I had provided myself with a gun; and at nightfall, on a ledge above the torrent roaring at our feet, I did the deed. . . . Yes, Cavalier, you behold a sportsman who has slain a wild sheep of Corsica. Such men are rare. "The echoes of the report attracted a company of pedestrians coming down the pass. They proved to be a party of comedians moving on Genoa from Turin, whence the Church had expelled them (as I gathered) upon an unjust suspicion of offending against public morals. At sight of Badcock, their leader, with little ado, offered him a place in the troupe. His ignorance of Italian was no bar; for pantomime, in which he was to play the role of pantaloon, is enacted (as you are aware) in dumb-show. Nay, on the strength only of our nationality they enlisted us both; for Englishmen, they told me, are famous over the continent of Europe for other things and for making the best clowns. We therefore turned back with them to Genoa. "But oh, Cavalier! these bodily happenings which I recite to you, what are they in comparison with the adventures of the spirit? I am in Italy--in Genoa, to be sure, which of all Italian cities passes for the unfriendliest to the Muse: but that is my probation. I have embraced the mission of my life. Here in Italy--here in the land of the vine, the olive--of Maecenas and the Medicis--it shall be mine to revive the arts and to make them pay; and if I can win out of this city of skinflints at a profit, I shall have served my apprenticeship and shall know my success assured. The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind; opportunity given, they would sneak the breeches off a highlander: they divide their time between commercialism and a licentiousness of which, sordid as it is, they habitually beat down the price. And yet Genoa is Italy, and has the feeling of Italy--the golden atmosphere, the clean outlines, the amplitude of its public spaces, the very shadows in the square, the statues looking down upon the crowd, the pose, the colouring, of any chance poor onion-seller in the market--" But here Mr. Fett broke off his harangue to rise and salute the Princess, who, entering with our host at her heels, turned to Marc'antonio and bade him, as purse-bearer, count out the money for a week's lodging. Payment in advance (it seemed) was the rule in Genoa. Messer' Fazio bit each coin carefully as it was tendered, and had scarcely pocketed the last before a noise at the front-door followed by peals of laughter announced the arrival of our fellow-lodgers. They burst into the room singing a chorus, _O pescatore da maremma_, and led by Mr. Badcock, who wore a wreath of seaweed a-cock over one eye and waved a dripping basket of sea-urchins. Two pretty girls held on to him, one by each arm, and thrust him staggering through the doorway. "O pesca--to--o--o--" Mr. Badcock's eyes, alighting on me, grew suddenly large as gooseberries and he checked himself in the middle of a roulade. "Eh! why! bless my soul, if it's not--" "Precisely," interjected Mr. Fett, with a quick warning wink and a wave of his hand to introduce us. "_I pescatori da maremma_. . . . To them enter Proteus with his attendant nymphs. . . . They rush on him and bind him with strings of sausages (will the Donna Julia oblige by tucking up her sleeves and fetching the sausages from the back kitchen, _with_ a brazier?) The music, slow at first, becomes agitated as the old man struggles with his captors; it then sinks and breaks forth triumphantly, _largo maestoso_, as he discourses on the future greatness of Genoa. The whole written, invented, and entirely stage-managed by Il Signore Fetto, Director of Periodic Festivities to the Genoese Republic. . . . To be serious, ladies, allow me to present to you four fellow-lodgers from--er-- Porto Fino, whom I have invited to share our repast. What ho! without, there! A brazier! Fazio--slave--to the macaroni! Bianca, trip to the cupboard and fetch forth the Val Pulchello. Badcock, hand me over the basket and go to the ant, thou sluggard; and thou, Rinaldo, to the kitchen, where already the sausages hiss, awaiting thee. . . ." In less than twenty minutes we were seated at table. Master Fazio's hotel (it appeared) welcomed all manner of strange guests, and (thanks to Mr. Fett's dextrous tomfooling) the comedians made us at home at once, without questions asked. Twice I saw Mr. Badcock, as he held a mouthful of macaroni suspended on his fork, like an angler dangling his bait over a fish, pause and roll his eyes towards me; and twice Mr. Fett slapped him opportunely between the shoulder-blades. He had seated me between the Duenna and the pretty Bianca, to both of whom--for both talked incessantly--I gave answers at random; which by-and-by the Columbine observed, and also that I stole a glance now and then across the Princess, who was trying her best to listen to the conversation of the Matamor. "Are you newly married, you two?" asked the Columbine, slily. "Oh, you need not blush! She puts us all in the shade. You are in love with her, at least? Well, she scorns us and is not clever at concealing it: but I will not revenge myself by trying to steal you away. I am magnanimous, for my part; and, moreover, all women love a lover." _ |
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