Part 45

"Quando fui desto da certi rumori Di buon sonagli ed allettar di cani"

he began to blink; with the quick direction to the huntsman--

"Deh, vanne innanzi, presto Capellaio,"

he stifled a smile. But the calling of the hounds by their names broke down his guard. Angioletto shrilled them out in a high, boyish voice--

"Chiama Tamburo, Pezuolo e Martello, La Foglia, la Castagna e la Guerrina, Fagiano, Fagianin, Rocca e Capello, E Friza, e Biondo, Bamboccio e Rossina, Ghiotto, la Torta, Viola e Pestello, E Serchio e Fuse e'l mio Buontempo vecchio, Zambraco, Buratel, Scaccio e Pennecchio...."

Every muscle of the keen old hunter was now quivering; his eyes were bright, his smile open and that of a child. To the last word of the poem--and it has length--he followed without breath the checks, the false casts, the bickering of the huntsmen, the petty incidents of a breezy morning in the marshes, nodding at every point, missing nothing, cracking his fingers, cheering under his breath, with delight undisguised and interest unalloyed. The moment it was ended he seemed prime for a burst of heedless comment; but he stopped, shut his lips with a snap, and became the inscrutable ruler of a fief of the Empire once more. But Angioletto knew that he had pleased him, for all that he walked off as he had come, without word or sign.

He had pleased every one. Homing to his nest in the Borgo, he caught his little Bellaroba in his arms with a rapture none the less because it had been earned at a stretch. It was long before he could find time and breath to lead her into the garden and have the story out. Olimpia, coming down to look for them in the dusk, found that a seat for two would easily hold one more. It should be added of Angioletto that he suppressed the incident of the Countess Lionella's salute.

At supper there were evidences that, whatever had been Angioletto's fate, all had not gone so well with the Captain of Lances. Not that appetite failed him; indeed, he ate the more for his taciturnity. Yet not repletion made him sigh, for he sighed consumedly before he began and rather less when he had finished, as though the kindlier juices of our nature had got to work to disperse the melancholic. Angioletto rallied him upon his gloom, but to no purpose. The meal was a silent one; almost the only conversation was that of the minstrel's foot with Bellaroba's under the table.

The truth was, that of conversation the Captain had had enough before supper--a very short colloquy with his Olimpia. In it he was brought to confess that he had seen his patron that morning. "Well?" had been Olimpia's commentary--a shot which raked the Captain fore and aft. Well, he desperately admitted, there was nothing actually arranged: patienza! His most noble master had been greatly harassed with affairs--the Duke's approaching visit to Rome, the precise forms which must be observed, the punctilios, the hundred niceties of etiquette; "Ah, patienza!" urged the sweating Mosca.

Patience, she saw, was the only wear; but, per Bacco, he should learn it too! She was in a high rage. The Captain was given to know that Ferrara was a great city, with more houses in it than one; in fine, he was shown the door. Supper first was an extreme and contemptuous condescension of Olimpia's, urged by the thought that a fed Mosca might be a more desperate Mosca, while a lean one would be desperate only for a meal.

A true relation of what passed in the Palazzo Guarini may serve to show how just she had been. The Count had received news of his henchman's attendance with a nod, had kept him waiting two hours in the cortile, then remembered him and bid him upstairs.

"Well, dog," said the young lord, from his dressing-table, "and why the devil are you so late to report yourself?"

"Ah, Excellence, believe me--" began to stutter the Captain.

"That is exactly what I will not do, my man. Who was that wench at your back yesterday?"

The Captain rubbed his hands. "Excellence, a wench indeed! A golden Venetian--glorious! Dove-eyed, honey-tongued, and very much your lordship's servant, I do assure you."

"You are so completely and at such length a fool, Mosca," said Count Guarini, with a yawn, "and strive so desperately to be rascal in spite of it, that I am almost sorry for you. Tie me these points, my good fellow, get me my sword, and go to the devil with your golden Venetian."

That, believe me, had been all. Therefore Captain Mosca, as he slunk out into the dark after supper in obedience to his inexorable Olimpia, felt that he must be more ingenious than he had supposed. At the same time it is only fair to say that when he had spoken so hopefully of his affair to the lady on the pillion he had believed every word of his own story. A man puts on spectacles to suit his complexion: the Captain's was sanguine.

FORTUNE WITH THE DOUBLE BLADE

"Similemente agli splendor mondani Ordino general ministra e duca, Che permutasse a tempo li ben vani, Di gente in gente, e d'uno in altro sangue."--Inf. vii. 77.

Angioletto had cause to believe in that star of his, for it never wavered in the course it held. Borso's court found him much to its taste. The men, however tall, of looks however terrible, bent their height and unbent their scowls to him; he was the pet of all the women; the very Fool, saturnine as he was (with a bite in every jest), had no gibe to put him to the blush withal. He made money, or money's worth, as fast as friends. A gold chain with a peregrine in enamel and jewels came to him by the hands of the Chamberlain; nothing was said, but he knew it was from the Duke. Countess Lionella could not reward him enough--now a jewel, now a gold cup, at one time a purse, at another a crystal phial filled with Jordan water. And so it went, the star waxing ever. He could have maintained the discreet house by Porta Angeli out of his earnings, and he did; but you have to pay for your luck somehow, and it very soon happened that he could not maintain himself in it. He was only too popular. The Count Guarino wanted him at the Palazzo Guarini; the Countess insisted that he should remain in bond at the Schifanoia; the august couple wrangled publicly over his little body.

"What, Madam," cried the Count, "is it not enough that you absent yourself from my house? Must you keep my friends out of it also?"

"He was accredited to me, my lord," said the lady, "to me, therefore, he shall come."

"Good madam," returned Guarini, "I admire your taste as a man, but deplore it as a husband. I think the little poet will do better with me."

"Stuff!" cried the Countess, "I might be his mother."

Said the Count: "Madam, I need not deny it; yet it is very evident that you are not his mother." He spoke with some heat.

Lionella was mightily amused. "Jealousy, my lord?" She arched her fine brows.

"I don't know the word, Madam," he answered her, touched on a raw. Jealousy appeared to him as the most vulgar of the vices.

"Prove that to me!" the Countess pursued him. Guarini made her a bow.