VI

Dancing began; slow and stately measures known as 'Venus and Zephyr,' 'Cruel Destiny,' 'Cupid,' etc.; the dresses of the ladies, being long and heavy, did not admit of rapid motion. The music was tender and soft, full of passionate languor like the sonnets of Petrarch, and to it moved dames and cavaliers, meeting and parting with bows, sighs, and smiles, all the perfection of dignity and grace.

Messer Galeazzo Sanseverino, the young commandant of Il Moro's guards, was the cynosure of the ladies' eyes; he was attired in white, with open-work sleeves upon a pink lining; his white shoes had diamond buckles, and his face was handsome, but fatigued, dissipated, and effeminate. An approving murmur ran through the crowd when in the dance, 'Sorte crudele' he dropped (of course accidentally), first his shoe, and then his mantle, but continued gliding and circling with that air of saddened negligence which was considered the mark of breeding. Danilo Mamiroff watched him in astonishment, spat contemptuously, and exclaimed—

'Good Lord, what a fool!'

The Duchess was not dancing; her heart was heavy, and only long practice enabled her to play her part of amiable hostess, to receive the New-Year's congratulations, and to respond with suitable banalities to the fine speeches of the courtiers. At times she felt unable to carry the business through; she longed to escape into some corner where she could burst into sobs.

Presently she entered a small and secluded apartment, where by a fire certain young ladies and courtiers were talking in a close ring. She asked them of what they spoke.

'Of platonic love, your Excellency,' replied one of the ladies. 'Messer Antoniotto Fregoso maintains that a lady does no violence to her modesty by kissing a man on the lips so it be by the way of ideal love.'

'And how does he prove that?' asked the Duchess absently.

Messer Antoniotto answered eagerly himself.

'With your Grace's permission, I maintain that the lips are the gates of the soul, and when they meet in a platonic salutation the souls of the lovers rise as to their natural outlet. Plato condemns not a kiss; and Solomon, in the Song of Songs, typifying the mystical union of the soul with God, says, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth."'

An old baron, a country knight, with a blunt and honest face, objected from the point of view of a husband; but the pretty lady, Fiordiligi, shrugging her graceful bare shoulders, reproved his barbarism.

'Dio mio! we speak of love, not of marriage! Would you profane the sacred names "Lover" and "Beloved" with those ignoble, rude, shameless titles, "husband" and "wife"?'

The baron would have answered her, but Messer Antoniotto interrupted with further descant; the Duchess, however, was tired, and moved away.

In the next saloon, verses were being recited by a noted poet from Rome, Serafino d'Aquila, surnamed the Unique; a little man very carefully washed, shaved, curled, and scented, with pink cheeks and a languishing smile, irregular teeth, and wily eyes.

Seeing Lucrezia in the circle of ladies surrounding this servant of the Muses, Beatrice paled, but instantly recovering herself, she advanced and kissed her with her usual graciousness. Before she could speak, however, an interruption occurred in the entry of a stout and gorgeous lady, who was suffering from bleeding of the nose.

''Tis an event upon which even Messer Unico himself could scarce make love-verses,' observed one of the courtiers contemptuously, for the sufferer was old and ugly.

Messer Unico, feeling his reputation at stake, sprang to his feet, passed his hand through his hair, threw back his head, and raised his eyes to heaven.

'Hush! hush!' murmured the ladies. 'Messer Unico composes! If your Excellency would move a little further she would hear better!'

Madonna Ermellina took a lute and ran her fingers over the strings; thus softly accompanied, the poet, in a voice guttural and majestic as that of a ventriloquist, declaimed his lines. They were to the effect that Love, moved by a lover to shoot at the heart of a fair one, had, owing to the bandage over his eyes, shot awry, and wounded not the heart but the nose of the unfortunate lady.

The audience applauded.

'Most beautiful! Stupendous! Unsurpassable! What conceits! What facility! Not like our Bellincioni who melts away under the exertion of putting a sonnet together! Truly, when he raised his eyes I felt the very wind of his inspiration making me wellnigh afraid!'

One lady offered him wine, another cooling tablets of mint; another placed him in an armchair and fanned him. He drooped and languished and blinked his eyes like a gorged cat in the afternoon sunshine.

Then he produced another sonnet in praise of the Duchess, which told how the snow, put to shame by the whiteness of her skin, had in vengeance turned itself to ice, and caused her to slip and wellnigh to fall upon the courtyard pavement.

Then he celebrated a lady who had lost a front tooth; 'twas the device of Love, who, dwelling in her mouth, required a loophole for the shooting of his arrows.

'But this man is a genius!' cried the ladies; 'his name will go down to posterity linked with that of Dante!'

'Nay, higher than Dante's. Where in the verses of Dante will you find these subtleties of our Unique one?'

'Ladies,' said the poet humbly, 'methinks you go too far. Dante has his special merits. Every one has his own qualities! As for me, I would give Dante's glory for your applause.'

He began another sonnet; but the Duchess had lost patience, and went away.

Returning to the main saloon, she commanded her page, Ricciardetto, a faithful lad, enamoured of her she sometimes fancied, to attend with a torch at the door of her bedchamber. Then she hurried through the long line of brilliant and crowded rooms, passed along a distant and deserted gallery, and ascended the winding stair. The immense vaulted apartment, now used as the ducal bedchamber, lay in the rectangular northern tower of the castle; she entered, took a candle, and went to a small oaken cupboard let into the thickness of the wall, in which the Duke kept important papers and his private letters. She had stolen the key from her husband, and now, nervous and agitated, fitted it to the lock. However, the attempt showed the lock to be broken, and she tore open the brass fastenings, only to find that the shelves had been emptied of their contents. Obviously Il Moro, noting the loss of his key, had transported his letters elsewhere. Beatrice stood motionless.

Snowflakes were fleeting past the window like white phantoms. The wind whistled, and howled, and moaned, and the lady shuddered as she listened, for these voices of the storm and of the night recalled to her mind a something terrible which she was never able to forget for long.

Her eye fell on the round lid of iron which covered the aperture to the Dionysius ear, the hearing-tube which Leonardo had run from the lower chambers of the palace to the Duke's bedchamber. She put her ear to it now and listened. Waves of sound reached her like the rolling of the sea heard in shells. She listened to the festal cries of the company, the laughter, the revels, the passionate sighing of the music, but with it mingled the whistle and roar of the storm.

Suddenly it seemed to her that, close by her side, some one murmured 'Bellincioni! Bellincioni!'

She gave a cry, the colour leaving her cheeks.

'Bellincioni! Of course! Why did I never think of him before? He is the one who will tell me everything. I must go to him this minute. Only so that no one shall notice me! Yet, truly, I care not if I am seen. I must know! I can endure this atmosphere of deceit no longer.'

She remembered that Bellincioni, on the pretext of indisposition, had not come to the ball. At this hour he would be at home, and alone!

So she called Ricciardetto, who was at the door.

'Tell two runners, with a litter, to await me below at the private gate. Despatch. Only see, if you desire my favour, that the matter is not known. Hear you? It must be known to none.'

He kissed her hand and set off with the message.

Beatrice threw on a sable pelisse and a mask of black velvet. A few minutes more and she was in the litter, being carried toward the Porta Ticinese, where the court poet had his lodging.