The Chronicles of Count Antonio

by Anthony Hope

"So he dies, I care not how," answered the Duke. "Indeed, I love to see him a witless fool even while his body is yet alive. O rare wizard, I go near to repenting having done justice on you! Go, Lorenzo, to the officer of the Guard and bid him fetch hither the Lady Lucia, and we will play the pretty comedy to the end."

"Will you be alone with him?" asked Lorenzo.

"Aye; why not? See! he is tame enough," and he buffeted Antonio in the face with his riding-glove. And Antonio whimpered and whined.

Now the officer of the Guard was in his lodge at the entrance of the palace, on the other side of the great hall; and Lorenzo turned and went, and presently the sound of his feet on the marble floor of the hall grew faint and distant. The Duke sat with the phial in his hand, smiling at Antonio who crouched at his feet. And Antonio drew himself on his knees quite close to the Duke, and looked up in his face with a foolish empty smile. And the Duke, laughing, buffeted him again. Then, with a sudden spring, like the spring of that Indian tiger which the Mogul of Delhi sent lately as a gift to the Most Christian King, and the king, for his diversion, made to slay deer before him at the château of Blois (which I myself saw, being there on a certain mission, and wonderful was the sight), Count Antonio, leaping, was upon the Duke; and he snatched the philtre from the Duke's hand and seized the Duke's head in his hands and wrenched his jaw open, and he poured the contents of the phial down the Duke's throat, and the Duke swallowed the potion. Then Antonio fixed a stern and imperious glance on the Duke, nailing his eyes to the Duke's and the Duke's to his, and he said in a voice of command, "Obey! You have drunk the potion!" And still he kept his eyes on the Duke's. And the Duke, amazed, suddenly began to tremble, and sought to rise; and Antonio took his hands off him, but said, "Sit there, and move not." Then, although Antonio's hands were no longer upon him, yet His Highness did not rise, but after a short struggle with himself sank back in his seat, and stared at Antonio like a bird fascinated by a snake. And he moaned, "Take away your eyes; they burn my brain. Take them away." But Antonio gazed all the more intently at him, saying, "Be still, be still!" and holding up his arm in enforcement of his command. And Antonio took from the Duke the sword that he wore and the dagger wherewith the Duke had killed the Wizard of Baratesta, he making no resistance, but sitting motionless with bewildered stare. Then Antonio looked round, for he knew that Lorenzo would soon come. And for the last time he bent his eyes again on the Duke's eyes in a very long gaze and the Duke cowered and shivered, moaning, "You hurt me, you hurt me."

Then Antonio said, "Be still and speak not till I return and bid you;" and he suddenly left the Duke and ran at the top of his speed along under the wall of the garden, and came where the wall ended; and there was a flight of steps leading up on to the top of the wall. Running up it, Antonio stood for a moment on the wall; and the river ran fifty feet below. But he heard a cry from the garden, and beheld Lorenzo rushing up to the Duke, and behind Lorenzo, the Captain of the Guard and, two men who led a maiden in white. Then Count Antonio, having commended himself to the keeping of God, leapt head foremost from the top of the wall into the river, and his body clove the water as an arrow cleaves the wand.

Now Lorenzo marvelled greatly at what he saw, and came to the Duke crying, "My lord, what does this mean? Antonio flies!" But the Duke answered nothing, sitting with empty eyes and lips set in a rigid smile; nor did he move. "My lord, what ails you?" cried Lorenzo. Yet the Duke did not answer. Then Lorenzo's eye fell on the fragments of the phial which lay broken on the rim of the fish-pond where Antonio had flung it; and he cried out in great alarm, "The potion! Where is the potion?" But the Duke did not answer. And Lorenzo was much bewildered and in sore fear; for it seemed as though His Highness's senses were gone; and Lorenzo said, "By some means he has drunk the potion!" And he ran up to the Duke, and caught him by the arm and shook him violently, seeking to rouse him from his stupor, and calling his name with entreaties, and crying, "He escapes, my lord; Antonio escapes! Rouse yourself, my lord—he escapes!" But the Duke did no more than lift heavy dull eyes to Lorenzo's face in puzzled inquiry.

And, seeing the strange thing, the Captain of the Guard hurried up, and with him the Lady Lucia, and she said, "Alas, my lord is ill!" and coming to His Highness she set her cool soft hand on his hot throbbing brow, and took perfume from a silver flask that hung at her girdle, and wetted her handkerchief with it and bathed his brow, whispering soft soothing words to him, as though he had been a sick woman. For let a woman have what grudge she may against a man, yet he gains pardon for all so soon as he becomes sick enough to let her nurse and comfort him; and Lucia was as tender to the Duke as to the Count Antonio himself, and forgot all save the need of giving him ease and rousing him from his stupor.

But Lorenzo cried angrily, "I at least have my senses!" And he said to the Captain of the Guard, "I must needs stay with His Highness; but Antonio of Monte Velluto has leapt from the wall into the river. Go and bring him here, dead or alive, and I will be your warrant to the Duke. But if he be as when I saw him last, he will give you small trouble. For he was like a child for weakness and folly." And having said this, he turned to the Duke again, and gave his aid to Lucia's ministrations.

Now the gentleman who commanded the Duke's Guard at this time was a Spaniard, by name Corogna, and he was young, of high courage, and burning to do some great deed. Therefore he said, "I pray he be as he is wont to be: yet I will bring him to the feet of my lord the Duke." And he ran swiftly through the hall and called for his horse, and drawing his sword, rode alone out of the city and across the bridge, seeking Antonio, and saying to himself, "What a thing if I take him! And if he slay me, why, I will show that a gentleman of Andalusia can die;" yet he thought for an instant of the house where his mother lived. Then he scanned the plain, and he beheld a man running some half-mile away; and the man seemed to be making for the hill on which stood the ruins of Antonio's house that the Duke had burnt. Then Corogna set spurs to his horse; but the man, whom by his stature and gait Corogna knew to be Antonio, ran very swiftly, and was not overtaken before he came to the hill; and he began to mount by a very steep rugged path, and he was out of sight in the trees when Corogna came to the foot. And Corogna's horse stumbled among the stones, and could not mount the path; so Corogna sprang off his back and ran on foot up the path, sword in hand. And he came in sight of Antonio round a curve of the path three parts of the way up the hill. Antonio was leaning against the trunk of a tree and wringing the water out of his cloak. Corogna drew near, sword in hand, and with a prayer to the Holy Virgin on his lips. And he trembled, not with fear, but because fate offered a great prize, and his name would be famed throughout Italy if he slew or took Antonio of Monte Velluto; and for fame, even as for a woman's smile, a young man will tremble as a coward quakes with fear.

The Count Antonio stood as though sunk in a reverie; yet, presently, hearing Corogna's tread, he raised his eyes, and smiling kindly on the young man, he said, "Very strange are the ways of Heaven, sir. I think that the Wizard of Baratesta spoke truth, and did not lie to the Duke. Yet I had that same power which the wizard claimed, although the Duke had none over me. We are children, sir, and our game is blind-man's buff; but all are blinded, and it is but the narrowest glimpse that we obtain now and again by some clever shifting of the handkerchief. Yet there are some things clear enough; as that a man should do his work, and be clean and true. What would you with me, sir? For I do not think I know you."