Beatrice dismissed her attendants with a look. She never spoke to her servants where a gesture would serve, and could draw hour-long silent enjoyment from the weary hands of tire-woman or slave, hairdresser or fanner, without a sign of embarrassment, or indeed understanding. Now she lay back, restful, impassive—indifferent utterly to any impression her will for a solitary interview with this gross creature might make upon them. And, indeed, there was little need for such concern. Hired assassination, a recognised institution, explained many otherwise strange conjunctions between the beauties and beasts of Milan.
The beast, in the present instance, behaved as was habitual with him in the presence of this Circe. That is to say, he was awkward, deprecating, and, of stranger significance, devoted to truthfulness. He adored her, as Caliban Miranda, but more fearfully: was her slave, the genii of the lamp of her loveliness, with which to be on any familiar terms, even of debasement, was enough. What did it matter that she paid him with offence and disdain? Her use of him was as her use of some necessary organic part of herself. And she might deprecate the necessity; but the secret of it was, nevertheless, their common property. Her beauty and his devotion were as near akin as blood and complexion. Perhaps some day, in the resurrection of the flesh, he would be able to substantiate that kinship.
The thought may have been there in him, instinctive, unilluminated, as he stood fumbling with his cap, and raising and lowering his hang-dog eyes, and waiting for her to open. Physically, at least, she showed no shame in implying his close right to her confidence. The noon was a noon of slumbering fires, and her mood a responsive one. A long white camisole, of the frailest tissue, rounded on her lower limbs, and, splitting at the waist, straddled her shoulders clingingly, leaving a warm breathing-space between. Round her full neck clung one loop of emeralds; and to the picture her black falling hair made a tenderest frame, while the sun, penetrating the tilt above, finished all with a mist of green translucence. A Circe, indeed, to this coarse and animal rogue, and alive with awful and covetable lusts, to which, nevertheless, he was an admitted procurer. He had not ceased to be in her pay and confidence, cursed and repudiated though he had been by his master, her erst protector. He had not even resented that episode of his betrayal at her hands, though it had condemned him for a living to the rôle of the hired bravo. She might always do with him as she liked; overbid with one imperious word his fast pledges to others; convert his craft wheresoever she wished to her own profit. The more she condescended to him, the more was he claimed a necessary part of her passions' functions. She discharged through him her hates and desires, and he was beatified in the choice of himself as their medium. There was a suggestion of understanding, of a conscious partnership between them, in the very fulsomeness with which he abased himself before her.
'Well,' she murmured at last, 'hast drunk thy senses to such surfeit that they drown in me?'
'Ay,' he mumbled, 'I could die looking.'
'A true Narcissus,' she scoffed; 'but I could wish a sweeter. Stand away, fellow. Your clothes offend me.'
He backed at once.
'Now,' she said, 'I can breathe. Deliver yourself!'
He heaved up his chest, and looked above her, concentrating his wits on an open loop of the tent, behind which a bird was flickering and chirping.
'I come, by Madonna's secret instructions, from privately informing Messer Lanti where Messer Bembo lies hidden,' he said, speaking as if by rote.