A Jay of Italy

by Bernard Capes

A despotism (Messer Bembo invitus) is the only absolute expression of automatic government. The fly-wheel moves, and every detail of the machinery, saw, knife, or punch, however distant, responds instantly to its initiative. Galeazzo, for example, had but to make, in Vigevano, the tenth part of a revolution, and behold, in Milan! Messer Jacopo—saw, knife, and punch in one—had 'come down,' automatically, upon the objectives of that movement. Within a few minutes of Tassino's return, Bernardo and his Fool, seized quietly and without resistance as they were taking the air on the battlements, were being lowered with cords into the 'Hermit's Cell.'

Sic itur ad astra.

The Duke of Milan re-entered his capital on the 20th of December. His Duchess met him with happy smiles and tears, loving complaints over his long absence, a sweet tongue ready with vindication of her trust, should that be demanded of her. The last week had done much to reassure her, in the near return to familiar conditions which it had witnessed; and she felt herself almost in a position to restore to her Bluebeard the key, unviolated, of the forbidden chamber. If only he would accept that earnest of her loyalty without too close a questioning!

And, to her joy, he did; inasmuch, you see, as he had his own reasons for a diplomatic silence. It would appear, indeed, that recent great events had altogether banished from his memory the pious circumstances of his departure to them. He had returned to find his duchy as to all moral intents he had left and could have wished to recover it. The fashion of Nature had shed its petals with the summer brocades, and Milan was itself again.

For the exquisite, who had set it, was vanished now some seven days gone; and that is a long time for the straining out of a popular fashion. He had departed, carrying his Fool with him, none—save one or two in the secret—knew whither; but surmise was plentiful, and for the most part rabid. That he had fallen out of home favour latterly was obvious and flagrant; now, the report grew that this alienation had received its first impetus from Piedmont. That whisper in itself was Nature's very quietus. Eleven out of a dozen presumed upon it, and themselves, to propitiate tyranny with a very debauch of reactionism to old licence. Moreover, scandal, in mere self-justification, must run intolerable riot. Nothing was too gross for it in its accounting for this secession. The pure love which had striven to redeem it, it tortured into a text for filthy slanders. The Countess of Caprona had her windows stoned in retaliation one day by a resentful crowd; the wretched girl Lucia was dragged from her bed and suffocated in a muddy ditch. The logic of the mob.

The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the boy no evil; had acted as she did merely in the interests of the State, she told herself. If, for a moment, her thoughts ever swerved to Tassino—now returned, as it was whispered, to his old quarters with the Provost Marshal, and abiding there a readjustment of affairs—she hid the treason under a lovely blush, and vowed herself for ever more true wife and incorruptible.

So for the most part all was satisfactory again; and there remained only to alienate the popular sympathy from its idol. And that the Church undertook to do. The moment the false prophet was exposed and deposed, it rose, shook the crumbs from its lap, and gave him his coup de grâce in the public estimation.

'He but sought,' it thundered, 'to turn ye over, clods; to cleanse your gross soil for the fairer growing of his roses.' A parable: but so far comprehensible to the demos in that it implied its narrow escape from some cleaning process, a vindication of its prescriptive rights to go unwashed, and therefore convincing. Down sank the threatening swine-monster thereon; and, being further played upon with comfits of a festal Christmas-tide, did yield up incontinent its last breath of revivalism, and kick in joyful reassurance of its sty.

So the whole city absolved itself of redemption, and set to making enthusiastic provision for the devil's entertainment against the season of peace and goodwill.

Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit: nor less Bona bona erit. Only there was a rift within the happy wife's lute, which somehow put the whole orchestra out of tune. She saw, for all her sweet chastened sense of relief, that the Duke was darkly troubled. The oppression of his mood communicated itself to hers; and she began to dream—horrible visions of cloyed fingers, and clinging shrouds, and ropey cobwebs that would drop and lace her mouth and nostrils, the while she could not fight free a hand to clear them.