"I forget many things in your presence which I should remember," he had replied. "Sometimes even that I, too, am a married man and, knowing you as I do, I can not blame the King of France that he is seeking, through divorce, freedom from a marriage into which he was half tricked, half forced, and that he is willing to risk salvation for the hope of your love."
That answer pleased her well. She had no doubt now that he loved her, and did not hesitate to assure him in many covert ways that the feeling was reciprocated. Brandilancia would have been blind indeed not to have recognised her admiration, but he believed it merely appreciation of his genius, whereas her mind was too limited to comprehend it. She was in love with the possibility of being a queen upon such easy terms, delighted to find that the necessary husband was no uncouth tyrant but a man of winsome personality whose delicate assiduities were ever present and yet never over passed the restraints of deference.
It would have been difficult for two persons to have more utterly misunderstood each other. Brandilancia had reached the full maturity of his mental powers. His genius had created many charming women, but the ideal for which his lonely heart yearned had only gradually taken shape in his mind, and the heroine which he now gave to literature marked an epoch in his career.
He had found the plot of his drama sketched in part in one of the novelli of Ser Giovanni; but the conception of an aristocratic yet gracious lady gifted with all perfection, with which he replaced the siren of Belmont, was not, as he supposed, a portrait from life of Marie de' Medici. The character sprang directly from his own intense longing, and by some unreasoning reflex action, his mind endowed the woman who happened to be near him with qualities which he created and which she unhappily did not possess.
The idol which he worshipped was absolutely the work of his own hands, for it was not until his imagination had cheated his eyes, and he had begun to look at Marie de' Medici through its flattering lenses that he thought her beautiful. And yet at the age of twenty she possessed very real attractions: a southern blond, not milky-veined, like the pale maidens of the north, but with all the gold of the hot sunshine in her hair, and the rich blood glowing through her fair skin like flame in an alabaster lamp. Superbly modelled, but lithe and tall, she carried regally the sumptuous opulence with which nature had endowed her, and the soft curve of her shoulders, throat, and bosom had not as yet blossomed into the plethora which Rubens depicted with so gloating a brush. Nor was she precisely the same as when Brandilancia had looked upon these charms unmoved. All arrogance and self-confidence were gone or lay buried under the most appealing of coquetry, a shy tenderness apparently born of irresistible impulse showing itself in little wilful sallies, a glance or touch, seemingly instantly regretted, and followed by alternations of reticence. He admitted her bewitching but had no idea that he was himself bewitched. His was a literary passion. He was a student of life as well as of books, and he had never before had the opportunity of studying such glorious examples of both at close range.
He completed his portrait of his ideal heroine Portia, the noblest that he ever depicted, and found to his surprise that quite another type of woman was forming itself in his mind. Powerful outside influences mingled their impressions with the long-stifled hunger in his heart. He was not in love with his hostess, but he was starving for love, and each book that he read, every object of art that he looked upon, and nature itself was steeped with the charm and passion of Italy. If he tossed aside Boccaccio and his too suggestive confrères to seek refreshment in the garden it was only to find himself face to face with the famous statue of the most seductive of all women, she who made Cæsar her slave and Antony her "floor-cloth."
She obtruded herself upon him everywhere, for his very bed
was hanged
With tapestry of silk and silver,
the story
Proud Cleopatra when she met her Roman.
He had read with Marie de' Medici the history of the Egyptian Queen, and had brooded over it until against his will something of the fascination of the "Serpent of Old Nile" invested his comrade, and the name of Antony ever after called up in her memory also the inspired face of her fellow-student in the dangerous science of love.
Realising vaguely the influence which like some mephitic perfume, an opiate of the soul, emanated from the purely literary reconstruction of such a character, he laid it aside for the heart-breaking story of Giulietta, whose very innocence moved him still more profoundly.