Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2

by Leigh Hunt

Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo, and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony for ever.

But to return to what she was going to say.—

"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather. It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or night.

"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own, when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name. But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please him.

"Day and night I exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however wrong it was. But my labour was to no purpose, for she was in love herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most accomplished and valiant gentleman, who had come into Scotland with a younger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestowed on him titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords of the land.

"Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to all I said in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my recommendation; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success, his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient, which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress myself in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and receive him into my arms.

"I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was; and out of the part which I played has come all this mischief. I have intimated to you that the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other's name) had been good friends before Ginevra preferred hint to my false lover. Pretending therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any rate, to let him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he asserted to be in his power. The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the ruins I spoke of; and there the two were posted on the night when I played my unhappy part in the balcony. He brought Lurcanio with him (that was the brother's name), because he suspected that the duke had a design on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be possible. Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother's engagement with the princess. It had been disclosed hitherto neither to him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the king himself. Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace, and not to come to him unless he should call: 'otherwise, my dear brother,' concluded he, 'stir not a step, if you love me.' "'Doubt me not,' said Lurcanio; and, with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post.

"Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,—the only person visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes of both, and let down the ladder.

"Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely houses, perceived all that was going on.

"I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her very self. The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.