Olimpia Castaneve, the muffled brooder in the poop, was cold, cross, and still. Bellaroba snivelled, but she was scornful under her cloak, and no word passed between the pair until they were in the great blunt-nosed barge, heading against a crisping tide for Chioggia. Then, as the sun shot through the mist and revealed the lagoon, one broad sheet of silver and blue, the shawls were opened, limbs went luxuriously at the stretch; you could see and hear chatter the couple of adventurers if you cared. Bellaroba you have seen already—very gentle, very simple, very unformed without and within. She had pretty ways, coaxing and appealing ways. When she asked a question it was with lifted eyebrows and a head on one side. She would take your hand without art, and let you hold it without afterthought. It was the easiest thing in the world to kiss her, for she suffered it gladly and quite innocently; it came as naturally as to a cat to rub his cheek on your chair or swinging foot. Yet the girl was as modest as a Clare. If you had presumed on your licence to make love to her, it would not have been her scorn (for she had none), but her distress that would have set you back in your place. God knows what La Fragiletta might have taught her. It is certain she was all unlettered in love up to that hour. Bellaroba was not only modest by instinct, but that better thing, innocent by preoccupation.
In all this she was a dead contrast to her handsome friend Olimpia Castaneve, who was really a beauty of the true Venetian mould. As sleek and sumptuous as a cat, as splendidly coloured as a sunburnt nectarine, crowned with a mass of red-gold hair, as stupid as she was sly, and as rich as she was spendthrift, the lovely Olimpia had been sent adventuring to the bees of Ferrara, not as lacking honey for Venice, but as being too great a treasure for her mother's house. Her mother was La Farfalla—a swollen butterfly in these days—and frankly said that she could not afford such a daughter. Olimpia had no instructions; in fact, needed none. She went cheerfully out to what Monna Nanna and the Blessed Virgin should prepare for her, without kisses (which she garnered against the lean years) and without reserves. She neither condemned her mother nor approved. Perhaps she had not the wit; assuredly she lacked the energy. She was remarkably handsome in her hot Venetian way, richly coloured, brown-eyed, crimson-lipped, bosomed like a goddess and shaped like a Caryatid. She half closed her eyes, half opened her lips, smiled and drowsed and waited. You would have thought her melting with love; she was ciphering a price, but being slow at figures, she hid herself (spiderwise) in a golden mesh. Olimpia was nearly always complaisant, had no reticences, no conscience, few brains. She was luxury itself, fond of the fire, fond of her bed, fond of her dinner. Admittedly self-absorbed, she was accustomed to say that she knew far too much about love to fall into it. It was a reflection as serious as she could make it; but Love is very apt to take such sayings amiss. Olimpia out of love might make men miserable; in it, what might she not do? I am about to tell you.
At Chioggia they were to await a shipload of merchants and pack-mules expected from Ancona; but the wind proved counter when their barge had weathered Malamocco, and that which dis-served them befriended the northering freight. They found the train of beasts awaiting them, saddled and loaded, restless to be off. Chioggia to Ferrara, by the road they would go, is a handsome fifty miles.
In that company, as they neared, they observed a calm-eyed youth with a delicate, girlish face, and wonderful shock of light gold hair all about it. He stood alone on the mole, one knee bent, a hand to his hip, and soberly surveyed the group on the barge. He made a charming little picture there—seemed indeed posed for some such thing; he was charmingly pretty himself, but for all that, he had a tragic touch upon him, a droop of the lip, or the eyelid, perhaps. One could hardly say, yet never miss it. Even Olimpia noticed the shadow across him. As they touched—"Look, look, Bellaroba," she whispered, and nudged her friend—"that boy! Did you ever see such a lovely child?"
Bellaroba drew a long breath. "I think he is as lovely as an angel," she replied, her eyes fascinated. And her saying was equally true. He was such a demure boy-angel, bright-haired, long and shapely in the limb, as the painters and carvers loved to set in Madonna's court, careful about her throne, or below the dais fiddling, or strumming lutes to charm away her listlessness. Moreover, Angioletto was the name he went by, though he had been christened Dominick. And he came from Borgo San Sepolcro—far cry from windy Chioggia—a place among the brown Tuscan hills, just where they melt into Umbria; and he was by trade a minstrel, and going to Ferrara. Of so much, with many bows, he informed the two girls, being questioned by Olimpia. But he looked at Bellaroba as he spoke, and she listened the harder and looked the longer of the two.
Everything about him seemed to her altogether gracious, from the silky floss of his gold hair to his proper legs, sheathed in scarlet to the thighs. He was as soft and daintily coloured as a girl, had long curved lashes to his grey eyes, a pathetic droop to his lip, the bloom as of a peach on his cheeks. But you could never mistake him for a girl. His eyes had a critical blink, he looked to have the discretion of a man. A fop he might be; he had a wiry mind. A fop, in fact, he was. He had a little scarlet cap on his head, scarlet stockings, peaked scarlet shoes: for the rest he was in green cloth with a blue leather belt about his waist. He had fine lace ruffles at his wrists, a fine line of white at his throat, and in his ears (if you could have seen them) gold rings. Just the pampered young minion of any Tuscan court, a precocious wrappage of wit, good manners, and sensibility, he looked what he spoke, the exquisite Florentine, to these broad-vowelled Venetian lasses; did not smile, but seemed never out of temper; and was certainly not timid. Self-possessed, reticent he was; but not timid. That was proved.
When the cavalcade was on the point to start, Angioletto stepped forward and took Bellaroba by the hand.
"Little lady," says he to his blushing captive, "I have a mule for the road which I am assured is a steady pacer. Will you be my pillion?"
"Oh, yes, Messere," said Bellaroba in a twitter, and dropped him a curtsy of her best.
"Excellent!" he cried gaily. "I can see that we are to be friends." So she was led away.