THE CAPTAIN'S TREADINGS
While Angioletto and his Bellaroba dwelt in a paradise, none the less glorious for being as sooty as the darkness which veiled it, the estate of Captain Mosca, that hungry swordsman, was most unhappy. Divorced from bed and board, cast off by his mistress, and not yet adopted by his master, the poor man felt dimly about for supports, conscious that his treadings had well-nigh slipped. At such a time the gentle eyes of Bellaroba—nobody's enemy—courted him, like a beam of firelight on a rain-scoured street, with a smiling invitation to share the peace within doors. He hung uneasily about the gateways in these days, cold-elbowed by the lackeys, ignored by the higher sort, unseen by the quality; he burnished the lintels with his shoulder-blades, chewed many straws, counted the flagstones, knew the hours by the signals of his stomach. Then, if by hazard Bellaroba should come dancing by with a "Good morning, Signor Capitano," a "Come sta?" or, prettier still, a bright "Sta bene?" what wonder if the man of rage humbled himself before the little Maid of Honour? What wonder, again, if she, out of the overflowings of her happiness, should give him an alms?
No wonder at all, but pity there should be; for the Captain played an unworthy part. I suppose his standard was not very high. I know he was hungry; I know that nothing degrades a man so low as degradation—since what he believes himself, that he is; but I find it hard to excuse him for draining Bellaroba of her little secrets. Judas that he was, he took her sop, and then sold her for thirty pieces of silver.
The draining of a well so limpid was the easiest thing in the world. She was too absurdly happy, too triumphant altogether in the successful craft of her brilliant little lord, to be continent. She dealt in semi-transparent mystery with her manipulator from the moment he had won her compassion. Her secret was none from the first, or it was like the secret which a child will tell you, all the louder for being said in your ear.
"My dear little friend," said the smirking Captain, when he had it, "what you tell me there is as wine in my blood. I declare it sets me singing tunes."
"Ah, but he is wonderful, my Angioletto," said she, and her eyes grew larger for the thought of him.
"For a stripling of his inches he beats any cock that ever fought a main," Mosca declared; "blood of Blood, but he does! What and if he did square up to me—do I bear a grudge? Never, upon my body."
"You will not—you would not—ah, tell Olimpia of this, Signor Capitano?" she hazarded. The Captain stroked one eye with the back of his finger. He looked pityingly upon her with the other.
"Ah, my dear soul," he said, sighing, "could you think it of old Mosca?"