VII
LAST CONSIDERATIONS OF CAN GRANDE II
You are not to suppose that the spectacle of Verona garbed in a gown of innocence, singing hymns and weaving chaplets of lilies, was to go unnoticed by the ruling power. Can Grande II. was lord of Verona, a most atrocious rascal, and one of many; but, like his famous ancestor and namesake, he had a gibing tongue, which was evidence of a scrutiny tolerably cool of the shifts of human nature. Human nature, he had observed, must needs account to itself for itself. If it met with what it did not understand, it was prompt to state the problem in a phrase which it could not explain. The simplicity of the plan was as little to be denied as its convenience was obvious. It was thus that Can Grande II. understood the emotions of Verona; it was thus, indeed, that he himself, confronted with statements and an explanation which did not satisfy him, accounted to himself, like any mother's son of his lieges. He explained their explanation, but only by another inexplicable formula. The energy with which he expounded his own view to those about him betrayed, perhaps, a lurking uneasiness in the burly tyrant.
"Pooh, my good lord," said he to the bishop, who had come full of the day's doings and night's report, "don't you know your own flock better than this? Did you ever hear a man with a broken limb attribute his mishap to other than Domeneddio? However drunk he may have been, however absurdly in a hurry—act of God! If it thunder and lighten of a summer night, if it turn the milk—a judgment! Luckily Monsignore has broad shoulders by all accounts; per Bacco!—He had need. Now then, look at this case. A belated woman with a baby stumbles upon a company of shepherds all in the twittering dark. Hearts jump to mouths, flesh creeps, hairs stand tiptoe—Madonna, of course! Whom else could they call her, pray? They don't know the woman: name her they must. Well! Who is there they don't know whose name comes readiest to the tongue? Madonna, of course. Good: Ecco Madonna!"
This was very eloquently reasoned, but the bishop shook his head. "It was not a brace of goat-herds last night, Excellency, but a roomful of brigands and their trulls in the Golden Fish. The worst company in Verona, Excellency—the most brazen, the most case-hardened. But the story is the same from their mouths as from the lads'; not a detail is wanting; not one point gives the lie to another. Excellency, I would bow to your wit in any case but this. The affair is inexplicable short of a miracle."
Can Grande knit his black brows; he objected to be crossed, and the more so when he had a sneaking thought that he was rightly crossed.
"I should like to see my Lady this night with my own eyes, bishop," said he.