The advice, however, was good, the judgment good enough; but before it could be followed a stroke more telling than any Can Grande's sword could have made was wrought by Madonna of the Peach-Tree.
On the night of that same day Can Grande was sitting in the palace with two chosen companions, as dare-devil as himself, waiting the hour of an assignation. It was about ten o'clock: at half-past the hour they were to go out cloaked into the streets, bent upon the lifting of a decent burgess's wife from her bed. Hence they were not in the castle, which is near San Zeno, but in the Della Scala Palace, in the very heart of the city. The two accomplices were Baldo Baldinanza, a grey villain, and young Francesco della Rocca Rossa. All three were armed with swords and daggers; the cloaks lay with the masks on the table. A servant came to the door, knocked, and waited. Can Grande, who (to be just) feared no eye upon his goings, shouted him into the room.
"Well, son of a pig," was his greeting, "and what is it now?"
The fellow, whose teeth chattered in his head, announced a veiled lady, very tall, who would not be denied. Baldinanza, grizzled and scarred as he was, took a quick breath and glanced at Rocca Rossa. The younger man was at no pains to conceal his emotions. His face ran the gamut from white to red, from red back again to white. It ended ashen. Neither looked at his master.
"Let her in," said Can Grande; and each noticed how laboriously he spoke.
The servant turned to obey: there in the doorway stood the Lady.
Tall enough she was, her head seemingly about a foot from the cross-beam of the door. She was cloaked from crown to foot; nothing but the oval of her face, colourless white with lips very wan, and a droop to them inexpressibly sad, showed out of the dark column she made. The servant shrank into the passage and stayed there praying; of the three men at the table only one, Can Grande himself, had the spirit left to be courteous. He got up; the other two remained seated, Francesco with his face in his arms.
"Madonna," began the tyrant; but she uncloaked her hand and put a finger to her sad lips.
"I may not stay," she said, in a voice so weary that it drew tears to Baldinanza's wicked old eyes—"I may not stay; but I must warn you, Can Grande, before I go. Walk not in the streets this night, walk not by the Piazza, pass not the arched way; peril lies there. No sword shall help you, nor the royal seat you have,—enter it not. Now I have warned you; let me go."
She put back her lifted hand under her cloak. Can Grande saw the round head of the Babe asleep. For five minutes after her disappearance no one spoke.