VIII
RESURRECTION OF THE JEW
This idyllic state of things might have lasted no one knows how long, with Ippolita-Silvestro finding joy in unreasonable service, and Pilade both ease and reason. Where either partner was so admirably suited it might have been interesting to see what would have happened: whether Ippolita would have betrayed herself or Pilade found her out. She was over head and ears in love, but he was vastly well served; and there is nothing like content for drugging the wits.
Things, however, fell out otherwise. The Jew, to begin with, fell out of the grave to which he had been hastily recommended, and most insecurely at that. He made himself felt in a variety of ways, was discovered by the gardener in the Via di Vanzo, and stuck into a gutter in the Via Man di Ferro. He was discovered again by some one who had either less to do among Christians or more among Jews than the generality in Padua; and this time he was carried to the Guard House. Being reported (reporting himself, indeed) to the watch, he was reported on to the Capitano, by him to the Prefect. The Prefect put the Sub-Prefect, who had met him before, upon the look-out.
"The Most Serene Republic," said that authority, "cannot have unburied Jews adrift in the city without finding out why the cemetery does not hold them and why the gutter does. Inquire, Alessandro mio, inquire! There was a wound in the man's ribs big enough for a nest of rats."
Alessandro bowed, but raised his fine eyebrows. He was at that hour most happily unhappy over the late disappearance of his Glorious Lady. The peerless beauty of Padua, the incomparable Ippolita, was gone. His business was to devise dirges, monodies, laments, descortz in the Provençal manner; to cry "Heigho!" and "Well-a-day!" not "Ban!" or "Out, haro!" To have these high frenzies, these straining states of the soul, disturbed by the unclaimed remains of a resolving Jew, was a cruel test. Yet, he reflected within himself, if his piercing love survived this inquiry, it was founded on rock. And, indeed, Alessandro believed that his heart was slowly turning to stone. He felt a curious chill there when he got up in the morning, a dead weight, a mass to lift with every choked beat. Perhaps the Jew would end what Ippolita had begun. If so, well. But, ah, Ippolita, Ippolita bella, Ippolita crudel! Ah, ohimè!
Habit set him to work. He instructed his officers, he visited the gates, questioned, took notes, inspected the gutter in the Via Man di Ferro, even inspected the Jew. He went to the Via della Gatta, to the fatal staircase; he bullied two or three landlords of two or three low taverns; went to the stews, to the Ghetto; talked very loud, flourished his sword, drove his men this way and that—in fine, did everything that becomes a young official of spirit. The result of his labours was that the Jew got posthumous fame out of all proportion to his merits. The city fairly hummed with him; nobody talked of anything but the dead Jew.
The goatherds, coming in by the Porta San Zuan a day later, were shrewdly scrutinised by the Guard. They were numbered off, their names taken; they were pulled about and flustered, asked questions, contradicted before they had time to answer, and then called prevaricators because they said nothing; they were, in fact, brought to that state of breathless hurry in which a boy will say anything you choose. This, as everybody knows, is the only way of getting at the truth.