“‘How—what mean you?’ said I, drawing back from him.
“‘To put fetters upon a man’s legs when he is away with his bride. Per Baccho, that is cunning work!’
“My heart was chilled at his words, and my lips trembled when I said:
“‘She is no bride of his.’
“‘No bride of his?—then the devil must have divorced them. She was married before my eyes this very morning. I had business last night at Incoronata, and she came there at Mass to-day. The priest married them before I sailed. Santa Maria, but you have laid his sheets well, old Andrea!’
“I turned from him impatiently, and went in silence and in gloom to my house. That Christine had chosen to cross not to the city, but to a neighbouring island, and there to receive the Sacrament of marriage, was a thing I had never looked to hear.
“‘Now God forgive me,’ said I, ‘for those whom He has joined together I have this night put asunder.’”
CHAPTER V
A WEDDING JOURNEY
“What befell Christine and Ugo upon their wedding journey will best be told as a plain tale, excellency,” said the admirable Barbarossa, taking up the thread of his narrative as we set sail for Spalato two days after I had seen the last of his famous island. “I played small part in her life then, or for years afterwards. Though I had opened the spring whence flowed the stream of her misfortunes, I was not to witness them, or to be friend to her as I had wished. The blow which fell was not to drive her back to the home she had left or the man who waited for her. It carried her rather out upon the flood of life; opened her eyes to the visions she had enjoyed in her dreams, yet shewed them to her through a veil of tears.
“I say that it carried her out upon the flood of life, for that is common knowledge, excellency. You yourself have heard the tale in Vienna as the gossips love to tell it. That which you have not heard is the word of Christine herself, as I had it in the capital a year ago; the simple tale of a woman who could stoop from triumph to the old friends who had wished well to her, could look down over from the heights where fortune had carried her upon the difficult path she had trodden. She told me her story without ornament or emphasis—the story of a dreamer’s life. As she spoke, so may I speak, for she opened her heart to me; she laid bare her soul as a child before its father.