[Pauses smiling.]
Bianca. Quick, quick!
Maria. There, there! ’Twas but to show you how I smiled
Saying the lord was young. It took him too;
For he said, ‘This will do! If I should call
To-night to pay respect unto your lovely—
Our lovely mistress, tell her that I said,
Our lovely mistress, shall I be received?’
And I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then say I come and if
All else is well let her throw down some favour
When as I pass below.’ He should be there!
Look from the balcony; he should be there!—
And there he is, dost see?
Bianca. Some favour. Yes.
This ribbon weighted by this brooch will do.
Maria, be you busy near within, but, till
I call take care you enter not. Go down
And let the young lord in, for hark, he knocks.
[Exit Maria.]
Great ladies might he choose from and yet he
Is drawn . . . ah, there my fear is! Was he drawn
By love to me—by love’s young strength alone?
That’s where it is, if I were sure he loved,
I then might do what greater dames have done
And venge me on a husband blind to beauty.
But if! Ah if! he is a wandering bee,
Mere gallant taster, who befools poor flowers . . .
[Maria opens the door for Guido Bardi, and then withdraws.]
My lord, I learn that we have something here,
In this poor house, which thou dost wish to buy.
My husband is from home, but my poor fate
Has made me perfect in the price of velvets,
Of silks and gay brocades. I think you offered
Some forty thousand crowns, or fifty thousand,
For something we have here? And it must be
That wonder of the loom, which my Simone
Has lately home; it is a Lucca damask,
The web is silver over-wrought with roses.
Since you did offer fifty thousand crowns
It must be that. Pray wait, for I will fetch it.
Guido. Nay, nay, thou gracious wonder of a loom
More cunning far than those of Lucca, I
Had in my thought no damask silver cloth
By hunch-back weavers woven toilsomely,
If such are priced at fifty thousand crowns
It shames me, for I hoped to buy a fabric
For which a hundred thousand then were little.
Bianca. A hundred thousand was it that you said?
Nay, poor Simone for so great a sum
Would sell you everything the house contains.
The thought of such a sum doth daze the brains
Of merchant folk who live such lives as ours.