“He offers a thousand gold florins,” he muttered, “in addition to Gonzaga's liberty and advancement. Why, then, I have said no more than was true when I assured the men that Gian Maria was but idly threatening us with bombardment. Keep this matter secret, Peppe.”
“But you will watch Messer Gonzaga?” quoth the fool.
“Watch him? Why, where is the need? You do not imagine him so vile that this offer could tempt him?”
Peppe looked up, his great, whimsical face screwed into an expression of cunning doubt.
“You do not think, lord, that he invited it?”
“Now, shame on you for that thought. Messer Gonzaga may be an idle lute-thrummer, a poor-spirited coward; but a traitor——! And to betray Monna Valentina! No, no.”
But the fool was far from reassured. He had had the longer acquaintance of Messer Gonzaga, and his shrewd eyes had long since taken the man's exact measure. Let Francesco scorn the notion of betrayal at Romeo's hands; Peppe would dog him like a shadow. This he did for the remainder of that day, clinging to Gonzaga as if he loved him dearly, and furtively observing the man's demeanour. Yet he saw nothing to confirm his suspicions beyond a certain preoccupied moodiness on the courtier's part.
That night, as they supped, Gonzaga pleaded toothache, and with Valentina's leave he quitted the table at the very outset of the meal. Peppe rose to follow him, but as he reached the door, his natural enemy, the friar—ever anxious to thwart him where he could—caught him by the nape of the neck, and flung him unceremoniously back into the room.
“Have you a toothache too, good-for-naught?” quoth the frate. “Stay you here and help me to wait upon the company.”
“Let me go, good Fra Domenico,” the fool whispered, in a voice so earnest that the monk left his way clear. But Valentina's voice now bade him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost.