“What says Madonna Bianca?” he inquired, his manner reassuming some measure of its courtliness. “Is her judgment as unmercifully level?”
She looked up, startled, and laughed a little excitedly, touched by the tenseness of a situation which she did not understand.
“What say I?” quoth she. “Why, that here is a deal of pother about some foolish words.”
“And there,” cried Pier Luigi, “spoke, I think, not only beauty but wisdom—Minerva's utterances from the lips of Diana!”
In glad relief the company echoed his forced laugh, and all sat down again, the incident at an end, and my contempt of the Duke increased to see him permit such a matter to be so lightly ended.
But that night, when I had retired to my chamber, I was visited by Cavalcanti. He was very grave.
“Agostino,” he said, “let me implore you to be circumspect, to keep a curb upon your bitter tongue. Be patient, boy, as I am—and I have more to endure.”
“I marvel, sir, that you endure it,” answered I, for my mood was petulant.
“You will marvel less when you are come to my years—if, indeed, you come to them. For if you pursue this course, and strike back when such men as Pier Luigi tap you, you will not be likely to see old age. Body of Satan! I would that Galeotto were here! If aught should happen to you...” He checked, and set a hand upon my shoulder.
“For your father's sake I love you, Agostino, and I speak as one who loves you.”