The young prince and Sanazarro gazed at each other in consternation. Something must be done, however, and that right quickly, for they both felt certain that it was the duke’s intention to see Lidia with his own eyes, and that the journey of the following day was to Charomonte’s house. Hastily Giovanni decided upon sending his serving man that night with a letter to Lidia. In this letter he told her that the duke, his uncle, had heard of her, and her beauty, and was about to seek her he feared, with unlawful love. “If he see you, as you are, fair Lidia,” he concluded, “my hoped-for happiness will be changed into an everlasting night. Let your goodness find some means to prevent my uncle seeing you, and thus you will save two lives, your own and the honorer of your virtues, Giovanni.”
Giovanni’s messenger found the young Lidia in the midst of her father’s household, who with the kind, old Charomonte, were devising all manner of merry-makings, in order to divert the sadness which had hung over her since the departure of the young prince. She received the letter with joy, and retired to read it in secret, that no one might witness her emotion. So soon as she read his request, the very means of accomplishing it flashed quickly into her mind. As the duke had never seen her, she resolved upon presenting to him another in her place. Her maid, Petronilla, was the person decided upon. This girl was ill-favored, coarse and rude. The only difficulty she had to surmount, would be her father’s opposition, but she thought she would contrive with the servants’ aid, to have Petronilla presented to the duke when her father was not present. This difficulty the duke unconsciously relieved her from, for he came to Charomonte’s mansion in anger; and so soon as he arrived he dismissed his train, desiring to see Charomonte alone. Then he upbraided him with treason—for he suspected the old man of dishonor. He feared that Giovanni had become entangled with this Lidia, and not knowing Sanazarro’s suspicions, he attributed Giovanni’s double dealings, to a dishonorable illicit connection with this girl, connived at by her father.
Poor old Charomonte listened to his royal master’s reproaches with angry amazement. So soon as the duke had ended, he replied with words that proved how his loyalty and outraged feelings contended for mastery. In speaking of his daughter, the light of his eyes, the comfort of his feeble age, he described her so lovingly and tenderly that the duke commanded she should be shown to him.
“But,” said he, “you shall not prepare her to answer these charges. We will see her immediately, and to prevent all intercourse, we do confine thee close prisoner to thy chamber, till all doubts are cleared.”
Lidia was summoned, and in her place came Petronilla, escorted by Giovanni and Sanazarro, followed by the servants, bearing a sumptuous banquet. At the sight of her coarse appearance the duke felt that the manners of her mind must be transcendent to defend so rough an outside. She received him boisterously, and at the banquet, behaved rudely and indelicately, and drank so freely of the wine, that she had to be carried away from the duke’s presence. The imposture, however, was so gross, that the duke began to suspect some cunning deceit or trick had been played upon him; but he dissembled this suspicion, and sent out Giovanni and Sanazarro with his train, saying he would soon join them; that he wished first to see the Signor Charomonte in private, that he might, with a few kind words of comfort, take leave of the poor old man.
It appeared to him unlikely that both Charomonte and Contarino, his old secretary, could be so blinded. “It may be,” he said to himself, “that the daughter, for some ends unknown, has personated this rude behaviour, which seems so ridiculous and impossible. Whatever be the riddle, however, I will resolve it, if possible.”
Charomonte, on being summoned, came to him; but when he heard the duke’s pitying description of the pretended Lidia, he instantly went to his daughter’s chamber, where she was feigning illness, and forced her into the presence of Cozimo. The beautiful Lidia trembling, and in tears, knelt before him and besought his mercy.
“Ah,” exclaimed the duke, “this is the peerless form I expected to see;” then turning to Charomonte, he commanded that Sanazarro and his nephew, Giovanni, should straightway be imprisoned in separate chambers, guarded, until he should pronounce sentence against them as traitors.
In tender, touching language, Lidia pleaded for the prince, and asked that whatever punishment he deserved, to inflict it on her, as she was the sad cause of his offence.
“I know,” she said, “that the prince is so far above me that my wishes even cannot reach him, and to restore him to your wonted grace and favor, I’ll abjure his sight forever, and betake myself to a religious life, where, in my prayers, I may remember him, but no man will I ever see but my ghostly father. Be not, O sire, like the eagle that in her angry mood destroys her hopeful young for suffering a wren to perch too near them.”