Part 12 (1/2)

This patronage I owed solely to my own fame and not, as has been a.s.serted, to the favour of his daughter-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, for that princess had no love for her supposed half-brother Alessandro, or for his Florentine familiars.

Though I could never have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child d.u.c.h.ess, I thanked G.o.d that Lorenzino had no such squeamish conscience.

And yet,--as in the virgin purity of the orange-blossom, the voluptuous perfume yearningly foretells the luscious, perfect fruit, and the blush of the peach-bloom shows the flower coyly but triumphantly conscious that it will one day ripen into mouth-watering deliciousness,--so even then there were hints and prophecies in Margaret's budding womanliness that the time was approaching when she would not only awaken love but would herself know the joy of loving.

The time and the man were nearer than I thought.

It was a matter of but six years subsequent to our first meeting that, chancing to be again in Rome, I next encountered Ottavio Farnese.

He was no longer the pretty page who had served the d.u.c.h.ess at the Villa Madama, but had grown into a tall, handsome youth, with the first down of manhood upon his lip. Though much lighter in weight than myself and his rapier as slender as a child's toy, he had been well taught in fencing, as I learned when meeting him by chance in front of St. Peter's church, he, to my utter surprise, fell upon me crying out that I was a scurvy knave unfit to live.

As I am not the man to swallow insults of this sort we slashed at one another without further ceremony until the Papal guards, rus.h.i.+ng from the Vatican, separated us. Recognising Ottavio as the grandson of the Pope (for Cardinal Farnese had on the death of Clement VI. succeeded to the tiara), they demanded why we fought. I replied that I had not the least idea, but Ottavio declared that it was to force me to confess what I had done with the casket which I had been commissioned to bring to the d.u.c.h.ess Margaret at Florence.

Laughing a little at his own zeal, but with all due deference I told him how the casket had been carried away by the Moors, on the evening when I repaired to Villa Madama to fetch it, and I had the happiness to convince him of the truth of my statement.

Dismissing the guards he strolled with me in the most amicable manner, informing me of many events which had happened during my absence in France.

The first in importance to himself was the fact that he was more madly than ever in love with the d.u.c.h.ess, and that she having experienced the brutality of one husband had no mind to venture another, and had announced her firm intention to remain a widow for the rest of her life.

In spite of this he had told her of his love, but she had treated him as a child and made sport of his pa.s.sion.

”I shall die of her disdain,” he said to me, ”for my love is beyond my power to conquer.”

Taking him by the hand and perceiving that he was in a fever, and that unless some hope was extended to him he must lose either his life or his reason, I counselled him to keep a stout heart. ”For,” said I, ”though you are young it is a fault which will lessen as years go by, and the Emperor surely will not look upon his daughter's repugnance to marriage with approval. Rumour hath it that he is on his way to punish, for a second time, the Moorish pirates who are back in their old nest at Tunis. When he visits Rome you should persuade the Pope to intercede with him in your behalf.”

”As if I had not already thought of that!” Ottavio replied. ”I have freely opened my heart to my grandfather, and he has negotiated with the Emperor, who is as favourable to an alliance with a Farnese Pope as he was to a similar compact with the Medici. Charles could force his daughter to accept me, as he compelled her to marry Alessandro; but I will not win her in that way, and she despises me, doubtless, for what she considers my pusillanimity.

”When I pleaded with her but yesterday bidding her set me any task to accomplish as a proof of my love--she laughed scornfully, saying that she had no lack of pages to fetch and carry unless it were to demand of Benvenuto Cellini the casket which he had forgotten to return to her.

”Then, though I knew that you, Benvenuto, were accounted a desperate man, I swore to her that I would not enter her presence again until I had fulfilled her behest. Yea, and I will fulfil it, for I will sail with the Emperor on this expedition to Tunis and will find the hag Afra and wrest it from her.”

”Your determination,” I replied, ”is a good one, and, as the adventure appeals to me, I will go with you. I have already met Hayraddin, commander of the Corsairs and brother of Monna Afra, who should know the whereabouts of the casket, and I may be able to aid you in obtaining it.”

As the affair turned out, though Ottavio did indeed sail for Africa with the Emperor, I was not allowed to accompany him, for his father, feigning to believe that the casket, together with certain valuable jewels stolen from Pope Clement, was in my possession, or at least hidden in some spot nearer to Rome than Tunis, caused me to be imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, until such time as I should make rest.i.tution.

He did this, moreover, without informing his son of my arrest, so that Ottavio departed believing that I had wilfully failed of my promise to go with him. But I was not alone in misfortune, for the Emperor far from achieving victories similar to those which crowned his previous expedition, met with terrible storms which scattered the s.h.i.+ps of his fleet and wrecked many of them upon the coast of Africa, where the savage barbarians, descending upon the drowning mariners, ma.s.sacred them in cold blood.

Word was brought back to Rome that this was the fate both of the Emperor and of Ottavio Farnese, and though this proved but an unfounded rumour, the heart of the gentle Margaret was filled with remorse as well as grief, for having driven so chivalrous a youth and one who loved her so devotedly to his death.

She mourned him most sincerely, wearing widow's weeds in his honour as though she had in reality been his bride. Such is the strange contrariety of a woman's heart that he who living had been the object of her scorn, was now loved with the most vehement pa.s.sion.

When at last it was known that the Emperor and Ottavio had indeed been rescued and were returning to Italy, but that the latter was dangerously ill, her transports of alternate joy and foreboding were most piteous to behold.

I was a witness to them, for at this time by twisting my sheets into a rope I had most marvellously escaped from the battlements of St. Angelo.

As I deemed it prudent to remain for a time in hiding and knew that the Villa Madama was unoccupied, I had repaired thither under cover of the night, and without undressing had slept soundly upon the floor, the house being denuded of furniture.