Part 4 (2/2)
Knights as my serfs be given; And as I will, let music go and come; Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven.
ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.--_Madrigal, from D. G. Rossetti's version_.
BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER
Graciosa was Balthazar's youngest child, a white, slim girl with violet eyes and strange pale hair which had the color and glitter of stardust.
”Some day at court,” her father often thought complacently, ”she, too, will make a good match.” He was a necessitous lord, a smiling, supple man who had already marketed two daughters to his advantage. But Graciosa's time was not yet mature in the year of grace 1533, for the girl was not quite sixteen. So Graciosa remained in Balthazar's big cheerless house and was tutored in all needful accomplishments. She was proficient in the making of preserves and unguents, could play the harpsichord and the virginals acceptably, could embroider an altarcloth to admiration, and, in spite of a trivial lameness in walking, could dance a coranto or a saraband against any woman between two seas.
Now to the north of Balthazar's home stood a tall forest, overhanging both the highway and the river whose windings the highway followed.
Graciosa was very often to be encountered upon the outskirts of these woods. She loved the forest, whose tranquillity bred dreams, but was already a woman in so far that she found it more interesting to watch the highway. Sometimes it would be deserted save for small purple b.u.t.terflies which fluttered about as if in continuous indecision, and rarely ascended more than a foot above the ground. But people pa.s.sed at intervals--as now a page, who was a notably fine fellow, clothed in ash-colored gray, with slashed, puffed sleeves, and having a heron's feather in his cap; or a Franciscan with his gown tucked up so that you saw how the veins on his naked feet stood out like the carvings on a vase; or a farmer leading a calf; or a gentleman in a mantle of squirrel's fur riding beside a wonderful proud lady, whose tiny hat was embroidered with pearls. It was all very interesting to watch, it was like turning over the leaves of a book written in an unknown tongue and guessing what the pictures meant, because these people were intent upon their private avocations, in which you had no part, and you would never see them any more.
Then destiny took a hand in the affair and Guido came. He reined his gray horse at the sight of her sitting by the wayside and deferentially inquired how far it might be to the nearest inn. Graciosa told him.
He thanked her and rode on. That was all, but the appraising glance of this sedate and handsome burgher obscurely troubled the girl afterward.
Next day he came again. He was a jewel-merchant, he told her, and he thought it within the stretch of possibility that my lord Balthazar's daughter might wish to purchase some of his wares. She viewed them with admiration, chaffered thriftily, and finally bought a topaz, dug from Mount Zabarca, Guido a.s.sured her, which rendered its wearer immune to terrors of any kind.
Very often afterward these two met on the outskirts of the forest as Guido rode between the coast and the hill-country about his vocation.
Sometimes he laughingly offered her a bargain, on other days he paused to exhibit a notable gem which he had procured for this or that wealthy amateur. Count Eglamore, the young Duke's favorite yonder at court, bought most of them, it seemed. ”The n.o.bles complain against this upstart Eglamore very bitterly,” said Guido, ”but we merchants have no quarrel with him. He buys too lavishly.”
”I trust I shall not see Count Eglamore when I go to court,” said Graciosa, meditatively; ”and, indeed, by that time, my father a.s.sures me, some honest gentleman will have contrived to cut the throat of this abominable Eglamore.” Her father's people, it should be premised, had been at bitter feud with the favorite ever since he detected and punished the conspiracy of the Marquis of Cibo, their kinsman. Then Graciosa continued: ”Nevertheless, I shall see many beautiful sights when I am taken to court... . And the Duke, too, you tell me, is an amateur of gems.”
”Eh, madonna, I wish that you could see his jewels,” cried Guido, growing fervent; and he lovingly catalogued a host of lapidary marvels.
”I hope that I shall see these wonderful jewels when I go to court,”
said Graciosa wistfully.
”Duke Alessandro,” he returned, his dark eyes strangely mirthful, ”is, as I take it, a catholic lover of beauty in all its forms. So he will show you his gems, very a.s.suredly, and, worse still, he will make verses in your honor. For it is a preposterous feature of Duke Alessandro's character that he is always making songs.”
”Oh, and such strange songs as they are, too, Guido. Who does not know them?”
”I am not the best possible judge of his verses' merit,” Guido estimated, drily. ”But I shall never understand how any singer at all came to be locked in such a prison. I fancy that at times the paradox puzzles even Duke Alessandro.”
”And is he as handsome as people report?”
Then Guido laughed a little. ”Tastes differ, of course. But I think your father will a.s.sure you, madonna, that no duke possessing such a zealous tax-collector as Count Eglamore was ever in his lifetime considered of repulsive person.”
”And is he young?”
”Why, as to that, he is about of an age with me, and in consequence old enough to be far more sensible than either of us is ever likely to be,”
said Guido; and began to talk of other matters.
But presently Graciosa was questioning him again as to the court, whither she was to go next year and enslave a marquis, or, at worst, an opulent baron. Her thoughts turned toward the court's predominating figure. ”Tell me of Eglamore, Guido.”
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