Part 21 (2/2)

Eliezer looked with a keen eye and a calculating air first at the Christian Merchant, then at the Madonna and Child; then presently bowed his head in a.s.sent and said he would accept the pledge offered. He returned with Fabio to his own house, and there handed him the five hundred ducats, well and truly weighed:

”The money is yours for a year. If at the end of that time, to the day, you have not paid me back the sum with interest at the rate fixed by the law of Venice and the custom of the Lombards, you can picture yourself, Fabio Mutinelli, what I shall think of the Christian Merchant and his security.”

Fabio, without a moment's loss of time, bought s.h.i.+ps and loaded up with salt and other sorts of merchandise, which he disposed of in the cities of the Adriatic sh.o.r.e to great advantage. Then, with a fresh cargo aboard, he set sail for Constantinople, where he bought carpets, perfumes, peac.o.c.k feathers, ivory and ebony. These goods his agents exchanged along the coasts of Dalmatia for building timber, which the Venetians had contracted for from him in advance. By these means, in six months' time, he had multiplied tenfold the amount the Jew had lent him.

But one day that he was taking his diversion with some Greek women, aboard his vessel, which lay in the Bosphorus, having put out too far to sea, he was captured by pirates and carried prisoner to Egypt, though, by rare good fortune, his gold and merchandise were in a safe place all the while. The pirates sold him to a Saracen lord, who putting him in fetters, sent him afield to till the wheat, which grows very finely in that country. Fabio offered his master to pay a heavy ransom, but the Paynim's daughter, who loved him and was fain to bring him to the end she desired, over-persuaded her father not to let him go at any price.

Reduced to the necessity of trusting to himself alone for release, he filed his irons with the tools given him for tilling the ground, made good his escape to the Nile and threw himself into a boat. Casting loose, he got to the sea, which was not far off, and when on the point of death from thirst and hunger, was rescued by a Spanish vessel bound for Genoa. But, after keeping her course a week, the s.h.i.+p was caught in a storm which drove her on the coast of Dalmatia. In making the sh.o.r.e, she was wrecked on a reef. All the crew were drowned except Fabio, who reached the beach after much difficulty, clinging to a hen-coop. There he lay senseless, but was presently succoured by a handsome widow, named Loreta, whose house was upon the seash.o.r.e. She had him carried to it, put him to bed in her own chamber, watched over him and lavished every care for his recovery.

On coming to himself, he smelt the perfume of myrtles and roses, and looking out of window saw a garden that descended in successive declivities to the sea. Signora Loreta, standing at his bed's head, took up her viol and began playing a tender air.

Fabio, ravished with grat.i.tude and pleasure, fell to kissing the lady's hands a thousand times over. He thanked her earnestly, a.s.suring her he was less touched by the saving of his life than by the fact of his owing his recovery to the pains of so fair a benefactress.

Presently he rose and went to walk with her in the garden, and sitting down to rest in a thicket of myrtles, he drew the young widow on his knee and manifested his grat.i.tude by a thousand caresses.

He found her not insensible to his efforts and spent some hours by her side drowned in amorous delight. But soon he grew pensive, and suddenly asked his hostess what month they were in, and what day of the month precisely it then was.

And when she told him, he fell to groaning and lamenting sore, finding it lacked but twenty-four short hours of a full year since he had received the five hundred ducats of Eliezer the Jew. The thought of breaking his promise and exposing his pledge to the reproaches of the Circ.u.mcised was intolerable to him. Signora Loreta inquiring the reason of his despair, he told her the whole story; and being a very pious woman and an ardent votress of the Holy Mother of G.o.d, she shared his chagrin to the full. The difficulty was not to procure the five hundred ducats; a Banker in a neighbouring town had had such a sum in his hands for the last six months at Fabio's disposition. But to travel from the coast of Dalmatia to Venice in four-and-twenty hours, with a broken sea and contrary winds, was a thing beyond all hope.

”Let us have the money ready to begin with,” said Fabio.

And when one of his hostess's serving-men had brought the sum, the n.o.ble Merchant ordered a vessel to be brought close in to the sh.o.r.e. In her he laid the bags containing the ducats, then went to the Signora Loreta's Oratory in search of an image of the Virgin with the Infant Jesus--an image of cedar-wood and greatly revered. This he set in the little bark, near the rudder, and addressed in these words:

”Madonna, you are my pledge. Now the Jew Eliezer must needs be paid to-morrow; 'tis a question of mine honour and of yours, Madonna, and of your Son's good name. What a mortal sinner, such as I, cannot do, you will a.s.suredly accomplish, unsullied Star of the Sea, you whose bosom suckled Him who walked upon the waters. Bear this silver to Eliezer the Jew, in the Ghetto at Venice, to the end the Circ.u.mcised may never say you are a bad surety.”

And pus.h.i.+ng the bark afloat, he doffed his hat and cried softly:

”Farewell, Madonna! farewell!”

The vessel sailed out to sea, and long the merchant and the widow followed it with their eyes. When night began to close in, a furrow of light was seen marking her wake over the waters, which were fallen to a dead calm.

At Venice next morning Eliezer, on opening his door, saw a bark in the narrow ca.n.a.l of the Ghetto laden with full sacks and manned by a little figure of black wood, flas.h.i.+ng in the clear morning sunbeams. The vessel stopped before the house where the seven-branched candlestick was carved; and the Jew recognized the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, pledge of the Christian Merchant.

HISTORY OF DOnA MARIA D'AVALOS AND DON FABRICIO, DUKE D'ANDRIA

TO HENRY GAUTHIER-VILLARS

HISTORY OF DOnA MARIA D'AVALOS AND DON FABRICIO, DUKE D'ANDRIA

_Done Marie d'Avalos, l'une des belles princesses du pas, mariee avec le prince de Venouse, laquelle s'estant enamourachee du comte d'Andriane, l'un des beaux princes du pas aussy, et s'estans tous deux concertez a la jouissance et le mari l'ayant descouverte ... les fit tous deux ma.s.sacrer par gens appostez; si que le lendemain on trouva ces deux belles moictiez et creatures exposees et tendues sur le pave devant la porte de la maison, toutes mortes et froides, a la veue de tous les pa.s.sants, qui les larmoyoient et plaignoient de leur miserable estat._[1]

(Pierre de Bourdeilles, abbe et Seigneur de Brantome. _Recueil des dames, seconde partie._)

[Footnote 1: ”Dona Maria d'Avalos, one of the fair Princesses of the land, and married to the Prince of Venosa, was enamoured of the Count d'Andriane, likewise one of the n.o.ble Princes of the country. So being both of them come together to enjoy their pa.s.sion, and the husband having discovered it ... had the twain of them slain by men appointed thereto. In such wise that next morning the fair and n.o.ble pair, unhappy beings, were seen lying stretched out and exposed to public view on the pavement in front of the house door, all dead and cold, in sight of all pa.s.sers-by, who could not but weep and lament over their piteous lot.”]

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