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How you did frighten me! I cannot bear to hear footsteps about when Adamo is out;" and Pipa gazes up and down into the darkness with an unpleasant consciousness that something ghostly might be watching her. "Pipa," says the cavaliere, putting his finger to his nose and winking palpably, "hold your tongue, and don't scream when I tell you something. Promise me."
He dreaded a long tirade from the old chamberlain on the subject of his court reminiscences; besides, Baldassare was bursting with a startling piece of intelligence as yet evidently unknown to Trenta. "News! no," answered the cavaliere, contemptuously. "I dare say it is some lie. You have, I am sorry to say, Baldassare, all the faults of a person new to society; you believe every thing."
"We have no statues nor pictures we have nothing but each other. Eh, darling?" "I beg your pardon," said Christina. "Oh, and the Cavaliere," added her mother. "The poodle, please!" cried the young girl. Rowland glanced at the Cavaliere; he was smiling more blandly than ever. A few days later Rowland presented himself, as civility demanded, at Mrs. Light's door.
But it was not the good wines alone of Madonna Anna that drew to her house some of the most distinguished men of Florence, and made it particularly the resort of the Cavaliere Oltramontani her humor was as racy as her wine; and many of the men of wit and pleasure about town were in the habit of lounging in the Sala Commune of Dame Gaetano, merely for the pleasure of drawing her out.
Before Fra Pacifico departed, he took some holy water from a little vessel near the bed, and sprinkled it upon Enrica. He ordered Pipa to keep her very warm, and to watch every breath she drew. Then he glided from the room with the light step of one well used to sickness. Cavaliere Trenta followed him slowly.
"My son, I come from your wife," repeated Fra Pacifico. There was a dead silence. "You saw your wife borne from the altar fainting. She was mercifully spared, therefore, hearing from your own lips that you repudiated her. She has since been informed by Cavaliere Trenta that you did so. I am here as her messenger. Your wife accepts the separation you desire."
He maintains a semi-artificial love; frequenting her house, writing sonnet after sonnet, rhetorical exercises, studies from the antique and the Provençal, for the most part; he, who was born to be a mere troubadour like Ventadour or Folquet, becomes, through the influence of Dante, the type of the poet Abate, of the poetic cavaliere servente; a good, weak man with aspirations, who, failing to get the better of Laura's virtue, doubtless consoles himself elsewhere, but returns to an habitual contemplation of it.
"No, no," she answered, greatly confused; "please say nothing not now another time. I should like to ascend the tower; let us go on." The cavaliere was greatly puzzled. It was plain there was something on her mind. What could it be? How fortunate, he told himself, if she had taken a liking to Marescotti, and desired to confess it! This would make all easy.
There certainly seemed no opportunity for concealing a body in the tiny place; and although I sounded the floor and walls, all gave a solid, heavy answer, the unmistakable sound of masonry. For the innocence of the floor the Cavaliere answered.
A moment later he wished he had held his tongue, for although the toast was drunk with demonstrative good-will, the Cavaliere received it with various small signs of eager self-effacement which suggested to Rowland that his diminished gentility but half relished honors which had a flavor of patronage.
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