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Oh, evil day that ever I came here." "Ah! say not so. 'Twas the brightest day ever shone on me or indeed on thee. I'll make thee confess so much ere long, ungrateful one." "Your highness," began Gerard, in a low, pleading voice. "Call me Claelia, Gerar-do." "Signora, I am too young and too little wise to know how I ought to speak to you, so as not to seem blind nor yet ungrateful.
Yet it was regal beauty, and wooing with a grace and tenderness he had never even figured in imagination. How to check her without wounding her? He blushed and trembled. The siren saw, and encouraged him. "Poor Gerardo," she murmured, "fear not; none shall ever harm thee under my wing. Wilt not speak to me, Gerar-do mio?" "Signora!" muttered Gerard deprecatingly.
After standing to him some time in her toga, she said she was fatigued, and wanted his assistance in another way: would he teach her to draw a little? He sat down beside her, and taught her to make easy lines. He found her wonderfully apt. He said so. "I had a teacher before thee, Gerar-do. Ay, and one as handsome as thyself."
She then went to a drawer, and brought out several heads drawn with a complete ignorance of the art, but with great patience and natural talent. They were all heads of Gerard, and full of spirit; and really not unlike. One was his very image. "There," said she. "Now thou seest who was my teacher." "Not I, signora." "What, know you not who teaches us women to do all things? 'Tis love, Gerar-do.
Love made me draw because thou draweth, Gerar-do. Love prints thine image in my bosom. My fingers touch the pen, and love supplies the want of art, and lo thy beloved features lie upon the paper." Gerard opened his eyes with astonishment at this return to an interdicted topic. "Oh, Signora, you promised me to be friends and nothing more." She laughed in his face.
"Saints of heaven!" cried Gerard, "what is amiss? what has she done?" "She knows right well. 'Tis not the first time. The nasty toad! I'll learn her to come to me stinking of the musk-cat." "Alas! Signora, 'twas a small fault, methinks." "A small fault? Nay, 'twas a foul fault." She added with an amazing sudden descent to humility and sweetness, "Are you wroth with me for beating her, Gerar-do?"
Ah! thou knowest not; lovest me not, I doubt, as I love thee. Eighteen times, Gerardo. And each time dearer to me. The day thou comest not 'tis night, not day, to Claelia. Alas! I speak for both. Cruel boy, am I not worth a word? Hast every day a princess at thy feet? Nay, prithee, prithee, speak to me, Gerar-do." "Signora," faltered Gerard, "what can I say, that were not better left unsaid?
"I am no swashbuckler, yet I have met steel with steel and methinks I had rather face your kinsmen's swords than your cruel tongue, lady. Why do you use me so?" "Gerar-do, for no good reason, but because I am wayward, and shrewish, and curst, and because everybody admires me but you." "I admire you too, Signora.
Gerar-do, teach me thy magic; teach me to make thee as happy by my side as I am still by thine." As she poured out these strange words, the princess's mellow voice sunk almost to a whisper, and trembled with half-suppressed passion, and her white hand stole timidly yet earnestly down Gerard's arm, till it rested like a soft bird upon his wrist, and as ready to fly away at a word.
"Nay, have thou mercy on her, and on thyself. She will never know in Holland what thou dost in Rome; unless I be driven to tell her my tale. Come, yield thee, Gerar-do mio: what will it cost thee to say thou lovest me? I ask thee but to feign it handsomely. Thou art young: die not for the poor pleasure of denying a lady what-the shadow of a heart. Who will shed a tear for thee?
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