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Updated: June 20, 2025
It might be death and death might mean this chill gloom with the face of the hideous past hanging over him for ever. But now Baldassarre's only dread was, lest the young limbs should escape him. He pressed his knuckles against the round throat, and knelt upon the chest with all the force of his aged frame. Let death come now! Again he kept his watch on the face.
It was true that it had been taken from Baldassarre's finger and put on his own as soon as his young hand had grown to the needful size; but there was really no valid good to anybody in those superstitious scruples about inanimate objects. The ring had helped towards the recognition of him. Tito had begun to dislike recognition, which was a claim from the past.
He took his hands from his head, and felt for something under his tunic. Every one guessed what that movement meant guessed that there was a weapon at his side. Glances were interchanged; and Bernardo Rucellai said, in a quiet tone, touching Baldassarre's shoulder "My friend, this is an important business of yours. You shall have all justice. Follow me into a private room."
There was a sparkling triumph under Baldassarre's black eyebrows as he replaced the little sapphire inside the bits of parchment and wound the string tightly round them. It was nearly dusk now, and he rose to walk back towards Florence. With his danari to buy him some bread, he felt rich: he could lie out in the open air, as he found plenty more doing in all corners of Florence.
There was not only the broken dagger, there was the certainty, from what Tessa had told him, that Baldassarre's mind was broken too, and had no edge that could reach him. Tito felt he had no choice now: he must defy Baldassarre as a mad, imbecile old man; and the chances were so strongly on his side that there was hardly room for fear.
He could hear the laughter; he could see Tito gesticulating with careless grace, and hear his voice, now alone, now mingling in the merry confusion of interlacing speeches. Baldassarre's mind was highly strung.
Romola's face saddened, but she checked herself, and said, cheerfully, "You would not guess where I went to-day, Tito. I went to the Duomo, to hear Fra Girolamo." Tito looked startled; he had immediately thought of Baldassarre's entrance into the Duomo; but Romola gave his look another meaning. "You are surprised, are you not? It was a sudden thought.
For a long while, Baldassarre's ruling thought was to ascertain whether Tito still wore the armour, for now at last his fainting hope would have been contented with a successful stab on this side the grave; but he would never risk his precious knife again. It was a weary time he had had to wait for the chance of answering this question by touching Tito's back in the press of the street.
The feeling, in its freshness, was too strong to be overcome by any trust he had in the change he had made in his appearance; for when the words "some madman, surely," had fallen from Tito's lips, it was not their baseness and cruelty only that had made their viper sting it was Baldassarre's instantaneous bitter consciousness that he might be unable to prove the words false.
"Foolish and helpless:" yes; so far she corresponded to Baldassarre's account. "It is a beautiful curl," she said, resisting the impulse to withdraw her hand. "Lillo's curls will be like it, perhaps, for his cheek, too, is dark. And you never know where your husband goes to when he leaves you?" "No," said Tessa, putting back her treasures out of the children's way.
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