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And my Lord Gambara sank back into his chair, languishing, the pomander to his nostrils. All laughed, and Messer Cosimo with them, still considering me. But Messer Fifanti's wife had yet to make me known to three others who sat there, beside the little sloe-eyed lady. This last was a cousin of her own Donna Leocadia degli Allogati, whom I saw now for the first and last time.
And their tale, of course, was that Gambara, being the lover of Fifanti's wife, had dispatched the doctor on a trumped-up mission, and had gone to visit her by night. But that the suspicious Fifanti lying near by in wait, and having seen the Cardinal enter, followed him soon after and attacked him, whereupon the Lord Gambara had slain him.
Messer Gambara's visits to Fifanti's grew more and more frequent, until they became a daily occurrence; and now my cousin Cosimo came oftener too. But it was their custom to come in the forenoon, when I was at work with Fifanti.
Thus was the Legate reaping the harvest of all the hatred he had sown, of all the tyranny and extortion of his iron rule in Piacenza. And willing to believe any evil of the man they hated, they not only laid Fifanti's death at his door, but they went to further lengths and accounted that I was the cat's-paw; that I was to be sacrificed to save the Legate's face and reputation.
Let Gambara by all means suffer in my place if the thing could be contrived. If not in fact, at least in intent, the Cardinal-legate had certainly sinned. If he was not in my place now, it was through the too great good fortune that attended him. Besides, Gambara would be in better case to protect himself from the consequences and from Fifanti's anger.
Messer Fifanti's was a very choice collection of works, and every one in manuscript; for the doctor was something of an idealist, and greatly averse to the printing-press and the wide dissemination of books to which it led.
But once my Lord Gambara supped with us, and he was light and trivial as ever, an incarnation of frivolity and questionable jests, apparently entirely unconscious of Fifanti's chill reserve and frequent sneers. Indeed, I greatly marvelled that a man of my Lord Gambara's eminence and Governor of Piacenza should so very amiably endure the boorishness of that pedant.
She set a finger to her lips. There fell a knock, and old Busio stood before us. "Madonna," he announced, "my Lord the Cardinal-legate is below and asks for you." I started up as if I had been stung. So! At this hour! Then Messer Fifanti's suspicions did not entirely lack for grounds. Giuliana flashed me a glance ere she made answer.
Fifanti's mule, I have since reflected, was tethered near the steps. I saw the beast, but it conveyed no meaning to my mind, which I think was numbed. I sped past it and on, through the gate, round the road by the Po, under the walls of the city, and so away into the open country.
"The teaching might come more aptly from Monna Giuliana," said he, and smiled very boldly across at Fifanti's lady who sat beside me, whilst a frown grew upon the prodigious brow of the pedant. "Indeed, indeed," the Cardinal murmured, considering her through half-closed eyes, "there is no man but may enter Paradise at her bidding."
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