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Updated: May 2, 2025
Even to her the man's fame made his homage a tribute; something it was, beyond doubt, to be courted by the greatest prince in Italy. And he had not touched her yet. Amilcare, whose desperate grinning made his jaws ache, noticed so much as he watched her, fidgeting in his place. His nails were for ever at his teeth: when the fruit should come in he was to slip out, and Grifone to crown the work.
And while he was consolidating his throne ruffling here, fawning there Grifone was always before Molly's eye; always plucking at her poor heartstrings; always holding up his grave patience, his bleeding, his most eloquent refusals, for her wonder. Wonder, indeed, she did, and much more than that. The thought sat upon her like a brooding evil spirit, frayed her nerves to waste.
It seems that the air, the exercise, precautions, what-not, had cried back her escaped wits: certain it is that, once in the storm-bitten old fortress, she thanked her leader and rescuer with a tremulous sweetness all her own, and then by Heaven and Earth! urged him gently to go back, "lest her honour should be breathed upon." Her honour! Grifone, the romancer, turned sick with amazement.
Grifone could have destroyed belief and him together by a lift of the eyebrow; but he wanted more than that, so waited on. The little fellow was really extraordinary. Luxurious as he was to the root, and effeminate; hating as he did cold water, cold food, the cold shoulder; one and all of these shuddering things he had schooled himself to bear without a blink.
Wife, mother, handmaid of high God, he thought of her as of Molly in apotheosis; dutiful for love's sake, yet incurably a child, made for the petting place. "Grifone the Secretary is your lover, my Molly," said Bianca Maria the wise. Molly admitted the sobering truth, and the other pinched her lip. "Take care of him, my dear. He is more perilous than that stiff husband you now have.
Go and fetch me a monk and a rope." The monk, a plausible rogue, began to read: little Grifone stood by the table. At a certain point he broke into the recital with an emphatic word: "Liar!" "What the deuce does this mean?" fumed Amilcare in a rage. "The monk is deceiving your Lordship," said Grifone; "the sense is the opposite of what he reports."
"Duke Cesare will ask you to sip of it first, Madonna." His looks were piercing; yet she was too far gone to be disturbed by such as those. She even smiled faintly at his emphasis. "Well, Grifone?" she asked again, in that same dry whisper. "How shall that be harm to him if I do it?" Grifone blew out his lips. "Harm, per Dio! None at all, but common prudence on his part.
He grew even to take a stern pleasure in the bitterness they cost him, as he turned them to his uses and reckoned up his balance at the bank. Amilcare snarled at him, cut his words out of his mouth, struck him, kicked him once like a yard-dog. Grifone added it all to his store.
So very noble, so white and miserable; Heaven knows she would have satisfied him if she could. But that was a talent denied to Grifone: he could not cry. All the same, she was at the point to kiss him, when he once more prevented her this time without violence. "Ah, my lady, my lady," he said, with a smile whimsically sad, "have a little pity on a torturing wretch!"
He is your lover." "No, no! I have no lover, Amilcare; I have never had a lover." "Liar!" he thundered. "If he had not been your lover you would not have spared his life. There can be no other reason. I am not a fool." To Grifone that was just what he appeared. To her some ray of her own soul's honest logic showed at the last.
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