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It was bitterly hard to bear. And he had felt a foreboding of it all in the afternoon and he wished that he had risked all and brought down the brass tiller on San Miniato's head and submitted to be sent to the galleys for life. He could never have forgotten Beatrice; but San Miniato could never have married her, and that satisfaction would have made chains light and hard labour a pastime.
San Miniato's temper might change and his tastes might be as variable as the moon, or the weather, but his face rarely expressed anything of what he felt, and if he felt anything at such times it was assuredly not fear. He had good qualities, and courage was one of them, if courage may be called a quality at all.
"Are you the Count of San Miniato's boatman?" she asked in her sweet voice. "Yes, Eccellenza," answered Ruggiero, still blushing violently "Then he has engaged the boat? We want a boat, too the Marchesa di Mola can you get us one?" "There is my brother, Eccellenza." "Is he a good sailor?" "Better than I, Eccellenza." Beatrice looked at the figure before her and smiled graciously.
Evil thoughts crossed her young brain, and she said to herself that she might perhaps be revenged upon the world for what she was suffering, for the pain that had already come into her young life, for the wretched years she anticipated in the future, for her mother's horrible logic which had forced her into the marriage, above all for San Miniato's cleverly arranged scene by which the current of her existence had been changed.
There was not much eloquence about the courtship, as there had been about San Miniato's, and there was not the fierce passion in Bastianello's breast that was eating up his brother's heart.
The Marchesa di Mola, having quite made up her mind that her daughter should marry San Miniato, and being almost too indolent about minor matters to care for appearances, would have allowed the two to be together from morning till night under the very least shadow of a chaperon's supervision, if Beatrice herself had shown a greater inclination for San Miniato's society than she actually did.
San Miniato's death cry rent the still air there was a little splashing, and all was done. So I have told my tale, such as it is, how Ruggiero of the Children of the King gave himself body and soul to free Beatrice Granmichele from a life's bondage.
Beatrice Granmichele saw and felt what she had never seen or felt before, and the magic of Tragara held sway over her, as it does over the few who see it as she saw it. She turned slowly and glanced at San Miniato's face. The moonlight improved it, she thought. There seemed to be more vigour in the well-drawn lines, more strength in the forehead than she had noticed until now.
Truly all this would have been much better! But the moment had passed and he must lie on his rock in silence, bound hand and foot by the necessity of hiding himself, and giving his heart to be torn to pieces by San Miniato's aristocratic fine gentleman's hands, and burned through and through by Beatrice's gentle words. "And so you really love me?" said San Miniato, sure at last of his victory.
Ruggiero, who is to be San Miniato's boatman this summer, is waiting outside the Count's door, until that idle gentleman wakes from his late sleep and calls him. The final agreement is yet to be made, and Ruggiero makes calculations upon his fingers as he sits on the box in the corridor. The Count wants a boat and three sailors by the month and if he is pleased, will keep them all the season.
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