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It seemed impossible such puppets could decide issues of life and death. But the red hangman and his machines were grim touches for a puppet-show. Olimpia Castaneve was brought forward first. She was more composed by now the air, the sun, the cheerful colours of the court, had warmed her. She stood alone facing Borso. He, at first glance, remembered every shred of her; but he betrayed nothing.
And Olimpia, from her shutter, watched him go. There was no trouble on the child's score. The Countess was away; a feigned message from her was enough. Had she been at home and in a good humour, she would have accorded a real one, no doubt; so the deceit was quite harmless. Bellaroba demurred a little that she could not in person warn Angioletto, but the Captain begged her to have no fears.
God knows what La Fragiletta might have taught her. It is certain she was all unlettered in love up to that hour. Bellaroba was not only modest by instinct, but that better thing, innocent by preoccupation. In all this she was a dead contrast to her handsome friend Olimpia Castaneve, who was really a beauty of the true Venetian mould.
The curtains before the door of the all-important room were closely drawn, so that he could not see Olimpia. Nor could he even see her from his own room during the two following days, notwithstanding that he scarcely ever left his window, and maintained a scarce interrupted watch through Coppola's perspective upon her room. On the third day curtains even were drawn across the window.
It is a place of holy days and feasts all music, loving, and delight! But you will see, my dear; I will see that you see." Olimpia must know more exactly than this, and so she told the Mosca. He could deny her nothing; so as they rode between the grey swamps of the lagoon, he poured out his understanding in his own fashion. His oaths made her gasp, but the facts atoned for that.
He brought a troop of underlings; a bevy of young women under his orders turned the little shuttered house out of doors at every window carpets, curtains, hangings of all sorts, fluttered as if for a triumphal procession. Flowers came in stacks: "H'm!" said Olimpia, "there's a woman in this." A couple of asses brought skins of wine. "That will be wash for the lean hog himself," she added.
He laid what he had left of hands upon her shoulders; he pulled her from the wall; he set her before him and hugged her close to his breast. Thus he made her back a shield against the long knife, and with her he fenced and held off his enemy for minutes more. Olimpia, horribly busy, scorched the girl's neck with her breath but she never made to hurt her. Then came the end.
Therefore Captain Mosca, as he slunk out into the dark after supper in obedience to his inexorable Olimpia, felt that he must be more ingenious than he had supposed. At the same time it is only fair to say that when he had spoken so hopefully of his affair to the lady on the pillion he had believed every word of his own story.
The great shield of all, however, is to have business before you when you are from house. Go briskly about this whether it be market, mass, or mischief and no one will look at you twice. At home it should be the same. There may be visitors; if Monna Olimpia can contrive it, there will be a good many. You may judge of their quality by her anxiety to receive them.
She will be all that you could wish, and you more than she could hope for. Think of it, lady, think of it." "I will," said Olimpia, who had already done so. There is no doubt that she and the Mosca understood each other.
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