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But I went, none the less, and her last words to me as I was departing were an injunction that I should spend the time until I should take up my studies for the day with Fra Gervasio in seeking forgiveness for the morning's sins and grace to do better in the future. I did not again see my mother that day, nor did she sup with us that evening.
It had made me understand a hundred little matters that hitherto had been puzzling me. And I saw how utterly and fatuously blind I had been to things which even Fra Gervasio had apprehended from just the relation he had drawn from me. It was as we were entering Piacenza by the Gate of San Lazzaro that I again drew my cousin to my side. "Sir Captain!"
At last that hideous repast came to an end in prayers of thanksgiving whose immoderate length was out of all proportion to the fare provided. The castellan shuffled forth upon the arm of the seneschal; Lorenza followed at a sign from my mother, and we three Gervasio, my mother, and I were left alone. And here let me say a word of Fra Gervasio.
From one to the other were the beggars passed on by Fra Gervasio, and lastly came they back to him, to receive from his hands a piece of money a grosso, of which he held the bag himself.
Of this memorial he prepared two copies, and to these as witnesses of all the facts therein related Bianca, Falcone, and I appended our signatures, and Fra Gervasio added his own. One of these copies Galeotto dispatched to the Pope, the other to Ferrante Gonzaga in Milan, with a request that it should be submitted to the Emperor.
I took this at Perugia, where he fell," he added, and pointed to his terrific scar. Then he laughed. "I wear it gladly in memory of him." He turned to Gervasio, smiling. "I hope that Giovanni d'Anguissola's son will hold me in some affection for his father's sake, when he shall come to know me better."
I had heard Fra Gervasio deliver judgment upon her, and I had doubted his justice, felt that he used her mercilessly. My own sight had now confirmed to me the truth of what he had said; but in doing so in allowing me to see her in another man's possession a very rage of jealousy had been stirred in me and a greater rage of longing.
What, then, does my ramble of two hours at San Gervasio amount to? It shows that there is a possibility, at least, of a now vanished fountain having existed on the heights where it might fulfil more accurately the conditions of Horace's ode.
The faintest of flushes crept into her wax-like cheeks. "If it should be a sign!" she murmured raptly, and then she turned again to Fra Gervasio. "You heard Agostino say that he could not bear this friar's gaze. You remember, brother, how a pilgrim appeared near San Rufino to the nurse of Saint Francis, and took from her arms the child that he might bless it ere once more he vanished?
"He was offered to God. And that God accepted the gift, He showed when He gave Giovanni back to life. How, then, could it come to pass that Agostino should have no call? Would God reject that which He had accepted?" Fra Gervasio rose again. "You go too deep for me, Madonna," he said bitterly.
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