She was moving towards the window again, and for all that he dared not a second time arrest her by force, he sought by words to do so.
“Madonna,” he exclaimed, “I implore you to hear me. In another hour I shall be in the saddle, on my way to Babbiano.”
“That, sir,” she answered him, “is the best news I have heard since your coming.” And without waiting for his reply, she stepped through the open window on to the terrace.
For a second he hesitated, a sense of angry humiliation oppressing his wits. Then he started to follow her; but as he reached the window the little crook-backed figure of Ser Peppe stood suddenly before him with a tinkle of bells, and a mocking grin illumining his face.
“Out of the way, fool,” growled the angry Duke. But the odd figure in its motley of red and black continued where it stood.
“If it is Madonna Valentina you seek,” said he, “behold her yonder.”
And Gian Maria, following the indication of Peppe's lean finger, saw that she had rejoined her ladies and that thus his opportunity of speaking with her was at an end. He turned his shoulder upon the jester, and moved ponderously towards the door by which he had originally entered the room. It had been well for Ser Peppe had he let him go. But the fool, who loved his mistress dearly, and had many of the instincts of the faithful dog, loving where she loved and hating where she hated, could not repress the desire to send a gibe after the retreating figure, and inflict another wound in that much wounded spirit.
“You find it a hard road to Madonna's heart, Magnificent,” he called after him. “Where your wisdom is blind be aided by the keen eyes of folly.”
The Duke stood still. A man more dignified would have left that treacherous tongue unheeded. But Dignity and Gian Maria were strangers. He turned, and eyed the figure that now followed him into the room.
“You have knowledge to sell,” he guessed contemptuously.
“Knowledge I have--a vast store--but none for sale, Lord Duke. Such as imports you I will bestow if you ask me, for no more than the joy of beholding you smile.”
“Say on,” the Duke bade him, without relaxing the grimness that tightened his flabby face.
Peppe bowed.
“It were an easy thing, most High and Mighty, to win the love of Madonna if----” He paused dramatically.
“Yes, yes. E dunque! If----?”
“If you had the noble countenance, the splendid height, the shapely limbs, the courtly speech and princely manner of one I wot of.”
“Are you deriding me?” the Duke questioned, unbelieving.
“Ah, no, Highness! I do but tell you how it were possible that my lady might come to love you. Had you those glorious attributes of him I speak of, and of whom she dreams, it might be easy. But since God fashioned you such as you are--gross of countenance, fat and stunted of shape, boorish of----”
With a roar the infuriated Duke was upon him. But the fool, as nimble of legs as he was of tongue, eluded the vicious grasp of those fat hands, and leaping through the window, ran to the shelter of his mistress's petticoats.
CHAPTER VII. GONZAGA THE INSIDIOUS
Well indeed had it been for Ser Peppe had he restrained his malicious mood and curbed the mocking speech that had been as vinegar to Gian Maria's wounds. For when Gian Maria was sore he was wont to be vindictive, and on the present occasion he was something even more.
There abode with him the memory of the fool's words, and the suggestion that in the heart of Valentina was framed the image of some other man. Now, loving her, in his own coarse way, and as he understood love, the rejected Duke waxed furiously jealous of this other at whose existence Peppe had hinted. This unknown stood in his path to Valentina, and to clear that path it suggested itself to Gian Maria that the simplest method was to remove the obstacle. But first he must discover it, and to this he thought, with a grim smile, the fool might--willy-nilly--help him.
He returned to his own apartments, and whilst the preparations for his departure were toward, he bade Alvaro summon Martin Armstadt--the captain of his guard. To the latter his orders were short and secret.
“Take four men,” he bade him, “and remain in Urbino after I am gone. Discover the haunts of Peppe the fool. Seize him, and bring him after me. See that you do it diligently, and let no suspicion of your task arise.”
The bravo--he was little better, for all that he commanded the guards of the Duke of Babbiano--bowed, and answered in his foreign, guttural voice that his Highness should be obeyed.
Thereafter Gian Maria made shift to depart. He took his leave of Guidobaldo, promising to return within a few days for the nuptials, and leaving an impression upon the mind of his host that his interview with Valentina had been very different from the actual.
It was from Valentina herself that Guidobaldo was to learn, after Gian Maria's departure, the true nature of that interview, and what had passed between his niece and his guest. She sought him out in his closet, whither he had repaired, driven thither by the demon of gout that already inhabited his body, and was wont to urge him at times to isolate himself from his court. She found him reclining upon a couch, seeking distraction in a volume of the prose works of Piccinino. He was a handsome man, of excellent shape, scarce thirty years of age. His face was pale, and there were dark circles round his eyes, and lines of pain about his strong mouth.
He sat up at her advent, and setting his book upon the table beside him, he listened to her angry complaints.
At first, the courtly Montefeltro inclined to anger upon learning of the roughness with which Gian Maria had borne himself. But presently he smiled.
“When all is said, I see in this no great cause for indignation,” he assured her. “I acknowledge that it may lack the formality that should attend the addresses of a man in the Duke's position to a lady in yours. But since he is to wed you, and that soon, why be angered at that he seeks to pay his court like any other man?”
“I have talked in vain, then,” she answered petulantly, “and I am misunderstood. I do not intend to wed this ducal clod you have chosen to be my husband.”
Guidobaldo stared at her with brows raised, and wonder in his fine eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulders a trifle wearily. This handsome and well-beloved Guidobaldo was very much a prince, so schooled to princely ways as to sometimes forget that he was a man.
“We forgive much to the impetuousness of youth,” said he, very coldly. “But there are bounds to the endurance of every one of us. As your uncle and your prince, I claim a double duty from you, and you owe a double allegiance to my wishes. By my twofold authority I have commanded you to wed with Gian Maria.”
The princess in her was all forgotten, and it was just the woman who answered him, in a voice of protest:
“But, Highness, I do not love him.”
A shade of impatience crossed his lofty face.
“I do not remember,” he made answer wearily, “that I loved your aunt. Yet we were wed, and through habit came to love each other and to be happy together.”
“I can understand that Monna Elizabetta should have come to love you,” she returned. “You are not as Gian Maria. You were not fat and ugly, stupid and cruel, as is he.”
It was an appeal that might have won its way to a man's heart through the ever-ready channel of his vanity. But it did not so with Guidobaldo. He only shook his head.
“The matter is not one that I will argue. It were unworthy in us both. Princes, my child, are not as ordinary folk.”
“In what are they different?” she flashed back at him. “Do they not hunger and thirst as ordinary folk? Are they not subject to the same ills; do they not experience the same joys? Are they not born, and do they not die, just as ordinary folk? In what, then, lies this difference that forbids them to mate as ordinary folk?”
Guidobaldo tossed his arms to Heaven, his eyes full of a consternation that clearly defied utterance. The violence of his gesture drew a gasp of pain from him. At last, when he had mastered it:
“They are different,” said he, “in that their lives are not their own to dispose of as they will. They belong to the State which they were born to govern, and in nothing else does this become of so much importance as in their mating. It behoves them to contract such alliances as shall redound to the advantage of their people.” A toss of her auburn head was Valentina's interpolation, but her uncle continued relentlessly in his cold, formal tones--such tones as those in which he might have addressed an assembly of his captains:
“In the present instance we are threatened--Babbiano and Urbino--by a common foe. And whilst divided, neither of us could withstand him, united, we shall combine to his overthrow. Therefore does this alliance become necessary--imperative.”
“I do not apprehend the necessity,” she answered, in a voice that breathed defiance. “If such an alliance as you speak of is desirable, why may it not be made a purely political one--such a one, for instance, as now binds Perugia and Camerino to you? What need to bring me into question?”