THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

CHAPTER XLI. I RETURN TO FLORENCE AND THE WORLD OF FASHION
Upon my arrival in the capital, my first care, after securing a lodging on the Lung' Arno, was to pay a visit to the Ghetto, where I
had spent those happy three days with my newly wedded wife—if wife indeed she had been. I found the church, but not the
priest; I found the old Jewess, Miriam, in whose house we had lodged. She made short work of my doubts. "You are no more
married to your Virginia than you are to me," she curtly said. "You are as little married as any young man of my acquaintance.
Married, indeed! Why, that church hadn't had a Mass said in it to my knowledge for fifty years, except a black one now and
again to oblige the jaded vicious; and as for your priest, 'tis true he was a priest once, but he had been degraded for a bad affair
of robbery with violence and inhibited from his business—and, now I come to think on it, he was hanged outside the Bargello
no earlier than last week."
I was aghast at this news, which, as it was delivered, I could hardly doubt. Virginia then had deceived me. I had trusted her in
all things and she had played me false. Designing to do her honour, I had done her the greatest dishonour—but through her
means. Blind fool that I was! Playing the husband, complacently accepting her play of the wife as serious. O Heaven, and she
had let me ruin her, and now was gone! I own that I was angry at being made the victim of a trick, indignant at having been
forced into a thing which I should never have dreamed of doing. But when I turned severely to Miriam and accused her of being
a party to the fraud, she laughed in my face, and put the case before me in a way which made me sing a tune in the minor.
"Fiddlededee!" she retorted, her arms stuck out akimbo, "what in the world had I to do with your fooleries? 'Twas the girl
arranged it all—and for reasons which do her more credit than YOU seem able to do her. I think she's a very good girl—a
thousand times too good for you. If you find her again I shall be sorry for her—and I'll tell you this much, that I shan't help you."
She had me pleading after this; but it took two or three visits and very liberal treatment before she would condescend to tell me
anything. Finally, however, she gave it as her opinion that Fra Palamone, whom I had been so short-sighted as to dismiss, was
more likely to know of her whereabouts than any one; and that I had better beware of the Marchese Semifonte, a man well
known to her. She plainly told me that she thought next to nothing of my chances, and that the best thing I could do was to go
back to England. "You don't understand our women, nor will you ever— you and the likes of you," she said. "They have more
sound sense in their little fingers than your nation in its collected Parliament. Do you imagine a girl like Virginia wants to be your
lady? What on earth should she do in such a place? Lie on a couch and order menservants about? Oh, preposterous! What
pleasures does Virginia know but those of bed and board and hoard? She'll be merry in the first, and hearty at the second, and
passionate for filling the crock with gold pieces. But your manners would freeze the heart out of her; and if you have more
guineas than you can spend, where's the joy of sweating to get 'em, or of hiding 'em under the flag-stones against a lean year?
No, no, she knew better than you, and did better. A gentleman may play the beggar for a while, but sooner or later his own will
have him—and what's Virginia to do then? Do you dare," she said sternly, "do you dare to blame her for what she has done?
She has done incredibly well; and if you in all the rest of your life can prove a tithe of her nobility, you will be a greater man than
I have reason to believe you."
"I cannot blame her, Miriam," I said, "I love her too much. I shall never rest until I find her." The tears stood in my eyes—I was
indeed humiliated; but my shame, though bitter, was not without fruit.
Shortly afterwards, in order to clear up the affairs of my inheritance, I presented myself before Sir John Macartney, the English
Minister, at his weekly levee in the Palazzo C——. A bluff, soldierly man, of Irish birth and English opinions, he received me
with particular civility, in which curiosity may perhaps have played its part. He deplored my loss of an excellent father, rejoiced
in my gain of an excellent estate, hoped I should return to England, cry for King George, hunt the country, and keep a good
head of game. He alluded, as delicately as he could, to religious differences. "I know very well that you're no turncoat, Mr.
Strelley," he said; "no, dammy, your house is inveterate for the Pope. But your father was never a Stuart's man, and I hope
you'll follow him there. You'll stand apart—'tis only natural—but, curse me, let us have no Jesuit rogues in our women's quarters
—hey? No, no—you must uphold the Protestant succession, Mr. Strelley, like your father before you."
My reply, I fancy, somewhat sobered the heart of Sir John. I said that I preferred the Republican form of government as I had
seen it in Venice and Lucca, and that I should certainly have nothing to question in the authority of King George, seeing that that
authority had been conferred upon him by Parliament. I added that my plans were very uncertain, and did not at present include
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