THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

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"You rascal," said I, "a cudgelling was the upshot of your last. Do you want another? Have you earned it yet?" "God do so unto me if I meditate any harm to your Excellency," said the old villain. "Upon Christ's life and death I can do you a service at last, and so I will. Know first of all that the most charitable deed you ever did in your life was to break your cane over my wicked body. Yes, yes, I tell you truly, you saved a soul that day, and I care not who knows it. Sir, sir!" said he earnestly, "I am here not only to thank you for having restored me my soul, but to give you a letter which will restore you your wife, and tell you the whole truth about her into the bargain." "Who wrote your letter?" I asked him, and he told me, "One who knows. Miriam the Jewess." I am to confess that he deceived me again. I was fool enough to believe that he could explain to me the guilty history of these two persons behind me—these two and their child. We believe what we desire to believe, whether it be of good or evil report. I bade him give me his letter; he dismounted and came towards me, fumbling in his cloak. "'Tis here," he was muttering to himself. "No, no, that is my pardon from his Holiness. Ah, what have we here? Nay, 'tis my certificate of communion. How, how? Have I lost it?" Grumbling and mumbling, grating his loose tooth, he was close upon me, his hand deep in his cloak. "Ha, ha!" he suddenly cried, "now I have it!" and whipped out his hand. Belviso shrieked my name aloud, "Francis, my lord and king!" and flung himself upon my breast. There was a shocking report of a pistol, discharged close at hand. Belviso shuddered and fell limp—a dead weight. I raised my arm, levelled, and shot Palamone through the head. We picked up the lifeless form of that lad whom I had once loved for his love of me and laid him by the fire. Virginia knelt beside him, pale and tearless; pale, stern and tearless also I stood above him, my weapon still reeking in my hand. "Woman," said I hoarsely, "would that I had fired that shot. Do you dare to say that he has not got his deserts?" She did not answer me; she was busy with the dead. She opened his jacket and vest and put her hand below his shirt to feel if his heart yet fluttered. Then she lifted to me a stern pure face. "His deserts, my lord, say you? Come, kneel you by me, and see whether he have them or no." Some impulse, I know not what, made me obey. I kneeled down by Virginia. She opened reverently the clothing of Belviso, laid back the vest, laid back the cotton shirt. Wonder, terror, a flood of shame came scalding into my eyes. I had looked upon, but now could not see, the young breasts of a girl. My proof had turned to my reproof. I was humbled to the dust. "Poor child," said Virginia very softly, "poor sinner, who died to save him that had once saved thee, I pray to God that thou knowest now how innocently he did thee this wrong." She stooped and kissed the cold lips, but I fell upon the cold bosom and wept bitterly. She let me sob my full. Not until I was calmer did the noble girl touch me upon the shoulder and call me by my name. "Francis," she said, "do not reproach yourself any more. This poor soul has done what she must in any case have done. Her heart was yours, and yours, she knew, could never have been given her. She was loyal to you through all and deceived you through loyalty. She is repaid in the only coin she could have asked. God have her soul." [Footnote: Belviso's tragic masquerade was not at all uncommon in Italy at the time of which I write. If a girl were desirous of becoming a comedian she must, unless her talents were extraordinary, appear to be a male. The salaries of women, to begin with, were high and out of the reach of poor companies of players; and secondly, as I have said in the text, some States, such as the Roman, forbade the appearance of women upon the scene. Women's parts, therefore, would be taken by castrati, or boys, whose sex it was necessary for a woman to assume. There was another reason which, I fondly believe, induced Belviso to adopt that name and appearance. A woman appearing as such must be morally ruined. I never heard of an exception to the rule. Belviso's real name was Geronima Sastre, and she was a native of the Trentino.—F. A. S.] I looked up at my beloved—now at last my entirely beloved—wife. Bare as she was, her neck bare of covering, her finger of the ring, she was my wife before God and the angels. I rose and faced her, she met my looks without flinching, in her eyes was no shame. The child lay sleeping in her shawl. My heart beat high. I lifted up my face to the sky and laughed aloud. "O God, O God, Thou hast redeemed me!" I cried. Then to Virginia I said, "This child of thine——" "It is thine," said Virginia. My arms embraced both mother and babe, but with a hand I took her by the chin. She turned her face to me, and with her clear 126
eyes searched my face. "It is ours," she said, and blushed. "And I am yours, my Virginia," I said, and stooped to her. Our lips met and stayed together. We kissed long, drinking the joy of one another. The Fool would err no more. HERE BELVISO LIES WHO DIED TO SAVE HIS FRIEND CHAPTER XLVIII. <strong>THE</strong> LAST Under this superscription we consigned to the dust the dust of our dear benefactor; and that reverently done, we settled ourselves in Lucca, where we have remained ever since, where I have written these pages, where I intend to live and die. Of my true marriage with my beloved, expect no raptures in this place, seek no further, ask no more. This is holy ground. In all these years wherein she has been spared to be my well of bliss, my fountain of nourishment, my stem of solace, I declare with my hand on my heart, never for one moment did she cease to be my loving, willing, chaste and discerning wife. We have been poor, for I renounced my inheritance in favour of my next brother, retaining nothing of it, and began the world again where I left it when I was driven from Lucca by misfortunes; and by industry and thrift we have risen to a competence enough to educate our children according to the degree marked out by their birth. I did this deliberately, having found out by hard experience that money was the bondslave of lust, and rank the breastplate of inanity. Had I taken my wife to England I must have retained my wretched panoply; but England also I renounced, and that also deliberately. I shall take leave to close my relation with a few words upon my choice of life. It has been said, with truth and reason, that our vices are but the excrescences of our virtuous essence. If I am justly to be called a Fool then, and my folly a vice, it is because it has ever been a ruling need of my nature to be naked, and to desire to deal nakedly with my neighbours, who, to serve my ends, must themselves be unclad. Let the light scoffer understand me. I speak of the soul, and of spiritual and moral matters. All my good fortune, and I have had much, was due to my ability to indulge that spiritual urgency of mine, and to my having been dealt with as I desired to deal; all my troubles, and they were not few, were bruises inflicted upon my simple soul by others, who opposed their mail-clad might to my tenderness. Not once, but many times, in the course of this narration, I have had occasion to show how the poor, the outcast, the forsaken and the very young entreated me, as one must suppose the Saviour of us all, His Divine Mother, and the guardian angels would entreat each other or us. The proud, the greatly circumstanced, the rich, the enclosed, the sitters in chief seats, wounded me, shocked, rebuffed, cast me down. But in this land the Genius of the place delights only to dwell in the hearts of the poor. They are the true Tuscan nations, and in spite of governments they remain the salt of the earth and the heirs of all that is good in it. In England it is not so. There the poor are serfs; there feudalism forbids intercourse; there the weak suspect (and rightly) the benevolence of the strong; and the strong can only be benevolent in proportion as they are weak. Consider for a moment what flows from these axiomata; it will result, I think, that Honour, Religion, and Love, the three fortresses of the human soul, will be found deeply involved with them. Honour, as I understand it, consists in the nice adjustment of what is due to me from my neighbours, and to them from me. Here, among the poor, where a native reserve has not grown, as a fungus upon it, a native cant, where there is no desire to seem better than one is, and no belief that one is so by seeming—here, I say, among the Tuscan poor, there is never any difficulty, for here there is no excrescence to the substantial quality of the soul, but precisely to the contrary, there is, if anything, a denudation. The fault of the Tuscans is, perhaps, a carelessness of opinion, and an ignorance of it, and, springing from that, a lack of reserve which occasionally approaches the shocking. Be this as it may, here it is possible for man to envisage man, each as he really is and can be discerned to be. In England it is not so. Honour is an artificial, manufactured thing, depending upon accepted, volunteered relationships. What is due from me to my lord differs from that which his lordship owes to me: so in any traffic between me and my valet, or my valet and the kitchen-boy. So also it is with Religion. The Englishman dare not even strip before his God, but will bear his garter or his worsted-braid, his cocked or cockaded hat, his sword or his dung-fork up to the very sanctuary rails— lest, forsooth, by 127
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THE FOOL ERRANT by MAURICE HEWLETT
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World Public Library The World Publ
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The Fool Errant Maurice Hewlett Cop
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grunted at his labours, his goaded
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CHAPTER I. MY EXORDIUM: A JUSTIFICA
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Italian soil I was, in the eyes of
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Meantime that year of new experienc
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and above all Tuscany, took sacred
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turned to her mistress, "Mistress,
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He felt my touch, and recoiled from
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"I will tell you, sir, the reason o
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things might have been; but the str
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more urgently than the present, or
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I am afflicted, as you ought to hav
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say, ha! fair enchantress, do we me
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some of which are no doubt open to
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and linen!" I laughed aloud, and fo
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and watery, he snivelled at the nos
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and my sack are no mean caterers. W
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"I say," I replied, "that I am than
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days running to Mass, I am very sur
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in your replies. Why, Heaven! the w
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spoke of me by a title of respect
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Then I knew that I had been kidnapp
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Fra Palamone, all smiles, made no d
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I laughed at her. "My child," said
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stout black-eyed woman of middle ag
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For his second day's campaign, when
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"You will be attacking the wrong ma
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won't find them any more to your li
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said, "is clement, the Holy Office
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"I think your Aurelia lost her litt
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Count Giraldi had three palaces in
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lended their forces within me; thei
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"Yes, yes," she said, "I have seen
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"Well?" I asked her. "And he said t
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silk and a hoop, and had her hair o
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"Be sure of this," I said sharply,
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"You shall join one or the other of
Page 79 and 80: child? His one desire is to get rid
Page 81 and 82: We ran up the Via Vecchietta withou
Page 83 and 84: there was but one. Was I to kill Pa
Page 85 and 86: I kissed her again, she not forbidd
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Page 89 and 90: coat of Aquamorta's servant I was n
Page 91 and 92: tailor's, the perruquier's, the bar
Page 93 and 94: until—evil wind that he is—he b
Page 95 and 96: She was silent for a few minutes, t
Page 97 and 98: He was confused and, boylike, tried
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Page 105 and 106: me and bury me alive. CHAPTER XXXVI
Page 107 and 108: "Bravo," said I, "and now, Avanti!"
Page 109 and 110: Ducal Court, authorising him to use
Page 111 and 112: performing it." The good lad droppe
Page 113 and 114: ose from my knees. If I rode in the
Page 115 and 116: CHAPTER XLI. I RETURN TO FLORENCE A
Page 117 and 118: Sir John looked sly. "Donna Giulia,
Page 119 and 120: The fair Aurelia was flushed and di
Page 121 and 122: agreed, would you have gone white a
Page 123 and 124: Aurelia. I judged her attractive by
Page 125 and 126: and ran his blade through my sword
Page 127 and 128: "He did, sir," said she haughtily;
Page 129: Grand Duchy, and a well-known haunt
Page 133: The End. World Public Library Assoc
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