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"I have now listened to your companion and to you," replied the Dominican. "The reasons which, on your showing, have prompted you to visit Florence are connected with sin. These are not creditable reasons, and explain nothing. I must again ask you, where are your papers?" Virginia, exasperated, threw up her arms and called on the Madonna. "Our papers! Just Heaven, how often is he to tell you that he has none?" "This is idle questioning," said I. "I cannot give you more than explanations, because I have nothing more. You will make me regret even so much complaisance." "But," said the breathless priest, with a comical look awry, "But this is very serious. How are we to fill up these forms if we have no papers?" "I cannot help you," I said. Here it was the turn of the third officer, and second Dominican. He was a fat-faced man with a perpetual smile. "You have done very wrongly, both of you," he said, looking as if he loved the thought. I said, "I have admitted it." "Silence," said he. "The Holy Office cannot excuse a breach of the laws of which it is the guardian." "I break no laws, sir," cried I. "At least none that are under your care." "Silence," said the Dominican. "I cannot believe a word that you say. Speak you, young woman, and speak the truth. Of what nation are you?" Virginia looked him squarely in the face. "I am a subject of the Grand Duke's, father. I am of Siena." She had her reasons for the fib, but, not knowing what they were at the moment, I started violently, and the inquisitor turned upon me. "Do you, young man, wish to make any remark?" "I wish to say—-" I began. The Dominican turned to his colleagues. "He denies that she is of Siena; therefore, probably she has spoken the truth. We will inscribe her so. Will you now tell us," he asked Virginia, "of what nation is this young man?" She replied, "He also has spoken the truth. He comes from Padua." "From Padua!" cried the pock-marked officer; and the breathless priest tossed up his hands, echoing, "A Venetian subject!" "You are wrong," I said, "I am an English subject." "Silence," said the stern Dominican, "you are now inscribed as a Venetian subject. A Venetian subject! From a country of profligacies and indescribable laxity of manners! A Venetian! A comedian!" "I am neither," said I; "but I must observe that it is open to a Venetian (if such I were), in a time of profound peace, to enter this State." "A comedian!" said the smiling Dominican in a whisper. I grew red with vexation. "Sir, sir," I reproved him, "you are making me a comedian against my will." These things, however, being duly inscribed against me, the more severe officer took up his parable. "The Grand Duke," he 56
said, "is clement, the Holy Office very patient, but there are bounds. The laws must in all cases be observed. In this case I suspect the worst. Pray, are you two living in sin?" Virginia cried, "Oh, father!" and the fact was immediately inscribed; but now I was furious. "You break all bounds—you who talk of bounds. You are an abominable man." The priest interposed his person and held up his fat hand. "These prevarications, this violence will not help you. It is idle to deny the evidence of our eyes, ears, understanding. You—a Venetian, a comedian! I assure you that you are in a very serious position.." The landlord raised his hands and let them down with a clatter against his thighs. I was silent, Virginia alarmed, while the officers consulted together in low murmurs, and the priest filled up the rest of his forms out of his own head. Presently the tall Dominican addressed us over his spectacles as follows: "You have shown us no reasons whatsoever for believing a word that you say. Your denial of the relationship in which you obviously stand to one another is extremely flagrant. Nothing but your youth and the comparative candour of the female stand as your advocates. Thanks to them, and to them alone, we have decided to be more patient with you than your contumacy deserves. Pending further inquiries, which, I promise you, shall be made in Venice, you, young man, will be lodged with the Jesuit Fathers; and you, girl, who report yourself as of Siena, will be placed in charge of the nuns of SS. Maria e Giuseppe sul Prato until you can be safely returned to your nation. That, let me tell you, will not be until you have shown signs of a less hardened disposition. You will accompany us at once. The seal of the Inquisition shall be placed upon your effects, which seem trifling. The landlord is warned that he stands in danger of legal process." Thus were my unhappy prognostications speedily fulfilled! I was helpless and knew it. For a second time those whose dignified office it was to personify the charity of our Redeemer showed themselves the least charitable of mankind. I was chewing the sour cud of these reflections when I heard Virginia thanking the officers for their paternal resolves in her regard. Strange girl! She thanked Heaven, on her knees, for their pious mission, promised them remembrance in her prayers, asked to be allowed to kiss their hands. This being permitted, was performed to my great disgust, who saw myself disbelieved because I had spoken the truth, and her believed because she had lied. But when she was allowed, as a grace, to bid me goodbye, and came to me and put her arms round my neck and kissed my cheeks, crying aloud, "Farewell, thou dear companion of my shame! Do well, fulfil the pious purposes of these fathers; be sure of me, sure of thyself!" and when I was about to reprove her smartly for her hypocrisy, she quickly whispered in my ear, "Did you read my falsehood? I am to be put where Aurelia will surely come. Courage—I will find her—trust your Virginia"—and filled me with confusion. I pressed her hands—the true friend that she was; for a moment she clung to me with passion. "Forget me not, my lord—pray for me—let me see you again!" Such were her sobbed and broken prayers—cut short by her unjust judges. CHAPTER XX. SURPRISING CHANGE IN MY FORTUNES Father Carnesecchi, of the Society of Jesus, who had charge of the penitents in the college of his Order, and to whom I was formally handed over by my indurate captor, was a member of an old family of Fiesole long settled in Florence, a thin, threadbare, humble old man, who kept his eyes fixed to the earth—sharply piercing, intelligent eyes as they could be—and did his best to keep his lips from speaking. He had a trick of pinching the lower of them, in the hope, I suppose, that the difficulty of using the upper one alone would hold him silent. But it did not. He talked to himself continually, the habit was inveterate, and as he never let go of his lower lip it was very difficult to catch what he said. He was a tall man, but stooped at the shoulders, threw his head forward like a long-necked bird, and nodded as he walked. Beside my Dominican monolith he looked, what he was far from being, abject and poor-witted. I thought that he bent his head, as if it weighed down to the earth under the pitiless blows rained upon it by the inquisitor, as without gesture or modulation of the voice, this monstrous man unwound his tale of my iniquities, which he had taken the trouble to spin, like a cocoon, all about my poor person. If he had twisted a halter of it to hang me with, I suspect that he had done what he truly desired. Father Carnesecchi listened to it all in the dejected, musing pose which I have described, words of pity incessantly escaping from his partly imprisoned mouth: "Dio mio!" "Dio buono!" "Che peccato!" and the like, with fine shades of difference in expression according to the dark, the denser dark, the lurid flashes of the Dominican's chiaroscuro. This hireling shepherd piled 57
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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
Page 9 and 10: CHAPTER I. MY EXORDIUM: A JUSTIFICA
Page 11 and 12: Italian soil I was, in the eyes of
Page 13 and 14: Meantime that year of new experienc
Page 15 and 16: and above all Tuscany, took sacred
Page 17 and 18: turned to her mistress, "Mistress,
Page 19 and 20: He felt my touch, and recoiled from
Page 21 and 22: "I will tell you, sir, the reason o
Page 23 and 24: things might have been; but the str
Page 25 and 26: more urgently than the present, or
Page 27 and 28: I am afflicted, as you ought to hav
Page 29 and 30: say, ha! fair enchantress, do we me
Page 31 and 32: some of which are no doubt open to
Page 33 and 34: and linen!" I laughed aloud, and fo
Page 35 and 36: and watery, he snivelled at the nos
Page 37 and 38: and my sack are no mean caterers. W
Page 39 and 40: "I say," I replied, "that I am than
Page 41 and 42: days running to Mass, I am very sur
Page 43 and 44: in your replies. Why, Heaven! the w
Page 45 and 46: spoke of me by a title of respect
Page 47 and 48: Then I knew that I had been kidnapp
Page 49 and 50: Fra Palamone, all smiles, made no d
Page 51 and 52: I laughed at her. "My child," said
Page 53 and 54: stout black-eyed woman of middle ag
Page 55 and 56: For his second day's campaign, when
Page 57 and 58: "You will be attacking the wrong ma
Page 59: won't find them any more to your li
Page 63 and 64: "I think your Aurelia lost her litt
Page 65 and 66: Count Giraldi had three palaces in
Page 67 and 68: lended their forces within me; thei
Page 69 and 70: "Yes, yes," she said, "I have seen
Page 71 and 72: "Well?" I asked her. "And he said t
Page 73 and 74: silk and a hoop, and had her hair o
Page 75 and 76: "Be sure of this," I said sharply,
Page 77 and 78: "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
Page 87 and 88: himself to doubt my gentility. I sh
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
Page 99 and 100: sometimes happy, sometimes acutely
Page 101 and 102: prayer and meditation, I made solem
Page 103 and 104: England imply when we speak of the
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
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ose from my knees. If I rode in the
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CHAPTER XLI. I RETURN TO FLORENCE A
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Sir John looked sly. "Donna Giulia,
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The fair Aurelia was flushed and di
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agreed, would you have gone white a
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Aurelia. I judged her attractive by
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and ran his blade through my sword
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"He did, sir," said she haughtily;
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Grand Duchy, and a well-known haunt
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eyes searched my face. "It is ours,
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The End. World Public Library Assoc
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