Chapter XIV: How I Left Palaestro

I could not bring myself to go to the great dining room and face my guests. I felt my head on fire; my senses were no longer obedient. I sent Andrea down to announce that I was suddenly unwell and must ask my friends to amuse themselves for the evening without me; then for full two hours I sat in my darkening chamber, refusing to let the valets bring in lights, leaning upon the marble table with my face in my hands. The letter from Wittenberg had shaken me to the depths of my being. I knew perfectly well that I was being forced to decide that which should determine my whole future, both in this mortal life and in the hereafter--if hereafter there was. There was no evading it; no postponement to seek prudent counsel. There was not a soul in Palaestro in whose wisdom and impartiality I had the least confidence; in fact, I did not know a single stable counsellor for such matters in the wide world. Across the miles and leagues, plains, Alps, and Apennines, had come a trumpet call. “No man while living has sinned beyond the forgiveness of heaven. Return to Germany.” The call of a peasant-born, Saxon friar, and he had dared to send it to me,--the high-born, wealthy, sophisticated, elegant lord of Palaestro, to whom princes extended cheerful courtesy.--And what was I to do?

For the friar had spoken the truth. “Truth, and only truth--curses on him!” so I groaned, while my teeth gritted. I could no more deny the justice of his appeal than I could deny my own existence--and my philosophic scepticism stopped at least there.

“Come, come, Walter,” I once declaimed to myself, “do not be swept from your feet by a meddlesome friar’s chidings. What arch-fiend has commissioned Martin Luther to be guide and conscience for you? Not the Church--the Church is like to burn him. Not philosophy--a thousand arguments refute him. Not your self-interest--even if you quit Palaestro, your business is to seek preferment at some royal court. Dissolve the spell! Cast his malign power from you!”

“Eccellenza, you are ill?” sounded Andrea’s anxious voice in my ear. “Will you have nothing? Can I not serve you?”

“Yes, dog! Get from the room!”

Out he went in alarm. I was not accustomed to answer thus. I sank back to my old posture, and strove with a kind of desperation to think calmly. Then into the dark room I heard coming the rustling of gauzy silks. A tall candle sent its haunting red light over the cartooned tapestries, the high ceiling, the tall black furniture. Marianna was setting the taper on the table beside me, was leaning over my shoulder; her long white hand touched my face.

“Gualtiero.”

The touch, the word, came as with a supernatural influence. By a kind of unaccountable shock my head cleared: my wonted faculties returned. I sprang from the table as though her touch had been a blow.

“Gualtiero,” now her questions came fast, her voice rose a little shrill, “what has happened? What was in that letter? I was told you had received one. Now you say you are unwell. Whence was the letter--from Germany?”

“Yes.” My mind was working with fearful rapidity. In a twinkling I had decided it was best to tell the entire case without evasion. If I must fight, I must fight.

“And from whom in Germany?”

“From Dr. Luther of Wittenberg.”

“The heretic friar! Santo Spirito, to have his vile paper in the palace! Where is the cursed thing?”

“Behold.” I pointed with my foot at the tattered bits upon the carpet.

“Holy Mother be praised! You have treated it as it deserved. But why do you look at me so fearfully?”

“Do I look fearful, Madonna? The only fearful thing is that Dr. Luther has spoken the truth.”

“The truth? What has he had the madness to say?”

“That I have sinned against God and man in deserting Germany. That I must return at once, and play my part there in the battle.”

“Good God!”

It was an instant before the full force of my remark struck her. While words trembled on her tongue I attempted to break the blow by an ill-conceived playfulness.

“It will have to come soon or late, Marianna, this parting of ours. The last months have been too joyous to go on forever. Better folk than we have been thrust asunder by the fates. Dante loved Beatrice only from afar. Petrarch was severed from Laura. Boccaccio said his farewell to Fiametta. I will not seek for like sorrows among the ancient worthies. Venus and Cupido have given us more of the sweet wine than they grant to most mortals; let us not cavil too loudly if at last we taste the bitter lees.”

She was terribly pale now, and pressed close upon me. Her words came with her panting breath. Her gestures would have been those of one mad, save for her redeeming Italian grace.

“You mean--you mean that all is ended? That we are to part forever? That you are returning to barbarous Germany? That you cast off Italy? That you cast off me? That you forsake all--_all_, at the summons of this heretic friar?”

“You have said it, Madonna,” I replied very gently, stepping away from her contact.

“And since when have you reached this prudent, sage, pious, honorable determination?” she called in rising accents of scorn.

“Since you entered the room, Madonna.” I knew the words would hurt, but for once I was keeping back nothing.

“Am I such a fiend, then?” Her words were almost a wail. In the red half light she had never looked more beautiful.

“Hear me, Marianna,” I threw back, still moving away from her, “this may be the last time we shall speak face to face on the old terms. Therefore hear the cold truth. Who am I--German, Italian? For believe me no man can be truly the son of more than one country. If Italian, I am yet too German to make a worthy one. You know the saying, ‘Tedesco Italianato è un diavolo incarnato.’ What have I to give to Italy, to win even dim glory for the Palaestro name? Arms? I was never shaped for a great general or even a tolerable captain. Poetry? My sonnets show abundant talent; never genius. Elegant manners and taste? I have too many noble ancestors, men of high words and higher deeds, to desire to have fops say on the Corso, ‘imitate the cloaks and cookery of the Conte di Palaestro.’ So much for Italy. But in Germany--”

“Ay, in Germany,” she moaned.

“_There_ a work awaits one worthy at least of a Lichtenstein-Regenstein. Old manners and beliefs change. New manners and beliefs are born. If there is to be a battle, my fathers would have me with the first in it. If wrongs threaten, it is mine to strive to avert them. If wrongs are committed, mine to avenge them: and if I fail, why, then, is not my state as glorious as that of the old Regenstein ritters who died before the walls of Jerusalem, yet never entered the Holy City? Not failure, but the manner of failure, will disgrace my fathers’ house.”

“Gualtiero! are you turned mad? You know your heretic friar will be burned.”

“No, by the pillars of heaven! First I prophesied that evil to him, then you to me. We were wrong. He will not be burned.”

“Not burned?” her voice rose shriller than ever. “What devils will save him?”

“I--we, the Germans.”

“You--the Germans? You link yourself finally with that accursed folk?”

I folded my arms across my breast.

“Yes, Marianna,” I replied, striving to speak calmly; “you have said it. I _am_ a German. Martin Luther is a German. And we Germans will not suffer our truth-telling, honor-loving friar to be banned and burned by your un-Christian and sensual Italian Pope.”

“Gualtiero!” The word came as one long scream. She threw her arms above her head and rushed from the room....

I paced to and fro a dozen times, then cast myself down again by the table. I was laughing in a kind of unhealthy delirium. Hedwig’s lines were dancing through my head again, louder, louder.

“Half of Northland,
Half of Southland,
Never gay
Till all of one land.”

“Ach! Gott,” I cried in round Saxon, “I should be very gay then--for I am wholly German now!”

In a desperate, mad way I was feeling a great relief of spirits. The hesitancy, the tension, was over. The battle had begun, and I had chosen my part.

I did not know what my guests thought of my proceedings that night. I did not care. I was going back to the Harzland, to the Regenstein, to Ilsa, to Martin Luther. The accursed lotus eating of the past months would cease. Life would be real; and come pain, come joy, come hell, come heaven--they, too, would be real. I was too delighted at the thought that I had truly chosen the man’s part, and would play it, to endeavor to shape ways and means how I might creditably dismiss my associates from Palaestro, and find occasion for returning to Germany. Long, very long, I sat in the black room, till Marianna’s candle had flickered down to its socket; then at last the door and the arras were cautiously pushed one side. Rabbi Isaac Sarfati, the Cardinal of Forli’s Jewish body physician drew his white beard and long dark cloak into the room.

“The Conte is sadly indisposed;” he began, gliding about with his long fingers; “he is excited. He will be the better for sleep. Allow my officiousness to prevail. If he will but go to bed, and then a draught--”

The deep booming of the tower clock announcing the hour after midnight reënforced his suggestion. I rose hastily.

“Yes, yes,” I assented, “it is late. Let me retire.”

Andrea, who had been anxiously waiting without, entered on the first sign, and I was assisted to bed. Rabbi Sarfati was there with his silver cup. In a more cautious mood I would have hesitated at the heavily spiced liquor he forced upon me, but at the moment I was utterly unsuspicious. I felt sight and sound leaving me, and for many hours must have been plunged in profound slumber.

* * * * *

When I awoke, I was in a small, mean room with narrow windows, and these with view only over a distant landscape. The furniture was dingy, the floor mere gray tiling. From the angle of the sunbeams one could tell it was past noon. I rose with a sudden start, but was plucked back by a hammer-like throbbing in my head. All my bones seemed to ache together. I gave a faint groan from the mingled pain and weakness. My call to Andrea brought at first no answer, but in a moment I saw beside the bed the olive face of Eugenio, one of Forli’s favorite body-servants.

“How in Satan’s name, rascal,” I began, “came I here? And how came you here? I don’t take snakes such as you into my service. What has happened?”

The fellow grinned most impudently before he replied. “The Conte should be calm. He is very sick.”

“He was very well last night and will be well enough now to break a cane over you soon.”

Again I started up. Again a sense of abject weakness and pain sent me back upon the pillows. I could only curse under my breath.

“At least,” I ordered, “fetch hither Andrea.”

“That is not commanded,” was the reply.

“Not commanded? And who gives commands in Palaestro save myself? Was the castle stormed last night, or am I turned mad?”

“We feared the latter,” said the sly villain gravely. “It was by orders of his Eminence my master and Signor Sarfati that you were brought hither. It was said in the palace, you were ill and deranged. I am appointed to watch you.”

The whole intent of Sarfati’s solicitude for my health and the effect of his medicine came now to me like a flash. It served to clear my reeling senses. This, then, was Marianna’s handiwork. While I had reflected complacently on my triumph over her, she had struck. I was a prisoner in my own mansion. If I recovered my freedom without some abject compromise, I was a fortunate man. In my unskilful folly I had driven Marianna and her father to extremities, and well did I know how they could fight.

“Well, Eugenio,” said I, regarding the fellow steadily, “I intend to waste no breath cursing you.”

“Thanks, Eccellenza,” came his answer.

“You have doubtless been ordered to report when I have awakened.”

“I have, Eccellenza.”

“Go, then, and tell his Eminence or Madonna Marianna that I am awake, but that if they wish to converse with me, they must first contrive to ease this headache, which is driving me frantic.”

“I go to tell them, Eccellenza,” and out he went, leaving me to all manner of imaginings.

In a few moments the door was opened by no less a visitor than the Cardinale di Forli. The good prelate was smiling benignantly, and bore in his hand a tiny glass of pure green liquid.

“Drink,” he said, advancing to the bedside; “this, more than most liqueurs, is for your health.”

I eyed the glass shrewdly.

“After what has just befallen, Eminenza,” I hesitated, “I may well think twice even ere drinking from the hands of the Cardinale di Forli.”

“Nonsense,” he answered jauntily; “this is not _aqua tofana_. A man as sensible as yourself should know that we know that all your Italian property is willed to your Florentine kinsfolk and your sudden demise would work more havoc with our wishes than even this return to Germany.”

Convinced that the Cardinal for once spoke the truth, I drank off the glass and at once experienced a beneficial effect; my head cleared and the throbbing partially ceased. I was able to sit up in bed and ask Forli if he would graciously state his business.

From his more than customary gesticulations, his circumlocutions, his use of delicate innuendo rather than open threats, I was led to perceive that he felt he had a ticklish business, and I played my own hand more boldly. He began by recalling that he had been favored with the early friendship of my noble kinsmen of Florence and Bologna; that I had been after a manner under his tutelage since quitting my studies at Padua, that he had introduced me to fashion and preferment at Rome, “and would have carried me yet higher, but for that dastardly bungling by Orosi.” Finally he referred delicately to “his near relationship to that lady whom I had so worthily honored with my affections.” All this, however, was mere preliminary to an admirably marshalled attack--in far more subtle language than Marianna had used--upon my determination to return to Germany.

But unfortunately for his Eminence, the arguments advanced had already been amply deliberated upon and refuted by my own sorely hesitant self. I had anticipated everything Forli had to say, and I replied to it, not indeed to his satisfaction, but vastly to my own. The result was that our dialogue did not run smoothly, and the worthy churchman presently raised his voice to no dignified pitch, while we exchanged parry and thrust.

“Do you believe in this swinish friar’s theology?” he shouted for the tenth time.

“You know I have no theology. I perhaps say ‘_credo_’ blindly to what the Church teaches, never asking whether what I speak with my lips is written on my heart. But now comes this man of Wittenberg who speaks not to my interest, my intellect, but to my soul.”

“Your soul? The strangest word that ever left your tongue. How can this friar, soon to feel the full displeasure of the Church, speak to your soul? It’s sure damnation.”

“Let us have no ‘damnation’ from such as you,” I returned. “I repeat, for reasons I cannot fathom, this Martin Luther has stirred me to the depths of my being. If damnation there is, it is such as he threatens.”

“You talk like one possessed. Explain.”

“I despair of explaining.” I strove vainly to speak with composure. “I understand myself, but not how to make all clear to you. Surely your Eminence knows the story of the women dancers, who danced before the cross in mockery of our Lord and His passion--how they must now dance through all eternity on sharp points amid hell fire. I tell you, I dread lest if I turn my back on this summons now--and go on dancing, feasting, laughing, here in Palaestro--I will meet their fate. I will not, I cannot invite it--”

The Cardinal shrugged his shoulders eloquently, and threw up his hands.

“My poor Gualtiero; who would have thought it? You are about to begin on ‘duty, honor, and conscience’ again. You are indeed very ill.”

“Not so. I am just growing better.”

“To think that a little thing like Tetzel’s incautious zeal with indulgences could make you so deranged.”

“Not Tetzel, but Luther. Oh! You are only an Italian, you will never understand.”

“I agree with you. Pestilenza! we will have to take you in hand roundly. I fear much, it will be some time before you can be allowed to go again without restraint. We cannot let you wreck your fine career. No, _per Dei Immortales_, your friends will save you, despite yourself. Since you are turned wholly unreasonable, you must remain here till the order comes from Rome.”

“From Rome--”

“Naturally I sent a courier thither as soon as Marianna explained to me your state. Your moody and nervous condition has been observed by your guests some time. They quite understand that you are unwell. I have written to the Holy Father for authority to keep you in easy custody until we are satisfied this dementia is entirely passed. The Pope will naturally designate your place of confinement, and the time of your release will be largely of your own determination.”

I sat before him, amazed and dumb. The Cardinal held out his hands insinuatingly.

“Come, Gualtiero. You see the trouble you have plunged us in. Give me your word you will not return to Germany, and I will send a second courier to undo the errand of the first.”

“No!” I said it stolidly and obstinately. Another shrug and Forli was gone, throwing over his shoulder a promise to come and argue again the next morning.

After a few moments Eugenio entered with a tray and a simple luncheon, whereof I partook, reflecting that if my captors wished to murder me they would find a thousand ways to accomplish it even if I grew lean with starvation. I soon discovered the method of my confinement. I was in one of the small extra rooms upon the northern wing of the palazzo, set off for the retainers of some distinguished guest. Three of the Cardinal’s stoutest serving-men were keeping watch outside the door. It was only twenty feet from the window to the ground, which sloped away into luxuriant vineyards; but a stout iron bar closed the narrow aperture, and I was without the least weapon or tool to force it. My behavior for recent days, and especially during the hours following the receipt of Luther’s letter, gave every color to the report among my guests that I was deranged, even to the need of restraint. Although the palazzo and its servants were nominally my own, I could count on almost no personal love and loyalty at Palaestro. The mansion had been practically deserted save for a few caretakers, until on my arrival a horde of mercenary attendants had been recruited from Florence. With bitterness I contrasted the attitude of my Regensteiners, who would have plucked down their schloss, rock from rock, rather than let their liege lord be imprisoned within it.

There was evidently no intention of making my custody unduly severe. Eugenio brought in an armful of my favorite books and writing materials, also candles when it began to darken, but I was in no mood even for Tully and Pico Della Mirandola. Painful as had been my process of resolving to return to Germany, I did not in the least regret my determination. I knew that it would take a good four days before any order could come from Rome for my legal detention; in the meantime it remained to be proved whether a Conte di Palaestro could be incarcerated in his own palace by one of his own guests.

“And as for you,” I muttered, “oh! Eminenza of Forli, and you, dark-eyed Madonna Marianna, I owe you both fair gratitude for this right noble proof of how unselfishly you love me!”

Eugenio and his companions were discreetly partaking of their macaroni and sour wine in the passage outside the door, whilst I was pretending to bend over my Latin; but in reality was devoting my mind not to the _Cluentius_, but to the more pressing problem of escape, when I was stirred by a sound at the lattice. A human form was hanging across the darkening sky at the window. I started instinctively, but a warning “hist!” held me in my chair.

“Do not stir, Eccellenza,” came in a clear whisper which I recognized as Andrea. His little peaked goatee and his bright beady eyes were thrust between the cross-bar.

“Whence are you fallen?” I spoke softly, but in astonishment; “the clouds?”

“Only the roof, Eccellenza. It is vastly easy to reach a trap-door to the tiling, to climb along the ridgepole, then swing downwards on a rope duly knotted around a pinnacle and with a good loop for my feet. ‘The Conte is stark mad,’ they told me; ‘he is raging and attempted the Cardinal’s life when his Eminence approached him.’ ‘_Si! Si!_’ said I, for it seldom pays to quarrel over an unlikely story; but as for myself, I have too many hairs in my chin to accept such a tale unsalted. ‘Either,’ said I to myself, ‘the Conte is indeed mad, in which case the mere sight of his sad state will be sorrowful but not deadly, or he is not mad--in which case he may need Andrea’s wits to help him out of the spider’s silk of Madonna Marianna.’”

“You reason like a philosopher. Only tell me,--do you think I am dangerous or sane?”

“The Eccellenza had a sharp tongue and a short temper the other night, but he seems marvellously himself just now. Only will he graciously answer a question?”

“Servants should not ask questions, but I am in no place to command you. Say on.”

“Eccellenza, is it true you have resolved to return to Germany and the Regenstein?”

“Cat! You have been overhearing the Cardinal and the Signorina.”

“It ill becomes me to contradict the Conte. But may I crave an answer nevertheless?”

“Then, sirrah, I go back to Germany as soon as I escape from this strange prison.”

“I am very sorry the Conte is so resolved. Is he quite sure no power can move him?”

“I did not ask you to applaud. I know you love the Germans as much as a monk does the Soldan. Now I have said this I imagine you will be prompt enough to leave me.”

“Wrong, Eccellenza;” said Andrea soberly; “an honest servant does not leave a master just because the master resolves upon what is unwise. I can lie to you, steal from you, disobey your small orders, do a thousand other things to make you curse and flog me, but forsake you in trouble--alas! what have I done to make the Conte think of me so ill?”

“You are the most honest rascal that ever escaped the gallows,” spoke I, with an imprudent laugh.

“Softer, Eccellenza,” entreated Andrea. “They think I am down at the village for a frolic. What we have to do were best done to-night. Is the Conte again hale and well?”

“Never sounder. Rabbi Sarfati’s cordial has spent itself,--the circumcised villain!”

I need not detail all that he then suggested. The invaluable fellow had already fathomed my entire predicament, and had a plan of escape devised. It was useless to strive to remain in Palaestro in the face of the authority Forli was attempting to exercise in the Pope’s name, but escape from my present imprisonment did not promise vast difficulties, though it irked my pride to seem to flee like an outlaw from my own paternal stronghold. Promising to be back before midnight Andrea swung his feet into the loops of his rope and vanished overhead, leaving me to possess my soul in what patience was permitted it.

From the state apartments of the palazzo came the sounds of music and merriment. The tidings of my derangement clearly had not blighted the spirits of the guests. They were, I imagined, arranging a _Moresche_, a ballet then much in vogue, the men of the company blackened like Moors and winding in giddy Oriental mazes, flourishing lighted tapers. I could hear the harps, flutes, and viols; some one was declaiming amorous sonnets, glasses were tinkling, the dance was swaying at its height. I could imagine the beauty of the women, the beauty of Marianna. One consenting word from me would put me back as centre and master of all that throng. Yet sooner might wild horses have torn me limb from limb than that I should say it. Many were my vices, but fickle mindedness, I dare to boast, was not among them. I had chosen. “I am facing toward the north,” I whispered to myself, whilst with impatience I awaited Andrea.

* * * * *

My worthy valet, councillor, and, I sometimes feared, governor, was evidently bent on proving that he could execute a masterpiece. “I had only sheep and asses from Rome to dispose of,” he explained to me afterward. “What chance had they against a Tuscan, against Andrea? Did I not suck my first milk at Siena? Their master, _il cardinale_, may know much about trussing capons so as to retain their juice, but as for circumventing an adversary by an act of real _virtù_--bah!”

The first I knew of Signor Andrea’s craftmanship was when Eugenio, after satisfying himself first that the grating at the window seemed strong, and second, that I lacked nothing of the ordinary creature comforts, barred and locked my door carefully from the outside, then retired with his two mates a considerable distance down the passageway. The songs and laughter from them soon told how Giovanna and Benedetta, well-known ladies of the servants’ hall, were with them, and I suspected they were not without wherewithal to drink. The loud crashing of music from the state chambers was all in our favor. I caught next the rattle of a rope against the outer wall, and Andrea was swinging on his loops again across the window. Once a good chisel had been passed to me inside, and what with Andrea working without, it did not take two active men long to force the base of the bar, especially as the iron had not been let very deeply into the stone, and with the lower end once free I twisted the whole clear in a twinkling. I piled the chair and table against the door, for what proved a needless precaution, and Andrea held out his hand to me.

“All is ready, Eccellenza,” he whispered.

“For Germany, then,” I answered.

The opening was narrow, but my slight figure writhed through without too much difficulty. The black wall yawned below me; above I could only see the blinking stars, but it was no moment for squeamish stomachs or hesitancy. Andrea had clambered up before me. I closed my eyes and felt for the loops. There was a nervously long interval of clutching and swinging ere my hands closed over the tiles of the roof, but they were quickly gained, and a lantern dimly burning at an opening showed us whither to clamber with what speed, yet silence, we might. A sliding door, then a ladder, a small room where Andrea quickly cast over me the cloak and biretta of a seedy genteel townsman of Tuscany, and again I was following him. He himself had adopted a similar guise. Knowing the labyrinthian corridors and galleries of the palazzo far better than I, he had no difficulty in conducting me through the vast building without encountering a soul.

Once I paused for an instant at a balcony overlooking the great hall. The candles were burning low, but the musicians were still sustaining the throb of the dance. Around and around in graceful mazes went Marianna, pirouetting before the admiring Campelli. Upon a time I would have been close to murder on seeing another showing her favors, but I was past all such moving now.

“Will it be he, who will console her?” I asked of myself with curling lip, “or the Spaniard Don Velasco, or the Milanese Conte di Tempori?” And then I turned to Andrea: “Lead on. We are going where things are real.”

He knew the private sally-port. The varlet there on duty had long since yawned and gone off to play cards with his mates. The stable grooms were sampling the liquor at the village trattoría; and saddled and bridled stood my four best horses; “two to ride and two to lead and relay, and I have thrown the bits and buckles for all the others down the well,” chuckled my admirable mentor, tightening the girths; “there will be enough cursing to cancel a great indulgence before they can harness for any pursuit.”

“And my jewels and papers?” I asked.

“So far as portable they are in the saddle bags, Eccellenza. The Cardinal just lacked the courage to seize them. And now if the Conte will deign to mount.”

“Bravo!” I cried, almost aloud, “I will no longer name you Andrea, but Ulysses.”

“The Conte will graciously keep his voice lower until we are well clear of the palazzo. Then he can venture upon such gracious compliments as he may desire.”

Thus admonished, I suffered Andrea to lead our two horses well down the stony slope and by a road behind the straggling village. It was about midnight. No shout of alarm was rising from the mass of the palace looming now above us. The lights at the windows were growing fewer. I could still catch the dim vibration of the music, presumably for the last dance. It would be dawn, and an hour or more past it before Eugenio would think of venturing to inquire of his high-born captive “if he had slept well”; an hour more or longer before Forli could organize an effective pursuit. All the dice had fallen in our favor.

“Andrea,” I said, “give me your hand. You have not been my servant, but my friend. Ask what you will of me.”

The fellow pressed my own hand to his lips.

“Eccellenza, you are going to Germany?”

“Certainly.”

“And you are very likely to remain there always?”

“Very likely.”

“Well, then, Eccellenza, promise that however much you may learn to love that dreadful North, however much you may desire to have those swinish Saxon louts around you, I may be ever your first valet.”

I thrust my hand into his, and squeezed hard.

“Andrea,” I said, and my throat choked a little, “you shall go with me, though I sail to the Western Isles like another Ammiraglio Colombo.”

I was winking fast while he climbed up into his saddle.

“I thank the Conte,” he observed quietly. “And now, Eccellenza, let us ride.”

The touch of the night air had kindled my spirits. They rose too at the thought that I was leaving Palaestro and its garden of evil delights. The good horse under me responded to my spur. I felt the wind rush past my hot cheek, I saw the stars ahead of me, and clearest of all the North Star; and the road led straight towards it. Swift as light we seemed to fly. Come weal, or woe, come victory or disaster, I knew that a great milestone in my life had been past. Other things might fail me. I had not utterly failed myself.

* * * * *

I travelled northward as rapidly as possible, calling myself the Signor Cervoni (a name in my mother’s family), and easily passing for a nobleman of decayed circumstances who was journeying without state. Once outside the Papal Territories I had nothing to fear as to pursuit, but I had no desire to loiter at any of the princely courts in northern Italy. From Modena I despatched a letter to my cousin in Florence acquainting him with my return to Germany, and directing him to make such representations at Rome as would halt any proceedings by Forli on the ground of my insanity; also to send a competent agent to secure my rights and property at Palaestro. I likewise sent a letter to Marianna, in which I informed her that after the desperate means used by her father and herself to thwart my decision I must consider our relations forever at an end. In concluding the epistle I added that I intended shortly to marry a German Gräfin.

I need scarce remark that I here referred to Ilsa. I was not sure how far I was deeply in love with that lady, but certainly I had vast esteem for her and it would be highly regrettable to have her enter the convent. If I was to live in Germany, of course I needed a German bride; and with the dowry which I knew now Von Steinitz could furnish, the match had at length become eminently suitable. I was sure of Moritz’s consent; and that Ilsa herself would think twice ere becoming the Lady of Regenstein, I had not the least idea in the world.