"He seemed a very unlicked cub," was all my reply. So we climbed the dusty steep, winding twice or thrice round about the hill in a brown plain set with stubbed trees, and entered the armed city by the Porta Eburnea. Inside the walls, threading our way up a spiral lane among bullock-carts, cloaked cavaliers, monks, fair-haired girls carrying pitchers and baskets, bullies, bravoes, and well-to-do burgesses, we passed from one ambush to another, by dark gullies, stinking traps, and twisted stairways, to the Via Deliziosa, without ever a hint of the broad sunshine or whiff of the balmy air which we had left outside on the plain. In a little mildewed court, where one patch of light did indeed slope upon a lemon-tree loaded with fruit and flowers, I found my man in a droll pass with his young wife. He was, in fact, tiring her hair in the open: nothing more; nevertheless there was that air of mystery in the performance which made me at once squeamish of going further, and afraid to withdraw. I stood, therefore, in confusion while the sport went on. It was of his seeking I could see, for the poor girl looked shamefaced and weary enough. She was a winsome child (no more), broad in the brows, full in the eye, yellow- haired, like most of the women in this place, with a fine-shaped mouth, rather voluptuously underlipped, and, as I then saw her, sitting in a carven chair with her hands at a listless droop over the arms of it. Her hair, which was loose about her and of great length and softness, lay at the mercy of her master. He, a short, pursy man, well over middle age-- "past the Grand Climacteric," as Bulwer Lytton used to say--red and anxiously lined, stood behind her, barber fashion, and ran her hair through his fingers, all the while talking to himself very fast. His eyes were half-shut: he seemed ravished by the sight of so much gold (if common reports belie him not) or the feel of so much silk (the likelier opinion), I know not which. Assuredly so odd a beginning to my adventure, a hardier man would have stumbled!
The sport went on. The girl, as I considered her, was of slight, almost mean figure; her good looks, which as yet lay rather in promise, resolved themselves into a small compass, for they ended at her shoulders. Below them she was slender to stooping, and with no shape to speak of. Allow her a fine little head, the timid freshness natural to her age, a blush-rose skin, slim neck, and that glorious weight of hair: there is Perugino's wife! Add that she was vested in a milky green robe which was cut square and low at the neck and fitted her close, and I have no more to say on her score than she had on any. As for the Maestro himself, I got to know him better. On mere sight I could guess something of him. A master evidently, unhappy when not ordering something; fidgety by the same token; yet a fellow of humours, and fertile of inventions whereon to feed them. The more I considered him the more subtle ministry to his pleasures did I find this morning's work to be. A man, finally, happiest in dreams. I looked at him now in that vein. In and out, elbow-deep sometimes, went his hands and arms, plunging, swimming in that luxurious mesh of hair. He sprayed it out in a shower for Dana; he clutched it hard and drew it into thick burnished ropes of fine gold. Anon, as the whim caught him, he would pile it up and hedge it with great silver pins, fan-shape, such as country girls use, till it took the semblance, now of a tower, now of a wheel, now of some winged beast--sphinx or basilisk--couching on the girl's head. Then, stepping back a little, he would clasp his hands over his eyes, and with head in air sing some snatch of triumph, or laugh aloud for the very wildness of his power; and so the game went on, that seemed a feast of delight to the man--a feast? an orgy of sense. But the woman might have been cut in stone. Had she not breathed, or had not her fingers faintly stirred now and again, you would have sworn her a wax doll.
I know not how long the two might have stayed at their affairs, for here I grew wearied and, coughing discreetly, slid my foot on the flags. The man looked up, stopped his play at once; the spell was broken. The girl, I noticed, stirred not at all, but sat on as she was with her hair about her clasping her shoulders and flooding her with gold. But Master Peter was a little disconcerted, I am pretty sure; certainly he was redder than usual about the gills and gullet. He cleared his throat once or twice with an attempt at pomposity which he vainly tried to sustain as he came out to meet me. When I handed him the Prothonotary's letter, and he saw the broad seal, he bowed quite low; the letter read, he took me by the hand and led me to the loggia of his house. We had to pass Madam on the way thither; but by this Master Peter carried off the affair as coolly as you choose. "Imola, child," he said as we passed, "I have company. Put up thy hair and fetch me out a fiaschone of Orvieto--that of the year before last. Be sure thou makest no mistake; and break no bottles, girl, for the wine is good. And hard enough to come by," he added with a sigh. The girl obeyed. Without raising her eyes she rose; without raising them she put her hands to her head and deftly braided and coiled her hair into a single twist; still looking down to earth she passed into the house.
Pietro began to talk briskly enough so soon as we were set. The air was mild for mid-March; between the ridged tiles of the cortile, which ran up to a great height, I could see a square of pale blue sky; gnats were busy in the beam of dusty light which slanted across the shade; I heard the bees about the lemon-bush droning of a quiet and opulent summer hovering near-by. It was a very peaceful and well-disposed world just then. Pietro, much at his ease, was apt to take life as he found it--nor do I wonder. "Yes," he said, "the work goes; the work goes. I have much to do; you may call me just now quite a man of affairs. This very morning, now, I received a little deputation from Citt di Castello--quite a company! The Prior, the Sub-Prior, two Vicars-Choral, two Wardens of Guilds, and other gentlemen, craving a piece by my own hand for the altar of Saint Roch. I thank our Lord I can pick and choose in these days. I told them I would think of it, whereat they seemed to know relief, but I added, How did they wish the boil treated, on the Saint's left thigh? For I told them, and I was very firm, that though Holy Church might aver the boil to have been a grievous boil, a boil indeed, yet my art could have little to say to boils, as boils. The boil must be a great boil, and a red, said they; for the populace love best what they know best, and cannot worship, as you might say, with maimed rites. Moreover, Poggibonsi had a Saint Roch done by that luxurious Sienese Bazzi (a man of scandalous living, as I daresay you know), where the boil was fiery to behold and as big as a man's ankle- bone. This was a cause of new great devotion among the impious by reason of its plain relationship to our frail flesh. Citt was a poor city; in fine, there must be a handsome boil, I said. Let me refine upon the boil, and Saint Roch is yours, with Madonna, in addition, caught up in clouds of pure light, and two fiddling angels, one at either hand. Finally, with the petition that Madonna should be rarely adorned with pearls Flemish- fashion, they let me have my way upon the boil. So the work goes on!"
"But, good Master Peter," I exclaimed here, "I could find some discrepancy in this. On the one hand you boggle at boils, on the other you suffer pearls to be thrust upon you. Why, if you cleave to the one, should you despise the other? For, for aught I see, your thesis should exclude either."
"And so it does," he said, smiling, "But for one man in Citt that knows a pearl there will be a hundred who can judge of a boil. My Madonna will be a pearl-faced Umbrian maid, and her other pearls just as Flemish as I choose. But I hear our glasses clinking."
I, too, heard Imola's footfall on the flags, and ventured to say, "And I know where your Madonna is, Master Peter," But he affected not to hear.
She served us our amber cup with the same persistent, almost sullen, self- continence. But, I thought, I must see your eyes, Mistress, for once; so called to mind my encounter with the wild young Baglione of the morning. Smiling as easily as I could, I accosted her with "Madonna, I am the bearer of compliments to you, if you choose to hear them." Then she looked me full for a second of time. I saw by her dilating eyes, wide as a hare's (though of a sea-grey colour), that