We went on without any more words; Virginia, all her spirit gone out of her, presented the most woebegone appearance. It would have been evident to me that she was deeply ashamed of herself had I not been too incensed to think anything about her. We entered the town of Prato about five o'clock in the evening, and found it crammed to the walls with sightseers and those who expected to offer them sights. The Piazza was like the camp about a fair, the inns were like anthills, the very churches were full. On the morrow was to be the great procession of religious to enact the translation of the remains. No lodgings were to be had better than a stall in the stable of the Sparrow-hawk. There it was that we established our camp; and that done, I left my companions and wandered alone about the town, hardly hoping, and not able, to find my beloved, remote and much injured Aurelia.
Late at night I returned and threw myself upon the straw which was to be my bed. I was tired, and fell asleep at once, but not comfortably. Restlessness possessed me, I turned and tossed about, was distressed by dreams of incredible and fruitless labours and of mental anguish, whose cause I could not define. Presently after I was awakened by a sense of something touching my feet, and lay for a time awake, wondering what it might be. Some person or another was touching me there--softly, very softly, and in kindness. I heard gentle whispering--I felt the touch as of velvet on my feet; and then a drop fell, warm and wet. I said, "Who are you who kiss my feet?" and was answered, "It is I--Virginia--my lord."
"What do you there, Virginia?" I asked her. "What do you need of me?"
"Your pardon," she said; and I heard her crying softly to herself in the dark.
"My child," I said, and held out my hand to her, "you know that I am no man to have pardons worth a woman's accepting, but I can assure you of Aurelia's pity and pardon for what you have said against her. Draw near and you shall have it from my hands."
The straw rustled as she crept on hands and knees towards me. Her face encountered my hands and rested between them. It was burning hot, and so were her lips, which kissed my palms alternately and thirstily as if she were lapping water. "Forgive me, my lord, forgive me," she urged me. "Oh, I am dreadfully ashamed! Forgive me this once, I am wretched."
"Child," I said, "think no more of it. I have no grudge against you--all my thoughts are kindly. Lie down, Virginia, and sleep. Our friendship is too strong for a tiff to break it." She kissed my palms again and again and crept off the straw. I heard her shut the door of the stable after her. Where she passed the night I know not; but I remarked that in our subsequent wanderings she never let me know how or where she did sleep. She met me next morning, her usual cool, nonchalant, reasonable self.
CHAPTER XVII
ERCOLE AT THE FAIR
If needs must have it that I was to accommodate crime by falling into it myself, it would appear that I was to do it with a certain air. When I awoke I found a very decent suit of black prepared for me against the proceedings of the day: a ribbon for my hair, shoes, shoebuckles, silk stockings, ruffles, a neat cravat edged with lace. Thus attired, I was to be Fra Palamone's secretary and lieutenant, to hold his devotional objects, pass them about for inspection, praise them discreetly, and take the money. Virginia was to play the country girl, who, by simple ardour and appropriate questioning, was to excite general interest and stimulate the sale. She, too, had a new gown and stomacher, and looked so well that, the frate said, it was quite on the cards that half his stock would be bought for her by enamoured contadini, and thus brought into circulation over and over again. It was noticeable that far less time was spent upon her instructions than upon mine. Fra Palamone was not at all sure how far I should prove amenable.
Crime, however, by which I mean an unfailing fount of ready lying, was a more difficult accomplishment than I had reckoned it. I had no notion when I began what hard work it could be. It was not for want of an exemplar, for although Fra Palamone sweated as he lied, it would be impossible to relate the quantity, the quality or quiddity of his lies. Their variety was indeed admirable, but apart from that they shocked me not a little, for I could not but see that as ready a way as any of discrediting true religion is to overcredit it; and that, where people believe in a miracle, to give them a glib hundred is to tempt them to infidelity. Because it might be true, as I undoubtedly believe it to be, that St. Francis of Assisi floated between pavement and rafters, that were no reason for pronouncing that Santa Caterina de' Ricci could stroke the chimney-pots; or if one thought it possible that St. Antony of Padua preached to the fishes of the sea, I contend that one would not be supported, but rather discouraged, in the opinion by hearing that Santa Caterina de' Ricci argued with eels in the stew-pan. But the melancholy fact remains to be told that, haranguing all day long, the wilder grew the anecdotes of Palamone, the brisker was his trade. Virginia also, I freely own, acted her part superbly, with a lisp and a trick of sucking her fingers for one batch, an "O la!" for another, which brought in showers of purchasers. She presently took a fit of bargaining--by mere caprice, I believe--in which she was so keen that she beat down Fra Palamone to half his prices and set an example which made him desperately angry. As for me, I fell into entire disgrace almost at the outset, for when an old countryman asked me whether it was true that Roses of Sharon were good for the stone, unthinkingly I replied that prayer was better. "Cospetto!" cried my man, "and cheaper too! Many thanks to you for an honest young gentleman." Fra Palamone ordered me to resume my old part of deaf-mute.
The procession of the day, which, of course, put an end to all marketing for the time, began at half after ten, with High Mass set for eleven o'clock. It was a pompous business--the nuns of San Vincenzio, two and two, with lighted tapers; their friends of the world, ladies in hoops and feathers, attendant cavaliers; Donna Violante, widow of the Grand Prince Ferdinand, deceased--a stout black-eyed woman of middle age, under-dressed and over-painted. She had a court about her of half a dozen gentlemen, twice that number of ladies, and three black boys to hold her train. Donna Camilla Pallavicini may have been there, but I did not see her. The clergy followed, then the bishop with his chaplains, train-bearer and acolytes; torch-bearers next; and then the casket containing the body of the saint under a heavy crimson canopy. Friars of St. Dominic's religion closed a very fine procession.
Having myself a fair musical ear, I thought that the nuns sang badly, without harmony or spirit. They looked about them too with what I considered regretable freedom: they talked to their friends; one of them had a damerino on either side of her, and one also, I was constrained to notice, looked fixedly in my direction, with fine eyes, full of knowledge--but presently turned her head and passed on. There was nothing flagrant, nothing to be compared with what was allowed to religious in Padua and Venice; but I was a little discontented at this nun's inspection. I had observed that she was handsome and of fine person, pale, serious, and with a high-bred air.
While all these devotees were winding their way round about the Piazza, Virginia and I had been sitting on a patch of grass by the roadway in the company of a country lad, who became extremely friendly. He was a goatherd from San Benedetto in Alpi, he told us, and had played truant for the day, walking over the stony hills for some sixteen or twenty miles and intending to return the same road at night. His name was Ercole; and that, as I told him, was as it should be. But I added, "Hercules served Eurystheus for twelve years for one clear purpose, which was that he might achieve immortality; and some of us labour for the same end, and others of us for ends which seem to us equally good. Will you tell me, Ercole, why you have undertaken these prodigious exertions of yours?"
Ercole shrugged. "There is no life upon our mountains," he said. "Moreover, Santa Caterina was a great saint, as I have heard your master say just now. Nor can you deny it."
I said, "I do not deny it. But the saints never fail us. Wheresoever one may dwell, there are they; and by the merits of holy baptism and the benefits of the Mass we may be in communion with them whether we live on mountain or plain."
"That