"Do not pretend that you care for me, Agostino," she said angrily; "I will believe it only on one condition, that you accompany me to Magliana."

"I have told you it is impossible, Imperia. Bazzi is an amusing fellow, a hundred times more entertaining than I."

"I am tired of Bazzi. He is an insufferable idiot. I will not go unless you escort me, Agostino."

"Then Raphael shall take you. His Holiness will be delighted to welcome him, as he desires him to plan some decorations for the villa; and you cannot, my Imperia, call Raphael an idiot."

It was Imperia's turn to blanch as Raphael came forward and courteously asked the honour of her company.

But she quickly recovered herself, "Raphael is too charming," she said guilefully, "and were it not that his heart is given to the beautiful Margherita I might be tempted to angle for it."

"Ah!" exclaimed Chigi, well pleased, "that is good news. Margherita is a rare prize, and I am glad to know that the unimpressionable Raphael at last really loves."

The eyes of Imperia and Chigi were intently fixed on Raphael's face, striving to read his true feelings. He felt and resented the scrutiny.

"I doubt if the man lives who has not loved," he said, flushing.

"Perhaps it is because I love so deeply that I cannot speak of it."

Imperia softened for an instant, and, taking a lute, sang, _Quant'e bella giovinezza_.[4] But the pent-up pa.s.sion that possessed her this evening woke again in the line, _Che si fugge tuttavia_, and she ended suddenly with a dry choking sob.

An embarra.s.sing silence fell upon us all, broken finally by Imperia. "A little honesty might clear the atmosphere," she said to Raphael; "besides what need is there of such secrecy when we have all guessed the truth. No, you shall not escort me to Magliana. I will be no man's second choice, not even yours, Agostino," and so saying she ungraciously departed from us.

"She is in a devil of a humour," Chigi said to me, uneasily, when Raphael had bidden us good-night. "What can have angered her? Is it possible that she suspects that her reign is over?"

"She suspects nothing," I a.s.sured him, truthfully; in my heart I added, "but she knows everything."

"But will she go?" Chigi asked, anxiously; "that is the immediate question. I cannot put her out by force."

"You will never have to do that," I replied. "She will go, never fear.

Leave her to herself, her mood will have changed by morning. There is only one thing to be relied upon in women, and that is their inconstancy, not alone to men but to any fixed idea."

In spite of the flippancy with which I had striven to beguile Chigi, I was vaguely but none the less genuinely troubled. Unable to sleep, I strolled toward dawn in the garden. A lamp burned in the tiny room a.s.signed to Margherita, and to my surprise there flitted across the window the shadow of Imperia. What business could she have there at such an hour? Certain expressions, to which I had given no weight at the time of their utterance, came back to me with sinister significance, and especially her declaration that Margherita must disappear, "not for one day, but for ever." I continued my watch until a gust of rain drove me into the house, and I fell asleep to dream that an oubliette lined with the blades of scythes (such as I knew existed in certain old Roman houses) had at Imperia's touch yawned beneath the couch of Margherita; and that the innocent barrier to Raphael's reconciliation with Maria had indeed "dropped from his life."

But I awoke at Chigi's cheery halloo to find that the storms of the previous evening had cleared. Imperia had expressed her readiness to spend the day at Magliana, and my host desired me to select horses for the excursion.

I never saw her gayer than on that day, and when I looked askance as she jested with his Holiness and flirted with Riario, daring him to give a supper in her honour in his new palace, she pressed my foot beneath the table and looked me smilingly in the face, as though striving to a.s.sure me that all was well.

But she would not comply with Leo's request for his father's canzone, _Quant e bella_, which she had sung with such effect the previous evening. She left the gay company while they were all clamoring for more, and insisted that I should urge the horses to the utmost as we dashed back to Rome.

Our common anxiety to know the outcome of Maria Dovizio's visit to Chigi's villa, together with her great longing for sympathy in this crisis of her life, so wrought with the favouring opportunity of that wild drive that Imperia granted me such a revelation of her inmost soul as I believe no other man can boast, and I knew her that night as G.o.d knew her.

She had sought Margherita the night before a criminal at heart, for she had determined to sacrifice the girl. Imperia possessed a house in Rome.

It was on her lips to tell Margherita that Raphael, who had met with an accident, was lying there at the point of death, and had sent for her to come to him. She had already instructed her servants, and had Margherita once entered that house its doors would never again have been opened for her.

But Imperia's guardian angel was kind. Before the words could be uttered Margherita had poured out her heart in grat.i.tude to the woman whom she believed to be her benefactress. While the girl spoke, Imperia strove to steel herself, repeating mentally the round of cruel reasoning which had been the Ixion's wheel on which her tortured brain had unceasingly revolved:

"If Margherita speaks to Maria Dovizio, Maria will never be reconciled with Raphael. Unless Maria weds Raphael she will surely marry Chigi.

Either Margherita or I must perish. Which shall it be?"

But gradually this fiend's chatter grew less insistent and Imperia heard instead Margherita's impa.s.sioned protestations. She was happy, blissfully happy, and owed it all to the disinterested kindness of her patroness; for though Raphael had always loved her he had been bound by a hateful engagement to a cold, proud woman, who had cast him aside for a wealthier suitor. Her memory had rankled in the mind of both, poisoning their happiness, for Margherita well realised that she was herself but a peasant, not to be compared in birth and breeding to this high lady. Until lately she had not deemed herself worthy to mate with so exalted a personage as her lover. But since she had known Imperia she had comprehended how such a miracle might be. "For," said she, "you are just like me, and all of the Signor Chigi's wealth and glory does not crush or humiliate you, because when two people really love each other it makes them equal, and neither genius nor riches nor anything else in all the world is worthy of being compared to the love of a true woman."

That shaft went home. The thought of being cla.s.sed with this single-hearted girl who had sacrificed everything to a great love so humiliated and touched the heart of the venal courtesan that in spite of all she had at stake, she could not prevail upon herself to do Margherita this great wrong. So, finding that she knew not who the great lady was to whom Raphael was betrothed, Imperia told her of Maria Dovizio's expected visit, as of that of an old friend who had been interested in her as a child at Cetinale, and bade her if opportunity offered repeat to Maria the story exactly as she had just told it, for it would surely be to her advantage to do so.

When Imperia told me this I cried out, "But it will kill Maria, and you forget that Raphael is there and will not permit her thus to speak."

"Nay, my friend," Imperia answered. "Raphael is not there, for Agostino, on reflection, wisely decided not to risk the meeting, and gave him a holiday this morning to work in his own house. Never fear that Chigi will not leave Maria Dovizio alone with Margherita, or that her revelations will have any such deadly effect. Agostino is an adept in consolation, and Maria must long since have divined the truth."

My heart beat in a tumult of conflicting emotions. For an instant a wild, unreasoning hope overpowered all the rest. "Imperia," I exclaimed, "you shall not lose Agostino. I will surrender my chances with Maria to no man but Raphael. If in truth he has ceased to love her,--then, for all you think me mad in saying so, we may both, may all be happy yet."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Villa Madama]

But such joyous ending to lovers' woes is found only in the fictions of romancers. Certes I have often thought I could design a fairer web than that the fates weave for us.

Even as I spoke Imperia caught my arm and I drew rein, for we were nearing the gateway of Chigi's villa. A carriage was leaving the grounds, and as it pa.s.sed us we saw Maria Dovizio lying in a swoon in her uncle's arms. Chigi was not with them, for she had left his house apparently indifferent to all that she had seen or heard within it, and had succ.u.mbed only when beyond his view.

"Poor child," said Imperia, "you are not wounded so deeply as you fancy.

No, do not drive in, Giovanni, I have learned all I wished to know. In spite of her present despair Maria will enter those gates ere long a happy bride; but I shall never knock at them again. The end would have come soon in any event, for Agostino had ceased to love me, but he shall never boast that he cast me out."

I took her to her own house, and when Chigi learned that she had not returned with me he but shrugged his shoulders, for she had rightly divined his heart. I never saw her again, but I heard much, for Rome still rings with wild tales of her notoriously evil life. A nature hers that had much of good in it I bear witness, though sadly she mistook her way. She mistook it even when she tried to do a kindness to Margherita.

Shame and heart-break was the guerdon which that poor child received in return for her great devotion.

As for me, the glimpse I had caught of Maria's death-struck face so rankled in my soul through the long watches of that sleepless night that on the morrow, in anguished contrition, I confessed all that miserable story to Raphael.

When he knew how cruelly he had misjudged her he was smitten with such remorse that he could never forgive himself or take joy in life. For though he went to her at once and she forgave him freely, nay, strove to comfort him by protesting there was naught to forgive, she had suffered overmuch to endure the great joy of their reconciliation. Prattling of love and happiness and smiling still when she no longer had strength to utter his name, she peacefully died within his arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pope Leo X. at Raphael's Bier

From the painting by Pietro Michis. Permission of Franz Hanfstaengl]

It was Raphael's grief rather than, as reported, a fever taken in superintending archaeological excavations which truly caused his death on his thirty-seventh birthday, upon that Good Friday which neither you nor I, my Giulio, can ever forget.

Margherita told me that in his delirium he knew her not, but kissed her hands, calling her "Maria" and begging her forgiveness. To the poor girl he left by will ample support; but, by the same testament, he was buried by the side of Maria Dovizio, beneath whose name he caused to be chiselled the inscription, "The affianced wife of Raphael Santi, whom death deprived of a happy marriage."

CHAPTER III

A CELLINI CASKET

INTERLUDE

The trellis that once shut the forest trees From the fair flowers, all torn and broken is, Though still the lily's scent is on the breeze, And the rose clasps the broken images.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

Neglected but not ruinous, its marbles mossy, its once unrivalled garden invaded by sweet wild-flower banditti which run riot among the gentle roses, its fountains dry, their cracks and crannies the homes of basking lizards, its charming loggia trodden only by enthusiasts for whom every spot touched by the genius of Raphael is a shrine of pilgrimage--the Villa Madama, though appealing in its desertion, is not a melancholy solitude.