The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

a man in my way of life never forgets a face, least of all a benefactor's. But thou knowest I seldom go abroad by daylight.”

      Teresa sighed. “And how long is it to be so, Lodovico?”

      “Till some cavalier passes his sword through me. They will not let a poor fellow like me take to any honest trade.”

      Pietro Vanucci was one of those who bear prosperity worse than adversity.

      Having been ignominiously ejected for late hours by their old landlady, and meeting Gerard in the street, he greeted him warmly, and soon after took up his quarters in the same house.

      He brought with him a lad called Andrea, who ground his colours, and was his pupil, and also his model, being a youth of rare beauty, and as sharp as a needle.

      Pietro had not quite forgotten old times, and professed a warm friendship for Gerard.

      Gerard, in whom all warmth of sentiment seemed extinct, submitted coldly to the other's friendship.

      And a fine acquaintance it was. This Pietro was not only a libertine, but half a misanthrope, and an open infidel.

      And so they ran in couples, with mighty little in common. O, rare phenomenon!

      One day, when Gerard had undermined his health, and taken the bloom off his beauty, and run through most of his money, Vanucci got up a gay party to mount the Tiber in a boat drawn by buffaloes. Lorenzo de' Medici had imported these creatures into Florence about three years before. But they were new in Rome, and nothing would content this beggar on horseback, Vanucci, but being drawn by the brutes up the Tiber.

      Each libertine was to bring a lady and she must be handsome, or he be fined. But the one that should contribute the loveliest was to be crowned with laurel, and voted a public benefactor. Such was their reading of “Vir bonus est quis?” They got a splendid galley, and twelve buffaloes. And all the libertines and their female accomplices assembled by degrees at the place of embarkation. But no Gerard.

      They waited for him some time, at first patiently, then impatiently.

      Vanucci excused him. “I heard him say he had forgotten to provide himself with a fardingale. Comrades, the good lad is hunting for a beauty fit to take rank among these peerless dames. Consider the difficulty, ladies, and be patient!”

      At last Gerard was seen at some distance with a female in his hand.

      “She is long enough,” said one of her sex, criticising her from afar.

      “Gemini! what steps she takes,” said another. “Oh! it is wise to hurry into good company,” was Pietro's excuse.

      But when the pair came up, satire was choked.

      Gerard's companion was a peerless beauty; she extinguished the boat-load, as stars the rising sun. Tall, but not too tall; and straight as a dart, yet supple as a young panther. Her face a perfect oval, her forehead white, her cheeks a rich olive with the eloquent blood mantling below and her glorious eyes fringed with long thick silken eyelashes, that seemed made to sweep up sensitive hearts by the half dozen. Saucy red lips, and teeth of the whitest ivory.

      The women were visibly depressed by this wretched sight; the men in ecstasies; they received her with loud shouts and waving of caps, and one enthusiast even went down on his knees upon the boat's gunwale, and hailed her of origin divine. But his chere amie pulling his hair for it—and the goddess giving him a little kick—cotemporaneously, he lay supine; and the peerless creature frisked over his body without deigning him a look, and took her seat at the prow. Pietro Vanucci sat in a sort of collapse, glaring at her, and gaping with his mouth open like a dying cod-fish.

      The drover spoke to the buffaloes, the ropes tightened, and they moved up stream.

      “What think ye of this new beef, mesdames?”

      “We ne'er saw monsters so viley ill-favoured; with their nasty horns that make one afeard, and, their foul nostrils cast up into the air. Holes be they; not nostrils.”

      “Signorina, the beeves are a present from Florence the beautiful Would ye look a gift beef i' the nose?”

      “They are so dull,” objected a lively lady. “I went up Tiber twice as fast last time with but five mules and an ass.”

      “Nay, that is soon mended,” cried a gallant, and jumping ashore he drew his sword, and despite the remonstrances of the drivers, went down the dozen buffaloes goading them.

      They snorted and whisked their tails, and went no faster, at which the boat-load laughed loud and long: finally he goaded a patriarch bull, who turned instantly on the sword, sent his long horns clean through the spark, and with a furious jerk of his prodigious neck sent him flying over his head into the air. He described a bold parabola and fell sitting, and unconsciously waving his glittering blade, into the yellow Tiber. The laughing ladies screamed and wrung their hands, all but Gerard's fair. She uttered something very like an oath, and seizing the helm steered the boat out, and the gallant came up sputtering, griped the gunwale, and was drawn in dripping.

      He glared round him confusedly. “I understand not that,” said he, a little peevishly; puzzled, and therefore, it would seem, discontented. At which, finding he was by some strange accident not slain, his doublet being perforated, instead of his body, they began to laugh again louder than ever.

      “What are ye cackling at?” remonstrated the spark, “I desire to know how 'tis that one moment a gentleman is out yonder a pricking of African beef, and the next moment—”

      Gerard's lady. “Disporting in his native stream.”

      “Tell him not, a soul of ye,” cried Vanucci. “Let him find out 's own riddle.”

      Confound ye all. I might puzzle my brains till doomsday, I should ne'er find it out. Also, where is my sword?

      Gerard's lady. “Ask Tiber! Your best way, signor, will be to do it over again; and, in a word, keep pricking of Afric's beef, till your mind receives light. So shall you comprehend the matter by degrees, as lawyers mount heaven, and buffaloes Tiber.”

      Here a chevalier remarked that the last speaker transcended the sons of Adam as much in wit as she did the daughters of Eve in beauty.

      At which, and indeed at all their compliments, the conduct of Pietro Vanucci was peculiar. That signor had left off staring, and gaping bewildered; and now sat coiled up snake-like, on each, his mouth muffled, and two bright eyes fixed on the' lady, and twinkling and scintillating most comically.

      He did not appear to interest or amuse her in return. Her glorious eyes and eyelashes swept him calmly at times, but scarce distinguished him from the benches and things.

      Presently the unanimity of the party suffered a momentary check.

      Mortified by the attention the cavaliers paid to Gerard's companion, the ladies began to pick her to pieces sotto voce, and audibly.

      The lovely girl then showed that, if rich in beauty, she was poor in feminine tact. Instead of revenging herself like a true woman through the men, she permitted herself to overhear, and openly retaliate on her detractors.

      “There is not one of you that wears Nature's colours,” said she. “Look here,” and she pointed rudely in one's face. “This is the beauty that is to be bought in every shop. Here is cerussa, here is stibium, and here purpurissum. Oh, I know the articles bless you, I use them every day—but not on my face, no thank you.”

      Here Vanucci's eyes twinkled themselves nearly out of sight.

      “Why, your lips are coloured, and the very veins in your forehead: not a charm but would come off with a wet towel. And look at your great coarse black hair like a horse's tail, drugged and stained to look like tow. And then your bodies are as false as your heads and your cheeks, and your hearts I trow. Look at your padded bosoms, and your wooden heeled chopines to raise your little stunted limbs up and deceive the world. Skinny dwarfs ye are, cushioned and stultified into great fat giants. Aha, mesdames, well is it said of you, grande—di legni: grosse—di