rapture of the renaissance, penetrating like an April song into these newly reclaimed lands. The wind blew from Florence, and all the peaceful vales, so long trodden into a bloody mire, were awakening to the ecstasy of the Promise. That men interpreted according to their lights—lights burning fast and passionate in most places, but in a few quiet and holy. The breed of German bandits, of foreign mercenaries, was swept away. Gone was the whole warring race of the Visconti, and in its place the peasant Sforza had set a guard about the land of his fierce adoption, that he might till and graft and prosper in peace. Italy had asserted itself the inheritance of its children, the Court of God's Vicegerent, the chosen land of Love's gospel. That, too, men interpreted according to their lights. 'We are all the vineyard of Rome,' said the little Parablist. Alas! he thought Rome the Holy of Holies, and his father a saint. But his father, who adored him, had committed him, with his blessing, to this mad romance! Such were the paradoxes of the Gospel of Love.

Beatrice spoke no more, and they rode on in silence. About evening they came into a pleasant dell, where there was a level sward among rocks; and a little stream, running down a stairway of stones, dropped laughing, like a child going to bed, into the quiet of a rushy pool. Great chestnuts clothed the slopes, and made a mantle, powdered with stars, to the setting sun. It was a very nest for love.

Messer Lanti, halting, commanded the green tents to be pitched on the grass. Then, with a stormy scowl and a mockery of courtesy, he came to dismount his lady.

'Now,' says he, as he got her aside, 'if I do not show thy saint to be a petticoat, my hug of thee is like to prove a bear's.'

'What!' she said, amazed: 'Bernardo?'

He ground his teeth.

'I do not mark his pink cheeks for nothing.'

'Well, an he be,' she retorted coldly, 'I am liker, than if he be not, to lose my gallant.'

'That depends,' he growled, 'upon whom your fickleship honours with that title'; and he strode away, calling roughly to Bembo, 'Art for a bath, saint, before supper?'

'Why, gladly, Carlo,' said the boy, 'so we may be private.'

They went down to the pool together, and stripped and entered. Lanti saw a Ganymede, and was not pleased thereat. He came to supper in a very bad humour, which no innocent artifice of his guest could allay. The kill that day of their falcons—partridges, served in their own feathers, and stuffed with artichokes and truffles—was tough; the pears and peaches were sour; the confetti savourless and of stale design. He rated his cook, cursed his servitors, and drank more than he ate. When the disagreeable meal was ended, he strode ruffling away, saying he desired his own sole company, which it were well that all should respect. Bembo saw him go, with a sigh and a smile.

'Good, honest soul,' quoth he, 'that already wakes to the reckoning!'

Madam misunderstood him, and pressed a little closer, with a happy echo of his sigh. Her eyes were soft with wine and passion. She had no precedent for doubting her influence on the moment she chose to make her own.

'The reckoning!' she murmured. 'But I am wax in thy hands, pretty saint. Shalt confess me, and take what toll thou wilt of my sins?'

Her hand settled light as a bird on his.

'Sing to me, Bernardino,' she whispered wooingly, 'sith the cloud is gone from our moon, and I am in the will to love.'

He shot one little startled glance her way; then slowly slung round his lute, and, touching the strings pensively, melted into the following reproach:—

'Speak low! What do you ask, false love? Speak low!

Sin cannot speak too low.

The night-wind stealing to thy bosom,

The dead star, dropping like a blossom,

Less voiceless be than thou!

Low, lower yet, false love, if to confess

What guilt, what shameful need?

God, who can hear the budding grass,

And flake kiss flake in the snowy pass,

Your secret else will heed.

Ah! thou art silent, not from love, but fear,

And true love knows no fear.

Creeping, soft-footed, in the dust,

It is not love, but conscious lust,

Which dreads that God shall hear.'

 

He rose swiftly beside her, while she sat, dumbly biting a lock of her own hair. The frown of outraged passion was in her eyes. What had the fool dared in rejecting her!

To touch the perfumed essence of sin with a rebuke which was like a caress—that, pace his monks, was Bernardo's rendering of the Gospel; and who shall say that, in its girlish tenderness, its earnest emotionalism, it was not the most dangerous method of all? Not every adulterous woman is fit to meet the gentle fate of Christ's. It is not always well to doctor too much kindness with more. Surfeit, surely, is not safely cured, unless by a God, with sugar-plums.

'For shame!' he said quietly; 'for shame! Christ weeps for thee!'

She looked up with a frozen, insolent smile.

'Yet there is no tear in all the night, prophet.'

He raised his hand. A star trailed down the sky, and disappeared behind the trees. It startled her for a moment, and in that moment he was gone, striding into the moonlight. She saw a sword gleam in the shadow of the tent.

'Carlo!' she hissed; 'Carlo! follow and kill him!'

Messer Lanti came out of his ambush, sheathing his blade. His teeth grinned in the white glow. He sauntered up to her, and stood looking down, hand on hip.

'Not for all the bona-robas in the world,' he said, and struck his hilt lightly. 'This I dedicate to his service from this day. Let who crosses my little saint beware it.'

He burst out laughing, not fierce, but low.

'Thou art well served in thy confessor, woman. Wert never dealt a fitter penance.'

It was significant enough that he had no word but mockery for her discomfiture. He might have spitted the seduced on a point of gallantry; for the siren, she was sacred through her calling.

In the meanwhile Bernardo had left the green, had passed the low, roistering camp pitched at a respectful distance beyond, and had thrown himself upon his knees in the wide fields.

'Sweet Jesus,' he prayed, 'O justify Thy Kingdom