James Branch Caball The Certain Hour

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allowable to prefer them to the sickly simplicity of those socalled poems
that embroider with old faded wools upon the canvas of wornout truisms,
trite, trivial and idiotically
The Certain Hour
BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER
19
sentimental patterns."
Let me have dames and damsels richly clad
To feed and tend my mirth, Singing by day and night to make me glad;
Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth
Fill'd with the strife of birds, With watersprings, and beasts that house i'
the earth.
Let me seem Solomon for lore of words, Samson for strength, for beauty
Absalom.
Knights as my serfs be given;
And as I will, let music go and come;
Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven.
ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI. Madrigal, from D. G. Rossetti's version.
BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER
Graciosa was Balthazar's youngest child, a white, slim girl with violet eyes
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and strange pale hair which had the color and glitter of stardust. "Some day
at court," her father often thought complacently, "she, too, will make a
good match." He was a necessitous lord, a smiling, supple man who had
already marketed two daughters to his advantage. But Graciosa's time was
not yet mature in the year of grace 1533, for the girl was not quite
sixteen. So Graciosa remained in Balthazar's big cheerless house and was
tutored in all needful accomplishments. She was proficient in the making of
preserves and unguents, could play the harpsichord and the virginals
acceptably, could embroider an altarcloth to admiration, and, in spite of a
trivial lameness in walking, could dance a coranto or a saraband against any
woman between two seas.
Now to the north of Balthazar's home stood a tall forest, overhanging both
the highway and the river whose windings the highway followed. Graciosa was
very often to be encountered upon the outskirts of these woods. She loved
the forest, whose tranquillity bred dreams, but was already a woman in so far
that she found it more interesting to watch the highway. Sometimes it would
be deserted save for small purple butterflies which fluttered about as if in
continuous indecision, and rarely ascended more than a foot above the ground.
But people passed at intervalsas now a page, who was a notably fine fellow,
clothed in ash colored gray, with slashed, puffed sleeves, and having a
heron's feather in his cap; or a Franciscan with his gown tucked up so that
you saw how the veins on his naked feet stood out like the carvings on a
vase; or a farmer leading a calf; or a gentleman in a mantle of squirrel's
fur riding beside a wonderful proud lady, whose tiny hat was embroidered
with pearls. It was all very interesting to watch, it was like turning over
the leaves of a book written in an unknown tongue and guessing what the
pictures meant, because these people were intent upon their private
avocations, in which you had no part, and you would never see them any more.
Then destiny took a hand in the affair and Guido came. He reined his gray
horse at the sight of her sitting by the wayside and deferentially inquired
how far it might be to the nearest inn. Graciosa told him. He thanked her
and rode on. That was all, but the appraising glance of this sedate and
handsome burgher obscurely troubled the girl afterward.
Next day he came again. He was a jewelmerchant, he told her, and he thought
it within the stretch of possibility that my lord Balthazar's daughter might
wish to purchase some of his wares. She viewed them with admiration,
chaffered thriftily, and finally bought a topaz, dug from Mount Zabarca,
Guido assured her, which rendered its wearer immune to terrors of any kind.
The Certain Hour
BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER
20
Very often afterward these two met on the outskirts of the forest as Guido
rode between the coast and the hillcountry about his vocation. Sometimes he
laughingly offered her a bargain, on other days he paused to exhibit a
notable gem which he had procured for this or that wealthy amateur. Count
Eglamore, the young
Duke's favorite yonder at court, bought most of them, it seemed. "The
nobles complain against this upstart
Eglamore very bitterly," said Guido, "but we merchants have no quarrel with
him. He buys too lavishly."
"I trust I shall not see Count Eglamore when I go to court," said Graciosa,
meditatively; "and, indeed, by that time, my father assures me, some honest
gentleman will have contrived to cut the throat of this abominable
Eglamore." Her father's people, it should be premised, had been at bitter
feud with the favorite ever since he detected and punished the conspiracy of
the Marquis of Cibo, their kinsman. Then Graciosa continued:
"Nevertheless, I shall see many beautiful sights when I am taken to court. .
. . And the Duke, too, you tell me, is an amateur of gems."
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"Eh, madonna, I wish that you could see his jewels," cried Guido, growing
fervent; and he lovingly catalogued a host of lapidary marvels.
"I hope that I shall see these wonderful jewels when I go to court," said
Graciosa wistfully.
"Duke Alessandro," he returned, his dark eyes strangely mirthful, "is, as I
take it, a catholic lover of beauty in all its forms. So he will show you
his gems, very assuredly, and, worse still, he will make verses in your
honor. For it is a preposterous feature of Duke Alessandro's character that
he is always making songs."
"Oh, and such strange songs as they are, too, Guido. Who does not know
them?"
"I am not the best possible judge of his verses' merit," Guido estimated,
drily. "But I shall never understand how any singer at all came to be
locked in such a prison. I fancy that at times the paradox puzzles even
Duke
Alessandro."
"And is he as handsome as people report?"
Then Guido laughed a little. "Tastes differ, of course. But I think your
father will assure you, madonna, that no duke possessing such a zealous tax
collector as Count Eglamore was ever in his lifetime considered of repulsive
person." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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