Rafael Sabatini

“ Filippo Maria raised his beady eyes. They kindled as they observed her, raking her generous yet supple lines from head to foot. It was not the first time that the watchful Bellarion had seen him look so at Facino's lady, nor the first time that he had seen her wantonly display herself to provoke that unmistakable regard. She bent now to the board, and Filippo's smouldering glance was upon the warm ivory beauty of her neck, and the swell of her breast revealed by the low-cut gown.
'It is human to despise what we do not understand,' Bellarion was answering her. ”

“ She gasped now in her amazement. 'With the world at your feet if you choose! To renounce all? To go back to the chill loneliness and joylessness of monkhood? Bellarion, you are mad.'
'Or else sane, madonna. Who shall judge?'
'And love, Bellarion? Is there no love in the world? Does that not lend reality to all these things that you deem shams?'
'Does it heal the vanity of the world?' he cried. 'It is a great power, as I perceive. For love men will go mad, they will become beasts: they will murder and betray.'
'Heretic!'
That startled him a little. ”

“ Facino turned livid with passion. A tall fellow among his captains, very noble-looking in cloth of silver under a blue houppelande, laughed aloud. The pale, bulging eyes of Gian Maria sought him out venomously.
'You laugh, knave?' he snarled, and came to his feet, outraged by the indignity. 'What is here for laughter?'
Bellarion laughed again as he answered: 'Yourself, Lord Duke, who in yourself are nothing. You are Duke of Milan at present by the grace of God and the favour of Facino Cane. ”

“ Least of all did he like the looks of Barbaresco who confronted him, oily and falsely suave of manner.
'Where have you been, Master Bellarion?'
He realised that he had need of his wits.
He looked round with surprise and contempt in his stare.
'Oh, yes, you're conspirators to the life,' he told them. 'You see a spy in every neighbour, a betrayal in every act. Oh, you have eyes; but no wit to inform your vision. God help those who trust you! ”

“ By contrast with that definite, peaceful purpose, this world of blindly striving, struggling, ever-restless men, who addressed themselves to their span of mortal existence as if it were to endure forever, was no better, no more purposeful, and of no more merit in its ultimate achievement, than a clot of writhing earthworms.
Thus Messer Bellarion, riding by sparkling waters in the dappled shade of poplars standing stark against the polished azure of the summer sky, and the very beauty with which God had dressed the world made man's defilement of it the more execrable in his eyes. ”

“ Can you claim nothing for yourself?'
'Valeria!'
She stooped to kiss his lips. 'My very hate of you in all these years was love dissembled. Because my spirit leapt to yours, almost from that first evening in the garden there, did it so wound and torture me to discover baseness in you. I should have trusted my own heart, rather than my erring senses, Bellarion. You warned me early that I am not good at inference. I have suffered as those suffer who are in rebellion against themselves.'
He pondered her, very pale and sorrowful. ”

“ But as the little company rode in the bright moonlight down the borgo of Porta Giovia, out of a narrow side street emerged a bulky man, almost dragged along by three great hounds straining at the leash and yelping eagerly, their noses to the ground. A slender figure in a cloak followed after him, calling petulantly as he came:
'Not so fast, Squarcia! Body of God! Not so fast, I say. I am out of breath!'
There was no mistaking that strident voice. It was the Duke, himself, and close upon his heels came six armed lackeys to make a bodyguard. ”

“ To view those frescoes came the Lady Valeria alone, leaving Monna Dionara to loiter on the bridge. Within the temple her highness found the bedaubed young painter dangling his legs from a scaffold and flourishing a brush in one hand, a mahlstick in the other. She looked at him in waiting silence. He did not try her patience.
'Madonna, you do not recognise me.' With the sleeve of his smock he wiped the daub of paint from across his features. But already his voice had made him known.
'Messer Bellarion! ”

“ The acclamations of the people lining the streets brought tears to the eyes of the Princess and a flush to the cheeks of her brother, and there were tears in her eyes when she sought Bellarion in his room to abase herself in the admission of her grievous misjudgment and to sue pardon for it.
'Your letter, sir,' she told him, 'touched me more deeply than anything I can remember in all my life. Think me a fool if you must for what is past, but not an ingrate. My brother shall prove our gratitude so soon as ever it lies within his power.'
'Madonna, I ask no proofs of it, nor need them. ”

“ Bellarion looked down on the grovelling, slobbering wretch with an infinite compassion in his soul. But there was no sign of it on his countenance or in his voice.
'You have but to answer my question, sir, and you shall have your wish. You shall be hanged without further suffering. Why did the Duke torture you, and why did the torture cease when it did? To what importunities did you yield?'
'Already you have guessed it, my lord. That is why you use me so! But it is not just. As God's my witness, it is not just. What am I but a poor man caught in the toils of the evil desires of others? ”

“ Filippo Maria stared unbelieving at the board. The lines of his mouth drooped, and his great pendulous cheeks trembled. Almost he seemed on the point of tears.
'God rot you, Bellarion! Always, always is it the same! I plan and build and whilst you seem to do no more than defend, you are preparing a death-stroke in an unexpected quarter.' Between jest and earnest he added: 'You slippery rogue! Always you defeat me by a trick.'
The Princess Valeria looked up from her embroidery on the word. Bellarion caught the movement and the glance in his direction. ”

“ The Visconti may never have feared man; but most of them had feared God. Gian Maria was not even of these.
'We'll test this miracle, by God!' he cried. 'Loose me two more dogs, you fool.'
'Highness ...' Squarcia was beginning a protest.
'Loose two more dogs, or I'll perform a miracle on you.'
Squarcia's fear of the Duke was even greater than his fear of the supernatural. With fumbling, trembling fingers he did as he was bidden. Two more dogs were launched against Bellarion, incited by the Duke himself with his strident voice and a cut of his whip across their haunches. ”

“ Bellarion smiled, a singularly sweet smile that had power to draw men's love and lead them into agreement with him.
'Is it not possible that those who invented the devil may have studied divinity in Persia, where the creed obtains that powers of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, strive perpetually for mastery of the world? Surely, otherwise, they would have remembered that if the devil exists, God must have created him, which in itself is blasphemy, for God can create no evil.'
Aghast, the Abbot descended at a stride from the theological to the practical. ”

“ A bridgeless nose broad as a negro's splayed across his fresh-complexioned face, immediately above the enormous purple lips of his shapeless mouth. Round, pale-coloured eyes bulged on the very surface of his face; his brow was sloping and shallow and his chin receded. From his handsome father he inherited only the red-gold hair that had distinguished Gian Galeazzo.
Bellarion stared at him, fascinated by that unsurpassable ugliness, and, meeting the stare, a frown descended between the thick sandy eyebrows. ”

“ I have been your friend, Bellarion—aye, and more. But that is over now.'
'Madonna, if I have offended ...'
'Let be.' She became imperious. 'Listen now. You must not continue with my Lord Facino because where he goes thither must I go, too.'
'You ask me to take my dismissal from his service?' He was incredulous.
'I beg it ... a favour, Bellarion. It is yourself have brought things to the pass where I may not meet you without humiliation. And continue daily to meet you I will not.' Her ready wicked temper flared up. ”

“ It is this very honesty you abuse in your present misjudgment of me. Oh! Me miserable!' It was the cry of a wounded soul. She sank down again into her chair. Self-pity welled in her to drown all else. 'I am to be starved of everything. If ever woman was pitiable, I am that woman; and you, Bellarion, you of all living men that know my heart, can find for me only cruelty and reproach!'
It moved him not at all. The plea was too inconsequent and illogical, and the display of a lack of reason repelled him like a physical defect.
'Your plaint, madonna, is that Facino will not make you a duchess. ”

“ Such knowledge gives us patience. A man may contain his soul for anything that is assured. It is the doubtful only that makes him fret and fume.'
'And you never doubted?' she asked him, wondering.
'I am too sure of myself,' he answered.
'And God knows you have cause to be, more cause than any man of whom ever I heard tell. Do you know, Lord Prince, that in these five years there is no evil I have not believed of you? I even deemed you a coward, on the word of that vain boaster Carmagnola.'
'He was none so wrong, by his own lights. I am not a fighter of his pattern. ”

“ Dog will not eat dog. That is all the magic you have here.'
'An evasion,' said Lonate, like one who thinks aloud.
The Duke flashed him a sidelong glance of irritation. 'Do I need to be told?' Then to Bellarion: 'This is a trick, rogue. God's Blood! I am not to be fooled. What have you done to my dogs?'
'Deserved their love,' said Bellarion, waving a hand to the great beasts that still gambolled about him.
'Aye, aye, but how?'
'How? Does any one know how love is deserved of man or beast? Loose the rest of your pack. There's not a dog in it will do more than lick my hands. ”

“ Bellarion tapped his shoulder, and he tapped hard. 'I do not like you, Messer de Vignate. You're a fool, and the world is troubled already by too many of your kind. So little am I venal that from a sense of duty to mankind I might send your head to the Duke of Milan you betrayed, and so forgo the hundred thousand ducats ransom you're to pay to me.'
Vignate's mouth fell open.
'Say nothing more,' Bellarion admonished him. 'What you've said so far has already cost you fifty thousand ducats. Insolence is a costly luxury in a prisoner.' He turned to the attendant Burgundians. ”

“ He had been reared at the splendid court of his cousin the Duke of Milan, that Gian Galeazzo whom Francesco da Carrara had dubbed 'the Great Viper,' in allusion as much to the man's nature as to the colubrine emblem of his house. Theodore had observed and no doubt admired the subtle methods by which Gian Galeazzo went to work against those whom he would destroy. If he lacked the godlike power of rendering them mad, at least he possessed the devilish craft of rendering them by their own acts detestable, so that in the end it was their own kin or their own subjects who pulled them down. ”

“ You'll seduce from me the best among my captains to turn his weapons against me in your service! If Bellarion had been an ingrate like yourself, if he had not been staunch and loyal, whom you dare to call a Judas, I might have known nothing of this until too late to guard myself. But I know you now, you dastardly usurper, and, by the Bones of God, your days are numbered. You'll prepare for war on Facino Cane, will you? Prepare, then, for, by the Passion, that war is coming to you.'
Theodore stood there white to the lips, between his two dismayed gentlemen, and said no word in answer. ”

“ Here at Abbiategrasso, away from turbulence, and able for the first time since Gian Galeazzo's death to live without being perpetually on guard, he confessed himself happier than he could remember to have been.
'If this were life,' he said to Bellarion one evening as they sauntered through the parklands where the red deer grazed, 'a man might be content.'
'Content,' said Bellarion, 'is stagnation. And man was not made for that. I am coming to perceive it. The peace of the convent is as the peace of the pasture to the ox.'
Facino smiled. ”

“ Then along Borgo Nuovo, a long street in which palace stood shoulder to shoulder with hovel, and which, though really narrow by comparison with other streets of Milan, appeared generously broad to Bellarion. The people moving in this thoroughfare were as oddly assorted as the dwellings that flanked it. Sedately well-nourished, opulent men of the merchant class, glittering nobles attended by armed lackeys with blazons on their breasts, some mounted, but more on foot, were mingled here with aproned artisans and with gaunt, ragged wretches of both sexes whose aspect bespoke want and hunger. ”