This love matured slowly, for like the best fruit it needed time, a change of seasons, the blessing of sunlight and the scent of rain, a series of dawns in which they would walk through the dewy garden among bushes of flowering may, conversations where a single word might suddenly light up the landscape locked in her tender, cloistered heart, when it would be like looking into the past and seeing ruined castles, vanished festivals where traps with gilded wheels rolled down the paths of neat, properly tended gardens past people in brightly colored clothes with harsh, powerful, and wicked profiles. There was in Francesca something of the past. She was fifteen but it was as if she had stepped out of a different century, as if the Sun King had seen her one morning on the lawn at Versailles playing with a hoop covered in colored paper, and had summoned her to him. There was a kind of radiance in her eyes that suggested women of long ago, women who would risk their lives for love. But it was he that had risked his life, he the suitor, the soldier of misfortune, when his old, terrifyingly rich, and disturbingly aristocratic rival pierced his bare chest just above the heart. Francesca watched the duel from an upstairs window. She stood calmly, her unbound hair hanging in black tendrils over her soft youthful shoulders, wearing the nightgown that the duke of Parma had ordered for her from Lyon a few days earlier, for he had personally taken charge of his future fiancée’s trousseau, stuffing heaps of lace, silk, and linen garments into individual boxes. Calmly she stood in the moonlight in a window on the second story, her arms folded across her chest, watching the two men, the old one and the younger one, who were prepared to shed their blood for her. But why? she might have wondered in that moment. Neither had received any favors, neither was taking anything away from the other, but there they were, leaping about in the silvery light, their bodies bare from the waist up, the moonlight flashing off the blades of their swords, the steel chiming like crystal goblets, and the duke’s wig slightly askew in the heat of the contest so that Francesca was genuinely afraid that this noble encounter might result in His Excellency of Parma losing his artificial mane. Later she saw the younger man fall. She watched carefully to see if the loser would rise. She tightened the silk scarf above her breasts. She waited a little longer. Then she married the duke of Parma.
“He wants to see me!” muttered Giacomo. “What does he want of me?” He vaguely remembered a rumor he had once heard that His Excellency had inherited some lands near Bolzano and a house in the hills. He felt no anger thinking about the duke. The man had fought well. There was something lordly and absolute about the way he had whisked Francesca away from the house of dreams, spiders, and bats, and Giacomo could not help but admire his aristocratic hauteur, even now, when he could no longer recollect the precise color of Francesca’s eyes. “The seduction was a failure,” he noted and stared into the fire. “The seduction was a failure, but the failure may also have been my greatest triumph. Francesca never became my lover. It might have been stupid and oversensitive of me but I felt only pity for her. She was the first and the last of those for whom I felt such pity. It might have been a great mistake, maybe even an unforgivable mistake, there’s no denying or forgetting that, but there was something exceptional about Francesca. It would have been good to have lived with her, to drink our morning chocolate together in bed, to visit Paris and show her the king and the flea-circus in the market at St. Germain, to warm a bedpan for her when her stomach ached, to buy her skirts, stockings, jewels, and fashionable hats and to grow old with her as the light fades over cities, landscapes, adventures, and life itself. I think I felt that when she stood before me in the garden under the blue sky. That is why I fled from her!” The thought had only just occurred to him, but he took it calmly. He had to face the laws of his own life. “That’s not the kind of thing I do,” he said to himself, but he threw aside the pen, stood up, and felt the restless pounding of his heart.
Perhaps it pounded only because he was now reminded that the gossip had been right, that Francesca and the duke of Parma were living nearby. For all he knew they might have been his very neighbors or occupying some palazzo in the main square, since it was likely, after all, that in winter they would leave their country house and move into town. And now that he recalled his ridiculous failure and remembered the melancholy lingering sense of triumph that accompanied it, he couldn’t help feeling that the morning that Francesca saw him lying wounded on the lawn of the garden of the Tuscan palazzo did not signify the end of the affair, that it hadn’t actually settled anything. You cannot after all settle things with a duel and a little bloodshed. The duke, having wounded him, was courteous, generous, and noble in bearing, and had personally lifted him into the coach. Even half-conscious as he was, he was amazed at the old man’s strength when he picked him up! It was the duke in person who had driven the horses that bore the invalid to Florence, driving carefully, stopping at every crossroads, dabbing with a silk handkerchief at the blood issuing from him, and all this without saying anything, confident in the knowledge that actions spoke louder than words. It was a long ride by night from Pistoia to Florence. The journey was tiring and he was bleeding badly, the stars twinkling distantly above him with a peculiar brightness. He was half sitting, half lying in the back seat and, in his fevered condition, could see the sky in a faint and foggy fashion. All he could see in fact was the sky full of stars against the dark carpet of the firmament, and the slim straight figure of the duke keeping the horses on a short rein. “There,” said the duke once they had arrived at the gates of Florence in the early dawn. “I shall take you to the best surgeon. You will have everything you need. Once you are well you will leave the region. Nor will you ever come back. Should you ever return,” he added, a little more loudly, without moving, the reins still in his hand, “I will either kill you myself or have you killed, make no mistake about it.” He spoke in an easy, friendly, perfectly natural manner. Then they drove into the city. The duke of Parma required no reply.
Theatrics
Finally he got down to it and wrote the letter to Signor Bragadin. It was a fine letter, the kind a writer would write, beginning “Father!” and ending “I kiss your feet,” and, over six pages, he related everything in considerable detaiclass="underline" the escape, the journey, Bolzano, the duke of Parma, his plans, and he mentioned Mensch, too, the secretary, money changer, and usurer, to whom money might be sent. He needed more than usual, if possible, or, better still, a letter of credit he could take to Munich and Paris, because his journey would lead him far afield now and it would be a great adventure that would test him to the limit, so it was possible that this letter might be the last opportunity to say goodbye to his friend and father, for who knew when the hearts of the Venetian authorities would soften and forgive their faithless, fugitive son? The question was rhetorical, so he labored to blend bombastic phrases with hard practical content. What could I, the exiled fugitive, offer Venice, that proud, powerful, and ruthless city? he asked, and immediately answered: “I offer my pen, my sword, my blood, and my life.” Then, as if realizing that this did not amount to much, he referred to his understanding of places and human affairs and to his store of ready information on everything and everybody that the Holy Inquisition might wish to know. Being a true Venetian, he knew that the republic had no need either of his pen or of his sword, but that it could always use sharp ears, smooth tongues, and well-trained eyes; that what it required was clever, well-born agents who were capable of observing and betraying Venetians’ secrets.