“This ring, Madonna,” said I, “was
given me by the Lord Cesare Borgia, and was to have
proved a talisman to open wide for me the door to fortune.
It did better service than that, Madonna. It
was the talisman that saved you from your pursuers
that day at Cagli, three years ago.”
“You remind me, Lazzaro,” she cried, “of
how much you have sacrificed in my service.
Yours must be a very noble nature that will do so much
to serve a helpless lady without any hope of guerdon.”
“Nay, nay,” I answered lightly, “you
must not make so much of it. It would never
have sorted with my inclinations to have turned man-at-arms.
This ring, Madonna, that once has served you, I beg
that you will keep, for it may serve you again.”
“I could not, Lazzaro! I could not!”
she exclaimed, recoiling, yet without any show of
deeming presumptuous my words or of being offended
by them.
“If you would make me the reward that you say
I have earned, you will do this for me. It will
make me happier, Madonna. Take it”—I
thrust it into her unwilling hand—“and
if ever you should need me send it back to me.
That ring and the name of the place where you abide
by the lips of the messenger you choose, and with
a glad heart, as fast as horse can bear me, shall
I ride to serve you once again.”
“In such a spirit, yes,” said she.
“I take it willingly, to treasure it as a buckler
against danger, since by means of it I can bring you
to my aid in time of peril.”
“Madonna, do not overestimate my powers,”
I besought her. “I would have you see
in me no more than I am. But it sometimes happens
that the mouse may aid the lion.”
“And when I need the lion to aid the mouse,
my good Lazzaro, I will send for you.”
There were tears in her voice, and her eyes were very
bright.
“Addio, Lazzaro,” she murmured brokenly.
“May God and His saints protect you.
I will pray for you, and I shall hope to see you again
some day, my friend.”
“Addio, Madonna!” was all that I could
trust myself to say ere I fled from her presence that
she might not see my deep emotion, nor hear the sobs
that were threatening to betray the anguish that was
ravaging my soul.
THE OGRE OF CESENA
MADONNA’S SUMMONS
However great the part that my mother—sainted
woman that she was—may have played in my
life, she nowise enters into the affairs of this chronicle,
so that it would be an irrelevance and an impertinence
to introduce her into these pages. Of the joy
with which she welcomed me to the little home near
Biancomonte, in which the earnings of Boccadoro the
Fool had placed her, it could interest you but little
to read in detail, nor could it interest you to know
of the gentle patience with which she cheered and
humoured me during the period that I sojourned there,
tilling the little plot she owned, reaping and garnering
like any born villano. With a woman’s quick
intuition she guessed perhaps the canker that was
eating at my heart, and with a mother’s blessed
charity she sought to soothe and mitigate my pain.
