And what of the man, how shall we know him?
[reading still] ’I will wear a violet cloak
with a silver falcon broidered on the shoulder.’
A brave attire, Ascanio.
I’d sooner have my leathern jerkin. And
you think he will tell you of your father?
Why, yes! It is a month ago now, you remember;
I was in the vineyard, just at the corner nearest
the road, where the goats used to get in, a man rode
up and asked me was my name Guido, and gave me this
letter, signed ‘Your Father’s Friend,’
bidding me be here to-day if I would know the secret
of my birth, and telling me how to recognise the writer!
I had always thought old Pedro was my uncle, but
he told me that he was not, but that I had been left
a child in his charge by some one he had never since
seen.
And you don’t know who your father is?
No.
No recollection of him even?
None, Ascanio, none.
[laughing] Then he could never have boxed your ears
so often as my father did mine.
[smiling] I am sure you never deserved it.
Never; and that made it worse. I hadn’t
the consciousness of guilt to buoy me up. What
hour did you say he fixed?
Noon. [Clock in the Cathedral strikes.]
It is that now, and your man has not come. I
don’t believe in him, Guido. I think it
is some wench who has set her eye at you; and, as
I have followed you from Perugia to Padua, I swear
you shall follow me to the nearest tavern. [Rises.]
By the great gods of eating, Guido, I am as hungry
as a widow is for a husband, as tired as a young maid
is of good advice, and as dry as a monk’s sermon.
Come, Guido, you stand there looking at nothing, like
the fool who tried to look into his own mind; your
man will not come.
Well, I suppose you are right. Ah! [Just as
he is leaving the stage with Ascanio, enter lord
Moranzone in a violet cloak, with a silver falcon
broidered on the shoulder; he passes across to the
Cathedral, and just as he is going in Guido runs
up and touches him.]
