“He does not yet lucidly understand your hospitality,” he said. “He comprehends where he is, but the fevers of his malady delude him concerning it. As yet he knows not his friends, or only sees them transmuted by the vain humours of fever.”
At this moment Mirandola passed by the door carrying two dishes, one of meat and the other of fruit. The Lady of the Tower was about to call her, for she was perplexed between the Duke’s weakness and the strength of his fevers; but Father Joseph laid a hand on her arm, and Mirandola went by. Then Father Joseph went to the open doorway and blessed the carrying of the dishes.
And much of that morning Mirandola sat by the Duke’s bedside, and at whiles he spoke with her and at whiles ate a little from the two dishes; and while she was with him his great anger was lulled; but not yet would he take food or drink from any in all that household save only Mirandola, nor tolerate one of them at the door of his bedchamber. And the rumour went through the house that the Duke would live, but it passed through gatherings of doubts and fears that had haunted the house since first he was taken ill, and many a fear clung yet to the hopeful rumour. But Father Joseph, who had some familiarity with the ways of life and death, saw how it would be and, deeming that there would be no entertainings at the Tower, nor high doings, nor any need of him, his thoughts turned now to his own little house, and the humble folk that came there for many a work-a-day need and to be unburdened of their different sins. He therefore said farewell to his host.
“What?” said the Lord of the Tower. “You leave us already?”
“It is time,” said Father Joseph.
“But you will help us to entertain the Duke?”
“Haply,” said Father Joseph, “he will lie awhile in bed.”
“But when he is recovered,” said Gonsalvo, “we will give a banquet to celebrate his deliverance.”
But Father Joseph was more sure of the passing of the illustrious visitor’s illness than he was of the fading of his anger, in the heat of which he had himself stood once already.
“I must return to the village,” he said.
Mirandola had entered the room.
“Then you will come again,” said Gonsalvo, “to marry Mirandola to Señor Gulvarez.”
For Gonsalvo had a small chapel in his house.
“Gladly,” said Father Joseph.
“Thank Father Joseph,” said the Lady of the Tower.
“Thank you,” said Mirandola.
Then away went Father Joseph; and soon from the pinnacles of lofty plans his mind descended to the little sins that the folk of the village he tended would have been sinning while he was away. He tried to think as he walked of the sins that each would have done; sometimes some girl of strange or passionate whims would a little puzzle his forecast, but for the most part he guessed rapidly, and just as he named to himself the sin of his last parishioner he reached the door under the deep black thatch of the house he loved so well.
He turned the handle and entered: it was not locked, for none in those parts dared rob Father Joseph’s house; nor was the sin of robbery much practised in houses there but rather on the road in the open air. He entered and was once more with his pleasant knickknacks that he had not seen for two days; and for a while his eye roamed over them, going from one to another, as he sat in his favourite chair in deep content. For a long while he sat thus, drawing into his spirit the deep quiet of his house, which had never been broken by such events as trouble the calm of the world: no illustrious hidalgos sojourned there; rarely even they passed it by: the sound of a trumpet or the sight of a gonfalon came once, or at most twice, in a generation. His gaze was reposing now on an old mug shaped like a bear, which rested upon a bracket: sometimes he was wont to fill it with good ale and so pass lonely evenings when sunset was early. Gazing now at the mug those evenings came back to his memory and he thought of the joyous radiance that there seemed to have been about them, when again and again till it interrupted his thoughts came a very furtive knock on his back door. He imagined the timid hand of some penitent sinner, come there to be rid of his sin, and arose to open the door. When he opened the little back door that looked to the forest, who was there but Ramon Alonzo?
The young man was wearing a fine old cloak of his father’s, which Mirandola had begged for him on the day that he had gone cloakless away from the Tower. She had told Peter to take it after him, but Peter’s master had not allowed him to go until the Duke had been received at the Tower; but when the banquet came to that sudden end none thought any more of Peter except Mirandola, so he took the cloak and went; and quietly, as he left, Mirandola said to him, “Tell him all that you saw.” So Peter had travelled all the rest of that day and all through the night, and had come on Ramon Alonzo in the magician’s wood; for Ramon Alonzo going circuitously round Aragona, over fields and wild heath, by night, and in the daylight travelling cautiously at such times as his shadow looked human, arrived on the second night so late near the house of the Master that he decided to sleep in the wood and enter by daylight. There Peter found him about dawn with the cloak, and glad Ramon Alonzo was of it. But when he heard of the malady that had overtaken the Duke, the dreadfulness of which
