The rough stones of the inner courtyard shone clean and bright in the morning sun, still wet with the heavy rains that had washed them yesternight.
The fool sat on a rude stool within the porch of the long gallery, and, moodily eyeing that glistening pavement, ruminated. He was angry, which, saving where Fra Domenico was concerned, was a rare thing with good-humoured Peppe. He had sought to reason with Monna Valentina touching the imprisonment in his chamber of Messer Francesco, and she had bidden him confine his attention to his capers with a harshness he had never known in her before. But he had braved her commands, and astonished her with the information that the true identity of this Messer Francesco had been known to him since that day when they had first met him at Acquasparta. He had meant to say more. He had meant to add the announcement of Francesco's banishment from Babbiano and his notorious unwillingness to mount his cousin's throne. He had meant to make her understand that had Francesco been so minded, he had no need to stoop to such an act as this that she imputed to him. But she had cut him short, and with angry words and angrier threats she had driven him from her presence.
And so she was gone to Mass, and the fool had taken shelter in the porch of the gallery, that there he might vent some of his ill-humour--or indeed indulge it--in pondering the obtuseness of woman and the insidiousness of Gonzaga, to whom he never doubted that this miserable state of things was due.
And as he sat there--a grotesque, misshapen figure in gaudy motley--an ungovernable rage possessed him. What was to become of them now? Without the Count of Aquila's stern support the garrison would have forced her to capitulate a week ago. What would betide, now that the restraint of his formidable command was withdrawn?
“She will know her folly when it's too late. It's the way of women,” he assured himself. And, loving his mistress as he did, his faithful soul was stricken at the thought. He would wait there until she returned from Mass, and then she should hear him--all should hear him. He would not permit himself to be driven away again so easily. He was intently turning over in his mind what he would say, with what startling, pregnant sentence he would compel attention, when he was startled by the appearance of a figure on the chapel steps. Sudden and quietly as an apparition it came, but it bore the semblance of Romeo Gonzaga.