He told no one of the approaching interview till it was actually time to knock off the prisoner's chains and start for the palace. It was quite enough, as he remarked to his wounded nephew, to have this Most Eminent son of Balaam's ass laying down the law, without running any risk of the soldiers plotting with Rivarez and his friends to effect an escape on the way.
When the Gadfly, strongly guarded, entered the room where Montanelli was writing at a table covered with papers, a sudden recollection came over him, of a hot midsummer afternoon when he had sat turning over manuscript sermons in a study much like this. The shutters had been closed, as they were here, to keep out the heat, and a fruitseller's voice outside had called: "Fragola! Fragola!"
He shook the hair angrily back from his eyes and set his mouth in a smile.
Montanelli looked up from his papers.
"You can wait in the hall," he said to the guards.
"May it please Your Eminence," began the sergeant, in a lowered voice and with evident nervousness, "the colonel thinks that this prisoner is dangerous and that it would be better------"
A sudden flash came into Montanelli's eyes.
"You can wait in the hall," he repeated quietly; and the sergeant, saluting and stammering excuses with a frightened face, left the room with his men.
"Sit down, please," said the Cardinal, when the door was shut. The Gadfly obeyed in silence.
"Signor Rivarez," Montanelli began after a pause, "I wish to ask you a few questions, and shall be very much obliged to you if you will answer them."
The Gadfly smiled. "My ch-ch-chief occupation at p-p-present is to be asked questions."
"And--not to answer them? So I have heard; but these questions are put by officials who are investigating your case and whose duty is to use your answers as evidence."
"And th-those of Your Eminence?" There was a covert insult in the tone more than in the words, and the Cardinal understood it at once; but his face did not lose its grave sweetness of expression.
"Mine," he said, "whether you answer them or not, will remain between you and me. If they should trench upon your political secrets, of course you will not answer. Otherwise, though we are complete strangers to each other, I hope that you will do so, as a personal favour to me."
"I am ent-t-tirely at the service of Your Eminence." He said it with a little bow, and a face that would have taken the heart to ask favours out of the daughters of the horse-leech.
"First, then, you are said to have been smuggling firearms into this district. What are they wanted for?"
"T-t-to k-k-kill rats with."
"That is a terrible answer. Are all your fellow-men rats in your eyes if they cannot think as you do?"
"S-s-some of them."
Montanelli leaned back in his chair and looked at him in silence for a little while.
"What is that on your hand?" he asked suddenly.
The Gadfly glanced at his left hand. "Old m-m-marks from the teeth of some of the rats."
"Excuse me; I was speaking of the other hand. That is a fresh hurt."
The slender, flexible right hand was badly cut and grazed. The Gadfly held it up. The wrist was swollen, and across it ran a deep and long black bruise.
"It is a m-m-mere trifle, as you see," he said. "When I was arrested the other day,--thanks to Your Eminence,"--he made another little bow,-- "one of the soldiers stamped on it."
Montanelli took the wrist and examined it closely. "How does it come to be in such a state now, after three weeks?" he asked. "It is all inflamed."
"Possibly the p-p-pressure of the iron has not done it much good."
The Cardinal looked up with a frown.
"Have they been putting irons on a fresh wound?"
"N-n-naturally, Your Eminence; that is what fresh wounds are for. Old wounds are not much use. They will only ache; you c-c-can't make them burn properly."
Montanelli looked at him again in the same close, scrutinizing way; then rose and opened a drawer full of surgical appliances.
"Give me the hand," he said.
The Gadfly, with a face as hard as beaten iron, held out the hand, and Montanelli, after bathing the injured place, gently bandaged it. Evidently he was accustomed to such work.
"I will speak about the irons," he said. "And now I want to ask you another question: What do you propose to do?"
"Th-th-that is very simply answered, Your Eminence. To escape if I can, and if I can't, to die."
"Why 'to die'?"
"Because if the Governor doesn't succeed in getting me shot, I shall be sent to the galleys, and for me that c-c-comes to the same thing. I have not got the health to live through it."
Montanelli rested his arm on the table and pondered silently. The Gadfly did not disturb him. He was leaning back with half-shut eyes, lazily enjoying the delicious physical sensation of relief from the chains.
"Supposing," Montanelli began again, "that you were to succeed in escaping; what should you do with your life?"
"I have already told Your Eminence; I should k-k-kill rats."
"You would kill rats. That is to say, that if I were to let you escape from here now,--supposing I had the power to do so,--you would use your freedom to foster violence and bloodshed instead of preventing them?"
The Gadfly raised his eyes to the crucifix on the wall. "'Not peace, but a sword';--at l-least I should be in good company. For my own part, though, I prefer pistols."
"Signor Rivarez," said the Cardinal with unruffled composure, "I have not insulted you as yet, or spoken slightingly of your beliefs or friends. May I not expect the same courtesy from you, or do you wish me to suppose that an atheist cannot be a gentleman?"
"Ah, I q-quite forgot. Your Eminence places courtesy high among the Christian virtues. I remember your sermon in Florence, on the occasion of my c-controversy with your anonymous defender."
"That is one of the subjects about which I wished to speak to you. Would you mind explaining to me the reason of the peculiar bitterness you seem to feel against me? If you have simply picked me out as a convenient target, that is another matter. Your methods of political controversy are your own affair, and we are not discussing politics now. But I fancied at the time that there was some personal animosity towards me; and if so, I should be glad to know whether I have ever done you wrong or in any way given you cause for such a feeling."
Ever done him wrong! The Gadfly put up the bandaged hand to his throat. "I must refer Your Eminence to Shakspere," he said with a little laugh. "It's as with the man who can't endure a harmless, necessary cat. My antipathy is a priest. The sight of the cassock makes my t-t-teeth ache."
"Oh, if it is only that----" Montanelli dismissed the subject with an indifferent gesture.
"Still," he added, "abuse is one thing and perversion of fact is another. When you stated, in answer to my sermon, that I knew the identity of the anonymous writer, you made a mistake,--I do not accuse you of wilful falsehood,--and stated what was untrue. I am to this day quite ignorant of his name."
The Gadfly put his head on one side, like an intelligent robin, looked at him for a moment gravely, then suddenly threw himself back and burst into a peal of laughter.
"S-s-sancta simplicitas! Oh, you, sweet, innocent, Arcadian people--and you never guessed! You n-never saw the cloven hoof?"
Montanelli stood up. "Am I to understand, Signor Rivarez, that you wrote both sides of the controversy yourself?"
"It was a shame, I know," the Gadfly answered, looking up with wide, innocent blue eyes. "And you s-s-swallowed everything whole; just as if it had been an oyster. It was very wrong; but oh, it w-w-was so funny!"
Montanelli bit his lip and sat down again. He had realized from the first that the Gadfly was trying to make him lose his temper, and had resolved to keep it whatever happened; but he was beginning to find excuses for the Governor's exasperation. A man who had been spending two hours a day for the last three weeks in interrogating the Gadfly might be pardoned an occasional swear-word.
"We will drop that subject," he said quietly. "What I wanted to see you for particularly is this: My position here as Cardinal gives me some voice, if I choose to claim my privilege, in the question of what is to be done with you. The only use to which I should ever put such a privilege would be to interfere in case of any violence to you which was not necessary to prevent you from doing violence to others. I sent for you, therefore, partly in order to ask whether you have anything to complain of,--I will see about the irons; but perhaps there is something else,--and partly because I felt it right, before giving my opinion, to see for myself what sort of man you are."
"I have nothing to complain of, Your Eminence. 'A la guerre comme a la guerre.' I am not a schoolboy, to expect any government to pat me on the head for s-s-smuggling firearms onto its territory. It's only natural that they should hit as hard as they can. As for what sort of man I am, you have had a romantic confession of my sins once. Is not that enough; or w-w-would you like me to begin again?"
"I don't understand you," Montanelli said coldly, taking up a pencil and twisting it between his fingers.
"Surely Your Eminence has not forgotten old Diego, the pilgrim?" He suddenly changed his voice and began to speak as Diego: "I am a miserable sinner------"
The pencil snapped in Montanelli's hand. "That is too much!" he said.
The Gadfly leaned his head back with a soft little laugh, and sat watching while the Cardinal paced silently up and down the room.
"Signor Rivarez," said Montanelli, stopping at last in front of him, "you have done a thing to me that a man who was born of a woman should hesitate to do to his worst enemy. You have stolen in upon my private grief and have made for yourself a mock and a jest out of the sorrow of a fellow-man. I once more beg you to tell me: Have I ever done you wrong? And if not, why have you played this heartless trick on me?"
The Gadfly, leaning back against the chair-cushions, looked up with his subtle, chilling, inscrutable smile
"It am-m-mused me, Your Eminence; you took it all so much to heart, and it rem-m-minded me-- a little bit--of a variety show----"
Montanelli, white to the very lips, turned away and rang the bell.
"You can take back the prisoner," he said when the guards came in.
After they had gone he sat down at the table, still trembling with unaccustomed indignation, and took up a pile of reports which had been sent in to him by the parish priests of his diocese.
Presently he pushed them away, and, leaning on the table, hid his face in both hands. The Gadfly seemed to have left some terrible shadow of himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room; and Montanelli sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up lest he should see the phantom presence that he knew was not there. The spectre hardly amounted to a hallucination. It was a mere fancy of overwrought nerves; but he was seized with an unutterable dread of its shadowy presence--of the wounded hand, the smiling, cruel mouth, the mysterious eyes, like deep sea water----
He shook off the fancy and settled to his work. All day long he had scarcely a free moment, and the thing did not trouble him; but going into his bedroom late at night, he stopped on the threshold with a sudden shock of fear. What if he should see it in a dream? He recovered himself immediately and knelt down before the crucifix to pray.
But he lay awake the whole night through.
CHAPTER IV.
MONTANELLI'S anger did not make him neglectful of his promise. He protested so emphatically against the manner in which the Gadfly had been chained that the unfortunate Governor, who by now was at his wit's end, knocked off all the fetters in the recklessness of despair. "How am I to know," he grumbled to the adjutant, "what His Eminence will object to next? If he calls a simple pair of handcuffs 'cruelty,' he'll be exclaiming against the window-bars presently, or wanting me to feed Rivarez on oysters and truffles. In my young days malefactors were malefactors and were treated accordingly, and nobody thought a traitor any better than a thief. But it's the fashion to be seditious nowadays; and His Eminence seems inclined to encourage all the scoundrels in the country."
"I don't see what business he has got to interfere at all," the adjutant remarked. "He is not a Legate and has no authority in civil and military affairs. By law------"
"What is the use of talking about law? You can't expect anyone to respect laws after the Holy Father has opened the prisons and turned the whole crew of Liberal scamps loose on us! It's a positive infatuation! Of course Monsignor Montanelli will give himself airs; he was quiet enough under His Holiness the late Pope, but he's cock of the walk now. He has jumped into favour all at once and can do as he pleases. How am I to oppose him? He may have secret authorization from the Vatican, for all I know. Everything's topsy-turvy now; you can't tell from day to day what may happen next. In the good old times one knew what to be at, but nowadays------"
The Governor shook his head ruefully. A world in which Cardinals troubled themselves over trifles of prison discipline and talked about the "rights" of political offenders was a world that was growing too complex for him.
The Gadfly, for his part, had returned to the fortress in a state of nervous excitement bordering on hysteria. The meeting with Montanelli had strained his endurance almost to breaking-point; and his final brutality about the variety show had been uttered in sheer desperation, merely to cut short an interview which, in another five minutes, would have ended in tears.
Called up for interrogation in the afternoon of the same day, he did nothing but go into convulsions of laughter at every question put to him; and when the Governor, worried out of all patience, lost his temper and began to swear, he only laughed more immoderately than ever. The unlucky Governor fumed and stormed and threatened his refractory prisoner with impossible punishments; but finally came, as James Burton had come long ago, to the conclusion that it was mere waste of breath and temper to argue with a person in so unreasonable a state of mind.
