so sure. Do you mean what you say, Ippolita?"

"Ah, Nannina!"

"Then you shall go. It so happens that I know one of those goatherds--a
rough lout of a fellow called Petruccio. I could tell him that a
youngster had got into trouble in the city and wanted to lie quiet for a
week or two. I can do it, Ippolita."

"Oh! And will you, will you?"

"Corpaccio! If you mean business."

"I mean nothing else."

"Then it is done."

They clung together and kissed. Annina was to return the next evening at
the same hour.

That night it was remarked on all sides that Ippolita's beauty had never
been so disastrous, her eyes so starry bright, her colour so
fire-flushed. Messer Alessandro, who loved her like a maniac, went
shivering out alone into the moonlit garden to expostulate with Nature.
"Thou hast formed, most cruel Mother," cried he, "an image of thy fatal
self, whose eyes are sharp swords, and her breath poison of ineffable
sweetness; whose consummate shape killeth by mere splendour; to whose
tint of bright fire every arm must stretch as moth to flame, and by it
be blasted. All this thou hast done, and not yet content, hast set this
glory so low that all may reach for it, and yet so remote that none can
touch. Burning-pure is my Beloved, at whose approach I faint. What hard
miracle is this of thine, Goddess, that all must love and none be found
worthy?" Thus we may reflect, as Alessandro beat his resounding
forehead, to what a pass poetry may bring a youth, who buys for twenty
ducats what twenty thousand cannot give him the use of. Pygmalion made a
woman one day, moulding all her gracious curves as his experience
taught him. There went his twenty ducats. But not he could warm that
image into glowing flesh, however much he sang to it and hymned. That
was another's affair. So here.

Annina came on the morrow full of secrecy and other things more
equivocal still in appearance. Her burden proved, however, to be a
bundle of rags which, she assured Ippolita, represented all that was
necessary to the perfect goatherd.

"We will do what we can here, child," said she, "in the way of staining
your skin, cutting off your hair, and such like. Then you shall veil and
come into the garden with me; but whereas you shall come in as the
Madonna of these heathens, you shall leave, per Dio, as Silvestro, who
murdered the Jew in the Via della Gatta and has to hide in the hills. Do
you remember him, Ippolita?"

"Of course I do," said Ip