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“Well, according to this boy, sir, who was looking and listening with his whole body, as it were, because he had never before been suffered so near the Duchess, it appears that the noble couple sat down in great good humor, the Duchess playfully reproving her husband for his long absence, while the Duke swore that to look so beautiful was the best way of punishing him. In this tone the talk continued, with such gay sallies on the part of the Duchess, such tender advances on the Duke’s, that the lad declared they were for all the world like a pair of lovers courting on a summer’s night in the vineyard; and so it went till the servant brought in the mulled wine.

“‘Ah,’ the Duke was saying at that moment, ‘this agreeable evening repays me for the many dull ones I have spent away from you; nor do I remember to have enjoyed such laughter since the afternoon last year when we drank chocolate in the gazebo with my cousin Ascanio. And that reminds me,’ he said, ‘is my cousin in good health?’

“‘I have no reports of it,’ says the Duchess. ‘But your excellency should taste these figs stewed in malmsey–‘

“‘I am in the mood to taste whatever you offer,’ said he; and as she helped him to the figs he added, ‘If my enjoyment were not complete as it is, I could almost wish my cousin Ascanio were with us. The fellow is rare good company at supper. What do you say, Madam? I hear he’s still in the country; shall we send for him to join us?’

“‘Ah,’ said the Duchess, with a sigh and a languishing look, ‘I see your excellency wearies of me already.’

“‘I, Madam? Ascanio is a capital good fellow, but to my mind his chief merit at this moment is his absence. It inclines me so tenderly to him that, by God, I could empty a glass to his good health.’

“With that the Duke caught up his goblet and signed to the servant to fill the Duchess’s.

“‘Here’s to the cousin,’ he cried, standing, ‘who has the good taste to stay away when he’s not wanted. I drink to his very long life–and you, Madam?’

“At this the Duchess, who had sat staring at him with a changed face, rose also and lifted her glass to her lips.

“‘And I to his happy death,’ says she in a wild voice; and as she spoke the empty goblet dropped from her hand and she fell face down on the floor.

“The Duke shouted to her women that she had swooned, and they came and lifted her to the bed…. She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping her. The Duke watched by her, and toward daylight sent for the chaplain; but by this she was unconscious and, her teeth being locked, our Lord’s body could not be passed through them.

* * * * *

“The Duke announced to his relations that his lady had died after partaking too freely of spiced wine and an omelet of carp’s roe, at a supper she had prepared in honor of his return; and the next year he brought home a new Duchess, who gave him a son and five daughters….”

V

The sky had turned to a steel gray, against which the villa stood out sallow and inscrutable. A wind strayed through the gardens, loosening here and there a yellow leaf from the sycamores; and the hills across the valley were purple as thunder-clouds.

* * * * *

“And the statue–?” I asked.

“Ah, the statue. Well, sir, this is what my grandmother told me, here on this very bench where we’re sitting. The poor child, who worshipped the Duchess as a girl of her years will worship a beautiful kind mistress, spent a night of horror, you may fancy, shut out from her lady’s room, hearing the cries that came from it, and seeing, as she crouched in her corner, the women rush to and fro with wild looks, the Duke’s lean face in the door, and the chaplain skulking in the antechamber with his eyes on his breviary. No one minded her that night or the next morning; and toward dusk, when it became known the Duchess was no more, the poor girl felt the pious wish to say a prayer for her dead mistress. She crept to the chapel and stole in unobserved. The place was empty and dim, but as she advanced she heard a low moaning, and coming in front of the statue she saw that its face, the day before so sweet and smiling, had the look on it that you know–and the moaning seemed to come from its lips. My grandmother turned cold, but something, she said afterward, kept her from calling or shrieking out, and she turned and ran from the place. In the passage she fell in a swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard that the Duke had locked the chapel door and forbidden any to set foot there…. The place was never opened again till the Duke died, some ten years later; and then it was that the other servants, going in with the new heir, saw for the first time the horror that my grandmother had kept in her bosom….”

“And the crypt?” I asked. “Has it never been opened?”

“Heaven forbid, sir!” cried the old man, crossing himself. “Was it not the Duchess’s express wish that the relics should not be disturbed?”