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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9829-8.txt b/9829-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..acaa3df --- /dev/null +++ b/9829-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1823 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jewel Merchants, by James Branch Cabell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Jewel Merchants + A Comedy in One Act + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Posting Date: October 29, 2011 [EBook #9829] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 22, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + _The Jewel Merchants_ + _A Comedy in One Act_ + + By + + James Branch Cabell + + + _"Io non posso ritrar di tutti appieno: + pero chi si mi caccia il lungo tema, + che molte volte al fatto il dir vieti meno."_ + + + + NEW YORK + 1921 + + + + TO + LOUISE BURLEIGH + + _This latest avatar of so many notions + which were originally hers._ + + + + +THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE + +Prudence urges me here to forestall detection, by conceding that this +brief play has no pretension to "literary" quality. It is a piece in +its inception designed for, and in its making swayed by, the requirements +of the little theatre stage. The one virtue which anybody anywhere could +claim for _The Jewel Merchants_ is the fact that it "acts" easily and +rather effectively. + +And candor compels the admission forthwith that the presence of this +anchoritic merit in the wilderness is hardly due to me. When circumstances +and the Little Theatre League of Richmond combined to bully me into +contriving the dramatization of a short story called _Balthazar's +Daughter_, I docilely converted this tale into a one-act play of which +you will find hereinafter no sentence. The comedy I wrote is now at one +with the lost dramaturgy of Pollio and of Posidippus, and is even less +likely ever to be resurrected for mortal auditors. + +It read, I still think, well enough: I am certain that, when we came to +rehearse, the thing did not "act" at all, and that its dialogue, whatever +its other graces, had the defect of being unspeakable. So at each +rehearsal we--by which inclusive pronoun I would embrace the actors and +the producing staff at large, and with especial (metaphorical) ardor Miss +Louise Burleigh, who directed all--changed here a little, and there a +little more; and shifted this bit, and deleted the other, and "tried out" +everybody's suggestions generally, until we got at least the relief of +witnessing at each rehearsal a different play. And steadily my manuscript +was enriched with interlineations, to and beyond the verge of legibility, +as steadily I substituted, for the speeches I had rewritten yesterday, +the speeches which the actor (having perfectly in mind the gist but not +the phrasing of what was meant) delivered naturally. + +This process made, at all events, for what we in particular wanted, +which was a play that the League could stage for half an evening's +entertainment; but it left existent not a shred of the rhetorical +fripperies which I had in the beginning concocted, and it made of the +actual first public performance a collaboration with almost as many +contributing authors as though the production had been a musical comedy. + +And if only fate had gifted me with an exigent conscience and a turn for +oratory, I would, I like to think, have publicly confessed, at that first +public performance, to all those tributary clarifying rills to the play's +progress: but, as it was, vainglory combined with an aversion to +"speech-making" to compel a taciturn if smirking acceptance of the +curtain-call with which an indulgent audience flustered the nominal author +of _The Jewel Merchants_.... Now, in any case, it is due my collaborators +to tell you that _The Jewel Merchants_ has amply fulfilled the purpose +of its makers by being enacted to considerable applause,--and is a +pleasure to add that this _succès d'estime_ was very little chargeable to +anything which I contributed to the play. + +For another matter, I would here confess that _The Jewel Merchants_, +in addition to its "literary" deficiencies, lacks moral fervor. It will, +I trust, corrupt no reader irretrievably, to untraversable leagues beyond +the last hope of redemption: but, even so, it is a frankly unethical +performance. You must accept this resuscitated trio, if at all, very much +as they actually went about Tuscany, in long ago discarded young flesh, +when the one trait everywhere common to their milieu was the absence of +any moral excitement over such-and-such an action's being or not being +"wicked." This phenomenon of Renaissance life, as lived in Italy in +particular, has elsewhere been discussed time and again, and I lack here +the space, and the desire, either to explain or to apologize for the era's +delinquencies. I would merely indicate that this point of conduct is the +fulcrum of _The Jewel Merchants_. + +The play presents three persons, to any one of whom the committing of +murder or theft or adultery or any other suchlike interdicted feat, is +just the risking of the penalty provided against the breaking of that +especial law if you have the vile luck to be caught at it: and this to +them is all that "wickedness" can mean. We nowadays are encouraged to +think differently: but such dear privileges do not entitle us to ignore +the truth that had any of these three advanced a dissenting code of +conduct, it would, in the time and locality, have been in radical +irreverence of the best-thought-of tenets. There was no generally +recognized criminality in crime, but only a perceptible risk. So must +this trio thriftily adhere to the accepted customs of their era, and +regard an infraction of the Decalogue (for an instance) very much as we +today look on a violation of our prohibition enactments. + +In fact, we have accorded to the Eighteenth Amendment almost exactly the +status then reserved for Omnipotence. You found yourself confronted by +occasionally enforced if obviously unreasonable supernal statutory +decrees, which every one broke now and then as a matter of convenience: +and every now and then, also, somebody was caught and punished, either in +this world or in the next, without his ill-fortune's involving any +disgrace or particular reprehension. As has been finely said, +righteousness and sinfulness were for the while "in strange and dreadful +peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good +man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a +villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes +recoil from believing." + +Such was the sixteenth-century Tuscan view of "wickedness." I have +endeavored to reproduce it without comment. + +So much of ink and paper and typography may be needed, I fear, to remind +you, in a more exhortatory civilization, that Graciosa is really, by all +the standards of her day, a well reared girl. To the prostitution of her +body, whether with or without the assistance of an ecclesiastically +acquired husband, she looks forward as unconcernedly as you must by +ordinary glance out of your front window, to face a vista so familiar +that the discovery of any change therein would be troubling. Meanwhile +she wishes this sorrow-bringing Eglamore assassinated, as the obvious, +the most convenient, and indeed the only way of getting rid of him: and +toward the end of the play, alike for her and Guido, the presence of a +corpse in her garden is merely an inconvenience without any touch of the +gruesome. Precautions have, of course, to be taken to meet the emergency +which has arisen: but in the dead body of a man _per se_, the lovers can +detect nothing more appalling, or more to be shrunk from, than would be +apparent if the lifeless object in the walkway were a dead flower. The +thing ought to be removed, if only in the interest of tidiness, but there +is no call to make a pother over it. + +As for our Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, +by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the +Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to +history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured +and retained: it is no part of the play. + +Above all, though, I must remind you that the Duke is unspurred by +malevolence. A twinge of jealousy there may be, just at first, to find his +pampered Eglamore so far advanced in the good graces of this pretty girl, +but that is hardly important. Thereafter the Duke is breaking no law, +for the large reason that his preference in any matter is the only law +thus far divulged to him. As concerns the man and the girl he discovers on +this hill-top, they, in common with all else in Tuscany, are possessions +of Duke Alessandro's. They can raise no question as to how he "ought" to +deal with them, for to your chattels, whether they be your finger rings or +your subjects or your pomatum pots or the fair quires whereon you indite +your verses, you cannot rationally he said to "owe" anything.... No, the +Duke is but a spirited lad in quest of amusement: and Guido and Graciosa +are the playthings with which, on this fine sunlit morning, he attempts to +divert himself. + +This much being granted--and confessed,--we let the play begin. + +_Dumbarton Grange,_ +_June, 1921_ + + + * * * * * + +["Alessandro de Medici is generally styled by the Italian authors the +first duke of Florence; but in this they are not strictly accurate. His +title of duke was derived from Città, or Cività di Penna, and had been +assumed by him several years before he obtained the direction of the +Florentine state. It must also be observed, that, after the evasion of +Eglamore, Duke Alessandro did not, as Robertson observes, 'enjoy the +same absolute dominion as his family have retained to the present times,' +(Hist. Charles V. book v.) he being only declared chief or prince of the +republic, and his authority being in some measure counteracted or +restrained by two councils chosen from the citizens, for life, one of +which consisted of forty-eight, and the other of two hundred members. +(Varchi, Storia Fior. p. 497: Nerli, Com. lib. xi. pp. 257, 264.)"] + + + * * * * * + + + THE JEWEL MERCHANTS + + _"Diamente nè smeraldo nè zaffino."_ + + +Originally produced by the Little Theatre League of Richmond, Virginia, +at the Binford High School Auditorium, 22 February, 1921. + + _Original Cast_ + +GRACIOSA...........................Elinor Fry + Daughter of Balthazar Valori + +GUIDO........................Roderick Maybee + A jewel merchant + +ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.........Francis F. Bierne + Duke of Florence + +Produced under the direction of Louise Burleigh. + + + * * * * * + + + +_THE JEWEL MERCHANTS_ + +_The play begins with the sound of a woman's voice singing a song +(adapted from Rossetti's version) which is delivered to the accompaniment +of a lute._ + +SONG: + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad. + + Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth + Filled with the strife of birds, + With water-springs and beasts that house i' the earth. + + Let me seem Solomon for lore of words, + Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom. + + Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come, + Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven. + +_As the singing ends, the curtain rises upon a corner of Balthazar +Valori's garden near the northern border of Tuscany. The garden is walled. +There is a shrine in the wall: the tortured figure upon the crucifix is +conspicuous. To the right stands a rather high-backed stone bench: by +mounting from the seat to the top of the bench it is possible to scale +the wall. To the left a crimson pennant on a pole shows against the sky. +The period is 1533, and a few miles southward the Florentines, after three +years of formally recognizing Jesus Christ as the sole lord and king of +Florence, have lately altered matters as profoundly as was possible by +electing Alessandro de Medici to be their Duke._ + +_GRACIOSA is seated upon the bench, with a lute. The girl is, to our +modern taste, very quaintly dressed in gold-colored satin, with a short +tight bodice, cut square and low at the neck, and with long full skirts. +When she stands erect, her preposterous "flowing" sleeves, lined with +sky blue, reach to the ground. Her blonde hair, of which she has a great +deal, is braided, in the intricate early sixteenth fashion, under a +jeweled cap and a veil the exact color of this hair._ + +_There is a call. Smiling, GRACIOSA answers this call by striking her +lute. She pats straight her hair and gown, and puts aside the instrument. +GUIDO appears at the top of the wall. All you can see of the handsome +young fellow, in this posture, is that he wears a green skull-cap and a +dark blue smock, the slashed sleeves of which are lined with green._ + +GUIDO +Ah, madonna.... + +GRACIOSA +Welcome, Ser Guido. Your journey has been brief. + +GUIDO +It has not seemed brief to me. + +GRACIOSA +Why, it was only three days ago you told me it would be a fortnight +before you came this way again. + +GUIDO +Yes, but I did not then know that each day spent apart from you, Madonna +Graciosa, would be a century in passing. + +GRACIOSA +Dear me, but your search must have been desperate! + +GUIDO +(_Who speaks, as almost always hereinafter, with sober enjoyment of the +fact that he is stating the exact truth unintelligibly._) Yes, my search +is desperate. + +GRACIOSA +Did you find gems worthy of your search? + +GUIDO +Very certainly, since at my journey's end I find Madonna Graciosa, the +chief jewel of Tuscany. + +GRACIOSA +Such compliments, Guido, make your speech less like a merchant's than a +courtier's. + +GUIDO +Ah, well, to balance that, you will presently find courtiers in Florence +who will barter for you like merchants. May I descend? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, if you have something of interest to show me. + +GUIDO +Am I to be welcomed merely for the sake of my gems? You were more +gracious, you were more beautifully like your lovely name, on the +fortunate day that I first encountered you ... only six weeks ago, and +only yonder, where the path crosses the highway. But now that I esteem +myself your friend, you greet me like a stranger. You do not even invite +me into your garden. I much prefer the manner in which you told me the +way to the inn when I was an unknown passer-by. And yet your pennant +promised greeting. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the smile of an exceptionally candid angel._) Ah, Guido, I flew +it the very minute the boy from the inn brought me your message! + +GUIDO +Now, there is the greeting I had hoped for! But how do you escape your +father's watch so easily? + +GRACIOSA +My father has no need to watch me in this lonely hill castle. Ever since +I can remember I have wandered at will in the forest. My father knows that +to me every path is as familiar as one of the corridors in his house; and +in no one of them did I ever meet anybody except charcoal-burners, and +sometimes a nun from the convent, and--oh, yes!--you. But descend, friend +Guido. + +_Thus encouraged, GUIDO descends from the top of the wall to the top of +the bench, and thence, via its seat, to the ground. You are thereby +enabled to discover that his nether portions are clad in dark blue tights +and soft leather shoes with pointed turned-up toes. It is also noticeable +that he carries a jewel pack of purple, which, when opened, reveals an +orange lining._ + +GUIDO +(_With as much irony as the pleasure he takes in being again with this +dear child permits._) That "Oh, yes, you!" is a very fitting reward for +my devotion. For I find that nowadays I travel about the kingdom buying +jewels less for my patrons at court than for the pleasure of having your +eyes appraise them, and smile at me. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the condescension of a great lady._) Guido, you have in point of +fact been very kind to me, and very amusing, too, in my loneliness on +the top of this hill. (_Drawing back the sleeve from her left arm, she +reveals the trinket there._) See, here is the turquoise bracelet I had +from you the second time you passed. I wear it always--secretly. + +GUIDO +That is wise, for the turquoise is a talisman. They say that the woman +who wears a turquoise is thereby assured of marrying the person whom she +prefers. + +GRACIOSA +I do not know about that, nor do I expect to have much choice as to what +rich nobleman marries me, but I know that I love this bracelet-- + +GUIDO +In fact, they are handsome stones. + +GRACIOSA +Because it reminds me constantly of the hours which I have spent here +with my lute-- + +GUIDO +Oh, with your lute! + +GRACIOSA +And with your pack of lovely jewels-- + +GUIDO +Yes, to be sure! with my jewels. + +GRACIOSA +And with you. + +GUIDO +There is again my gracious lady. Now, in reward for that, you shall +feast your eyes. + +GRACIOSA +(_All eagerness._) And what have you to-day? + +_GUIDO opens his pack. She bends above it with hands outstretched._ + +GUIDO +(_Taking out a necklace._) For one thing, pearls, black pearls, set with +a clasp of emeralds. See! They will become you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Taking them, pressing them to her cheek._) How cool! But I--poor child +of a poor noble--I cannot afford such. + +GUIDO +Oh, I did not mean to offer them to you to-day. No, this string is +intended for the Duke's favorite, Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +(_Stiffening._) Count Eglamore! These are for him? + +GUIDO +For Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +Has the upstart such taste? + +GUIDO +If it be taste to appreciate pearls, then the Duke's chief officer has +excellent taste. He seeks them far and wide. He will be very generous in +paying for this string. + +_GRACIOSA drops the pearls, in which she no longer delights. She returns +to the bench, and sits down and speaks with a sort of disappointment._ + +GRACIOSA +I am sorry to learn that this Eglamore is among your patrons. + +GUIDO +(_Still half engrossed by the contents of his pack. The man loves jewels +equally for their value and their beauty._) Oh, the nobles complain of +him, but we merchants have no quarrel with Eglamore. He buys too lavishly. + +GRACIOSA +Do you think only of buying and selling, Guido? + +GUIDO +It is a pursuit not limited to us who frankly live by sale and purchase. +Count Eglamore, for example, knows that men may be bought as readily as +merchandise. It is one reason why he is so hated--by the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Irritated by the title._) Count Eglamore, indeed! I ask in my prayers +every night that some honest gentleman may contrive to cut the throat of +this abominable creature. + +GUIDO +(_His hand going to his throat._) You pray too much, madonna. Even very +pious people ought to be reasonable. + +GRACIOSA +(_Rising from the bench._) Have I not reason to hate the man who killed +my kinsman? + +GUIDO +(_Rising from his gems._) The Marquis of Cibo conspired, or so the court +judged-- + +GRACIOSA +I know nothing of the judgment. But it was this Eglamore who discovered +the plot, if there indeed was any plot, and who sent my cousin Cibo to +a death--(_pointing to the shrine_)--oh, to a death as horrible as that. +So I hate him. + +GUIDO +Yet you have never even seen him, I believe? + +GRACIOSA +And it would be better for him never to see me or any of my kin. My +father, my uncles and my cousins have all sworn to kill him-- + +GUIDO +So I have gathered. They remain among the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Returning, sits upon the bench, and speaks regretfully._) But they +have never any luck. Cousin Pietro contrived to have a beam dropped on +Eglamore's head, and it missed him by not half a foot-- + +GUIDO +Ah, yes, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +And Cousin Georgio stabbed him in the back one night, but the coward had +on chain-armor under his finery-- + +GUIDO +I remember that also. + +GRACIOSA +And Uncle Lorenzo poisoned his soup, but a pet dog got at it first. That +was very unfortunate. + +GUIDO +Yes, the dog seemed to think so, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +However, perseverance is always rewarded. So I still hope that one or +another of my kinsmen will contrive to kill this Eglamore before I go to +court. + +GUIDO +(_Sits at her feet._) Has my Lord Balthazar yet set a day for that +presentation? + +GRACIOSA +Not yet. + +GUIDO +I wish to have this Eglamore's accounts all settled by that date. + +GRACIOSA +But in three months, Guido, I shall be sixteen. My sisters went to court +when they were sixteen. + +GUIDO +In fact, a noble who is not rich cannot afford to continue supporting a +daughter who is salable in marriage. + +GRACIOSA +No, of course not. (_She speaks in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. +Then, more impulsively, the girl slips down from the bench, and sits by +him on the around._) Do you think I shall make as good a match as my +sisters, Guido? Do you think some great rich nobleman will marry me very +soon? And shall I like the court! What shall I see there? + +GUIDO +Marvels. I think--yes, I am afraid that you will like them. + +GRACIOSA +And Duke Alessandro--shall I like him? + +GUIDO +Few courtiers have expressed dislike of him in my presence. + +GRACIOSA +Do you like him? Does he too buy lavishly? + +GUIDO +Eh, madonna! some day, when you have seen his jewels-- + +GRACIOSA +Oh! I shall see them when I go to court? + +GUIDO +Yes, he will show them to you, I think, without fail, for the Duke loves +beauty in all its forms. So he will take pleasure in confronting the +brightness of your eyes with the brightness of the four kinds of sapphires, +of the twelve kinds of rubies, and of many extraordinary pearls-- + +GRACIOSA +(_With eyes shining, and lips parted._) Oh! + +GUIDO +And you will see his famous emerald necklace, and all his diamonds, and +his huge turquoises, which will make you ashamed of your poor talisman-- + +GRACIOSA +He will show all these jewels to me! + +GUIDO +(_Looking at her, and still smiling thoughtfully._) He will show you the +very finest of his gems, assuredly. And then, worse still, he will be +making verses in your honor. + +GRACIOSA +It would be droll to have a great duke making songs about me! + +GUIDO +It is a preposterous feature of Duke Alessandro's character that he is +always making songs about some beautiful thing or another. + +GRACIOSA +Such strange songs, Guido! I was singing over one of them just before +you came,-- + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad-- + +But I could not quite understand it. Are his songs thought good? + +GUIDO +The songs of a reigning duke are always good. + +GRACIOSA +And is he as handsome as people report? + +GUIDO +Tastes differ, of course-- + +GRACIOSA +And is he--? + +GUIDO +I have a portrait of the Duke. It does not, I think, unduly flatter him. +Will you look at it? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, yes! + +GUIDO +(_Drawing out a miniature on a chain._) Here is the likeness. + +GRACIOSA +But how should you--? + +GUIDO +(_Seeing her surprise._) Oh, it was a gift to me from his highness for a +special service I did him, and as such must be treasured. + +GRACIOSA +Perhaps, then, I shall see yon at court, Messer Guido, who are the friend +of princes? + +GUIDO +If you do, I ask only that in noisy Florence you remember this quiet +garden. + +GRACIOSA +(_Looks at him silently, then glances at the portrait. She speaks with +evident disappointment._) Is this the Duke? + +GUIDO +You may see his arms on it, and on the back his inscription. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, but--(_looking at the portrait again_)--but ... he is ... so ... + +GUIDO +You are astonished at his highness' coloring? That he inherits from his +mother. She was, you know, a blackamoor. + +GRACIOSA +And my sisters wrote me he was like a god! + +GUIDO +Such observations are court etiquette. + +GRACIOSA +(_With an outburst of disgust._) Take it back! Though how can you bear to +look at it, far less to have it touching you! And only yesterday I was +angry because I had not seen the Duke riding past! + +GUIDO +Seen him! here! riding past! + +GRACIOSA +Old Ursula told me that the Duke had gone by with twenty men, riding down +toward the convent at the border. And I flung my sewing-bag straight at +her head because she had not called me. + +GUIDO +That was idle gossip, I fancy. The Duke rarely rides abroad without +my--(_he stops_)--without my lavish patron Eglamore, the friend of all +honest merchants. + +GRACIOSA +But that abominable Eglamore may have been with him. I heard nothing to +the contrary. + +GUIDO +True, madonna, true. I had forgotten you did not see them. + +GRACIOSA +No. What is he like, this Eglamore? Is he as appalling to look at as the +Duke? + +GUIDO +Madonna! but wise persons do not apply such adjectives to dukes. And wise +persons do not criticize Count Eglamore's appearance, either, now that +Eglamore is indispensable to the all-powerful Duke of Florence. + +GRACIOSA +Indispensable? + +GUIDO +It is thanks to the Eglamore whom you hate that the Duke has ample leisure +to indulge in recreations which are reputed to be--curious. + +GRACIOSA +I do not understand you, Guido. + +GUIDO +That is perhaps quite as well. (_Attempting to explain as much as is +decently expressible._) To be brief, madonna, business annoys the Duke. + +GRACIOSA +Why? + +GUIDO +It interferes with the pursuit of all the beautiful things he asks for +in that song. + +GRACIOSA +But how does that make Eglamore indispensable? + +GUIDO +Eglamore is an industrious person who affixes seals, and signs treaties, +and musters armies, and collects revenues, upon the whole, quite as +efficiently as Alessandro would be capable of doing these things. + +GRACIOSA +So Duke Alessandro merely makes verses? + +GUIDO +And otherwise amuses himself as his inclinations prompt, while Eglamore +rules Tuscany--and the Tuscans are none the worse off on account of it. +(_He rises, and his hand goes to the dagger at his belt._) But is not +that a horseman? + +GRACIOSA +(_She too has risen, and is now standing on the bench, looking over the +wall._) A solitary rider, far down by the convent, so far away that he +seems hardly larger than a scarlet dragon-fly. + +GUIDO +I confess I wish to run no risk of being found here, by your respected +father or by your ingenious cousins and uncles. + +GRACIOSA +(_She turns, but remains standing upon the bench._) I think your Duke is +much more dangerous looking than any of them. Heigho! I can quite foresee +that I shall never fall in love with this Duke. + +GUIDO +A prince has means to overcome all obstacles. + +GRACIOSA +No. It is unbefitting and a little cowardly for Duke Alessandro to shirk +the duties of his station for verse-making and eternal pleasure-seeking. +Now if I were Duke-- + +GUIDO +What would you do? + +GRACIOSA +(_Posturing a little as she stands upon the bench._) If I were duke? +Oh ... I would grant my father a pension ... and I would have Eglamore +hanged ... and I would purchase a new gown of silvery green-- + +GUIDO +In which you would be very ravishingly beautiful. + +_His tone has become rather ardent, and he is now standing nearer to her +than the size of the garden necessitates. So GRACIOSA demurely steps +down from the bench, and sits at the far end._ + +GRACIOSA +And that is all I can think of. What would you do if you were duke, +Messer Guido? + +GUIDO +(_Who is now sitting beside her at closer quarters than the length of the +bench quite strictly demands._) I? What would I do if I were a great lord +instead of a tradesman! (_Softly._) I think you know the answer, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +Oh, you would make me your duchess, of course. That is quite understood. +But I was speaking seriously, Guido. + +GUIDO +And is it not a serious matter that a pedler of crystals should have dared +to love a nobleman's daughter? + +GRACIOSA +(_Delighted._) This is the first I have heard of it. + +GUIDO +But you are perfectly right. It is not a serious matter. That I worship +you is an affair which does not seriously concern any person save me in +any way whatsoever. Yet I think that knowledge of the fact would put your +father to the trouble of sharpening his dagger. + +GRACIOSA +Ye-es. But not even Father would deny that you were showing excellent +taste. + +GUIDO +Indeed, I am not certain that I do worship you; for in order to adore +whole-heartedly the idolater must believe his idol to be perfect. +(_Taking her hand._) Now your nails are of an ugly shape, like that of +little fans. Your nose is nothing to boast of. And your mouth is too +large. I do not admire these faults, for faults they are undoubtedly-- + +GRACIOSA +Do they make me very ugly? I know that I have not a really good mouth, +Guido, but do you think it is positively repulsive? + +GUIDO +No.... Then, too, I know that you are vain and self-seeking, and look +forward contentedly to the time when your father will transfer his +ownership of your physical attractions to that nobleman who offers the +highest price for them. + +GRACIOSA +But we daughters of the poor Valori are compelled to marry--suitably. We +have only the choice between that and the convent yonder. + +GUIDO +That is true, and nobody disputes it. Still, you participate in a +monstrous bargain, and I would prefer to have you exhibit distaste for it. + +_Bending forward, GUIDO draws from his jewel pack the string of pearls, +and this he moodily contemplates, in order to evince his complete +disinterestedness. The pose has its effect. GRACIOSA looks at him for a +moment, rises, draws a deep breath, and speaks with a sort of humility._ + +GRACIOSA +And to what end, Guido? What good would weeping do? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling whimsically._) I am afraid that men do not always love +according to the strict laws of logic. (_He drops the pearls, and, +rising, follows her._) I desire your happiness above all things, yet to +see you so abysmally untroubled by anything which troubles me is--another +matter. + +GRACIOSA +But I am not untroubled, Guido. + +GUIDO +No? + +GRACIOSA +No. (_Rather tremulously._) Sometimes I sit here dreading my life at +court. I want never to leave my father's bleak house. I fear that I may +not like the man who offers the highest price for me. And it seems as +if the court were a horrible painted animal, dressed in bright silks, and +shining with jewels, and waiting to devour me. + +_Beyond the wall appears a hat of scarlet satin with a divided brim, +which, rising, is revealed to surmount the head of an extraordinarily +swarthy person, to whose dark skin much powder has only loaned the hue of +death: his cheeks, however, are vividly carmined. This is all that the +audience can now see of the young DUKE of FLORENCE, whose proximity the +two in the garden are just now too much engrossed to notice._ + +_The DUKE looks from one to the other. His eyes narrow, his teeth are +displayed in a wide grin; he now understands the situation. He lowers his +head as GRACIOSA moves._ + +GRACIOSA +No, I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I +am very fond of you--and yet I do not trust you. + +GUIDO +You know that I love you. + +GRACIOSA +You tell me so. It pleases me to have you say it-- + +GUIDO +Madonna is candid this morning. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, I am candid. It does please me. And I know that for the sake of +seeing me you endanger your life, for if my father heard of our meetings +here he would have you killed. + +GUIDO +Would I incur such risks without caring? + +GRACIOSA +No,--and yet, somehow, I do not believe it is altogether for me that you +care. + +_The DUKE laughs. GUIDO starts, half drawing his dagger. GRACIOSA turns +with an instinctive gesture of seeking protection. The DUKE'S head and +shoulders appear above the wall._ + +THE DUKE +And you will find, my friend, that the most charming women have just these +awkward intuitions. + +_The DUKE ascends the wall, while the two stand motionless and silent. +When he is on top of the wall, GUIDO, who now remembers that omnipotence +perches there, makes haste to serve it, and obsequiously assists the DUKE +to descend. The DUKE then comes well forward, in smiling meditation, and +hands first his gloves, then his scarlet cloak (which you now perceive to +be lined with ermine and sable in four stripes) to GUIDO, who takes them +as a servant would attend his master._ + +_The removal of this cloak reveals the DUKE to be clad in a scarlet satin +doublet, which has a high military collar and sleeves puffed with black. +His tights also are of scarlet, and he wears shining soft black +riding-boots. Jewels glisten at his neck. About his middle, too, there is +a metallic gleaming, for he is equipped with a noticeably long sword and +a dagger. Such is the personage who now addresses himself more explicitly +to GRACIOSA._ + +THE DUKE +(_Sitting upon the bench, very much at his ease while the others stand +uncomfortably before him._) Yes, madonna, I suspect that Eglamore here +cares greatly for the fact that you are Balthazar Valori's daughter, and +cousin to the late Marquis of Cibo. + +GRACIOSA +(_Just in bewilderment._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +For Cibo left many kinsmen. These still resent the circumstance that +the matching of his wits against Eglamore's wits earned for Cibo an +unpleasantly public death-bed. So they pursue their feud against Eglamore +with vexatious industry. And Eglamore goes about in hourly apprehension +of another falling beam, another knife-thrust in the back, or another +plate of poison. + +GRACIOSA +(_She comprehends now._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +(_Who is pleased alike by Eglamore's neat plan and by his own cleverness +in unriddling it._) But if rich Eglamore should make a stolen match with +you, your father--good thrifty man!--could be appeased without much +trouble. Your cousins, those very angry but penniless Valori, would not +stay over-obdurate to a kinsman who had at his disposal so many pensions +and public offices. Honor would permit a truce with their new cousin +Eglamore, a truce very profitable to everybody. + +GRACIOSA +He said they must be bought somehow! + +THE DUKE +Yes, Eglamore could bind them all to his interest within ten days. All +could be bought at a stroke by marrying you. And Eglamore would be rid +of the necessity of sleeping in chain-armor. Have I not unraveled the +scheme correctly, Eglamore? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling and deferential._) Your highness was never lacking in +penetration. + +_GRACIOSA, at this, turns puzzled from one man to the other._ + +GRACIOSA +Are you--? + +THE DUKE +I am Alessandro de Medici, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +The Duke! + +THE DUKE +A sadly neglected prince, who wondered over the frequent absences of his +chief counselor, and secretly set spies upon him. Eglamore here will +attest as much--(_As GRACIOSA draws away from GUIDO_)--or if you cannot +believe Eglamore any longer in anything, I shall have other witnesses +within the half-hour. Yes, my twenty cut-throats are fetching back for me +a brace of nuns from the convent yonder. I can imagine that, just now, my +cut-throats will be in your opinion more trustworthy witnesses than is +poor Eglamore. And my stout knaves will presently assure you that I am +the Duke. + +GUIDO +(_Suavely._) It happens that not a moment ago we were admiring your +highness' portrait. + +GRACIOSA +And so you are Count Eglamore. That is very strange. So it was the hand +of Eglamore (_rubbing her hands as if to clean them_) that I touched just +now. I thought it was the hand of my friend Guido. But I forget. There is +no Guido. You are Eglamore. It is strange you should have been capable of +so much wickedness, for to me you seem only a smirking and harmless +lackey. + +_The DUKE is watching as if at a play. He is aesthetically pleased by the +girl's anguish. GUIDO winces. As GRACIOSA begins again to speak, they turn +facing her, so that to the audience the faces of both men are invisible._ + +GRACIOSA +And it was you who detected--so you said--the Marquis of Cibo's +conspiracy. Tebaldeo was my cousin, Count Eglamore. I loved him. We were +reared together. We used to play here in this garden. I remember how +Tebaldeo once fetched me a wren's nest from that maple yonder. I stood +just here. I was weeping, because I was afraid he would fall. If he had +fallen, if he had been killed then, it would have been the luckier for +him. They say that he conspired. I do not know. I only know that by your +orders, Count Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like +that (_pointing to the shrine_). I know that his arms and legs were each +broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set +upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died +very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, +and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday +to watch him die, the boy who fetched me a wren's nest from yonder maple. +And I know that you are Eglamore, who ordered these things done. + +GUIDO +I gave orders for the Marquis of Cibo's execution, as was the duty of my +office. I did not devise the manner of his punishment. The punishment for +Cibo's crime was long ago fixed by our laws. All who attack the Duke's +person must die thus. + +GRACIOSA +(_Waves his excuses aside._) And then you plan this masquerade. You plan +to make me care for you so greatly that even when I know you to be Count +Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate +Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to leave them--in your huckster's phrase--no +longer unbought. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me +as a stepping-stone to safety. But was it fair to me? + +GUIDO +Graciosa ... you shame me-- + +GRACIOSA +Look you, Count Eglamore, I was only a child, playing here, alone, and +not unhappy. Oh, was it fair, was it worth while to match your skill +against my ignorance? + +THE DUKE +Fie, Donna Graciosa, you must not be too harsh with Eglamore-- + +GRACIOSA +Think how unhappy I would be if even now I loved you, and how I would +loathe myself! + +THE DUKE +It is his nature to scheme, and he weaves his plots as inevitably as the +spider does her web-- + +GRACIOSA +But I am getting angry over nothing. Nothing has happened except that +I have dreamed--of a Guido. And there is no Guido. There is only an +Eglamore, a lackey in attendance upon his master. + +THE DUKE +Believe me, it is wiser to forget this clever lackey--as I do--except when +there is need of his services. I think that you have no more need to +consider him-- + +_He takes the girl's hand. GRACIOSA now looks at him as though seeing him +for the first time. She is vaguely frightened by this predatory beast, but +in the main her emotion is as yet bewilderment._ + +THE DUKE +For you are very beautiful, Graciosa. You are as slim as a lily, and +more white. Your eyes are two purple mirrors in each of which I see a +tiny image of Duke Alessandro. (_GUIDO takes a step forward, and the DUKE +now addresses him affably._) Those nuns they are fetching me are big +high-colored wenches with cheeks like apples. It is not desirable that +women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should +be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, +and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. +It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you +comprehend how easy it would be to murder her. + +GUIDO +(_Softly, without expression._) God, God! + +_The DUKE looks with delight at GRACIOSA, who stands bewildered and +childlike._ + +THE DUKE +You fear me, do you not, Graciosa? Your hand is soft and cold as the skin +of a viper. When I touch it you shudder. I am very tired of women who +love me, of women who are infatuated by my beauty. You, I can see, are not +infatuated. To you my touch will always be a martyrdom, you will always +loathe me. And therefore I shall not weary of you for a long while, +because the misery and the helplessness of my lovely victim will incite +me to make very lovely verses. + +_He draws her to the bench, sitting beside her._ + +THE DUKE +Yes, Graciosa, you will inspire me. Your father shall have all the wealth +and state that even his greedy imaginings can devise, so long as you can +contrive to loathe me. We will find you a suitable husband--say, in +Eglamore here. You shall have flattery and titles, gold and fine glass, +soft stuffs and superb palaces and many lovely jewels-- + +_The DUKE glances down at the pedler's pack._ + +THE DUKE +But Eglamore also has been wooing you with jewels. You must see mine, +dear Graciosa. + +GRACIOSA +(_Without expression._) Count Eglamore said that I must. + +THE DUKE +(_Raises the necklace, and lets it drop contemptuously._) Oh, not such +trumpery as this. I have in Florence gems which have not their fellows +anywhere, gems which have not even a name, and the value of which is +incalculable. I have jewels engendered by the thunder, jewels taken from +the heart of the Arabian deer. I have jewels cut from the brain of a toad, +and from the eyes of serpents. I have jewels which are authentically known +to have fallen from the moon. Well, we will select the rarest, and have a +pair of slippers encrusted with them, and in these slippers you shall +dance for me, in a room that I know of-- + +GUIDO +(_Without moving._) Highness--! + +THE DUKE +It will all be very amusing, for I think that she is now quite innocent, +as pure as the high angels. Yes, it will be diverting to make her as I am. +It will be an atrocious action that will inspire me to write lovelier +verses than even I have ever written. + +GUIDO +She is a child-- + +THE DUKE +Yes, yes, a frightened child who cannot speak, who stays as still as a +lark that has been taken in a snare. Why, neither of her sisters can +compare with this, and, besides, the elder one had a quite ugly mole upon +her thigh--But that old rogue Balthazar Valori has a real jewel to offer, +this time. Well, I will buy it. + +GUIDO +Highness, I love this child-- + +THE DUKE +Ah, then you cannot ever be her husband. You would have suited otherwise. +But we will find some other person of discretion-- + +_For a moment the two men regard each other in silence. The DUKE becomes +aware that he is being opposed. His brows contract a little, but he rises +from the bench rather as if in meditation than in anger. Then GUIDO drops +the cloak and gloves he has been holding until this. His lackeyship is +over._ + +GUIDO +No! + +THE DUKE +My friend, some long-faced people say you made a beast of me-- + +GUIDO +No, I will not have it. + +THE DUKE +So do you beware lest the beast turn and rend you. + +GUIDO +I have never been too nice to profit by your vices. I have taken my +thrifty toll of abomination. I have stood by contentedly, not urging you +on, yet never trying to stay you as you waded deeper and ever deeper into +the filth of your debaucheries, because meanwhile you left me so much +power. + +THE DUKE +Would you reshape your handiwork more piously? Come, come, man, be content +with it as I am. And be content with the kingdom I leave you to play with. + +GUIDO +It was not altogether I who made of you a brainsick beast. But what you +are is in part my handiwork. Nevertheless, you shall not harm this child. + +THE DUKE +"Shall not" is a delightfully quaint expression. I only regret that you +are not likely ever to use it to me again. + +GUIDO +I know this means my ruin. + +THE DUKE +Indeed, I must venture to remind you, Count Eglamore, that I am still a +ruling prince-- + +GUIDO +That is nothing to me. + +THE DUKE +And that, where you are master of very admirable sentiments, I happen to +be master of all Tuscany. + +GUIDO +At court you are the master. At your court in Florence I have seen many +mothers raise the veil from their daughters' faces because you were +passing. But here upon this hill-top I can see only the woman I love and +the man who has insulted her. + +THE DUKE +So all the world is changed, and Pandarus is transformed into Hector! +Your words are very sonorous words, dear Eglamore, but by what deeds +do you propose to back them? + +GUIDO +By killing you, your highness. + +THE DUKE +But in what manner? By stifling me with virtuous rhetoric? Hah, it is +rather awkward for you--is it not--that our sumptuary laws forbid you +merchants to carry swords? + +GUIDO +(_Draws his dagger._) I think this knife will serve me, highness, to make +earth a cleaner place. + +THE DUKE +(_Drawing his long sword._) It would save trouble now to split you like a +chicken for roasting.... (_He shrugs, and sheathes his sword. He unbuckles +his sword-belt, and lays it aside._) No, no, this farce ascends in +interest. So let us play it fairly to the end. I risk nothing, since from +this moment you are useless to me, my rebellious lackey-- + +GUIDO +You risk your life, for very certainly I mean to kill you. + +THE DUKE +Two go to every bargain, my friend. Now, if I kill you, it is always +diverting to kill; and if by any chance you should kill me, I shall at +least be rid of the intolerable knowledge that to-morrow will be just like +to-day. + +_He draws his dagger. The two men engage warily but with determination, +the DUKE presently advancing. GUIDO steps backward, and in the act trips +over the pedler's pack, and falls prostrate. His dagger flies from his +hand. GRACIOSA, with a little cry, has covered her face. Nobody strikes +an attitude, because nobody is conscious of any need to be heroic, but +there is a perceptible silence, which is broken by the DUKE'S quiet +voice._ + +THE DUKE +Well! am I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my +caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other +with some pretension of adroitness. + +GUIDO +(_Rising, with a sob._) Ah! + +_He catches up the fallen dagger, and attacks the DUKE, this time with +utter disregard of the rules of fence and his own safety. GUIDO drives the +DUKE back. GUIDO is careless of defence, and desirous only to kill. The +DUKE is wounded, and falls with a cry at the foot of the shrine. GUIDO +utters a sort of strangled growl. He raises his dagger, intending to hack +at and mutilate his antagonist, who is now unconscious. As GUIDO stoops, +GRACIOSA, from behind him, catches his arm._ + +GRACIOSA +He gave you your life. + +_GUIDO turns. He drops the weapon. He speaks with great gentleness, almost +with weariness._ + +GUIDO +Madonna, the Duke is not yet dead. That wound is nothing serious. + +GRACIOSA +He spared your life. + +GUIDO +It is impossible to let him live. + +GRACIOSA +But I think he only voiced a caprice-- + +GUIDO +I think so, too, but I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless. + +GRACIOSA +But you have power-- + +GUIDO +Power! I, who have attacked the Duke's person! I, who have done what your +dead cousin merely planned to do! + +GRACIOSA +Guido--! + +GUIDO +Living, this brain-sick beast will make of you his plaything--and, a +little later, his broken, soiled and cast-by plaything. It is therefore +necessary that I kill Duke Alessandro. + +_GRACIOSA moves away from him, and GUIDO rises._ + +GRACIOSA +And afterward--and afterward you must die just as Tebaldeo died! + +GUIDO +That is the law, madonna. But what he said is true. I am useless to him, +a rebellious lackey to be punished. Whether I have his life or no, I am a +lost man. + +GRACIOSA +A moment since you were Count Eglamore, whom all our nobles feared-- + +GUIDO +Now there is not a beggar in the kingdom who would change lots with me. +But at least I shall first kill this kingdom's lord. + +_He picks up his dagger._ + +GRACIOSA +You are a friendless and hunted man, in peril of a dreadful death. But +even so, you are not penniless. These jewels here are of great value-- + +_GUIDO laughs, and hangs the pearls about her neck._ + +GUIDO +Do you keep them, then. + +GRACIOSA +There is a world outside this kingdom. You have only to make your way +through the forest to be out of Tuscany. + +GUIDO +(_Coolly reflective._) Perhaps I might escape, going north to Bologna, and +then to Venice, which is at war with the Duke-- + +GRACIOSA +I can tell you the path to Bologna. + +GUIDO +But first the Duke must die, because his death saves you. + +GRACIOSA +No, Guido! I would have Eglamore go hence with hands as clean as possible. + +GUIDO +Not even Eglamore would leave you at the mercy of this poet. + +GRACIOSA +How does that matter! It is no secret that my father intends to market me +as best suits his interests. And the great Duke of Florence, no less, +would have been my purchaser! You heard him, "I will buy this jewel," he +said. He would have paid thrice what any of my sisters' purchasers have +paid. You know very well that my father would have been delighted. + +GUIDO +(_Since the truth of what she has just said is known to him by more +startling proofs than she dreams of, he speaks rather bitterly, as he +sheathes the dagger._) And I must need upset the bargain between these +jewel merchants! + +GRACIOSA +(_Lightly._) "No, I will not have it!" Count Eglamore must cry. (_Her +hand upon his arm._) My dear unthrifty pedler! it cost you a great deal to +speak those words. + +GUIDO +I had no choice. I love you. (_A pause. As GRACIOSA does not speak, GUIDO +continues, very quiet at first._) It is a theme on which I shall not +embroider. So long as I thought to use you as an instrument I could woo +fluently enough. Today I saw that you were frightened and helpless--oh, +quite helpless. And something in me changed. I knew for the first time +that I loved you. And I knew I was not clean as you are clean. I knew +that I had more in common with this beast here than I had with you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Who with feminine practicality, while the man talks, has reached her +decision._) We daughters of the Valori are so much merchandise.... Heigho, +since I cannot help it, since bought and sold I must be, one day or +another, at least I will go at a noble price. Yet I do not think I am +quite worth the wealth and power which you have given up because of me. So +it will be necessary to make up the difference, dear, by loving you very +much. + +_GUIDO takes her hands, only half-believing that he understands her +meaning. He puts an arm about her shoulder, holding her at a distance, the +better to see her face._ + +GUIDO +You, who had only scorn to give me when I was a kingdom's master! Would +you go with me now that I am homeless and friendless? + +GRACIOSA +(_Archly._) But to me you do not seem quite friendless. + +GUIDO +Graciosa--! + +GRACIOSA +And I doubt if you could ever find your way through the forest alone. +(_But as she stands there with one hand raised to each of his shoulders +her vindication is self-revealed, and she indicates her bracelet rather +indignantly._) Besides, what else is a poor maid to do, when she is +burdened with a talisman that compels her to marry the man whom she--so +very much--prefers? + +GUIDO +(_Drawing her to him._) Ah, you shall not regret that foolish preference. + +GRACIOSA +But come! There is a path--(_They are gathering up the pack and its +contents, as GUIDO pauses by the DUKE._) Is he--? + +GUIDO +He will not enter Hell to-day. (_The DUKE stirs._) Already he revives, you +see. So let us begone before his attendants come. + +_GUIDO lifts her to the top of the wall. He lifts up the pack._ + +GRACIOSA +My lute! + +GUIDO +(_Giving it to her._) So we may pass for minstrels on the road to Venice. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, singing the Duke's songs to pay our way. (_GUIDO climbs over the +wall, and stands on the far side, examining the landscape beneath._) +Horsemen! + +GUIDO +The Duke's attendants fetching him new women--two more of those numerous +damsels that his song demands. They will revive this ruinous songmaker to +rule over Tuscany more foolishly than Eglamore governed when Eglamore was +a great lord. (_He speaks pensively, still looking down._) It is a very +rich and lovely country, this kingdom which a half-hour since lay in the +hollow of my hand. Now I am empty-handed. + +GRACIOSA +(_With mocking reproach._) Empty-handed! + +_She extends to him both her hands. GUIDO takes them, and laughs joyously, +saying,_ "Come!" _as he lifts her down._ + +_There is a moment's silence, then is heard the song and lute-playing with +which the play began, growing ever more distant:..._ + + "Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come." + +_... The DUKE moves. The DUKE half raises himself at the foot of the +crucifix._ + +THE DUKE +Eglamore! I am hurt. Help me, Eglamore! + + +(THE CURTAIN FALLS) + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Jewel Merchants, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + +***** This file should be named 9829-8.txt or 9829-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/8/2/9829/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/9829-8.zip b/9829-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..81f1601 --- /dev/null +++ b/9829-8.zip diff --git a/9829.txt b/9829.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cb5f4e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/9829.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1823 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jewel Merchants, by James Branch Cabell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Jewel Merchants + A Comedy in One Act + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Posting Date: October 29, 2011 [EBook #9829] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 22, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + _The Jewel Merchants_ + _A Comedy in One Act_ + + By + + James Branch Cabell + + + _"Io non posso ritrar di tutti appieno: + pero chi si mi caccia il lungo tema, + che molte volte al fatto il dir vieti meno."_ + + + + NEW YORK + 1921 + + + + TO + LOUISE BURLEIGH + + _This latest avatar of so many notions + which were originally hers._ + + + + +THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE + +Prudence urges me here to forestall detection, by conceding that this +brief play has no pretension to "literary" quality. It is a piece in +its inception designed for, and in its making swayed by, the requirements +of the little theatre stage. The one virtue which anybody anywhere could +claim for _The Jewel Merchants_ is the fact that it "acts" easily and +rather effectively. + +And candor compels the admission forthwith that the presence of this +anchoritic merit in the wilderness is hardly due to me. When circumstances +and the Little Theatre League of Richmond combined to bully me into +contriving the dramatization of a short story called _Balthazar's +Daughter_, I docilely converted this tale into a one-act play of which +you will find hereinafter no sentence. The comedy I wrote is now at one +with the lost dramaturgy of Pollio and of Posidippus, and is even less +likely ever to be resurrected for mortal auditors. + +It read, I still think, well enough: I am certain that, when we came to +rehearse, the thing did not "act" at all, and that its dialogue, whatever +its other graces, had the defect of being unspeakable. So at each +rehearsal we--by which inclusive pronoun I would embrace the actors and +the producing staff at large, and with especial (metaphorical) ardor Miss +Louise Burleigh, who directed all--changed here a little, and there a +little more; and shifted this bit, and deleted the other, and "tried out" +everybody's suggestions generally, until we got at least the relief of +witnessing at each rehearsal a different play. And steadily my manuscript +was enriched with interlineations, to and beyond the verge of legibility, +as steadily I substituted, for the speeches I had rewritten yesterday, +the speeches which the actor (having perfectly in mind the gist but not +the phrasing of what was meant) delivered naturally. + +This process made, at all events, for what we in particular wanted, +which was a play that the League could stage for half an evening's +entertainment; but it left existent not a shred of the rhetorical +fripperies which I had in the beginning concocted, and it made of the +actual first public performance a collaboration with almost as many +contributing authors as though the production had been a musical comedy. + +And if only fate had gifted me with an exigent conscience and a turn for +oratory, I would, I like to think, have publicly confessed, at that first +public performance, to all those tributary clarifying rills to the play's +progress: but, as it was, vainglory combined with an aversion to +"speech-making" to compel a taciturn if smirking acceptance of the +curtain-call with which an indulgent audience flustered the nominal author +of _The Jewel Merchants_.... Now, in any case, it is due my collaborators +to tell you that _The Jewel Merchants_ has amply fulfilled the purpose +of its makers by being enacted to considerable applause,--and is a +pleasure to add that this _succes d'estime_ was very little chargeable to +anything which I contributed to the play. + +For another matter, I would here confess that _The Jewel Merchants_, +in addition to its "literary" deficiencies, lacks moral fervor. It will, +I trust, corrupt no reader irretrievably, to untraversable leagues beyond +the last hope of redemption: but, even so, it is a frankly unethical +performance. You must accept this resuscitated trio, if at all, very much +as they actually went about Tuscany, in long ago discarded young flesh, +when the one trait everywhere common to their milieu was the absence of +any moral excitement over such-and-such an action's being or not being +"wicked." This phenomenon of Renaissance life, as lived in Italy in +particular, has elsewhere been discussed time and again, and I lack here +the space, and the desire, either to explain or to apologize for the era's +delinquencies. I would merely indicate that this point of conduct is the +fulcrum of _The Jewel Merchants_. + +The play presents three persons, to any one of whom the committing of +murder or theft or adultery or any other suchlike interdicted feat, is +just the risking of the penalty provided against the breaking of that +especial law if you have the vile luck to be caught at it: and this to +them is all that "wickedness" can mean. We nowadays are encouraged to +think differently: but such dear privileges do not entitle us to ignore +the truth that had any of these three advanced a dissenting code of +conduct, it would, in the time and locality, have been in radical +irreverence of the best-thought-of tenets. There was no generally +recognized criminality in crime, but only a perceptible risk. So must +this trio thriftily adhere to the accepted customs of their era, and +regard an infraction of the Decalogue (for an instance) very much as we +today look on a violation of our prohibition enactments. + +In fact, we have accorded to the Eighteenth Amendment almost exactly the +status then reserved for Omnipotence. You found yourself confronted by +occasionally enforced if obviously unreasonable supernal statutory +decrees, which every one broke now and then as a matter of convenience: +and every now and then, also, somebody was caught and punished, either in +this world or in the next, without his ill-fortune's involving any +disgrace or particular reprehension. As has been finely said, +righteousness and sinfulness were for the while "in strange and dreadful +peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good +man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a +villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes +recoil from believing." + +Such was the sixteenth-century Tuscan view of "wickedness." I have +endeavored to reproduce it without comment. + +So much of ink and paper and typography may be needed, I fear, to remind +you, in a more exhortatory civilization, that Graciosa is really, by all +the standards of her day, a well reared girl. To the prostitution of her +body, whether with or without the assistance of an ecclesiastically +acquired husband, she looks forward as unconcernedly as you must by +ordinary glance out of your front window, to face a vista so familiar +that the discovery of any change therein would be troubling. Meanwhile +she wishes this sorrow-bringing Eglamore assassinated, as the obvious, +the most convenient, and indeed the only way of getting rid of him: and +toward the end of the play, alike for her and Guido, the presence of a +corpse in her garden is merely an inconvenience without any touch of the +gruesome. Precautions have, of course, to be taken to meet the emergency +which has arisen: but in the dead body of a man _per se_, the lovers can +detect nothing more appalling, or more to be shrunk from, than would be +apparent if the lifeless object in the walkway were a dead flower. The +thing ought to be removed, if only in the interest of tidiness, but there +is no call to make a pother over it. + +As for our Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, +by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the +Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to +history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured +and retained: it is no part of the play. + +Above all, though, I must remind you that the Duke is unspurred by +malevolence. A twinge of jealousy there may be, just at first, to find his +pampered Eglamore so far advanced in the good graces of this pretty girl, +but that is hardly important. Thereafter the Duke is breaking no law, +for the large reason that his preference in any matter is the only law +thus far divulged to him. As concerns the man and the girl he discovers on +this hill-top, they, in common with all else in Tuscany, are possessions +of Duke Alessandro's. They can raise no question as to how he "ought" to +deal with them, for to your chattels, whether they be your finger rings or +your subjects or your pomatum pots or the fair quires whereon you indite +your verses, you cannot rationally he said to "owe" anything.... No, the +Duke is but a spirited lad in quest of amusement: and Guido and Graciosa +are the playthings with which, on this fine sunlit morning, he attempts to +divert himself. + +This much being granted--and confessed,--we let the play begin. + +_Dumbarton Grange,_ +_June, 1921_ + + + * * * * * + +["Alessandro de Medici is generally styled by the Italian authors the +first duke of Florence; but in this they are not strictly accurate. His +title of duke was derived from Citta, or Civita di Penna, and had been +assumed by him several years before he obtained the direction of the +Florentine state. It must also be observed, that, after the evasion of +Eglamore, Duke Alessandro did not, as Robertson observes, 'enjoy the +same absolute dominion as his family have retained to the present times,' +(Hist. Charles V. book v.) he being only declared chief or prince of the +republic, and his authority being in some measure counteracted or +restrained by two councils chosen from the citizens, for life, one of +which consisted of forty-eight, and the other of two hundred members. +(Varchi, Storia Fior. p. 497: Nerli, Com. lib. xi. pp. 257, 264.)"] + + + * * * * * + + + THE JEWEL MERCHANTS + + _"Diamente ne smeraldo ne zaffino."_ + + +Originally produced by the Little Theatre League of Richmond, Virginia, +at the Binford High School Auditorium, 22 February, 1921. + + _Original Cast_ + +GRACIOSA...........................Elinor Fry + Daughter of Balthazar Valori + +GUIDO........................Roderick Maybee + A jewel merchant + +ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.........Francis F. Bierne + Duke of Florence + +Produced under the direction of Louise Burleigh. + + + * * * * * + + + +_THE JEWEL MERCHANTS_ + +_The play begins with the sound of a woman's voice singing a song +(adapted from Rossetti's version) which is delivered to the accompaniment +of a lute._ + +SONG: + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad. + + Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth + Filled with the strife of birds, + With water-springs and beasts that house i' the earth. + + Let me seem Solomon for lore of words, + Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom. + + Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come, + Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven. + +_As the singing ends, the curtain rises upon a corner of Balthazar +Valori's garden near the northern border of Tuscany. The garden is walled. +There is a shrine in the wall: the tortured figure upon the crucifix is +conspicuous. To the right stands a rather high-backed stone bench: by +mounting from the seat to the top of the bench it is possible to scale +the wall. To the left a crimson pennant on a pole shows against the sky. +The period is 1533, and a few miles southward the Florentines, after three +years of formally recognizing Jesus Christ as the sole lord and king of +Florence, have lately altered matters as profoundly as was possible by +electing Alessandro de Medici to be their Duke._ + +_GRACIOSA is seated upon the bench, with a lute. The girl is, to our +modern taste, very quaintly dressed in gold-colored satin, with a short +tight bodice, cut square and low at the neck, and with long full skirts. +When she stands erect, her preposterous "flowing" sleeves, lined with +sky blue, reach to the ground. Her blonde hair, of which she has a great +deal, is braided, in the intricate early sixteenth fashion, under a +jeweled cap and a veil the exact color of this hair._ + +_There is a call. Smiling, GRACIOSA answers this call by striking her +lute. She pats straight her hair and gown, and puts aside the instrument. +GUIDO appears at the top of the wall. All you can see of the handsome +young fellow, in this posture, is that he wears a green skull-cap and a +dark blue smock, the slashed sleeves of which are lined with green._ + +GUIDO +Ah, madonna.... + +GRACIOSA +Welcome, Ser Guido. Your journey has been brief. + +GUIDO +It has not seemed brief to me. + +GRACIOSA +Why, it was only three days ago you told me it would be a fortnight +before you came this way again. + +GUIDO +Yes, but I did not then know that each day spent apart from you, Madonna +Graciosa, would be a century in passing. + +GRACIOSA +Dear me, but your search must have been desperate! + +GUIDO +(_Who speaks, as almost always hereinafter, with sober enjoyment of the +fact that he is stating the exact truth unintelligibly._) Yes, my search +is desperate. + +GRACIOSA +Did you find gems worthy of your search? + +GUIDO +Very certainly, since at my journey's end I find Madonna Graciosa, the +chief jewel of Tuscany. + +GRACIOSA +Such compliments, Guido, make your speech less like a merchant's than a +courtier's. + +GUIDO +Ah, well, to balance that, you will presently find courtiers in Florence +who will barter for you like merchants. May I descend? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, if you have something of interest to show me. + +GUIDO +Am I to be welcomed merely for the sake of my gems? You were more +gracious, you were more beautifully like your lovely name, on the +fortunate day that I first encountered you ... only six weeks ago, and +only yonder, where the path crosses the highway. But now that I esteem +myself your friend, you greet me like a stranger. You do not even invite +me into your garden. I much prefer the manner in which you told me the +way to the inn when I was an unknown passer-by. And yet your pennant +promised greeting. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the smile of an exceptionally candid angel._) Ah, Guido, I flew +it the very minute the boy from the inn brought me your message! + +GUIDO +Now, there is the greeting I had hoped for! But how do you escape your +father's watch so easily? + +GRACIOSA +My father has no need to watch me in this lonely hill castle. Ever since +I can remember I have wandered at will in the forest. My father knows that +to me every path is as familiar as one of the corridors in his house; and +in no one of them did I ever meet anybody except charcoal-burners, and +sometimes a nun from the convent, and--oh, yes!--you. But descend, friend +Guido. + +_Thus encouraged, GUIDO descends from the top of the wall to the top of +the bench, and thence, via its seat, to the ground. You are thereby +enabled to discover that his nether portions are clad in dark blue tights +and soft leather shoes with pointed turned-up toes. It is also noticeable +that he carries a jewel pack of purple, which, when opened, reveals an +orange lining._ + +GUIDO +(_With as much irony as the pleasure he takes in being again with this +dear child permits._) That "Oh, yes, you!" is a very fitting reward for +my devotion. For I find that nowadays I travel about the kingdom buying +jewels less for my patrons at court than for the pleasure of having your +eyes appraise them, and smile at me. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the condescension of a great lady._) Guido, you have in point of +fact been very kind to me, and very amusing, too, in my loneliness on +the top of this hill. (_Drawing back the sleeve from her left arm, she +reveals the trinket there._) See, here is the turquoise bracelet I had +from you the second time you passed. I wear it always--secretly. + +GUIDO +That is wise, for the turquoise is a talisman. They say that the woman +who wears a turquoise is thereby assured of marrying the person whom she +prefers. + +GRACIOSA +I do not know about that, nor do I expect to have much choice as to what +rich nobleman marries me, but I know that I love this bracelet-- + +GUIDO +In fact, they are handsome stones. + +GRACIOSA +Because it reminds me constantly of the hours which I have spent here +with my lute-- + +GUIDO +Oh, with your lute! + +GRACIOSA +And with your pack of lovely jewels-- + +GUIDO +Yes, to be sure! with my jewels. + +GRACIOSA +And with you. + +GUIDO +There is again my gracious lady. Now, in reward for that, you shall +feast your eyes. + +GRACIOSA +(_All eagerness._) And what have you to-day? + +_GUIDO opens his pack. She bends above it with hands outstretched._ + +GUIDO +(_Taking out a necklace._) For one thing, pearls, black pearls, set with +a clasp of emeralds. See! They will become you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Taking them, pressing them to her cheek._) How cool! But I--poor child +of a poor noble--I cannot afford such. + +GUIDO +Oh, I did not mean to offer them to you to-day. No, this string is +intended for the Duke's favorite, Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +(_Stiffening._) Count Eglamore! These are for him? + +GUIDO +For Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +Has the upstart such taste? + +GUIDO +If it be taste to appreciate pearls, then the Duke's chief officer has +excellent taste. He seeks them far and wide. He will be very generous in +paying for this string. + +_GRACIOSA drops the pearls, in which she no longer delights. She returns +to the bench, and sits down and speaks with a sort of disappointment._ + +GRACIOSA +I am sorry to learn that this Eglamore is among your patrons. + +GUIDO +(_Still half engrossed by the contents of his pack. The man loves jewels +equally for their value and their beauty._) Oh, the nobles complain of +him, but we merchants have no quarrel with Eglamore. He buys too lavishly. + +GRACIOSA +Do you think only of buying and selling, Guido? + +GUIDO +It is a pursuit not limited to us who frankly live by sale and purchase. +Count Eglamore, for example, knows that men may be bought as readily as +merchandise. It is one reason why he is so hated--by the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Irritated by the title._) Count Eglamore, indeed! I ask in my prayers +every night that some honest gentleman may contrive to cut the throat of +this abominable creature. + +GUIDO +(_His hand going to his throat._) You pray too much, madonna. Even very +pious people ought to be reasonable. + +GRACIOSA +(_Rising from the bench._) Have I not reason to hate the man who killed +my kinsman? + +GUIDO +(_Rising from his gems._) The Marquis of Cibo conspired, or so the court +judged-- + +GRACIOSA +I know nothing of the judgment. But it was this Eglamore who discovered +the plot, if there indeed was any plot, and who sent my cousin Cibo to +a death--(_pointing to the shrine_)--oh, to a death as horrible as that. +So I hate him. + +GUIDO +Yet you have never even seen him, I believe? + +GRACIOSA +And it would be better for him never to see me or any of my kin. My +father, my uncles and my cousins have all sworn to kill him-- + +GUIDO +So I have gathered. They remain among the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Returning, sits upon the bench, and speaks regretfully._) But they +have never any luck. Cousin Pietro contrived to have a beam dropped on +Eglamore's head, and it missed him by not half a foot-- + +GUIDO +Ah, yes, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +And Cousin Georgio stabbed him in the back one night, but the coward had +on chain-armor under his finery-- + +GUIDO +I remember that also. + +GRACIOSA +And Uncle Lorenzo poisoned his soup, but a pet dog got at it first. That +was very unfortunate. + +GUIDO +Yes, the dog seemed to think so, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +However, perseverance is always rewarded. So I still hope that one or +another of my kinsmen will contrive to kill this Eglamore before I go to +court. + +GUIDO +(_Sits at her feet._) Has my Lord Balthazar yet set a day for that +presentation? + +GRACIOSA +Not yet. + +GUIDO +I wish to have this Eglamore's accounts all settled by that date. + +GRACIOSA +But in three months, Guido, I shall be sixteen. My sisters went to court +when they were sixteen. + +GUIDO +In fact, a noble who is not rich cannot afford to continue supporting a +daughter who is salable in marriage. + +GRACIOSA +No, of course not. (_She speaks in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. +Then, more impulsively, the girl slips down from the bench, and sits by +him on the around._) Do you think I shall make as good a match as my +sisters, Guido? Do you think some great rich nobleman will marry me very +soon? And shall I like the court! What shall I see there? + +GUIDO +Marvels. I think--yes, I am afraid that you will like them. + +GRACIOSA +And Duke Alessandro--shall I like him? + +GUIDO +Few courtiers have expressed dislike of him in my presence. + +GRACIOSA +Do you like him? Does he too buy lavishly? + +GUIDO +Eh, madonna! some day, when you have seen his jewels-- + +GRACIOSA +Oh! I shall see them when I go to court? + +GUIDO +Yes, he will show them to you, I think, without fail, for the Duke loves +beauty in all its forms. So he will take pleasure in confronting the +brightness of your eyes with the brightness of the four kinds of sapphires, +of the twelve kinds of rubies, and of many extraordinary pearls-- + +GRACIOSA +(_With eyes shining, and lips parted._) Oh! + +GUIDO +And you will see his famous emerald necklace, and all his diamonds, and +his huge turquoises, which will make you ashamed of your poor talisman-- + +GRACIOSA +He will show all these jewels to me! + +GUIDO +(_Looking at her, and still smiling thoughtfully._) He will show you the +very finest of his gems, assuredly. And then, worse still, he will be +making verses in your honor. + +GRACIOSA +It would be droll to have a great duke making songs about me! + +GUIDO +It is a preposterous feature of Duke Alessandro's character that he is +always making songs about some beautiful thing or another. + +GRACIOSA +Such strange songs, Guido! I was singing over one of them just before +you came,-- + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad-- + +But I could not quite understand it. Are his songs thought good? + +GUIDO +The songs of a reigning duke are always good. + +GRACIOSA +And is he as handsome as people report? + +GUIDO +Tastes differ, of course-- + +GRACIOSA +And is he--? + +GUIDO +I have a portrait of the Duke. It does not, I think, unduly flatter him. +Will you look at it? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, yes! + +GUIDO +(_Drawing out a miniature on a chain._) Here is the likeness. + +GRACIOSA +But how should you--? + +GUIDO +(_Seeing her surprise._) Oh, it was a gift to me from his highness for a +special service I did him, and as such must be treasured. + +GRACIOSA +Perhaps, then, I shall see yon at court, Messer Guido, who are the friend +of princes? + +GUIDO +If you do, I ask only that in noisy Florence you remember this quiet +garden. + +GRACIOSA +(_Looks at him silently, then glances at the portrait. She speaks with +evident disappointment._) Is this the Duke? + +GUIDO +You may see his arms on it, and on the back his inscription. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, but--(_looking at the portrait again_)--but ... he is ... so ... + +GUIDO +You are astonished at his highness' coloring? That he inherits from his +mother. She was, you know, a blackamoor. + +GRACIOSA +And my sisters wrote me he was like a god! + +GUIDO +Such observations are court etiquette. + +GRACIOSA +(_With an outburst of disgust._) Take it back! Though how can you bear to +look at it, far less to have it touching you! And only yesterday I was +angry because I had not seen the Duke riding past! + +GUIDO +Seen him! here! riding past! + +GRACIOSA +Old Ursula told me that the Duke had gone by with twenty men, riding down +toward the convent at the border. And I flung my sewing-bag straight at +her head because she had not called me. + +GUIDO +That was idle gossip, I fancy. The Duke rarely rides abroad without +my--(_he stops_)--without my lavish patron Eglamore, the friend of all +honest merchants. + +GRACIOSA +But that abominable Eglamore may have been with him. I heard nothing to +the contrary. + +GUIDO +True, madonna, true. I had forgotten you did not see them. + +GRACIOSA +No. What is he like, this Eglamore? Is he as appalling to look at as the +Duke? + +GUIDO +Madonna! but wise persons do not apply such adjectives to dukes. And wise +persons do not criticize Count Eglamore's appearance, either, now that +Eglamore is indispensable to the all-powerful Duke of Florence. + +GRACIOSA +Indispensable? + +GUIDO +It is thanks to the Eglamore whom you hate that the Duke has ample leisure +to indulge in recreations which are reputed to be--curious. + +GRACIOSA +I do not understand you, Guido. + +GUIDO +That is perhaps quite as well. (_Attempting to explain as much as is +decently expressible._) To be brief, madonna, business annoys the Duke. + +GRACIOSA +Why? + +GUIDO +It interferes with the pursuit of all the beautiful things he asks for +in that song. + +GRACIOSA +But how does that make Eglamore indispensable? + +GUIDO +Eglamore is an industrious person who affixes seals, and signs treaties, +and musters armies, and collects revenues, upon the whole, quite as +efficiently as Alessandro would be capable of doing these things. + +GRACIOSA +So Duke Alessandro merely makes verses? + +GUIDO +And otherwise amuses himself as his inclinations prompt, while Eglamore +rules Tuscany--and the Tuscans are none the worse off on account of it. +(_He rises, and his hand goes to the dagger at his belt._) But is not +that a horseman? + +GRACIOSA +(_She too has risen, and is now standing on the bench, looking over the +wall._) A solitary rider, far down by the convent, so far away that he +seems hardly larger than a scarlet dragon-fly. + +GUIDO +I confess I wish to run no risk of being found here, by your respected +father or by your ingenious cousins and uncles. + +GRACIOSA +(_She turns, but remains standing upon the bench._) I think your Duke is +much more dangerous looking than any of them. Heigho! I can quite foresee +that I shall never fall in love with this Duke. + +GUIDO +A prince has means to overcome all obstacles. + +GRACIOSA +No. It is unbefitting and a little cowardly for Duke Alessandro to shirk +the duties of his station for verse-making and eternal pleasure-seeking. +Now if I were Duke-- + +GUIDO +What would you do? + +GRACIOSA +(_Posturing a little as she stands upon the bench._) If I were duke? +Oh ... I would grant my father a pension ... and I would have Eglamore +hanged ... and I would purchase a new gown of silvery green-- + +GUIDO +In which you would be very ravishingly beautiful. + +_His tone has become rather ardent, and he is now standing nearer to her +than the size of the garden necessitates. So GRACIOSA demurely steps +down from the bench, and sits at the far end._ + +GRACIOSA +And that is all I can think of. What would you do if you were duke, +Messer Guido? + +GUIDO +(_Who is now sitting beside her at closer quarters than the length of the +bench quite strictly demands._) I? What would I do if I were a great lord +instead of a tradesman! (_Softly._) I think you know the answer, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +Oh, you would make me your duchess, of course. That is quite understood. +But I was speaking seriously, Guido. + +GUIDO +And is it not a serious matter that a pedler of crystals should have dared +to love a nobleman's daughter? + +GRACIOSA +(_Delighted._) This is the first I have heard of it. + +GUIDO +But you are perfectly right. It is not a serious matter. That I worship +you is an affair which does not seriously concern any person save me in +any way whatsoever. Yet I think that knowledge of the fact would put your +father to the trouble of sharpening his dagger. + +GRACIOSA +Ye-es. But not even Father would deny that you were showing excellent +taste. + +GUIDO +Indeed, I am not certain that I do worship you; for in order to adore +whole-heartedly the idolater must believe his idol to be perfect. +(_Taking her hand._) Now your nails are of an ugly shape, like that of +little fans. Your nose is nothing to boast of. And your mouth is too +large. I do not admire these faults, for faults they are undoubtedly-- + +GRACIOSA +Do they make me very ugly? I know that I have not a really good mouth, +Guido, but do you think it is positively repulsive? + +GUIDO +No.... Then, too, I know that you are vain and self-seeking, and look +forward contentedly to the time when your father will transfer his +ownership of your physical attractions to that nobleman who offers the +highest price for them. + +GRACIOSA +But we daughters of the poor Valori are compelled to marry--suitably. We +have only the choice between that and the convent yonder. + +GUIDO +That is true, and nobody disputes it. Still, you participate in a +monstrous bargain, and I would prefer to have you exhibit distaste for it. + +_Bending forward, GUIDO draws from his jewel pack the string of pearls, +and this he moodily contemplates, in order to evince his complete +disinterestedness. The pose has its effect. GRACIOSA looks at him for a +moment, rises, draws a deep breath, and speaks with a sort of humility._ + +GRACIOSA +And to what end, Guido? What good would weeping do? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling whimsically._) I am afraid that men do not always love +according to the strict laws of logic. (_He drops the pearls, and, +rising, follows her._) I desire your happiness above all things, yet to +see you so abysmally untroubled by anything which troubles me is--another +matter. + +GRACIOSA +But I am not untroubled, Guido. + +GUIDO +No? + +GRACIOSA +No. (_Rather tremulously._) Sometimes I sit here dreading my life at +court. I want never to leave my father's bleak house. I fear that I may +not like the man who offers the highest price for me. And it seems as +if the court were a horrible painted animal, dressed in bright silks, and +shining with jewels, and waiting to devour me. + +_Beyond the wall appears a hat of scarlet satin with a divided brim, +which, rising, is revealed to surmount the head of an extraordinarily +swarthy person, to whose dark skin much powder has only loaned the hue of +death: his cheeks, however, are vividly carmined. This is all that the +audience can now see of the young DUKE of FLORENCE, whose proximity the +two in the garden are just now too much engrossed to notice._ + +_The DUKE looks from one to the other. His eyes narrow, his teeth are +displayed in a wide grin; he now understands the situation. He lowers his +head as GRACIOSA moves._ + +GRACIOSA +No, I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I +am very fond of you--and yet I do not trust you. + +GUIDO +You know that I love you. + +GRACIOSA +You tell me so. It pleases me to have you say it-- + +GUIDO +Madonna is candid this morning. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, I am candid. It does please me. And I know that for the sake of +seeing me you endanger your life, for if my father heard of our meetings +here he would have you killed. + +GUIDO +Would I incur such risks without caring? + +GRACIOSA +No,--and yet, somehow, I do not believe it is altogether for me that you +care. + +_The DUKE laughs. GUIDO starts, half drawing his dagger. GRACIOSA turns +with an instinctive gesture of seeking protection. The DUKE'S head and +shoulders appear above the wall._ + +THE DUKE +And you will find, my friend, that the most charming women have just these +awkward intuitions. + +_The DUKE ascends the wall, while the two stand motionless and silent. +When he is on top of the wall, GUIDO, who now remembers that omnipotence +perches there, makes haste to serve it, and obsequiously assists the DUKE +to descend. The DUKE then comes well forward, in smiling meditation, and +hands first his gloves, then his scarlet cloak (which you now perceive to +be lined with ermine and sable in four stripes) to GUIDO, who takes them +as a servant would attend his master._ + +_The removal of this cloak reveals the DUKE to be clad in a scarlet satin +doublet, which has a high military collar and sleeves puffed with black. +His tights also are of scarlet, and he wears shining soft black +riding-boots. Jewels glisten at his neck. About his middle, too, there is +a metallic gleaming, for he is equipped with a noticeably long sword and +a dagger. Such is the personage who now addresses himself more explicitly +to GRACIOSA._ + +THE DUKE +(_Sitting upon the bench, very much at his ease while the others stand +uncomfortably before him._) Yes, madonna, I suspect that Eglamore here +cares greatly for the fact that you are Balthazar Valori's daughter, and +cousin to the late Marquis of Cibo. + +GRACIOSA +(_Just in bewilderment._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +For Cibo left many kinsmen. These still resent the circumstance that +the matching of his wits against Eglamore's wits earned for Cibo an +unpleasantly public death-bed. So they pursue their feud against Eglamore +with vexatious industry. And Eglamore goes about in hourly apprehension +of another falling beam, another knife-thrust in the back, or another +plate of poison. + +GRACIOSA +(_She comprehends now._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +(_Who is pleased alike by Eglamore's neat plan and by his own cleverness +in unriddling it._) But if rich Eglamore should make a stolen match with +you, your father--good thrifty man!--could be appeased without much +trouble. Your cousins, those very angry but penniless Valori, would not +stay over-obdurate to a kinsman who had at his disposal so many pensions +and public offices. Honor would permit a truce with their new cousin +Eglamore, a truce very profitable to everybody. + +GRACIOSA +He said they must be bought somehow! + +THE DUKE +Yes, Eglamore could bind them all to his interest within ten days. All +could be bought at a stroke by marrying you. And Eglamore would be rid +of the necessity of sleeping in chain-armor. Have I not unraveled the +scheme correctly, Eglamore? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling and deferential._) Your highness was never lacking in +penetration. + +_GRACIOSA, at this, turns puzzled from one man to the other._ + +GRACIOSA +Are you--? + +THE DUKE +I am Alessandro de Medici, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +The Duke! + +THE DUKE +A sadly neglected prince, who wondered over the frequent absences of his +chief counselor, and secretly set spies upon him. Eglamore here will +attest as much--(_As GRACIOSA draws away from GUIDO_)--or if you cannot +believe Eglamore any longer in anything, I shall have other witnesses +within the half-hour. Yes, my twenty cut-throats are fetching back for me +a brace of nuns from the convent yonder. I can imagine that, just now, my +cut-throats will be in your opinion more trustworthy witnesses than is +poor Eglamore. And my stout knaves will presently assure you that I am +the Duke. + +GUIDO +(_Suavely._) It happens that not a moment ago we were admiring your +highness' portrait. + +GRACIOSA +And so you are Count Eglamore. That is very strange. So it was the hand +of Eglamore (_rubbing her hands as if to clean them_) that I touched just +now. I thought it was the hand of my friend Guido. But I forget. There is +no Guido. You are Eglamore. It is strange you should have been capable of +so much wickedness, for to me you seem only a smirking and harmless +lackey. + +_The DUKE is watching as if at a play. He is aesthetically pleased by the +girl's anguish. GUIDO winces. As GRACIOSA begins again to speak, they turn +facing her, so that to the audience the faces of both men are invisible._ + +GRACIOSA +And it was you who detected--so you said--the Marquis of Cibo's +conspiracy. Tebaldeo was my cousin, Count Eglamore. I loved him. We were +reared together. We used to play here in this garden. I remember how +Tebaldeo once fetched me a wren's nest from that maple yonder. I stood +just here. I was weeping, because I was afraid he would fall. If he had +fallen, if he had been killed then, it would have been the luckier for +him. They say that he conspired. I do not know. I only know that by your +orders, Count Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like +that (_pointing to the shrine_). I know that his arms and legs were each +broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set +upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died +very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, +and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday +to watch him die, the boy who fetched me a wren's nest from yonder maple. +And I know that you are Eglamore, who ordered these things done. + +GUIDO +I gave orders for the Marquis of Cibo's execution, as was the duty of my +office. I did not devise the manner of his punishment. The punishment for +Cibo's crime was long ago fixed by our laws. All who attack the Duke's +person must die thus. + +GRACIOSA +(_Waves his excuses aside._) And then you plan this masquerade. You plan +to make me care for you so greatly that even when I know you to be Count +Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate +Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to leave them--in your huckster's phrase--no +longer unbought. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me +as a stepping-stone to safety. But was it fair to me? + +GUIDO +Graciosa ... you shame me-- + +GRACIOSA +Look you, Count Eglamore, I was only a child, playing here, alone, and +not unhappy. Oh, was it fair, was it worth while to match your skill +against my ignorance? + +THE DUKE +Fie, Donna Graciosa, you must not be too harsh with Eglamore-- + +GRACIOSA +Think how unhappy I would be if even now I loved you, and how I would +loathe myself! + +THE DUKE +It is his nature to scheme, and he weaves his plots as inevitably as the +spider does her web-- + +GRACIOSA +But I am getting angry over nothing. Nothing has happened except that +I have dreamed--of a Guido. And there is no Guido. There is only an +Eglamore, a lackey in attendance upon his master. + +THE DUKE +Believe me, it is wiser to forget this clever lackey--as I do--except when +there is need of his services. I think that you have no more need to +consider him-- + +_He takes the girl's hand. GRACIOSA now looks at him as though seeing him +for the first time. She is vaguely frightened by this predatory beast, but +in the main her emotion is as yet bewilderment._ + +THE DUKE +For you are very beautiful, Graciosa. You are as slim as a lily, and +more white. Your eyes are two purple mirrors in each of which I see a +tiny image of Duke Alessandro. (_GUIDO takes a step forward, and the DUKE +now addresses him affably._) Those nuns they are fetching me are big +high-colored wenches with cheeks like apples. It is not desirable that +women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should +be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, +and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. +It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you +comprehend how easy it would be to murder her. + +GUIDO +(_Softly, without expression._) God, God! + +_The DUKE looks with delight at GRACIOSA, who stands bewildered and +childlike._ + +THE DUKE +You fear me, do you not, Graciosa? Your hand is soft and cold as the skin +of a viper. When I touch it you shudder. I am very tired of women who +love me, of women who are infatuated by my beauty. You, I can see, are not +infatuated. To you my touch will always be a martyrdom, you will always +loathe me. And therefore I shall not weary of you for a long while, +because the misery and the helplessness of my lovely victim will incite +me to make very lovely verses. + +_He draws her to the bench, sitting beside her._ + +THE DUKE +Yes, Graciosa, you will inspire me. Your father shall have all the wealth +and state that even his greedy imaginings can devise, so long as you can +contrive to loathe me. We will find you a suitable husband--say, in +Eglamore here. You shall have flattery and titles, gold and fine glass, +soft stuffs and superb palaces and many lovely jewels-- + +_The DUKE glances down at the pedler's pack._ + +THE DUKE +But Eglamore also has been wooing you with jewels. You must see mine, +dear Graciosa. + +GRACIOSA +(_Without expression._) Count Eglamore said that I must. + +THE DUKE +(_Raises the necklace, and lets it drop contemptuously._) Oh, not such +trumpery as this. I have in Florence gems which have not their fellows +anywhere, gems which have not even a name, and the value of which is +incalculable. I have jewels engendered by the thunder, jewels taken from +the heart of the Arabian deer. I have jewels cut from the brain of a toad, +and from the eyes of serpents. I have jewels which are authentically known +to have fallen from the moon. Well, we will select the rarest, and have a +pair of slippers encrusted with them, and in these slippers you shall +dance for me, in a room that I know of-- + +GUIDO +(_Without moving._) Highness--! + +THE DUKE +It will all be very amusing, for I think that she is now quite innocent, +as pure as the high angels. Yes, it will be diverting to make her as I am. +It will be an atrocious action that will inspire me to write lovelier +verses than even I have ever written. + +GUIDO +She is a child-- + +THE DUKE +Yes, yes, a frightened child who cannot speak, who stays as still as a +lark that has been taken in a snare. Why, neither of her sisters can +compare with this, and, besides, the elder one had a quite ugly mole upon +her thigh--But that old rogue Balthazar Valori has a real jewel to offer, +this time. Well, I will buy it. + +GUIDO +Highness, I love this child-- + +THE DUKE +Ah, then you cannot ever be her husband. You would have suited otherwise. +But we will find some other person of discretion-- + +_For a moment the two men regard each other in silence. The DUKE becomes +aware that he is being opposed. His brows contract a little, but he rises +from the bench rather as if in meditation than in anger. Then GUIDO drops +the cloak and gloves he has been holding until this. His lackeyship is +over._ + +GUIDO +No! + +THE DUKE +My friend, some long-faced people say you made a beast of me-- + +GUIDO +No, I will not have it. + +THE DUKE +So do you beware lest the beast turn and rend you. + +GUIDO +I have never been too nice to profit by your vices. I have taken my +thrifty toll of abomination. I have stood by contentedly, not urging you +on, yet never trying to stay you as you waded deeper and ever deeper into +the filth of your debaucheries, because meanwhile you left me so much +power. + +THE DUKE +Would you reshape your handiwork more piously? Come, come, man, be content +with it as I am. And be content with the kingdom I leave you to play with. + +GUIDO +It was not altogether I who made of you a brainsick beast. But what you +are is in part my handiwork. Nevertheless, you shall not harm this child. + +THE DUKE +"Shall not" is a delightfully quaint expression. I only regret that you +are not likely ever to use it to me again. + +GUIDO +I know this means my ruin. + +THE DUKE +Indeed, I must venture to remind you, Count Eglamore, that I am still a +ruling prince-- + +GUIDO +That is nothing to me. + +THE DUKE +And that, where you are master of very admirable sentiments, I happen to +be master of all Tuscany. + +GUIDO +At court you are the master. At your court in Florence I have seen many +mothers raise the veil from their daughters' faces because you were +passing. But here upon this hill-top I can see only the woman I love and +the man who has insulted her. + +THE DUKE +So all the world is changed, and Pandarus is transformed into Hector! +Your words are very sonorous words, dear Eglamore, but by what deeds +do you propose to back them? + +GUIDO +By killing you, your highness. + +THE DUKE +But in what manner? By stifling me with virtuous rhetoric? Hah, it is +rather awkward for you--is it not--that our sumptuary laws forbid you +merchants to carry swords? + +GUIDO +(_Draws his dagger._) I think this knife will serve me, highness, to make +earth a cleaner place. + +THE DUKE +(_Drawing his long sword._) It would save trouble now to split you like a +chicken for roasting.... (_He shrugs, and sheathes his sword. He unbuckles +his sword-belt, and lays it aside._) No, no, this farce ascends in +interest. So let us play it fairly to the end. I risk nothing, since from +this moment you are useless to me, my rebellious lackey-- + +GUIDO +You risk your life, for very certainly I mean to kill you. + +THE DUKE +Two go to every bargain, my friend. Now, if I kill you, it is always +diverting to kill; and if by any chance you should kill me, I shall at +least be rid of the intolerable knowledge that to-morrow will be just like +to-day. + +_He draws his dagger. The two men engage warily but with determination, +the DUKE presently advancing. GUIDO steps backward, and in the act trips +over the pedler's pack, and falls prostrate. His dagger flies from his +hand. GRACIOSA, with a little cry, has covered her face. Nobody strikes +an attitude, because nobody is conscious of any need to be heroic, but +there is a perceptible silence, which is broken by the DUKE'S quiet +voice._ + +THE DUKE +Well! am I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my +caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other +with some pretension of adroitness. + +GUIDO +(_Rising, with a sob._) Ah! + +_He catches up the fallen dagger, and attacks the DUKE, this time with +utter disregard of the rules of fence and his own safety. GUIDO drives the +DUKE back. GUIDO is careless of defence, and desirous only to kill. The +DUKE is wounded, and falls with a cry at the foot of the shrine. GUIDO +utters a sort of strangled growl. He raises his dagger, intending to hack +at and mutilate his antagonist, who is now unconscious. As GUIDO stoops, +GRACIOSA, from behind him, catches his arm._ + +GRACIOSA +He gave you your life. + +_GUIDO turns. He drops the weapon. He speaks with great gentleness, almost +with weariness._ + +GUIDO +Madonna, the Duke is not yet dead. That wound is nothing serious. + +GRACIOSA +He spared your life. + +GUIDO +It is impossible to let him live. + +GRACIOSA +But I think he only voiced a caprice-- + +GUIDO +I think so, too, but I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless. + +GRACIOSA +But you have power-- + +GUIDO +Power! I, who have attacked the Duke's person! I, who have done what your +dead cousin merely planned to do! + +GRACIOSA +Guido--! + +GUIDO +Living, this brain-sick beast will make of you his plaything--and, a +little later, his broken, soiled and cast-by plaything. It is therefore +necessary that I kill Duke Alessandro. + +_GRACIOSA moves away from him, and GUIDO rises._ + +GRACIOSA +And afterward--and afterward you must die just as Tebaldeo died! + +GUIDO +That is the law, madonna. But what he said is true. I am useless to him, +a rebellious lackey to be punished. Whether I have his life or no, I am a +lost man. + +GRACIOSA +A moment since you were Count Eglamore, whom all our nobles feared-- + +GUIDO +Now there is not a beggar in the kingdom who would change lots with me. +But at least I shall first kill this kingdom's lord. + +_He picks up his dagger._ + +GRACIOSA +You are a friendless and hunted man, in peril of a dreadful death. But +even so, you are not penniless. These jewels here are of great value-- + +_GUIDO laughs, and hangs the pearls about her neck._ + +GUIDO +Do you keep them, then. + +GRACIOSA +There is a world outside this kingdom. You have only to make your way +through the forest to be out of Tuscany. + +GUIDO +(_Coolly reflective._) Perhaps I might escape, going north to Bologna, and +then to Venice, which is at war with the Duke-- + +GRACIOSA +I can tell you the path to Bologna. + +GUIDO +But first the Duke must die, because his death saves you. + +GRACIOSA +No, Guido! I would have Eglamore go hence with hands as clean as possible. + +GUIDO +Not even Eglamore would leave you at the mercy of this poet. + +GRACIOSA +How does that matter! It is no secret that my father intends to market me +as best suits his interests. And the great Duke of Florence, no less, +would have been my purchaser! You heard him, "I will buy this jewel," he +said. He would have paid thrice what any of my sisters' purchasers have +paid. You know very well that my father would have been delighted. + +GUIDO +(_Since the truth of what she has just said is known to him by more +startling proofs than she dreams of, he speaks rather bitterly, as he +sheathes the dagger._) And I must need upset the bargain between these +jewel merchants! + +GRACIOSA +(_Lightly._) "No, I will not have it!" Count Eglamore must cry. (_Her +hand upon his arm._) My dear unthrifty pedler! it cost you a great deal to +speak those words. + +GUIDO +I had no choice. I love you. (_A pause. As GRACIOSA does not speak, GUIDO +continues, very quiet at first._) It is a theme on which I shall not +embroider. So long as I thought to use you as an instrument I could woo +fluently enough. Today I saw that you were frightened and helpless--oh, +quite helpless. And something in me changed. I knew for the first time +that I loved you. And I knew I was not clean as you are clean. I knew +that I had more in common with this beast here than I had with you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Who with feminine practicality, while the man talks, has reached her +decision._) We daughters of the Valori are so much merchandise.... Heigho, +since I cannot help it, since bought and sold I must be, one day or +another, at least I will go at a noble price. Yet I do not think I am +quite worth the wealth and power which you have given up because of me. So +it will be necessary to make up the difference, dear, by loving you very +much. + +_GUIDO takes her hands, only half-believing that he understands her +meaning. He puts an arm about her shoulder, holding her at a distance, the +better to see her face._ + +GUIDO +You, who had only scorn to give me when I was a kingdom's master! Would +you go with me now that I am homeless and friendless? + +GRACIOSA +(_Archly._) But to me you do not seem quite friendless. + +GUIDO +Graciosa--! + +GRACIOSA +And I doubt if you could ever find your way through the forest alone. +(_But as she stands there with one hand raised to each of his shoulders +her vindication is self-revealed, and she indicates her bracelet rather +indignantly._) Besides, what else is a poor maid to do, when she is +burdened with a talisman that compels her to marry the man whom she--so +very much--prefers? + +GUIDO +(_Drawing her to him._) Ah, you shall not regret that foolish preference. + +GRACIOSA +But come! There is a path--(_They are gathering up the pack and its +contents, as GUIDO pauses by the DUKE._) Is he--? + +GUIDO +He will not enter Hell to-day. (_The DUKE stirs._) Already he revives, you +see. So let us begone before his attendants come. + +_GUIDO lifts her to the top of the wall. He lifts up the pack._ + +GRACIOSA +My lute! + +GUIDO +(_Giving it to her._) So we may pass for minstrels on the road to Venice. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, singing the Duke's songs to pay our way. (_GUIDO climbs over the +wall, and stands on the far side, examining the landscape beneath._) +Horsemen! + +GUIDO +The Duke's attendants fetching him new women--two more of those numerous +damsels that his song demands. They will revive this ruinous songmaker to +rule over Tuscany more foolishly than Eglamore governed when Eglamore was +a great lord. (_He speaks pensively, still looking down._) It is a very +rich and lovely country, this kingdom which a half-hour since lay in the +hollow of my hand. Now I am empty-handed. + +GRACIOSA +(_With mocking reproach._) Empty-handed! + +_She extends to him both her hands. GUIDO takes them, and laughs joyously, +saying,_ "Come!" _as he lifts her down._ + +_There is a moment's silence, then is heard the song and lute-playing with +which the play began, growing ever more distant:..._ + + "Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come." + +_... The DUKE moves. The DUKE half raises himself at the foot of the +crucifix._ + +THE DUKE +Eglamore! I am hurt. Help me, Eglamore! + + +(THE CURTAIN FALLS) + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Jewel Merchants, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + +***** This file should be named 9829.txt or 9829.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/8/2/9829/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Jewel Merchants + A Comedy In One Act + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9829] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 22, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + _The Jewel Merchants_ + _A Comedy in One Act_ + + By + + James Branch Cabell + + + _"Io non posso ritrar di tutti appieno: + pero chi si mi caccia il lungo tema, + che molte volte al fatto il dir vieti meno."_ + + + + NEW YORK + 1921 + + + + TO + LOUISE BURLEIGH + + _This latest avatar of so many notions + which were originally hers._ + + + + +THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE + +Prudence urges me here to forestall detection, by conceding that this +brief play has no pretension to "literary" quality. It is a piece in +its inception designed for, and in its making swayed by, the requirements +of the little theatre stage. The one virtue which anybody anywhere could +claim for _The Jewel Merchants_ is the fact that it "acts" easily and +rather effectively. + +And candor compels the admission forthwith that the presence of this +anchoritic merit in the wilderness is hardly due to me. When circumstances +and the Little Theatre League of Richmond combined to bully me into +contriving the dramatization of a short story called _Balthazar's +Daughter_, I docilely converted this tale into a one-act play of which +you will find hereinafter no sentence. The comedy I wrote is now at one +with the lost dramaturgy of Pollio and of Posidippus, and is even less +likely ever to be resurrected for mortal auditors. + +It read, I still think, well enough: I am certain that, when we came to +rehearse, the thing did not "act" at all, and that its dialogue, whatever +its other graces, had the defect of being unspeakable. So at each +rehearsal we--by which inclusive pronoun I would embrace the actors and +the producing staff at large, and with especial (metaphorical) ardor Miss +Louise Burleigh, who directed all--changed here a little, and there a +little more; and shifted this bit, and deleted the other, and "tried out" +everybody's suggestions generally, until we got at least the relief of +witnessing at each rehearsal a different play. And steadily my manuscript +was enriched with interlineations, to and beyond the verge of legibility, +as steadily I substituted, for the speeches I had rewritten yesterday, +the speeches which the actor (having perfectly in mind the gist but not +the phrasing of what was meant) delivered naturally. + +This process made, at all events, for what we in particular wanted, +which was a play that the League could stage for half an evening's +entertainment; but it left existent not a shred of the rhetorical +fripperies which I had in the beginning concocted, and it made of the +actual first public performance a collaboration with almost as many +contributing authors as though the production had been a musical comedy. + +And if only fate had gifted me with an exigent conscience and a turn for +oratory, I would, I like to think, have publicly confessed, at that first +public performance, to all those tributary clarifying rills to the play's +progress: but, as it was, vainglory combined with an aversion to +"speech-making" to compel a taciturn if smirking acceptance of the +curtain-call with which an indulgent audience flustered the nominal author +of _The Jewel Merchants_.... Now, in any case, it is due my collaborators +to tell you that _The Jewel Merchants_ has amply fulfilled the purpose +of its makers by being enacted to considerable applause,--and is a +pleasure to add that this _succes d'estime_ was very little chargeable to +anything which I contributed to the play. + +For another matter, I would here confess that _The Jewel Merchants_, +in addition to its "literary" deficiencies, lacks moral fervor. It will, +I trust, corrupt no reader irretrievably, to untraversable leagues beyond +the last hope of redemption: but, even so, it is a frankly unethical +performance. You must accept this resuscitated trio, if at all, very much +as they actually went about Tuscany, in long ago discarded young flesh, +when the one trait everywhere common to their milieu was the absence of +any moral excitement over such-and-such an action's being or not being +"wicked." This phenomenon of Renaissance life, as lived in Italy in +particular, has elsewhere been discussed time and again, and I lack here +the space, and the desire, either to explain or to apologize for the era's +delinquencies. I would merely indicate that this point of conduct is the +fulcrum of _The Jewel Merchants_. + +The play presents three persons, to any one of whom the committing of +murder or theft or adultery or any other suchlike interdicted feat, is +just the risking of the penalty provided against the breaking of that +especial law if you have the vile luck to be caught at it: and this to +them is all that "wickedness" can mean. We nowadays are encouraged to +think differently: but such dear privileges do not entitle us to ignore +the truth that had any of these three advanced a dissenting code of +conduct, it would, in the time and locality, have been in radical +irreverence of the best-thought-of tenets. There was no generally +recognized criminality in crime, but only a perceptible risk. So must +this trio thriftily adhere to the accepted customs of their era, and +regard an infraction of the Decalogue (for an instance) very much as we +today look on a violation of our prohibition enactments. + +In fact, we have accorded to the Eighteenth Amendment almost exactly the +status then reserved for Omnipotence. You found yourself confronted by +occasionally enforced if obviously unreasonable supernal statutory +decrees, which every one broke now and then as a matter of convenience: +and every now and then, also, somebody was caught and punished, either in +this world or in the next, without his ill-fortune's involving any +disgrace or particular reprehension. As has been finely said, +righteousness and sinfulness were for the while "in strange and dreadful +peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good +man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a +villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes +recoil from believing." + +Such was the sixteenth-century Tuscan view of "wickedness." I have +endeavored to reproduce it without comment. + +So much of ink and paper and typography may be needed, I fear, to remind +you, in a more exhortatory civilization, that Graciosa is really, by all +the standards of her day, a well reared girl. To the prostitution of her +body, whether with or without the assistance of an ecclesiastically +acquired husband, she looks forward as unconcernedly as you must by +ordinary glance out of your front window, to face a vista so familiar +that the discovery of any change therein would be troubling. Meanwhile +she wishes this sorrow-bringing Eglamore assassinated, as the obvious, +the most convenient, and indeed the only way of getting rid of him: and +toward the end of the play, alike for her and Guido, the presence of a +corpse in her garden is merely an inconvenience without any touch of the +gruesome. Precautions have, of course, to be taken to meet the emergency +which has arisen: but in the dead body of a man _per se_, the lovers can +detect nothing more appalling, or more to be shrunk from, than would be +apparent if the lifeless object in the walkway were a dead flower. The +thing ought to be removed, if only in the interest of tidiness, but there +is no call to make a pother over it. + +As for our Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, +by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the +Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to +history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured +and retained: it is no part of the play. + +Above all, though, I must remind you that the Duke is unspurred by +malevolence. A twinge of jealousy there may be, just at first, to find his +pampered Eglamore so far advanced in the good graces of this pretty girl, +but that is hardly important. Thereafter the Duke is breaking no law, +for the large reason that his preference in any matter is the only law +thus far divulged to him. As concerns the man and the girl he discovers on +this hill-top, they, in common with all else in Tuscany, are possessions +of Duke Alessandro's. They can raise no question as to how he "ought" to +deal with them, for to your chattels, whether they be your finger rings or +your subjects or your pomatum pots or the fair quires whereon you indite +your verses, you cannot rationally he said to "owe" anything.... No, the +Duke is but a spirited lad in quest of amusement: and Guido and Graciosa +are the playthings with which, on this fine sunlit morning, he attempts to +divert himself. + +This much being granted--and confessed,--we let the play begin. + +_Dumbarton Grange,_ +_June, 1921_ + + + * * * * * + +["Alessandro de Medici is generally styled by the Italian authors the +first duke of Florence; but in this they are not strictly accurate. His +title of duke was derived from Citta, or Civita di Penna, and had been +assumed by him several years before he obtained the direction of the +Florentine state. It must also be observed, that, after the evasion of +Eglamore, Duke Alessandro did not, as Robertson observes, 'enjoy the +same absolute dominion as his family have retained to the present times,' +(Hist. Charles V. book v.) he being only declared chief or prince of the +republic, and his authority being in some measure counteracted or +restrained by two councils chosen from the citizens, for life, one of +which consisted of forty-eight, and the other of two hundred members. +(Varchi, Storia Fior. p. 497: Nerli, Com. lib. xi. pp. 257, 264.)"] + + + * * * * * + + + THE JEWEL MERCHANTS + + _"Diamente ne smeraldo ne zaffino."_ + + +Originally produced by the Little Theatre League of Richmond, Virginia, +at the Binford High School Auditorium, 22 February, 1921. + + _Original Cast_ + +GRACIOSA...........................Elinor Fry + Daughter of Balthazar Valori + +GUIDO........................Roderick Maybee + A jewel merchant + +ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.........Francis F. Bierne + Duke of Florence + +Produced under the direction of Louise Burleigh. + + + * * * * * + + + +_THE JEWEL MERCHANTS_ + +_The play begins with the sound of a woman's voice singing a song +(adapted from Rossetti's version) which is delivered to the accompaniment +of a lute._ + +SONG: + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad. + + Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth + Filled with the strife of birds, + With water-springs and beasts that house i' the earth. + + Let me seem Solomon for lore of words, + Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom. + + Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come, + Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven. + +_As the singing ends, the curtain rises upon a corner of Balthazar +Valori's garden near the northern border of Tuscany. The garden is walled. +There is a shrine in the wall: the tortured figure upon the crucifix is +conspicuous. To the right stands a rather high-backed stone bench: by +mounting from the seat to the top of the bench it is possible to scale +the wall. To the left a crimson pennant on a pole shows against the sky. +The period is 1533, and a few miles southward the Florentines, after three +years of formally recognizing Jesus Christ as the sole lord and king of +Florence, have lately altered matters as profoundly as was possible by +electing Alessandro de Medici to be their Duke._ + +_GRACIOSA is seated upon the bench, with a lute. The girl is, to our +modern taste, very quaintly dressed in gold-colored satin, with a short +tight bodice, cut square and low at the neck, and with long full skirts. +When she stands erect, her preposterous "flowing" sleeves, lined with +sky blue, reach to the ground. Her blonde hair, of which she has a great +deal, is braided, in the intricate early sixteenth fashion, under a +jeweled cap and a veil the exact color of this hair._ + +_There is a call. Smiling, GRACIOSA answers this call by striking her +lute. She pats straight her hair and gown, and puts aside the instrument. +GUIDO appears at the top of the wall. All you can see of the handsome +young fellow, in this posture, is that he wears a green skull-cap and a +dark blue smock, the slashed sleeves of which are lined with green._ + +GUIDO +Ah, madonna.... + +GRACIOSA +Welcome, Ser Guido. Your journey has been brief. + +GUIDO +It has not seemed brief to me. + +GRACIOSA +Why, it was only three days ago you told me it would be a fortnight +before you came this way again. + +GUIDO +Yes, but I did not then know that each day spent apart from you, Madonna +Graciosa, would be a century in passing. + +GRACIOSA +Dear me, but your search must have been desperate! + +GUIDO +(_Who speaks, as almost always hereinafter, with sober enjoyment of the +fact that he is stating the exact truth unintelligibly._) Yes, my search +is desperate. + +GRACIOSA +Did you find gems worthy of your search? + +GUIDO +Very certainly, since at my journey's end I find Madonna Graciosa, the +chief jewel of Tuscany. + +GRACIOSA +Such compliments, Guido, make your speech less like a merchant's than a +courtier's. + +GUIDO +Ah, well, to balance that, you will presently find courtiers in Florence +who will barter for you like merchants. May I descend? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, if you have something of interest to show me. + +GUIDO +Am I to be welcomed merely for the sake of my gems? You were more +gracious, you were more beautifully like your lovely name, on the +fortunate day that I first encountered you ... only six weeks ago, and +only yonder, where the path crosses the highway. But now that I esteem +myself your friend, you greet me like a stranger. You do not even invite +me into your garden. I much prefer the manner in which you told me the +way to the inn when I was an unknown passer-by. And yet your pennant +promised greeting. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the smile of an exceptionally candid angel._) Ah, Guido, I flew +it the very minute the boy from the inn brought me your message! + +GUIDO +Now, there is the greeting I had hoped for! But how do you escape your +father's watch so easily? + +GRACIOSA +My father has no need to watch me in this lonely hill castle. Ever since +I can remember I have wandered at will in the forest. My father knows that +to me every path is as familiar as one of the corridors in his house; and +in no one of them did I ever meet anybody except charcoal-burners, and +sometimes a nun from the convent, and--oh, yes!--you. But descend, friend +Guido. + +_Thus encouraged, GUIDO descends from the top of the wall to the top of +the bench, and thence, via its seat, to the ground. You are thereby +enabled to discover that his nether portions are clad in dark blue tights +and soft leather shoes with pointed turned-up toes. It is also noticeable +that he carries a jewel pack of purple, which, when opened, reveals an +orange lining._ + +GUIDO +(_With as much irony as the pleasure he takes in being again with this +dear child permits._) That "Oh, yes, you!" is a very fitting reward for +my devotion. For I find that nowadays I travel about the kingdom buying +jewels less for my patrons at court than for the pleasure of having your +eyes appraise them, and smile at me. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the condescension of a great lady._) Guido, you have in point of +fact been very kind to me, and very amusing, too, in my loneliness on +the top of this hill. (_Drawing back the sleeve from her left arm, she +reveals the trinket there._) See, here is the turquoise bracelet I had +from you the second time you passed. I wear it always--secretly. + +GUIDO +That is wise, for the turquoise is a talisman. They say that the woman +who wears a turquoise is thereby assured of marrying the person whom she +prefers. + +GRACIOSA +I do not know about that, nor do I expect to have much choice as to what +rich nobleman marries me, but I know that I love this bracelet-- + +GUIDO +In fact, they are handsome stones. + +GRACIOSA +Because it reminds me constantly of the hours which I have spent here +with my lute-- + +GUIDO +Oh, with your lute! + +GRACIOSA +And with your pack of lovely jewels-- + +GUIDO +Yes, to be sure! with my jewels. + +GRACIOSA +And with you. + +GUIDO +There is again my gracious lady. Now, in reward for that, you shall +feast your eyes. + +GRACIOSA +(_All eagerness._) And what have you to-day? + +_GUIDO opens his pack. She bends above it with hands outstretched._ + +GUIDO +(_Taking out a necklace._) For one thing, pearls, black pearls, set with +a clasp of emeralds. See! They will become you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Taking them, pressing them to her cheek._) How cool! But I--poor child +of a poor noble--I cannot afford such. + +GUIDO +Oh, I did not mean to offer them to you to-day. No, this string is +intended for the Duke's favorite, Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +(_Stiffening._) Count Eglamore! These are for him? + +GUIDO +For Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +Has the upstart such taste? + +GUIDO +If it be taste to appreciate pearls, then the Duke's chief officer has +excellent taste. He seeks them far and wide. He will be very generous in +paying for this string. + +_GRACIOSA drops the pearls, in which she no longer delights. She returns +to the bench, and sits down and speaks with a sort of disappointment._ + +GRACIOSA +I am sorry to learn that this Eglamore is among your patrons. + +GUIDO +(_Still half engrossed by the contents of his pack. The man loves jewels +equally for their value and their beauty._) Oh, the nobles complain of +him, but we merchants have no quarrel with Eglamore. He buys too lavishly. + +GRACIOSA +Do you think only of buying and selling, Guido? + +GUIDO +It is a pursuit not limited to us who frankly live by sale and purchase. +Count Eglamore, for example, knows that men may be bought as readily as +merchandise. It is one reason why he is so hated--by the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Irritated by the title._) Count Eglamore, indeed! I ask in my prayers +every night that some honest gentleman may contrive to cut the throat of +this abominable creature. + +GUIDO +(_His hand going to his throat._) You pray too much, madonna. Even very +pious people ought to be reasonable. + +GRACIOSA +(_Rising from the bench._) Have I not reason to hate the man who killed +my kinsman? + +GUIDO +(_Rising from his gems._) The Marquis of Cibo conspired, or so the court +judged-- + +GRACIOSA +I know nothing of the judgment. But it was this Eglamore who discovered +the plot, if there indeed was any plot, and who sent my cousin Cibo to +a death--(_pointing to the shrine_)--oh, to a death as horrible as that. +So I hate him. + +GUIDO +Yet you have never even seen him, I believe? + +GRACIOSA +And it would be better for him never to see me or any of my kin. My +father, my uncles and my cousins have all sworn to kill him-- + +GUIDO +So I have gathered. They remain among the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Returning, sits upon the bench, and speaks regretfully._) But they +have never any luck. Cousin Pietro contrived to have a beam dropped on +Eglamore's head, and it missed him by not half a foot-- + +GUIDO +Ah, yes, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +And Cousin Georgio stabbed him in the back one night, but the coward had +on chain-armor under his finery-- + +GUIDO +I remember that also. + +GRACIOSA +And Uncle Lorenzo poisoned his soup, but a pet dog got at it first. That +was very unfortunate. + +GUIDO +Yes, the dog seemed to think so, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +However, perseverance is always rewarded. So I still hope that one or +another of my kinsmen will contrive to kill this Eglamore before I go to +court. + +GUIDO +(_Sits at her feet._) Has my Lord Balthazar yet set a day for that +presentation? + +GRACIOSA +Not yet. + +GUIDO +I wish to have this Eglamore's accounts all settled by that date. + +GRACIOSA +But in three months, Guido, I shall be sixteen. My sisters went to court +when they were sixteen. + +GUIDO +In fact, a noble who is not rich cannot afford to continue supporting a +daughter who is salable in marriage. + +GRACIOSA +No, of course not. (_She speaks in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. +Then, more impulsively, the girl slips down from the bench, and sits by +him on the around._) Do you think I shall make as good a match as my +sisters, Guido? Do you think some great rich nobleman will marry me very +soon? And shall I like the court! What shall I see there? + +GUIDO +Marvels. I think--yes, I am afraid that you will like them. + +GRACIOSA +And Duke Alessandro--shall I like him? + +GUIDO +Few courtiers have expressed dislike of him in my presence. + +GRACIOSA +Do you like him? Does he too buy lavishly? + +GUIDO +Eh, madonna! some day, when you have seen his jewels-- + +GRACIOSA +Oh! I shall see them when I go to court? + +GUIDO +Yes, he will show them to you, I think, without fail, for the Duke loves +beauty in all its forms. So he will take pleasure in confronting the +brightness of your eyes with the brightness of the four kinds of sapphires, +of the twelve kinds of rubies, and of many extraordinary pearls-- + +GRACIOSA +(_With eyes shining, and lips parted._) Oh! + +GUIDO +And you will see his famous emerald necklace, and all his diamonds, and +his huge turquoises, which will make you ashamed of your poor talisman-- + +GRACIOSA +He will show all these jewels to me! + +GUIDO +(_Looking at her, and still smiling thoughtfully._) He will show you the +very finest of his gems, assuredly. And then, worse still, he will be +making verses in your honor. + +GRACIOSA +It would be droll to have a great duke making songs about me! + +GUIDO +It is a preposterous feature of Duke Alessandro's character that he is +always making songs about some beautiful thing or another. + +GRACIOSA +Such strange songs, Guido! I was singing over one of them just before +you came,-- + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad-- + +But I could not quite understand it. Are his songs thought good? + +GUIDO +The songs of a reigning duke are always good. + +GRACIOSA +And is he as handsome as people report? + +GUIDO +Tastes differ, of course-- + +GRACIOSA +And is he--? + +GUIDO +I have a portrait of the Duke. It does not, I think, unduly flatter him. +Will you look at it? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, yes! + +GUIDO +(_Drawing out a miniature on a chain._) Here is the likeness. + +GRACIOSA +But how should you--? + +GUIDO +(_Seeing her surprise._) Oh, it was a gift to me from his highness for a +special service I did him, and as such must be treasured. + +GRACIOSA +Perhaps, then, I shall see yon at court, Messer Guido, who are the friend +of princes? + +GUIDO +If you do, I ask only that in noisy Florence you remember this quiet +garden. + +GRACIOSA +(_Looks at him silently, then glances at the portrait. She speaks with +evident disappointment._) Is this the Duke? + +GUIDO +You may see his arms on it, and on the back his inscription. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, but--(_looking at the portrait again_)--but ... he is ... so ... + +GUIDO +You are astonished at his highness' coloring? That he inherits from his +mother. She was, you know, a blackamoor. + +GRACIOSA +And my sisters wrote me he was like a god! + +GUIDO +Such observations are court etiquette. + +GRACIOSA +(_With an outburst of disgust._) Take it back! Though how can you bear to +look at it, far less to have it touching you! And only yesterday I was +angry because I had not seen the Duke riding past! + +GUIDO +Seen him! here! riding past! + +GRACIOSA +Old Ursula told me that the Duke had gone by with twenty men, riding down +toward the convent at the border. And I flung my sewing-bag straight at +her head because she had not called me. + +GUIDO +That was idle gossip, I fancy. The Duke rarely rides abroad without +my--(_he stops_)--without my lavish patron Eglamore, the friend of all +honest merchants. + +GRACIOSA +But that abominable Eglamore may have been with him. I heard nothing to +the contrary. + +GUIDO +True, madonna, true. I had forgotten you did not see them. + +GRACIOSA +No. What is he like, this Eglamore? Is he as appalling to look at as the +Duke? + +GUIDO +Madonna! but wise persons do not apply such adjectives to dukes. And wise +persons do not criticize Count Eglamore's appearance, either, now that +Eglamore is indispensable to the all-powerful Duke of Florence. + +GRACIOSA +Indispensable? + +GUIDO +It is thanks to the Eglamore whom you hate that the Duke has ample leisure +to indulge in recreations which are reputed to be--curious. + +GRACIOSA +I do not understand you, Guido. + +GUIDO +That is perhaps quite as well. (_Attempting to explain as much as is +decently expressible._) To be brief, madonna, business annoys the Duke. + +GRACIOSA +Why? + +GUIDO +It interferes with the pursuit of all the beautiful things he asks for +in that song. + +GRACIOSA +But how does that make Eglamore indispensable? + +GUIDO +Eglamore is an industrious person who affixes seals, and signs treaties, +and musters armies, and collects revenues, upon the whole, quite as +efficiently as Alessandro would be capable of doing these things. + +GRACIOSA +So Duke Alessandro merely makes verses? + +GUIDO +And otherwise amuses himself as his inclinations prompt, while Eglamore +rules Tuscany--and the Tuscans are none the worse off on account of it. +(_He rises, and his hand goes to the dagger at his belt._) But is not +that a horseman? + +GRACIOSA +(_She too has risen, and is now standing on the bench, looking over the +wall._) A solitary rider, far down by the convent, so far away that he +seems hardly larger than a scarlet dragon-fly. + +GUIDO +I confess I wish to run no risk of being found here, by your respected +father or by your ingenious cousins and uncles. + +GRACIOSA +(_She turns, but remains standing upon the bench._) I think your Duke is +much more dangerous looking than any of them. Heigho! I can quite foresee +that I shall never fall in love with this Duke. + +GUIDO +A prince has means to overcome all obstacles. + +GRACIOSA +No. It is unbefitting and a little cowardly for Duke Alessandro to shirk +the duties of his station for verse-making and eternal pleasure-seeking. +Now if I were Duke-- + +GUIDO +What would you do? + +GRACIOSA +(_Posturing a little as she stands upon the bench._) If I were duke? +Oh ... I would grant my father a pension ... and I would have Eglamore +hanged ... and I would purchase a new gown of silvery green-- + +GUIDO +In which you would be very ravishingly beautiful. + +_His tone has become rather ardent, and he is now standing nearer to her +than the size of the garden necessitates. So GRACIOSA demurely steps +down from the bench, and sits at the far end._ + +GRACIOSA +And that is all I can think of. What would you do if you were duke, +Messer Guido? + +GUIDO +(_Who is now sitting beside her at closer quarters than the length of the +bench quite strictly demands._) I? What would I do if I were a great lord +instead of a tradesman! (_Softly._) I think you know the answer, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +Oh, you would make me your duchess, of course. That is quite understood. +But I was speaking seriously, Guido. + +GUIDO +And is it not a serious matter that a pedler of crystals should have dared +to love a nobleman's daughter? + +GRACIOSA +(_Delighted._) This is the first I have heard of it. + +GUIDO +But you are perfectly right. It is not a serious matter. That I worship +you is an affair which does not seriously concern any person save me in +any way whatsoever. Yet I think that knowledge of the fact would put your +father to the trouble of sharpening his dagger. + +GRACIOSA +Ye-es. But not even Father would deny that you were showing excellent +taste. + +GUIDO +Indeed, I am not certain that I do worship you; for in order to adore +whole-heartedly the idolater must believe his idol to be perfect. +(_Taking her hand._) Now your nails are of an ugly shape, like that of +little fans. Your nose is nothing to boast of. And your mouth is too +large. I do not admire these faults, for faults they are undoubtedly-- + +GRACIOSA +Do they make me very ugly? I know that I have not a really good mouth, +Guido, but do you think it is positively repulsive? + +GUIDO +No.... Then, too, I know that you are vain and self-seeking, and look +forward contentedly to the time when your father will transfer his +ownership of your physical attractions to that nobleman who offers the +highest price for them. + +GRACIOSA +But we daughters of the poor Valori are compelled to marry--suitably. We +have only the choice between that and the convent yonder. + +GUIDO +That is true, and nobody disputes it. Still, you participate in a +monstrous bargain, and I would prefer to have you exhibit distaste for it. + +_Bending forward, GUIDO draws from his jewel pack the string of pearls, +and this he moodily contemplates, in order to evince his complete +disinterestedness. The pose has its effect. GRACIOSA looks at him for a +moment, rises, draws a deep breath, and speaks with a sort of humility._ + +GRACIOSA +And to what end, Guido? What good would weeping do? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling whimsically._) I am afraid that men do not always love +according to the strict laws of logic. (_He drops the pearls, and, +rising, follows her._) I desire your happiness above all things, yet to +see you so abysmally untroubled by anything which troubles me is--another +matter. + +GRACIOSA +But I am not untroubled, Guido. + +GUIDO +No? + +GRACIOSA +No. (_Rather tremulously._) Sometimes I sit here dreading my life at +court. I want never to leave my father's bleak house. I fear that I may +not like the man who offers the highest price for me. And it seems as +if the court were a horrible painted animal, dressed in bright silks, and +shining with jewels, and waiting to devour me. + +_Beyond the wall appears a hat of scarlet satin with a divided brim, +which, rising, is revealed to surmount the head of an extraordinarily +swarthy person, to whose dark skin much powder has only loaned the hue of +death: his cheeks, however, are vividly carmined. This is all that the +audience can now see of the young DUKE of FLORENCE, whose proximity the +two in the garden are just now too much engrossed to notice._ + +_The DUKE looks from one to the other. His eyes narrow, his teeth are +displayed in a wide grin; he now understands the situation. He lowers his +head as GRACIOSA moves._ + +GRACIOSA +No, I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I +am very fond of you--and yet I do not trust you. + +GUIDO +You know that I love you. + +GRACIOSA +You tell me so. It pleases me to have you say it-- + +GUIDO +Madonna is candid this morning. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, I am candid. It does please me. And I know that for the sake of +seeing me you endanger your life, for if my father heard of our meetings +here he would have you killed. + +GUIDO +Would I incur such risks without caring? + +GRACIOSA +No,--and yet, somehow, I do not believe it is altogether for me that you +care. + +_The DUKE laughs. GUIDO starts, half drawing his dagger. GRACIOSA turns +with an instinctive gesture of seeking protection. The DUKE'S head and +shoulders appear above the wall._ + +THE DUKE +And you will find, my friend, that the most charming women have just these +awkward intuitions. + +_The DUKE ascends the wall, while the two stand motionless and silent. +When he is on top of the wall, GUIDO, who now remembers that omnipotence +perches there, makes haste to serve it, and obsequiously assists the DUKE +to descend. The DUKE then comes well forward, in smiling meditation, and +hands first his gloves, then his scarlet cloak (which you now perceive to +be lined with ermine and sable in four stripes) to GUIDO, who takes them +as a servant would attend his master._ + +_The removal of this cloak reveals the DUKE to be clad in a scarlet satin +doublet, which has a high military collar and sleeves puffed with black. +His tights also are of scarlet, and he wears shining soft black +riding-boots. Jewels glisten at his neck. About his middle, too, there is +a metallic gleaming, for he is equipped with a noticeably long sword and +a dagger. Such is the personage who now addresses himself more explicitly +to GRACIOSA._ + +THE DUKE +(_Sitting upon the bench, very much at his ease while the others stand +uncomfortably before him._) Yes, madonna, I suspect that Eglamore here +cares greatly for the fact that you are Balthazar Valori's daughter, and +cousin to the late Marquis of Cibo. + +GRACIOSA +(_Just in bewilderment._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +For Cibo left many kinsmen. These still resent the circumstance that +the matching of his wits against Eglamore's wits earned for Cibo an +unpleasantly public death-bed. So they pursue their feud against Eglamore +with vexatious industry. And Eglamore goes about in hourly apprehension +of another falling beam, another knife-thrust in the back, or another +plate of poison. + +GRACIOSA +(_She comprehends now._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +(_Who is pleased alike by Eglamore's neat plan and by his own cleverness +in unriddling it._) But if rich Eglamore should make a stolen match with +you, your father--good thrifty man!--could be appeased without much +trouble. Your cousins, those very angry but penniless Valori, would not +stay over-obdurate to a kinsman who had at his disposal so many pensions +and public offices. Honor would permit a truce with their new cousin +Eglamore, a truce very profitable to everybody. + +GRACIOSA +He said they must be bought somehow! + +THE DUKE +Yes, Eglamore could bind them all to his interest within ten days. All +could be bought at a stroke by marrying you. And Eglamore would be rid +of the necessity of sleeping in chain-armor. Have I not unraveled the +scheme correctly, Eglamore? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling and deferential._) Your highness was never lacking in +penetration. + +_GRACIOSA, at this, turns puzzled from one man to the other._ + +GRACIOSA +Are you--? + +THE DUKE +I am Alessandro de Medici, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +The Duke! + +THE DUKE +A sadly neglected prince, who wondered over the frequent absences of his +chief counselor, and secretly set spies upon him. Eglamore here will +attest as much--(_As GRACIOSA draws away from GUIDO_)--or if you cannot +believe Eglamore any longer in anything, I shall have other witnesses +within the half-hour. Yes, my twenty cut-throats are fetching back for me +a brace of nuns from the convent yonder. I can imagine that, just now, my +cut-throats will be in your opinion more trustworthy witnesses than is +poor Eglamore. And my stout knaves will presently assure you that I am +the Duke. + +GUIDO +(_Suavely._) It happens that not a moment ago we were admiring your +highness' portrait. + +GRACIOSA +And so you are Count Eglamore. That is very strange. So it was the hand +of Eglamore (_rubbing her hands as if to clean them_) that I touched just +now. I thought it was the hand of my friend Guido. But I forget. There is +no Guido. You are Eglamore. It is strange you should have been capable of +so much wickedness, for to me you seem only a smirking and harmless +lackey. + +_The DUKE is watching as if at a play. He is aesthetically pleased by the +girl's anguish. GUIDO winces. As GRACIOSA begins again to speak, they turn +facing her, so that to the audience the faces of both men are invisible._ + +GRACIOSA +And it was you who detected--so you said--the Marquis of Cibo's +conspiracy. Tebaldeo was my cousin, Count Eglamore. I loved him. We were +reared together. We used to play here in this garden. I remember how +Tebaldeo once fetched me a wren's nest from that maple yonder. I stood +just here. I was weeping, because I was afraid he would fall. If he had +fallen, if he had been killed then, it would have been the luckier for +him. They say that he conspired. I do not know. I only know that by your +orders, Count Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like +that (_pointing to the shrine_). I know that his arms and legs were each +broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set +upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died +very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, +and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday +to watch him die, the boy who fetched me a wren's nest from yonder maple. +And I know that you are Eglamore, who ordered these things done. + +GUIDO +I gave orders for the Marquis of Cibo's execution, as was the duty of my +office. I did not devise the manner of his punishment. The punishment for +Cibo's crime was long ago fixed by our laws. All who attack the Duke's +person must die thus. + +GRACIOSA +(_Waves his excuses aside._) And then you plan this masquerade. You plan +to make me care for you so greatly that even when I know you to be Count +Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate +Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to leave them--in your huckster's phrase--no +longer unbought. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me +as a stepping-stone to safety. But was it fair to me? + +GUIDO +Graciosa ... you shame me-- + +GRACIOSA +Look you, Count Eglamore, I was only a child, playing here, alone, and +not unhappy. Oh, was it fair, was it worth while to match your skill +against my ignorance? + +THE DUKE +Fie, Donna Graciosa, you must not be too harsh with Eglamore-- + +GRACIOSA +Think how unhappy I would be if even now I loved you, and how I would +loathe myself! + +THE DUKE +It is his nature to scheme, and he weaves his plots as inevitably as the +spider does her web-- + +GRACIOSA +But I am getting angry over nothing. Nothing has happened except that +I have dreamed--of a Guido. And there is no Guido. There is only an +Eglamore, a lackey in attendance upon his master. + +THE DUKE +Believe me, it is wiser to forget this clever lackey--as I do--except when +there is need of his services. I think that you have no more need to +consider him-- + +_He takes the girl's hand. GRACIOSA now looks at him as though seeing him +for the first time. She is vaguely frightened by this predatory beast, but +in the main her emotion is as yet bewilderment._ + +THE DUKE +For you are very beautiful, Graciosa. You are as slim as a lily, and +more white. Your eyes are two purple mirrors in each of which I see a +tiny image of Duke Alessandro. (_GUIDO takes a step forward, and the DUKE +now addresses him affably._) Those nuns they are fetching me are big +high-colored wenches with cheeks like apples. It is not desirable that +women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should +be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, +and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. +It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you +comprehend how easy it would be to murder her. + +GUIDO +(_Softly, without expression._) God, God! + +_The DUKE looks with delight at GRACIOSA, who stands bewildered and +childlike._ + +THE DUKE +You fear me, do you not, Graciosa? Your hand is soft and cold as the skin +of a viper. When I touch it you shudder. I am very tired of women who +love me, of women who are infatuated by my beauty. You, I can see, are not +infatuated. To you my touch will always be a martyrdom, you will always +loathe me. And therefore I shall not weary of you for a long while, +because the misery and the helplessness of my lovely victim will incite +me to make very lovely verses. + +_He draws her to the bench, sitting beside her._ + +THE DUKE +Yes, Graciosa, you will inspire me. Your father shall have all the wealth +and state that even his greedy imaginings can devise, so long as you can +contrive to loathe me. We will find you a suitable husband--say, in +Eglamore here. You shall have flattery and titles, gold and fine glass, +soft stuffs and superb palaces and many lovely jewels-- + +_The DUKE glances down at the pedler's pack._ + +THE DUKE +But Eglamore also has been wooing you with jewels. You must see mine, +dear Graciosa. + +GRACIOSA +(_Without expression._) Count Eglamore said that I must. + +THE DUKE +(_Raises the necklace, and lets it drop contemptuously._) Oh, not such +trumpery as this. I have in Florence gems which have not their fellows +anywhere, gems which have not even a name, and the value of which is +incalculable. I have jewels engendered by the thunder, jewels taken from +the heart of the Arabian deer. I have jewels cut from the brain of a toad, +and from the eyes of serpents. I have jewels which are authentically known +to have fallen from the moon. Well, we will select the rarest, and have a +pair of slippers encrusted with them, and in these slippers you shall +dance for me, in a room that I know of-- + +GUIDO +(_Without moving._) Highness--! + +THE DUKE +It will all be very amusing, for I think that she is now quite innocent, +as pure as the high angels. Yes, it will be diverting to make her as I am. +It will be an atrocious action that will inspire me to write lovelier +verses than even I have ever written. + +GUIDO +She is a child-- + +THE DUKE +Yes, yes, a frightened child who cannot speak, who stays as still as a +lark that has been taken in a snare. Why, neither of her sisters can +compare with this, and, besides, the elder one had a quite ugly mole upon +her thigh--But that old rogue Balthazar Valori has a real jewel to offer, +this time. Well, I will buy it. + +GUIDO +Highness, I love this child-- + +THE DUKE +Ah, then you cannot ever be her husband. You would have suited otherwise. +But we will find some other person of discretion-- + +_For a moment the two men regard each other in silence. The DUKE becomes +aware that he is being opposed. His brows contract a little, but he rises +from the bench rather as if in meditation than in anger. Then GUIDO drops +the cloak and gloves he has been holding until this. His lackeyship is +over._ + +GUIDO +No! + +THE DUKE +My friend, some long-faced people say you made a beast of me-- + +GUIDO +No, I will not have it. + +THE DUKE +So do you beware lest the beast turn and rend you. + +GUIDO +I have never been too nice to profit by your vices. I have taken my +thrifty toll of abomination. I have stood by contentedly, not urging you +on, yet never trying to stay you as you waded deeper and ever deeper into +the filth of your debaucheries, because meanwhile you left me so much +power. + +THE DUKE +Would you reshape your handiwork more piously? Come, come, man, be content +with it as I am. And be content with the kingdom I leave you to play with. + +GUIDO +It was not altogether I who made of you a brainsick beast. But what you +are is in part my handiwork. Nevertheless, you shall not harm this child. + +THE DUKE +"Shall not" is a delightfully quaint expression. I only regret that you +are not likely ever to use it to me again. + +GUIDO +I know this means my ruin. + +THE DUKE +Indeed, I must venture to remind you, Count Eglamore, that I am still a +ruling prince-- + +GUIDO +That is nothing to me. + +THE DUKE +And that, where you are master of very admirable sentiments, I happen to +be master of all Tuscany. + +GUIDO +At court you are the master. At your court in Florence I have seen many +mothers raise the veil from their daughters' faces because you were +passing. But here upon this hill-top I can see only the woman I love and +the man who has insulted her. + +THE DUKE +So all the world is changed, and Pandarus is transformed into Hector! +Your words are very sonorous words, dear Eglamore, but by what deeds +do you propose to back them? + +GUIDO +By killing you, your highness. + +THE DUKE +But in what manner? By stifling me with virtuous rhetoric? Hah, it is +rather awkward for you--is it not--that our sumptuary laws forbid you +merchants to carry swords? + +GUIDO +(_Draws his dagger._) I think this knife will serve me, highness, to make +earth a cleaner place. + +THE DUKE +(_Drawing his long sword._) It would save trouble now to split you like a +chicken for roasting.... (_He shrugs, and sheathes his sword. He unbuckles +his sword-belt, and lays it aside._) No, no, this farce ascends in +interest. So let us play it fairly to the end. I risk nothing, since from +this moment you are useless to me, my rebellious lackey-- + +GUIDO +You risk your life, for very certainly I mean to kill you. + +THE DUKE +Two go to every bargain, my friend. Now, if I kill you, it is always +diverting to kill; and if by any chance you should kill me, I shall at +least be rid of the intolerable knowledge that to-morrow will be just like +to-day. + +_He draws his dagger. The two men engage warily but with determination, +the DUKE presently advancing. GUIDO steps backward, and in the act trips +over the pedler's pack, and falls prostrate. His dagger flies from his +hand. GRACIOSA, with a little cry, has covered her face. Nobody strikes +an attitude, because nobody is conscious of any need to be heroic, but +there is a perceptible silence, which is broken by the DUKE'S quiet +voice._ + +THE DUKE +Well! am I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my +caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other +with some pretension of adroitness. + +GUIDO +(_Rising, with a sob._) Ah! + +_He catches up the fallen dagger, and attacks the DUKE, this time with +utter disregard of the rules of fence and his own safety. GUIDO drives the +DUKE back. GUIDO is careless of defence, and desirous only to kill. The +DUKE is wounded, and falls with a cry at the foot of the shrine. GUIDO +utters a sort of strangled growl. He raises his dagger, intending to hack +at and mutilate his antagonist, who is now unconscious. As GUIDO stoops, +GRACIOSA, from behind him, catches his arm._ + +GRACIOSA +He gave you your life. + +_GUIDO turns. He drops the weapon. He speaks with great gentleness, almost +with weariness._ + +GUIDO +Madonna, the Duke is not yet dead. That wound is nothing serious. + +GRACIOSA +He spared your life. + +GUIDO +It is impossible to let him live. + +GRACIOSA +But I think he only voiced a caprice-- + +GUIDO +I think so, too, but I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless. + +GRACIOSA +But you have power-- + +GUIDO +Power! I, who have attacked the Duke's person! I, who have done what your +dead cousin merely planned to do! + +GRACIOSA +Guido--! + +GUIDO +Living, this brain-sick beast will make of you his plaything--and, a +little later, his broken, soiled and cast-by plaything. It is therefore +necessary that I kill Duke Alessandro. + +_GRACIOSA moves away from him, and GUIDO rises._ + +GRACIOSA +And afterward--and afterward you must die just as Tebaldeo died! + +GUIDO +That is the law, madonna. But what he said is true. I am useless to him, +a rebellious lackey to be punished. Whether I have his life or no, I am a +lost man. + +GRACIOSA +A moment since you were Count Eglamore, whom all our nobles feared-- + +GUIDO +Now there is not a beggar in the kingdom who would change lots with me. +But at least I shall first kill this kingdom's lord. + +_He picks up his dagger._ + +GRACIOSA +You are a friendless and hunted man, in peril of a dreadful death. But +even so, you are not penniless. These jewels here are of great value-- + +_GUIDO laughs, and hangs the pearls about her neck._ + +GUIDO +Do you keep them, then. + +GRACIOSA +There is a world outside this kingdom. You have only to make your way +through the forest to be out of Tuscany. + +GUIDO +(_Coolly reflective._) Perhaps I might escape, going north to Bologna, and +then to Venice, which is at war with the Duke-- + +GRACIOSA +I can tell you the path to Bologna. + +GUIDO +But first the Duke must die, because his death saves you. + +GRACIOSA +No, Guido! I would have Eglamore go hence with hands as clean as possible. + +GUIDO +Not even Eglamore would leave you at the mercy of this poet. + +GRACIOSA +How does that matter! It is no secret that my father intends to market me +as best suits his interests. And the great Duke of Florence, no less, +would have been my purchaser! You heard him, "I will buy this jewel," he +said. He would have paid thrice what any of my sisters' purchasers have +paid. You know very well that my father would have been delighted. + +GUIDO +(_Since the truth of what she has just said is known to him by more +startling proofs than she dreams of, he speaks rather bitterly, as he +sheathes the dagger._) And I must need upset the bargain between these +jewel merchants! + +GRACIOSA +(_Lightly._) "No, I will not have it!" Count Eglamore must cry. (_Her +hand upon his arm._) My dear unthrifty pedler! it cost you a great deal to +speak those words. + +GUIDO +I had no choice. I love you. (_A pause. As GRACIOSA does not speak, GUIDO +continues, very quiet at first._) It is a theme on which I shall not +embroider. So long as I thought to use you as an instrument I could woo +fluently enough. Today I saw that you were frightened and helpless--oh, +quite helpless. And something in me changed. I knew for the first time +that I loved you. And I knew I was not clean as you are clean. I knew +that I had more in common with this beast here than I had with you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Who with feminine practicality, while the man talks, has reached her +decision._) We daughters of the Valori are so much merchandise.... Heigho, +since I cannot help it, since bought and sold I must be, one day or +another, at least I will go at a noble price. Yet I do not think I am +quite worth the wealth and power which you have given up because of me. So +it will be necessary to make up the difference, dear, by loving you very +much. + +_GUIDO takes her hands, only half-believing that he understands her +meaning. He puts an arm about her shoulder, holding her at a distance, the +better to see her face._ + +GUIDO +You, who had only scorn to give me when I was a kingdom's master! Would +you go with me now that I am homeless and friendless? + +GRACIOSA +(_Archly._) But to me you do not seem quite friendless. + +GUIDO +Graciosa--! + +GRACIOSA +And I doubt if you could ever find your way through the forest alone. +(_But as she stands there with one hand raised to each of his shoulders +her vindication is self-revealed, and she indicates her bracelet rather +indignantly._) Besides, what else is a poor maid to do, when she is +burdened with a talisman that compels her to marry the man whom she--so +very much--prefers? + +GUIDO +(_Drawing her to him._) Ah, you shall not regret that foolish preference. + +GRACIOSA +But come! There is a path--(_They are gathering up the pack and its +contents, as GUIDO pauses by the DUKE._) Is he--? + +GUIDO +He will not enter Hell to-day. (_The DUKE stirs._) Already he revives, you +see. So let us begone before his attendants come. + +_GUIDO lifts her to the top of the wall. He lifts up the pack._ + +GRACIOSA +My lute! + +GUIDO +(_Giving it to her._) So we may pass for minstrels on the road to Venice. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, singing the Duke's songs to pay our way. (_GUIDO climbs over the +wall, and stands on the far side, examining the landscape beneath._) +Horsemen! + +GUIDO +The Duke's attendants fetching him new women--two more of those numerous +damsels that his song demands. They will revive this ruinous songmaker to +rule over Tuscany more foolishly than Eglamore governed when Eglamore was +a great lord. (_He speaks pensively, still looking down._) It is a very +rich and lovely country, this kingdom which a half-hour since lay in the +hollow of my hand. Now I am empty-handed. + +GRACIOSA +(_With mocking reproach._) Empty-handed! + +_She extends to him both her hands. GUIDO takes them, and laughs joyously, +saying,_ "Come!" _as he lifts her down._ + +_There is a moment's silence, then is heard the song and lute-playing with +which the play began, growing ever more distant:..._ + + "Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come." + +_... The DUKE moves. The DUKE half raises himself at the foot of the +crucifix._ + +THE DUKE +Eglamore! I am hurt. Help me, Eglamore! + + +(THE CURTAIN FALLS) + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Jewel Merchants, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + +This file should be named 7jmch10.txt or 7jmch10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7jmch11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7jmch10a.txt + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Jewel Merchants + A Comedy In One Act + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9829] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 22, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + _The Jewel Merchants_ + _A Comedy in One Act_ + + By + + James Branch Cabell + + + _"Io non posso ritrar di tutti appieno: + pero chi si mi caccia il lungo tema, + che molte volte al fatto il dir vieti meno."_ + + + + NEW YORK + 1921 + + + + TO + LOUISE BURLEIGH + + _This latest avatar of so many notions + which were originally hers._ + + + + +THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE + +Prudence urges me here to forestall detection, by conceding that this +brief play has no pretension to "literary" quality. It is a piece in +its inception designed for, and in its making swayed by, the requirements +of the little theatre stage. The one virtue which anybody anywhere could +claim for _The Jewel Merchants_ is the fact that it "acts" easily and +rather effectively. + +And candor compels the admission forthwith that the presence of this +anchoritic merit in the wilderness is hardly due to me. When circumstances +and the Little Theatre League of Richmond combined to bully me into +contriving the dramatization of a short story called _Balthazar's +Daughter_, I docilely converted this tale into a one-act play of which +you will find hereinafter no sentence. The comedy I wrote is now at one +with the lost dramaturgy of Pollio and of Posidippus, and is even less +likely ever to be resurrected for mortal auditors. + +It read, I still think, well enough: I am certain that, when we came to +rehearse, the thing did not "act" at all, and that its dialogue, whatever +its other graces, had the defect of being unspeakable. So at each +rehearsal we--by which inclusive pronoun I would embrace the actors and +the producing staff at large, and with especial (metaphorical) ardor Miss +Louise Burleigh, who directed all--changed here a little, and there a +little more; and shifted this bit, and deleted the other, and "tried out" +everybody's suggestions generally, until we got at least the relief of +witnessing at each rehearsal a different play. And steadily my manuscript +was enriched with interlineations, to and beyond the verge of legibility, +as steadily I substituted, for the speeches I had rewritten yesterday, +the speeches which the actor (having perfectly in mind the gist but not +the phrasing of what was meant) delivered naturally. + +This process made, at all events, for what we in particular wanted, +which was a play that the League could stage for half an evening's +entertainment; but it left existent not a shred of the rhetorical +fripperies which I had in the beginning concocted, and it made of the +actual first public performance a collaboration with almost as many +contributing authors as though the production had been a musical comedy. + +And if only fate had gifted me with an exigent conscience and a turn for +oratory, I would, I like to think, have publicly confessed, at that first +public performance, to all those tributary clarifying rills to the play's +progress: but, as it was, vainglory combined with an aversion to +"speech-making" to compel a taciturn if smirking acceptance of the +curtain-call with which an indulgent audience flustered the nominal author +of _The Jewel Merchants_.... Now, in any case, it is due my collaborators +to tell you that _The Jewel Merchants_ has amply fulfilled the purpose +of its makers by being enacted to considerable applause,--and is a +pleasure to add that this _succès d'estime_ was very little chargeable to +anything which I contributed to the play. + +For another matter, I would here confess that _The Jewel Merchants_, +in addition to its "literary" deficiencies, lacks moral fervor. It will, +I trust, corrupt no reader irretrievably, to untraversable leagues beyond +the last hope of redemption: but, even so, it is a frankly unethical +performance. You must accept this resuscitated trio, if at all, very much +as they actually went about Tuscany, in long ago discarded young flesh, +when the one trait everywhere common to their milieu was the absence of +any moral excitement over such-and-such an action's being or not being +"wicked." This phenomenon of Renaissance life, as lived in Italy in +particular, has elsewhere been discussed time and again, and I lack here +the space, and the desire, either to explain or to apologize for the era's +delinquencies. I would merely indicate that this point of conduct is the +fulcrum of _The Jewel Merchants_. + +The play presents three persons, to any one of whom the committing of +murder or theft or adultery or any other suchlike interdicted feat, is +just the risking of the penalty provided against the breaking of that +especial law if you have the vile luck to be caught at it: and this to +them is all that "wickedness" can mean. We nowadays are encouraged to +think differently: but such dear privileges do not entitle us to ignore +the truth that had any of these three advanced a dissenting code of +conduct, it would, in the time and locality, have been in radical +irreverence of the best-thought-of tenets. There was no generally +recognized criminality in crime, but only a perceptible risk. So must +this trio thriftily adhere to the accepted customs of their era, and +regard an infraction of the Decalogue (for an instance) very much as we +today look on a violation of our prohibition enactments. + +In fact, we have accorded to the Eighteenth Amendment almost exactly the +status then reserved for Omnipotence. You found yourself confronted by +occasionally enforced if obviously unreasonable supernal statutory +decrees, which every one broke now and then as a matter of convenience: +and every now and then, also, somebody was caught and punished, either in +this world or in the next, without his ill-fortune's involving any +disgrace or particular reprehension. As has been finely said, +righteousness and sinfulness were for the while "in strange and dreadful +peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good +man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a +villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes +recoil from believing." + +Such was the sixteenth-century Tuscan view of "wickedness." I have +endeavored to reproduce it without comment. + +So much of ink and paper and typography may be needed, I fear, to remind +you, in a more exhortatory civilization, that Graciosa is really, by all +the standards of her day, a well reared girl. To the prostitution of her +body, whether with or without the assistance of an ecclesiastically +acquired husband, she looks forward as unconcernedly as you must by +ordinary glance out of your front window, to face a vista so familiar +that the discovery of any change therein would be troubling. Meanwhile +she wishes this sorrow-bringing Eglamore assassinated, as the obvious, +the most convenient, and indeed the only way of getting rid of him: and +toward the end of the play, alike for her and Guido, the presence of a +corpse in her garden is merely an inconvenience without any touch of the +gruesome. Precautions have, of course, to be taken to meet the emergency +which has arisen: but in the dead body of a man _per se_, the lovers can +detect nothing more appalling, or more to be shrunk from, than would be +apparent if the lifeless object in the walkway were a dead flower. The +thing ought to be removed, if only in the interest of tidiness, but there +is no call to make a pother over it. + +As for our Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, +by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the +Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to +history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured +and retained: it is no part of the play. + +Above all, though, I must remind you that the Duke is unspurred by +malevolence. A twinge of jealousy there may be, just at first, to find his +pampered Eglamore so far advanced in the good graces of this pretty girl, +but that is hardly important. Thereafter the Duke is breaking no law, +for the large reason that his preference in any matter is the only law +thus far divulged to him. As concerns the man and the girl he discovers on +this hill-top, they, in common with all else in Tuscany, are possessions +of Duke Alessandro's. They can raise no question as to how he "ought" to +deal with them, for to your chattels, whether they be your finger rings or +your subjects or your pomatum pots or the fair quires whereon you indite +your verses, you cannot rationally he said to "owe" anything.... No, the +Duke is but a spirited lad in quest of amusement: and Guido and Graciosa +are the playthings with which, on this fine sunlit morning, he attempts to +divert himself. + +This much being granted--and confessed,--we let the play begin. + +_Dumbarton Grange,_ +_June, 1921_ + + + * * * * * + +["Alessandro de Medici is generally styled by the Italian authors the +first duke of Florence; but in this they are not strictly accurate. His +title of duke was derived from Città, or Cività di Penna, and had been +assumed by him several years before he obtained the direction of the +Florentine state. It must also be observed, that, after the evasion of +Eglamore, Duke Alessandro did not, as Robertson observes, 'enjoy the +same absolute dominion as his family have retained to the present times,' +(Hist. Charles V. book v.) he being only declared chief or prince of the +republic, and his authority being in some measure counteracted or +restrained by two councils chosen from the citizens, for life, one of +which consisted of forty-eight, and the other of two hundred members. +(Varchi, Storia Fior. p. 497: Nerli, Com. lib. xi. pp. 257, 264.)"] + + + * * * * * + + + THE JEWEL MERCHANTS + + _"Diamente nè smeraldo nè zaffino."_ + + +Originally produced by the Little Theatre League of Richmond, Virginia, +at the Binford High School Auditorium, 22 February, 1921. + + _Original Cast_ + +GRACIOSA...........................Elinor Fry + Daughter of Balthazar Valori + +GUIDO........................Roderick Maybee + A jewel merchant + +ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.........Francis F. Bierne + Duke of Florence + +Produced under the direction of Louise Burleigh. + + + * * * * * + + + +_THE JEWEL MERCHANTS_ + +_The play begins with the sound of a woman's voice singing a song +(adapted from Rossetti's version) which is delivered to the accompaniment +of a lute._ + +SONG: + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad. + + Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth + Filled with the strife of birds, + With water-springs and beasts that house i' the earth. + + Let me seem Solomon for lore of words, + Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom. + + Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come, + Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven. + +_As the singing ends, the curtain rises upon a corner of Balthazar +Valori's garden near the northern border of Tuscany. The garden is walled. +There is a shrine in the wall: the tortured figure upon the crucifix is +conspicuous. To the right stands a rather high-backed stone bench: by +mounting from the seat to the top of the bench it is possible to scale +the wall. To the left a crimson pennant on a pole shows against the sky. +The period is 1533, and a few miles southward the Florentines, after three +years of formally recognizing Jesus Christ as the sole lord and king of +Florence, have lately altered matters as profoundly as was possible by +electing Alessandro de Medici to be their Duke._ + +_GRACIOSA is seated upon the bench, with a lute. The girl is, to our +modern taste, very quaintly dressed in gold-colored satin, with a short +tight bodice, cut square and low at the neck, and with long full skirts. +When she stands erect, her preposterous "flowing" sleeves, lined with +sky blue, reach to the ground. Her blonde hair, of which she has a great +deal, is braided, in the intricate early sixteenth fashion, under a +jeweled cap and a veil the exact color of this hair._ + +_There is a call. Smiling, GRACIOSA answers this call by striking her +lute. She pats straight her hair and gown, and puts aside the instrument. +GUIDO appears at the top of the wall. All you can see of the handsome +young fellow, in this posture, is that he wears a green skull-cap and a +dark blue smock, the slashed sleeves of which are lined with green._ + +GUIDO +Ah, madonna.... + +GRACIOSA +Welcome, Ser Guido. Your journey has been brief. + +GUIDO +It has not seemed brief to me. + +GRACIOSA +Why, it was only three days ago you told me it would be a fortnight +before you came this way again. + +GUIDO +Yes, but I did not then know that each day spent apart from you, Madonna +Graciosa, would be a century in passing. + +GRACIOSA +Dear me, but your search must have been desperate! + +GUIDO +(_Who speaks, as almost always hereinafter, with sober enjoyment of the +fact that he is stating the exact truth unintelligibly._) Yes, my search +is desperate. + +GRACIOSA +Did you find gems worthy of your search? + +GUIDO +Very certainly, since at my journey's end I find Madonna Graciosa, the +chief jewel of Tuscany. + +GRACIOSA +Such compliments, Guido, make your speech less like a merchant's than a +courtier's. + +GUIDO +Ah, well, to balance that, you will presently find courtiers in Florence +who will barter for you like merchants. May I descend? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, if you have something of interest to show me. + +GUIDO +Am I to be welcomed merely for the sake of my gems? You were more +gracious, you were more beautifully like your lovely name, on the +fortunate day that I first encountered you ... only six weeks ago, and +only yonder, where the path crosses the highway. But now that I esteem +myself your friend, you greet me like a stranger. You do not even invite +me into your garden. I much prefer the manner in which you told me the +way to the inn when I was an unknown passer-by. And yet your pennant +promised greeting. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the smile of an exceptionally candid angel._) Ah, Guido, I flew +it the very minute the boy from the inn brought me your message! + +GUIDO +Now, there is the greeting I had hoped for! But how do you escape your +father's watch so easily? + +GRACIOSA +My father has no need to watch me in this lonely hill castle. Ever since +I can remember I have wandered at will in the forest. My father knows that +to me every path is as familiar as one of the corridors in his house; and +in no one of them did I ever meet anybody except charcoal-burners, and +sometimes a nun from the convent, and--oh, yes!--you. But descend, friend +Guido. + +_Thus encouraged, GUIDO descends from the top of the wall to the top of +the bench, and thence, via its seat, to the ground. You are thereby +enabled to discover that his nether portions are clad in dark blue tights +and soft leather shoes with pointed turned-up toes. It is also noticeable +that he carries a jewel pack of purple, which, when opened, reveals an +orange lining._ + +GUIDO +(_With as much irony as the pleasure he takes in being again with this +dear child permits._) That "Oh, yes, you!" is a very fitting reward for +my devotion. For I find that nowadays I travel about the kingdom buying +jewels less for my patrons at court than for the pleasure of having your +eyes appraise them, and smile at me. + +GRACIOSA +(_With the condescension of a great lady._) Guido, you have in point of +fact been very kind to me, and very amusing, too, in my loneliness on +the top of this hill. (_Drawing back the sleeve from her left arm, she +reveals the trinket there._) See, here is the turquoise bracelet I had +from you the second time you passed. I wear it always--secretly. + +GUIDO +That is wise, for the turquoise is a talisman. They say that the woman +who wears a turquoise is thereby assured of marrying the person whom she +prefers. + +GRACIOSA +I do not know about that, nor do I expect to have much choice as to what +rich nobleman marries me, but I know that I love this bracelet-- + +GUIDO +In fact, they are handsome stones. + +GRACIOSA +Because it reminds me constantly of the hours which I have spent here +with my lute-- + +GUIDO +Oh, with your lute! + +GRACIOSA +And with your pack of lovely jewels-- + +GUIDO +Yes, to be sure! with my jewels. + +GRACIOSA +And with you. + +GUIDO +There is again my gracious lady. Now, in reward for that, you shall +feast your eyes. + +GRACIOSA +(_All eagerness._) And what have you to-day? + +_GUIDO opens his pack. She bends above it with hands outstretched._ + +GUIDO +(_Taking out a necklace._) For one thing, pearls, black pearls, set with +a clasp of emeralds. See! They will become you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Taking them, pressing them to her cheek._) How cool! But I--poor child +of a poor noble--I cannot afford such. + +GUIDO +Oh, I did not mean to offer them to you to-day. No, this string is +intended for the Duke's favorite, Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +(_Stiffening._) Count Eglamore! These are for him? + +GUIDO +For Count Eglamore. + +GRACIOSA +Has the upstart such taste? + +GUIDO +If it be taste to appreciate pearls, then the Duke's chief officer has +excellent taste. He seeks them far and wide. He will be very generous in +paying for this string. + +_GRACIOSA drops the pearls, in which she no longer delights. She returns +to the bench, and sits down and speaks with a sort of disappointment._ + +GRACIOSA +I am sorry to learn that this Eglamore is among your patrons. + +GUIDO +(_Still half engrossed by the contents of his pack. The man loves jewels +equally for their value and their beauty._) Oh, the nobles complain of +him, but we merchants have no quarrel with Eglamore. He buys too lavishly. + +GRACIOSA +Do you think only of buying and selling, Guido? + +GUIDO +It is a pursuit not limited to us who frankly live by sale and purchase. +Count Eglamore, for example, knows that men may be bought as readily as +merchandise. It is one reason why he is so hated--by the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Irritated by the title._) Count Eglamore, indeed! I ask in my prayers +every night that some honest gentleman may contrive to cut the throat of +this abominable creature. + +GUIDO +(_His hand going to his throat._) You pray too much, madonna. Even very +pious people ought to be reasonable. + +GRACIOSA +(_Rising from the bench._) Have I not reason to hate the man who killed +my kinsman? + +GUIDO +(_Rising from his gems._) The Marquis of Cibo conspired, or so the court +judged-- + +GRACIOSA +I know nothing of the judgment. But it was this Eglamore who discovered +the plot, if there indeed was any plot, and who sent my cousin Cibo to +a death--(_pointing to the shrine_)--oh, to a death as horrible as that. +So I hate him. + +GUIDO +Yet you have never even seen him, I believe? + +GRACIOSA +And it would be better for him never to see me or any of my kin. My +father, my uncles and my cousins have all sworn to kill him-- + +GUIDO +So I have gathered. They remain among the unbought. + +GRACIOSA +(_Returning, sits upon the bench, and speaks regretfully._) But they +have never any luck. Cousin Pietro contrived to have a beam dropped on +Eglamore's head, and it missed him by not half a foot-- + +GUIDO +Ah, yes, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +And Cousin Georgio stabbed him in the back one night, but the coward had +on chain-armor under his finery-- + +GUIDO +I remember that also. + +GRACIOSA +And Uncle Lorenzo poisoned his soup, but a pet dog got at it first. That +was very unfortunate. + +GUIDO +Yes, the dog seemed to think so, I remember. + +GRACIOSA +However, perseverance is always rewarded. So I still hope that one or +another of my kinsmen will contrive to kill this Eglamore before I go to +court. + +GUIDO +(_Sits at her feet._) Has my Lord Balthazar yet set a day for that +presentation? + +GRACIOSA +Not yet. + +GUIDO +I wish to have this Eglamore's accounts all settled by that date. + +GRACIOSA +But in three months, Guido, I shall be sixteen. My sisters went to court +when they were sixteen. + +GUIDO +In fact, a noble who is not rich cannot afford to continue supporting a +daughter who is salable in marriage. + +GRACIOSA +No, of course not. (_She speaks in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. +Then, more impulsively, the girl slips down from the bench, and sits by +him on the around._) Do you think I shall make as good a match as my +sisters, Guido? Do you think some great rich nobleman will marry me very +soon? And shall I like the court! What shall I see there? + +GUIDO +Marvels. I think--yes, I am afraid that you will like them. + +GRACIOSA +And Duke Alessandro--shall I like him? + +GUIDO +Few courtiers have expressed dislike of him in my presence. + +GRACIOSA +Do you like him? Does he too buy lavishly? + +GUIDO +Eh, madonna! some day, when you have seen his jewels-- + +GRACIOSA +Oh! I shall see them when I go to court? + +GUIDO +Yes, he will show them to you, I think, without fail, for the Duke loves +beauty in all its forms. So he will take pleasure in confronting the +brightness of your eyes with the brightness of the four kinds of sapphires, +of the twelve kinds of rubies, and of many extraordinary pearls-- + +GRACIOSA +(_With eyes shining, and lips parted._) Oh! + +GUIDO +And you will see his famous emerald necklace, and all his diamonds, and +his huge turquoises, which will make you ashamed of your poor talisman-- + +GRACIOSA +He will show all these jewels to me! + +GUIDO +(_Looking at her, and still smiling thoughtfully._) He will show you the +very finest of his gems, assuredly. And then, worse still, he will be +making verses in your honor. + +GRACIOSA +It would be droll to have a great duke making songs about me! + +GUIDO +It is a preposterous feature of Duke Alessandro's character that he is +always making songs about some beautiful thing or another. + +GRACIOSA +Such strange songs, Guido! I was singing over one of them just before +you came,-- + + Let me have dames and damsels richly clad + To feed and tend my mirth, + Singing by day and night to make me glad-- + +But I could not quite understand it. Are his songs thought good? + +GUIDO +The songs of a reigning duke are always good. + +GRACIOSA +And is he as handsome as people report? + +GUIDO +Tastes differ, of course-- + +GRACIOSA +And is he--? + +GUIDO +I have a portrait of the Duke. It does not, I think, unduly flatter him. +Will you look at it? + +GRACIOSA +Yes, yes! + +GUIDO +(_Drawing out a miniature on a chain._) Here is the likeness. + +GRACIOSA +But how should you--? + +GUIDO +(_Seeing her surprise._) Oh, it was a gift to me from his highness for a +special service I did him, and as such must be treasured. + +GRACIOSA +Perhaps, then, I shall see yon at court, Messer Guido, who are the friend +of princes? + +GUIDO +If you do, I ask only that in noisy Florence you remember this quiet +garden. + +GRACIOSA +(_Looks at him silently, then glances at the portrait. She speaks with +evident disappointment._) Is this the Duke? + +GUIDO +You may see his arms on it, and on the back his inscription. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, but--(_looking at the portrait again_)--but ... he is ... so ... + +GUIDO +You are astonished at his highness' coloring? That he inherits from his +mother. She was, you know, a blackamoor. + +GRACIOSA +And my sisters wrote me he was like a god! + +GUIDO +Such observations are court etiquette. + +GRACIOSA +(_With an outburst of disgust._) Take it back! Though how can you bear to +look at it, far less to have it touching you! And only yesterday I was +angry because I had not seen the Duke riding past! + +GUIDO +Seen him! here! riding past! + +GRACIOSA +Old Ursula told me that the Duke had gone by with twenty men, riding down +toward the convent at the border. And I flung my sewing-bag straight at +her head because she had not called me. + +GUIDO +That was idle gossip, I fancy. The Duke rarely rides abroad without +my--(_he stops_)--without my lavish patron Eglamore, the friend of all +honest merchants. + +GRACIOSA +But that abominable Eglamore may have been with him. I heard nothing to +the contrary. + +GUIDO +True, madonna, true. I had forgotten you did not see them. + +GRACIOSA +No. What is he like, this Eglamore? Is he as appalling to look at as the +Duke? + +GUIDO +Madonna! but wise persons do not apply such adjectives to dukes. And wise +persons do not criticize Count Eglamore's appearance, either, now that +Eglamore is indispensable to the all-powerful Duke of Florence. + +GRACIOSA +Indispensable? + +GUIDO +It is thanks to the Eglamore whom you hate that the Duke has ample leisure +to indulge in recreations which are reputed to be--curious. + +GRACIOSA +I do not understand you, Guido. + +GUIDO +That is perhaps quite as well. (_Attempting to explain as much as is +decently expressible._) To be brief, madonna, business annoys the Duke. + +GRACIOSA +Why? + +GUIDO +It interferes with the pursuit of all the beautiful things he asks for +in that song. + +GRACIOSA +But how does that make Eglamore indispensable? + +GUIDO +Eglamore is an industrious person who affixes seals, and signs treaties, +and musters armies, and collects revenues, upon the whole, quite as +efficiently as Alessandro would be capable of doing these things. + +GRACIOSA +So Duke Alessandro merely makes verses? + +GUIDO +And otherwise amuses himself as his inclinations prompt, while Eglamore +rules Tuscany--and the Tuscans are none the worse off on account of it. +(_He rises, and his hand goes to the dagger at his belt._) But is not +that a horseman? + +GRACIOSA +(_She too has risen, and is now standing on the bench, looking over the +wall._) A solitary rider, far down by the convent, so far away that he +seems hardly larger than a scarlet dragon-fly. + +GUIDO +I confess I wish to run no risk of being found here, by your respected +father or by your ingenious cousins and uncles. + +GRACIOSA +(_She turns, but remains standing upon the bench._) I think your Duke is +much more dangerous looking than any of them. Heigho! I can quite foresee +that I shall never fall in love with this Duke. + +GUIDO +A prince has means to overcome all obstacles. + +GRACIOSA +No. It is unbefitting and a little cowardly for Duke Alessandro to shirk +the duties of his station for verse-making and eternal pleasure-seeking. +Now if I were Duke-- + +GUIDO +What would you do? + +GRACIOSA +(_Posturing a little as she stands upon the bench._) If I were duke? +Oh ... I would grant my father a pension ... and I would have Eglamore +hanged ... and I would purchase a new gown of silvery green-- + +GUIDO +In which you would be very ravishingly beautiful. + +_His tone has become rather ardent, and he is now standing nearer to her +than the size of the garden necessitates. So GRACIOSA demurely steps +down from the bench, and sits at the far end._ + +GRACIOSA +And that is all I can think of. What would you do if you were duke, +Messer Guido? + +GUIDO +(_Who is now sitting beside her at closer quarters than the length of the +bench quite strictly demands._) I? What would I do if I were a great lord +instead of a tradesman! (_Softly._) I think you know the answer, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +Oh, you would make me your duchess, of course. That is quite understood. +But I was speaking seriously, Guido. + +GUIDO +And is it not a serious matter that a pedler of crystals should have dared +to love a nobleman's daughter? + +GRACIOSA +(_Delighted._) This is the first I have heard of it. + +GUIDO +But you are perfectly right. It is not a serious matter. That I worship +you is an affair which does not seriously concern any person save me in +any way whatsoever. Yet I think that knowledge of the fact would put your +father to the trouble of sharpening his dagger. + +GRACIOSA +Ye-es. But not even Father would deny that you were showing excellent +taste. + +GUIDO +Indeed, I am not certain that I do worship you; for in order to adore +whole-heartedly the idolater must believe his idol to be perfect. +(_Taking her hand._) Now your nails are of an ugly shape, like that of +little fans. Your nose is nothing to boast of. And your mouth is too +large. I do not admire these faults, for faults they are undoubtedly-- + +GRACIOSA +Do they make me very ugly? I know that I have not a really good mouth, +Guido, but do you think it is positively repulsive? + +GUIDO +No.... Then, too, I know that you are vain and self-seeking, and look +forward contentedly to the time when your father will transfer his +ownership of your physical attractions to that nobleman who offers the +highest price for them. + +GRACIOSA +But we daughters of the poor Valori are compelled to marry--suitably. We +have only the choice between that and the convent yonder. + +GUIDO +That is true, and nobody disputes it. Still, you participate in a +monstrous bargain, and I would prefer to have you exhibit distaste for it. + +_Bending forward, GUIDO draws from his jewel pack the string of pearls, +and this he moodily contemplates, in order to evince his complete +disinterestedness. The pose has its effect. GRACIOSA looks at him for a +moment, rises, draws a deep breath, and speaks with a sort of humility._ + +GRACIOSA +And to what end, Guido? What good would weeping do? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling whimsically._) I am afraid that men do not always love +according to the strict laws of logic. (_He drops the pearls, and, +rising, follows her._) I desire your happiness above all things, yet to +see you so abysmally untroubled by anything which troubles me is--another +matter. + +GRACIOSA +But I am not untroubled, Guido. + +GUIDO +No? + +GRACIOSA +No. (_Rather tremulously._) Sometimes I sit here dreading my life at +court. I want never to leave my father's bleak house. I fear that I may +not like the man who offers the highest price for me. And it seems as +if the court were a horrible painted animal, dressed in bright silks, and +shining with jewels, and waiting to devour me. + +_Beyond the wall appears a hat of scarlet satin with a divided brim, +which, rising, is revealed to surmount the head of an extraordinarily +swarthy person, to whose dark skin much powder has only loaned the hue of +death: his cheeks, however, are vividly carmined. This is all that the +audience can now see of the young DUKE of FLORENCE, whose proximity the +two in the garden are just now too much engrossed to notice._ + +_The DUKE looks from one to the other. His eyes narrow, his teeth are +displayed in a wide grin; he now understands the situation. He lowers his +head as GRACIOSA moves._ + +GRACIOSA +No, I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I +am very fond of you--and yet I do not trust you. + +GUIDO +You know that I love you. + +GRACIOSA +You tell me so. It pleases me to have you say it-- + +GUIDO +Madonna is candid this morning. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, I am candid. It does please me. And I know that for the sake of +seeing me you endanger your life, for if my father heard of our meetings +here he would have you killed. + +GUIDO +Would I incur such risks without caring? + +GRACIOSA +No,--and yet, somehow, I do not believe it is altogether for me that you +care. + +_The DUKE laughs. GUIDO starts, half drawing his dagger. GRACIOSA turns +with an instinctive gesture of seeking protection. The DUKE'S head and +shoulders appear above the wall._ + +THE DUKE +And you will find, my friend, that the most charming women have just these +awkward intuitions. + +_The DUKE ascends the wall, while the two stand motionless and silent. +When he is on top of the wall, GUIDO, who now remembers that omnipotence +perches there, makes haste to serve it, and obsequiously assists the DUKE +to descend. The DUKE then comes well forward, in smiling meditation, and +hands first his gloves, then his scarlet cloak (which you now perceive to +be lined with ermine and sable in four stripes) to GUIDO, who takes them +as a servant would attend his master._ + +_The removal of this cloak reveals the DUKE to be clad in a scarlet satin +doublet, which has a high military collar and sleeves puffed with black. +His tights also are of scarlet, and he wears shining soft black +riding-boots. Jewels glisten at his neck. About his middle, too, there is +a metallic gleaming, for he is equipped with a noticeably long sword and +a dagger. Such is the personage who now addresses himself more explicitly +to GRACIOSA._ + +THE DUKE +(_Sitting upon the bench, very much at his ease while the others stand +uncomfortably before him._) Yes, madonna, I suspect that Eglamore here +cares greatly for the fact that you are Balthazar Valori's daughter, and +cousin to the late Marquis of Cibo. + +GRACIOSA +(_Just in bewilderment._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +For Cibo left many kinsmen. These still resent the circumstance that +the matching of his wits against Eglamore's wits earned for Cibo an +unpleasantly public death-bed. So they pursue their feud against Eglamore +with vexatious industry. And Eglamore goes about in hourly apprehension +of another falling beam, another knife-thrust in the back, or another +plate of poison. + +GRACIOSA +(_She comprehends now._) Eglamore! + +THE DUKE +(_Who is pleased alike by Eglamore's neat plan and by his own cleverness +in unriddling it._) But if rich Eglamore should make a stolen match with +you, your father--good thrifty man!--could be appeased without much +trouble. Your cousins, those very angry but penniless Valori, would not +stay over-obdurate to a kinsman who had at his disposal so many pensions +and public offices. Honor would permit a truce with their new cousin +Eglamore, a truce very profitable to everybody. + +GRACIOSA +He said they must be bought somehow! + +THE DUKE +Yes, Eglamore could bind them all to his interest within ten days. All +could be bought at a stroke by marrying you. And Eglamore would be rid +of the necessity of sleeping in chain-armor. Have I not unraveled the +scheme correctly, Eglamore? + +GUIDO +(_Smiling and deferential._) Your highness was never lacking in +penetration. + +_GRACIOSA, at this, turns puzzled from one man to the other._ + +GRACIOSA +Are you--? + +THE DUKE +I am Alessandro de Medici, madonna. + +GRACIOSA +The Duke! + +THE DUKE +A sadly neglected prince, who wondered over the frequent absences of his +chief counselor, and secretly set spies upon him. Eglamore here will +attest as much--(_As GRACIOSA draws away from GUIDO_)--or if you cannot +believe Eglamore any longer in anything, I shall have other witnesses +within the half-hour. Yes, my twenty cut-throats are fetching back for me +a brace of nuns from the convent yonder. I can imagine that, just now, my +cut-throats will be in your opinion more trustworthy witnesses than is +poor Eglamore. And my stout knaves will presently assure you that I am +the Duke. + +GUIDO +(_Suavely._) It happens that not a moment ago we were admiring your +highness' portrait. + +GRACIOSA +And so you are Count Eglamore. That is very strange. So it was the hand +of Eglamore (_rubbing her hands as if to clean them_) that I touched just +now. I thought it was the hand of my friend Guido. But I forget. There is +no Guido. You are Eglamore. It is strange you should have been capable of +so much wickedness, for to me you seem only a smirking and harmless +lackey. + +_The DUKE is watching as if at a play. He is aesthetically pleased by the +girl's anguish. GUIDO winces. As GRACIOSA begins again to speak, they turn +facing her, so that to the audience the faces of both men are invisible._ + +GRACIOSA +And it was you who detected--so you said--the Marquis of Cibo's +conspiracy. Tebaldeo was my cousin, Count Eglamore. I loved him. We were +reared together. We used to play here in this garden. I remember how +Tebaldeo once fetched me a wren's nest from that maple yonder. I stood +just here. I was weeping, because I was afraid he would fall. If he had +fallen, if he had been killed then, it would have been the luckier for +him. They say that he conspired. I do not know. I only know that by your +orders, Count Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like +that (_pointing to the shrine_). I know that his arms and legs were each +broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set +upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died +very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, +and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday +to watch him die, the boy who fetched me a wren's nest from yonder maple. +And I know that you are Eglamore, who ordered these things done. + +GUIDO +I gave orders for the Marquis of Cibo's execution, as was the duty of my +office. I did not devise the manner of his punishment. The punishment for +Cibo's crime was long ago fixed by our laws. All who attack the Duke's +person must die thus. + +GRACIOSA +(_Waves his excuses aside._) And then you plan this masquerade. You plan +to make me care for you so greatly that even when I know you to be Count +Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate +Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to leave them--in your huckster's phrase--no +longer unbought. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me +as a stepping-stone to safety. But was it fair to me? + +GUIDO +Graciosa ... you shame me-- + +GRACIOSA +Look you, Count Eglamore, I was only a child, playing here, alone, and +not unhappy. Oh, was it fair, was it worth while to match your skill +against my ignorance? + +THE DUKE +Fie, Donna Graciosa, you must not be too harsh with Eglamore-- + +GRACIOSA +Think how unhappy I would be if even now I loved you, and how I would +loathe myself! + +THE DUKE +It is his nature to scheme, and he weaves his plots as inevitably as the +spider does her web-- + +GRACIOSA +But I am getting angry over nothing. Nothing has happened except that +I have dreamed--of a Guido. And there is no Guido. There is only an +Eglamore, a lackey in attendance upon his master. + +THE DUKE +Believe me, it is wiser to forget this clever lackey--as I do--except when +there is need of his services. I think that you have no more need to +consider him-- + +_He takes the girl's hand. GRACIOSA now looks at him as though seeing him +for the first time. She is vaguely frightened by this predatory beast, but +in the main her emotion is as yet bewilderment._ + +THE DUKE +For you are very beautiful, Graciosa. You are as slim as a lily, and +more white. Your eyes are two purple mirrors in each of which I see a +tiny image of Duke Alessandro. (_GUIDO takes a step forward, and the DUKE +now addresses him affably._) Those nuns they are fetching me are big +high-colored wenches with cheeks like apples. It is not desirable that +women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should +be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, +and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. +It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you +comprehend how easy it would be to murder her. + +GUIDO +(_Softly, without expression._) God, God! + +_The DUKE looks with delight at GRACIOSA, who stands bewildered and +childlike._ + +THE DUKE +You fear me, do you not, Graciosa? Your hand is soft and cold as the skin +of a viper. When I touch it you shudder. I am very tired of women who +love me, of women who are infatuated by my beauty. You, I can see, are not +infatuated. To you my touch will always be a martyrdom, you will always +loathe me. And therefore I shall not weary of you for a long while, +because the misery and the helplessness of my lovely victim will incite +me to make very lovely verses. + +_He draws her to the bench, sitting beside her._ + +THE DUKE +Yes, Graciosa, you will inspire me. Your father shall have all the wealth +and state that even his greedy imaginings can devise, so long as you can +contrive to loathe me. We will find you a suitable husband--say, in +Eglamore here. You shall have flattery and titles, gold and fine glass, +soft stuffs and superb palaces and many lovely jewels-- + +_The DUKE glances down at the pedler's pack._ + +THE DUKE +But Eglamore also has been wooing you with jewels. You must see mine, +dear Graciosa. + +GRACIOSA +(_Without expression._) Count Eglamore said that I must. + +THE DUKE +(_Raises the necklace, and lets it drop contemptuously._) Oh, not such +trumpery as this. I have in Florence gems which have not their fellows +anywhere, gems which have not even a name, and the value of which is +incalculable. I have jewels engendered by the thunder, jewels taken from +the heart of the Arabian deer. I have jewels cut from the brain of a toad, +and from the eyes of serpents. I have jewels which are authentically known +to have fallen from the moon. Well, we will select the rarest, and have a +pair of slippers encrusted with them, and in these slippers you shall +dance for me, in a room that I know of-- + +GUIDO +(_Without moving._) Highness--! + +THE DUKE +It will all be very amusing, for I think that she is now quite innocent, +as pure as the high angels. Yes, it will be diverting to make her as I am. +It will be an atrocious action that will inspire me to write lovelier +verses than even I have ever written. + +GUIDO +She is a child-- + +THE DUKE +Yes, yes, a frightened child who cannot speak, who stays as still as a +lark that has been taken in a snare. Why, neither of her sisters can +compare with this, and, besides, the elder one had a quite ugly mole upon +her thigh--But that old rogue Balthazar Valori has a real jewel to offer, +this time. Well, I will buy it. + +GUIDO +Highness, I love this child-- + +THE DUKE +Ah, then you cannot ever be her husband. You would have suited otherwise. +But we will find some other person of discretion-- + +_For a moment the two men regard each other in silence. The DUKE becomes +aware that he is being opposed. His brows contract a little, but he rises +from the bench rather as if in meditation than in anger. Then GUIDO drops +the cloak and gloves he has been holding until this. His lackeyship is +over._ + +GUIDO +No! + +THE DUKE +My friend, some long-faced people say you made a beast of me-- + +GUIDO +No, I will not have it. + +THE DUKE +So do you beware lest the beast turn and rend you. + +GUIDO +I have never been too nice to profit by your vices. I have taken my +thrifty toll of abomination. I have stood by contentedly, not urging you +on, yet never trying to stay you as you waded deeper and ever deeper into +the filth of your debaucheries, because meanwhile you left me so much +power. + +THE DUKE +Would you reshape your handiwork more piously? Come, come, man, be content +with it as I am. And be content with the kingdom I leave you to play with. + +GUIDO +It was not altogether I who made of you a brainsick beast. But what you +are is in part my handiwork. Nevertheless, you shall not harm this child. + +THE DUKE +"Shall not" is a delightfully quaint expression. I only regret that you +are not likely ever to use it to me again. + +GUIDO +I know this means my ruin. + +THE DUKE +Indeed, I must venture to remind you, Count Eglamore, that I am still a +ruling prince-- + +GUIDO +That is nothing to me. + +THE DUKE +And that, where you are master of very admirable sentiments, I happen to +be master of all Tuscany. + +GUIDO +At court you are the master. At your court in Florence I have seen many +mothers raise the veil from their daughters' faces because you were +passing. But here upon this hill-top I can see only the woman I love and +the man who has insulted her. + +THE DUKE +So all the world is changed, and Pandarus is transformed into Hector! +Your words are very sonorous words, dear Eglamore, but by what deeds +do you propose to back them? + +GUIDO +By killing you, your highness. + +THE DUKE +But in what manner? By stifling me with virtuous rhetoric? Hah, it is +rather awkward for you--is it not--that our sumptuary laws forbid you +merchants to carry swords? + +GUIDO +(_Draws his dagger._) I think this knife will serve me, highness, to make +earth a cleaner place. + +THE DUKE +(_Drawing his long sword._) It would save trouble now to split you like a +chicken for roasting.... (_He shrugs, and sheathes his sword. He unbuckles +his sword-belt, and lays it aside._) No, no, this farce ascends in +interest. So let us play it fairly to the end. I risk nothing, since from +this moment you are useless to me, my rebellious lackey-- + +GUIDO +You risk your life, for very certainly I mean to kill you. + +THE DUKE +Two go to every bargain, my friend. Now, if I kill you, it is always +diverting to kill; and if by any chance you should kill me, I shall at +least be rid of the intolerable knowledge that to-morrow will be just like +to-day. + +_He draws his dagger. The two men engage warily but with determination, +the DUKE presently advancing. GUIDO steps backward, and in the act trips +over the pedler's pack, and falls prostrate. His dagger flies from his +hand. GRACIOSA, with a little cry, has covered her face. Nobody strikes +an attitude, because nobody is conscious of any need to be heroic, but +there is a perceptible silence, which is broken by the DUKE'S quiet +voice._ + +THE DUKE +Well! am I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my +caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other +with some pretension of adroitness. + +GUIDO +(_Rising, with a sob._) Ah! + +_He catches up the fallen dagger, and attacks the DUKE, this time with +utter disregard of the rules of fence and his own safety. GUIDO drives the +DUKE back. GUIDO is careless of defence, and desirous only to kill. The +DUKE is wounded, and falls with a cry at the foot of the shrine. GUIDO +utters a sort of strangled growl. He raises his dagger, intending to hack +at and mutilate his antagonist, who is now unconscious. As GUIDO stoops, +GRACIOSA, from behind him, catches his arm._ + +GRACIOSA +He gave you your life. + +_GUIDO turns. He drops the weapon. He speaks with great gentleness, almost +with weariness._ + +GUIDO +Madonna, the Duke is not yet dead. That wound is nothing serious. + +GRACIOSA +He spared your life. + +GUIDO +It is impossible to let him live. + +GRACIOSA +But I think he only voiced a caprice-- + +GUIDO +I think so, too, but I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless. + +GRACIOSA +But you have power-- + +GUIDO +Power! I, who have attacked the Duke's person! I, who have done what your +dead cousin merely planned to do! + +GRACIOSA +Guido--! + +GUIDO +Living, this brain-sick beast will make of you his plaything--and, a +little later, his broken, soiled and cast-by plaything. It is therefore +necessary that I kill Duke Alessandro. + +_GRACIOSA moves away from him, and GUIDO rises._ + +GRACIOSA +And afterward--and afterward you must die just as Tebaldeo died! + +GUIDO +That is the law, madonna. But what he said is true. I am useless to him, +a rebellious lackey to be punished. Whether I have his life or no, I am a +lost man. + +GRACIOSA +A moment since you were Count Eglamore, whom all our nobles feared-- + +GUIDO +Now there is not a beggar in the kingdom who would change lots with me. +But at least I shall first kill this kingdom's lord. + +_He picks up his dagger._ + +GRACIOSA +You are a friendless and hunted man, in peril of a dreadful death. But +even so, you are not penniless. These jewels here are of great value-- + +_GUIDO laughs, and hangs the pearls about her neck._ + +GUIDO +Do you keep them, then. + +GRACIOSA +There is a world outside this kingdom. You have only to make your way +through the forest to be out of Tuscany. + +GUIDO +(_Coolly reflective._) Perhaps I might escape, going north to Bologna, and +then to Venice, which is at war with the Duke-- + +GRACIOSA +I can tell you the path to Bologna. + +GUIDO +But first the Duke must die, because his death saves you. + +GRACIOSA +No, Guido! I would have Eglamore go hence with hands as clean as possible. + +GUIDO +Not even Eglamore would leave you at the mercy of this poet. + +GRACIOSA +How does that matter! It is no secret that my father intends to market me +as best suits his interests. And the great Duke of Florence, no less, +would have been my purchaser! You heard him, "I will buy this jewel," he +said. He would have paid thrice what any of my sisters' purchasers have +paid. You know very well that my father would have been delighted. + +GUIDO +(_Since the truth of what she has just said is known to him by more +startling proofs than she dreams of, he speaks rather bitterly, as he +sheathes the dagger._) And I must need upset the bargain between these +jewel merchants! + +GRACIOSA +(_Lightly._) "No, I will not have it!" Count Eglamore must cry. (_Her +hand upon his arm._) My dear unthrifty pedler! it cost you a great deal to +speak those words. + +GUIDO +I had no choice. I love you. (_A pause. As GRACIOSA does not speak, GUIDO +continues, very quiet at first._) It is a theme on which I shall not +embroider. So long as I thought to use you as an instrument I could woo +fluently enough. Today I saw that you were frightened and helpless--oh, +quite helpless. And something in me changed. I knew for the first time +that I loved you. And I knew I was not clean as you are clean. I knew +that I had more in common with this beast here than I had with you. + +GRACIOSA +(_Who with feminine practicality, while the man talks, has reached her +decision._) We daughters of the Valori are so much merchandise.... Heigho, +since I cannot help it, since bought and sold I must be, one day or +another, at least I will go at a noble price. Yet I do not think I am +quite worth the wealth and power which you have given up because of me. So +it will be necessary to make up the difference, dear, by loving you very +much. + +_GUIDO takes her hands, only half-believing that he understands her +meaning. He puts an arm about her shoulder, holding her at a distance, the +better to see her face._ + +GUIDO +You, who had only scorn to give me when I was a kingdom's master! Would +you go with me now that I am homeless and friendless? + +GRACIOSA +(_Archly._) But to me you do not seem quite friendless. + +GUIDO +Graciosa--! + +GRACIOSA +And I doubt if you could ever find your way through the forest alone. +(_But as she stands there with one hand raised to each of his shoulders +her vindication is self-revealed, and she indicates her bracelet rather +indignantly._) Besides, what else is a poor maid to do, when she is +burdened with a talisman that compels her to marry the man whom she--so +very much--prefers? + +GUIDO +(_Drawing her to him._) Ah, you shall not regret that foolish preference. + +GRACIOSA +But come! There is a path--(_They are gathering up the pack and its +contents, as GUIDO pauses by the DUKE._) Is he--? + +GUIDO +He will not enter Hell to-day. (_The DUKE stirs._) Already he revives, you +see. So let us begone before his attendants come. + +_GUIDO lifts her to the top of the wall. He lifts up the pack._ + +GRACIOSA +My lute! + +GUIDO +(_Giving it to her._) So we may pass for minstrels on the road to Venice. + +GRACIOSA +Yes, singing the Duke's songs to pay our way. (_GUIDO climbs over the +wall, and stands on the far side, examining the landscape beneath._) +Horsemen! + +GUIDO +The Duke's attendants fetching him new women--two more of those numerous +damsels that his song demands. They will revive this ruinous songmaker to +rule over Tuscany more foolishly than Eglamore governed when Eglamore was +a great lord. (_He speaks pensively, still looking down._) It is a very +rich and lovely country, this kingdom which a half-hour since lay in the +hollow of my hand. Now I am empty-handed. + +GRACIOSA +(_With mocking reproach._) Empty-handed! + +_She extends to him both her hands. GUIDO takes them, and laughs joyously, +saying,_ "Come!" _as he lifts her down._ + +_There is a moment's silence, then is heard the song and lute-playing with +which the play began, growing ever more distant:..._ + + "Knights as my serfs be given; + And as I will, let music go and come." + +_... The DUKE moves. The DUKE half raises himself at the foot of the +crucifix._ + +THE DUKE +Eglamore! I am hurt. Help me, Eglamore! + + +(THE CURTAIN FALLS) + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Jewel Merchants, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL MERCHANTS *** + +This file should be named 8jmch10.txt or 8jmch10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8jmch11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8jmch10a.txt + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Clare Boothby and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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