They were going
to send her away--she was to go into a cloister; he was locked up in the
castle. But the old custodian, who adored the boy, let him escape by the
underground passage. He came out in the church. She had gone there to
pray, knowing nothing of the underground way--it was kept a profound
secret in those days. As the girl knelt, Giovanni appeared suddenly
beside the altar. Her duenna thought him an apparition, and the two fled
up to the monastery--that one you see from here."
"And then----?" said Nina breathlessly.
"The Father Abbot relented and married them."
Nina tried to discern the path to the monastery; in her imagination she
saw them hurrying along on the night of their escape.
"And then? In the end what became of them?"
"She bore him fifteen children; thirteen of them were girls."
Giovanni's manner was so casual as he said this that Nina laughed long
and deliciously. He swung himself lightly over the balustrade and
gathered her a long-stemmed rose from the bush whose early branches were
supposed to have known the touch of Beatrice. Perhaps the legend was
untrue, but his action, like the afternoon, held much that was alluring.
Something of this allure lay in Giovanni's having the same name as the
people he told about. Something, too, in the carelessness, and yet the
pride, of his telling, made his tales enchanting, and seemed in some way
to include his own personality in the chain of romance as its final
link.
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