It was poor stuff, and a poor living they made at it. The wealthy grew their own fruit and vegetables, the poorer could not afford to buy. Crushed by hopeless oppression into a perpetual dull acceptance, the crowd trudged along, with shuffling feet and bent heads, unheeding the beauty and the sunshine, unnoticing the glory of the spring, with dull faces from which all the soul had been stamped out, and "fear" writ large across the blank. Every movement showed them slaves, every line in their bent figures told they lived under a rule of terror, too potent for them to dare even to raise their eyes to question. A stream of gray and brown monotony along the glorious road, decked with the fairest beauty of fair Italy, these miserable peasants were strangely out of keeping, both with the radiant blossoming country and the magnificent city they drew near.
Keeping close behind them walked a young man and a boy, better attired than the others, yet travel-worn and weary-looking. The delicate cast of their features bespoke them of another part of Italy, as did the soft Latin tongue in which they held their whispering, excited conversation. The elder, whom his companion called Tomaso, was a fair-haired youth of about nineteen; the other, like enough to be a relative, a mere child of ten or twelve. The sun was growing hot, and their stout cloaks of dull red serge were flung back, showing their leathern doublets, to which the elder boy wore attached a great pouch of undressed skin, which evidently bore their day's provisions.
Suddenly, when Milan, clear and gray, was distant barely half a mile, the group of wretched figures was roused from its shuffling apathy: and the terror latent in their aspect leaped into life and motion.
Swept back by the others, the two Florentines gazed in amazement to learn the cause of this panic. In the distance, brilliant between the dark stone of the gateway of the city, fluttered a banner, blazoned with the same device as those that blew above the walls. The peasants' eyes, sharpened by fear, were quicker than Tomaso's: it was some seconds before he could discern that the banner fluttered from the canopy of a splendid coach, magnificent in gold and scarlet, issuing from the somber shadow into the sunshine of the road; and as it drew nearer, he looked with pleasure not unmixed with wonder at the rich gildings, fine silk, the beauty of the four black horses, the size and magnificent liveries of the huge negroes who walked at their heads. To him it was an interesting sight, an incident of his travels. But to the Milanese peasants it was the symbol of the dread power that ruled Lombardy with a grip of blood, the device that kept Milan, the wealthiest, proudest city in the north, cringing in silent slavery; the banner that had waved from city after city, added by force or treachery to the dominions of Milan; the banner of Gian Galeazzo Maria Visconti, Duke.
With trembling hands and muttered threats to their slow beasts, the hinds dragged their burdens to the roadside, forcing the children back into the hedges; leaving clear the ways. Cowering and awestruck, in fascinated expectation, they stared, toward that oncoming banner, and at the horseman who rode behind.
Still at the same measured pace the coach advanced; a cumbrous structure, swung high on massive gilded wheels, and open under an embroidered canopy of scarlet silk. At the head of each black horse walked a negro, richly dressed in scarlet and gold. The trappings of the steeds were dazzling, in stamped leather and metal.
But this splendor of array the peasant folk of Lombardy were used to; it was not that that made them crouch as if they would ask the earth to hide them, shiver and shudder yet farther back as if the soft green bank could save them.
In the coach sat two, a man and a woman, but both so old and shrivelled that the distinguishing characteristics of their sex were well-nigh lost. Both were richly clad in furs, and half-hidden in satin cushions, nothing of the old man visible but his wrinkled face, gray beard, and, loaded with rings, thin yellow hands, the fingers of which were clutching nervously at his heavy silken robe. The woman, painted and bedizened under a large red wig, weighed down by a gown of cloth of gold, and with pearls around her neck, wrung her hands together, and whispered incoherently below her breath. Both had sunk together among the cushions in an attitude of despair, the man looking steadily in front of him with white face, the woman casting terror-stricken eyes over the wretched spectators in a mute appeal for help, if even from them.
Behind them rode the single horseman who had struck the terror. His pace was leisurely, his horse's bridle held by a pale-faced man with long red hair, of a stealthy bearing, crushed and mean-looking, but resplendent in a jeweled dress. The rider himself, slight and handsome, about thirty, plainly attired in green, gave, at a first glance, small token of the spell he exercised. He rode with ease and surety: in one hand a half-rolled parchment from which he read aloud in a soft voice, in the other a long whip with which he flicked and teased the occupants of the carriage.
The coach and its occupants, the solitary rider, and the red-haired man, were the whole of the procession.
At the rider's side hung a single dagger, the others were unarmed, yet the crowd trembled under a spell of fear as if half Italy had backed that man. No one gave sign of feeling, no one moved, though the wretched couple looked around keenly and eagerly, with the helpless misery of those who have fallen below everything save fear, and will stoop to ask help of the lowest. And the Visconti banner floated out dreamily upon the light spring breeze, and the rider rode at ease and read from the parchment with a smiling face.
Suddenly the old man rose, and threw out his hands with a wild gesture toward the crouching peasants. His frantic cry was stifled on his lips, and a cut from the whip sent him back to his seat with a snarl of impotent fury. The woman sobbed aloud, but sat still, for the tease of the whip followed their slightest movements, though the horseman seemed to heed nothing but the parchment from which he read.
"Beautiful the Tuscan flowers grew
Around the Florentine——"
The soft lines died away on his smiling lips: he raised his eyes and looked straight at the old man, who, at the words, had turned in his seat and was gazing over his shoulder with an intensity of hate.
But on the pause there followed a cold laugh as the old man winced, faltered, and dropped his eyes from that charmed and steady gaze. Again the whip circled round them, and the calm voice continued:
"But straight and firm the poplars grew
The Lombard ranks between."
The woman gazed around the crowd, desperate in hopeless misery. Hopeless indeed. Not a finger was raised, not a word uttered, though, men alone, they numbered more than fifty.
"Perchance thou wouldst not dare to turn
And draw the veil from off that face,
Fearing what secrets thou might'st learn
Both for thine own and her disgrace,"
read the horseman, and the cavalcade passed on its heavy way, and the faint hope that had leaped to life within the wretched victims, at sight of human eyes upon them, died within them.
But on the outside of the crowd, Tomaso and Vittore, kneeling with the rest, as that banner drew near, now stirred uneasily, and, as the coach came abreast, the woman made a convulsive movement with her hands. The elder sprang to his feet and stepped forward impulsively. At sight of him in the roadway the horseman drew rein, and the terror-stricken crowd watched breathless, while the youth advanced boldly to his stirrup, hot words upon his lips, defiance in his eyes. The red-haired man at the bridle crouched, but before the lad could speak, the rider, leaning forward, struck him a blow full across the face.
There was no need for a second. With a scream of pain, Tomaso fell back, and then, as if noticing them for the first time, the horseman sent his glance on the crowd. No sound or movement: they cowered beneath his eyes in deprecating silence.
"Drive on," he said, and the dreary procession started again, winding through the sun and shadow toward Brescia.
So great was the spell upon the peasants, that though the wounded boy lay moaning in the road, not a man, scarce a child among them stirred from his place till the banner of the Viper was a silver speck in the distance.
Then with shaking hands the youth was dragged into the ditch amid a babble of blame and fear. Vittore, rising from his stricken comrade,