I was abashed; I was humiliated; I was nigh to tears. I choked it all down, and I strode on beside her, my rage smouldering within me. But it was flaring up again by the time we reached the house with no more words spoken between us. She went to her room without another glance at me, and I repaired straight in quest of Fifanti.
I found him in the library. He had locked himself in, as was his frequent habit when at his studies, but he opened to my knock. I stalked in, unbuckled my sword, and set it in a corner. Then I turned to him.
“You are doing your wife a shameful wrong, sir doctor,” said I, with all the directness of youth and indiscretion.
He stared at me as if I had struck him--as he might have stared, rather, at a child who had struck him, undecided whether to strike back for the child's good, or to be amused and smile.
“Ah!” he said at last. “She has been talking to you?” And he clasped his hands behind him and stood before me, his head thrust forward, his legs wide apart, his long gown, which was open, clinging to his ankles.
“In that case nothing will surprise me,” he said in his sour, contemptuous manner. “And so you have concluded...?”
“That you are harbouring an infamous suspicion.”
“Your assurance that it is infamous would offend me did it not comfort me,” he sneered. “And what, pray, is this suspicion?
“You suspect that... that--O God! I can't utter the thing.”
“Take courage,” he mocked me. And he thrust his head farther forward. He looked singularly like a vulture in that moment.
“You suspect that Messer Gambara... that Messer Gambara and Madonna... that...” I clenched my hands together, and looked into his leering face. “You understand me well enough,” I cried, almost angrily.
He looked at me seriously now, a cold glitter in his small eyes.
“I wonder do you understand yourself?” he asked. “I think not. I think not. Since God has made you a fool, it but remains for man to make you a priest, and thus complete God's work.”
“You cannot move me by your taunts,” I said. “You have a foul mind, Messer Fifanti.”
He approached me slowly, his untidily shod feet slip-slopping on the wooden floor.
“Because,” said he, “I suspect that Messer Gambara... that Messer Gambara and Madonna... that... You understand me,” he mocked me, with a mimicry of my own confusion. “And what affair may it be of yours whom I suspect or of what I suspect them where my own are concerned?”