The Gadfly, with a cigar in his mouth and a hot-house flower in his buttonhole, was holding out to him a slender, carefully-gloved hand.
With the sunlight reflected in his immaculate boots and glancing back from the water on to his smiling face, he looked to Martini less lame and more conceited than usual.
They were shaking hands, affably on the one side and rather sulkily on the other, when Riccardo hastily exclaimed:
"I am afraid Signora Bolla is not well!"
She was so pale that her face looked almost livid under the shadow of her bonnet, and the ribbon at her throat fluttered perceptibly from the violent beating of the heart.
"I will go home," she said faintly.
A cab was called and Martini got in with her to see her safely home.
As the Gadfly bent down to arrange her cloak, which was hanging over the wheel, he raised his eyes suddenly to her face, and Martini saw that she shrank away with a look of something like terror.
"Gemma, what is the matter with you?" he asked, in English, when they had started. "What did that scoundrel say to you?"
"Nothing, Cesare; it was no fault of his.
I-- I--had a fright----"
"A fright?"
"Yes; I fancied----" She put one hand over her eyes, and he waited silently till she should recover her self-command.
Her face was already regaining its natural colour.
"You are quite right," she said at last, turning to him and speaking in her usual voice; "it is worse than useless to look back at a horrible past.
It plays tricks with one's nerves and makes one imagine all sorts of impossible things.
We will NEVER talk about that subject again, Cesare, or I shall see fantastic likenesses to Arthur in every face I meet.
It is a kind of hallucination, like a nightmare in broad daylight.
Just now, when that odious little fop came up, I fancied it was Arthur."
CHAPTER V.
THE Gadfly certainly knew how to make personal enemies.
He had arrived in Florence in August, and by the end of October three-fourths of the committee which had invited him shared Martini's opinion.
His savage attacks upon Montanelli had annoyed even his admirers; and Galli himself, who at first had been inclined to uphold everything the witty satirist said or did, began to acknowledge with an aggrieved air that Montanelli had better have been left in peace.
"Decent cardinals are none so plenty. One might treat them politely when they do turn up."
The only person who, apparently, remained quite indifferent to the storm of caricatures and pasquinades was Montanelli himself.
It seemed, as Martini said, hardly worth while to expend one's energy in ridiculing a man who took it so good-humouredly.
It was said in the town that Montanelli, one day when the Archbishop of Florence was dining with him, had found in the room one of the Gadfly's bitter personal lampoons against himself, had read it through and handed the paper to the Archbishop, remarking:
"That is rather cleverly put, is it not?"
One day there appeared in the town a leaflet, headed:
"The Mystery of the Annunciation."
Even had the author omitted his now familiar signature, a sketch of a gadfly with spread wings, the bitter, trenchant style would have left in the minds of most readers no doubt as to his identity.
The skit was in the form of a dialogue between Tuscany as the Virgin Mary, and Montanelli as the angel who, bearing the lilies of purity and crowned with the olive branch of peace, was announcing the advent of the Jesuits.
The whole thing was full of offensive personal allusions and hints of the most risky nature, and all Florence felt the satire to be both ungenerous and unfair.
And yet all Florence laughed.
There was something so irresistible in the Gadfly's grave absurdities that those who most disapproved of and disliked him laughed as immoderately at all his squibs as did his warmest partisans.
Repulsive in tone as the leaflet was, it left its trace upon the popular feeling of the town.
Montanelli's personal reputation stood too high for any lampoon, however witty, seriously to injure it, but for a moment the tide almost turned against him.
The Gadfly had known where to sting; and, though eager crowds still collected before the Cardinal's house to see him enter or leave his carriage, ominous cries of
"Jesuit!" and
"Sanfedist spy!" often mingled with the cheers and benedictions.
But Montanelli had no lack of supporters.
Two days after the publication of the skit, the Churchman, a leading clerical paper, brought out a brilliant article, called:
"An Answer to 'The Mystery of the Annunciation,'" and signed: "A Son of the Church."
It was an impassioned defence of Montanelli against the Gadfly's slanderous imputations.
The anonymous writer, after expounding, with great eloquence and fervour, the doctrine of peace on earth and good will towards men, of which the new Pontiff was the evangelist, concluded by challenging the Gadfly to prove a single one of his assertions, and solemnly appealing to the public not to believe a contemptible slanderer.
Both the cogency of the article as a bit of special pleading and its merit as a literary composition were sufficiently far above the average to attract much attention in the town, especially as not even the editor of the newspaper could guess the author's identity.
The article was soon reprinted separately in pamphlet form; and the "anonymous defender" was discussed in every coffee-shop in Florence.
The Gadfly responded with a violent attack on the new Pontificate and all its supporters, especially on Montanelli, who, he cautiously hinted, had probably consented to the panegyric on himself.
To this the anonymous defender again replied in the Churchman with an indignant denial.
During the rest of Montanelli's stay the controversy raging between the two writers occupied more of the public attention than did even the famous preacher himself.