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The marquis introduced me to his wife, whom I knew as the intimate friend of my dear Lucrezia. There was something saint-like in her expression, and to see her surrounded by her little children was like looking at a picture of the Holy Family.
'What can you expect from a man who to- day is enthusiastic about Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris, and to- morrow mad about Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia? he said. Tieck's conversation about these and similar topics was much too entertaining and charming for me to give any serious weight to the bitterness of his views.
This unlooked for accident, taken as a miracle by the people, robbed Lucrezia of the most exciting part of the execution; but her father was holding in reserve another kind of spectacle to console her with later.
As everybody objected to sleep alone, Lucrezia said that she would sleep with Angelique in one of the rooms leading to the orange-house, and proposed that her husband should share a room with the young abbe, his brother-in-law, and that Donna Cecilia should take her youngest daughter with her.
"I promise you," said Lucrezia, "to do my best to ensure your meeting your obligations." Donna Lucrezia took me to my room, where she handed me over to the charge of an imposing-looking servant, and wished me a good night. I slept for eight hours in a most comfortable bed, and when I was dressed Lucrezia took me to breakfast with the marchioness, who was at her toilette.
And then, in a flash, it occurred to me that here lay the means, ready to my hand, by avail of which I might boldly re-enter Pesaro despite my banishment, and discharge my errand to Lucrezia Borgia. For, surely, considering the mission on which ostensibly I should be returning as the saviour and protector of his kinswoman Giovanni Sforza could not enforce that ban against me.
It was thought of no use to consult Lucrezia in this affair, for she had two or three times displayed an absurd attachment for her husband, and they left her undisturbed in her government of Spoleto.
But, to my mind, the most fascinating chapter in this part of her history is the Chopin chapter, covering the next decade, or, roughly speaking, the 'forties. She has revealed something of this time naturally from her own point of view in "Lucrezia Floriana" . For it is, of course, one of the most notorious characteristics of George Sand that she invariably turned her loves into "copy."
So back to the Vatican went the Neapolitan envoys with definite proposals of an alliance to be cemented by a marriage between Giuffredo Borgia aged twelve and Ferrante's granddaughter Lucrezia of Aragon. The Pope, with his plans but half-matured as yet, temporized, was evasive, and continued to arm and to recruit.
"And then, signora, I said to Lucrezia, 'the padrona loves Zampaglione, and you must be sure to " "Wait, Gaspare! I thought I heard Yes, it is, it is! Hush! Maurice listen!"
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