United States or British Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"In the woods at Acquasparta, where the river Metauro is no better than a brook. Some two leagues this side of Sant' Angelo." "Sant' Angelo!" echoed Gian Maria, starting at the very mention of the place where the late conspiracy against him had been hatched. "And when was this?" "On the Wednesday before Easter, as Monna Valentina was journeying from Santa Sofia to Urbino."

Then the memory of Francesco set a wrinkle 'twixt his brows, and he bethought him how taken Valentina had been with the fellow when first she had beheld him at Acquasparta, and of how, as she rode that day, she had seen naught but the dark eyes of this Knight Francesco. "Knight Francesco of what or where?" he muttered to himself. "Bah!

"Yes, Madonna of you and our first meeting in the woods at Acquasparta. Do you recall it?" "I do, I do," she murmured fondly. "And do you recall how I then swore myself your knight and ever your champion? Little did we dream how the honour that I sighed for was to be mine." She made him no answer, her mind harking back to that first meeting on which so often and so fondly she had pondered.

A frown settled on Gian Maria's brow. Was the fool about to intimidate him with talk of supernatural vengeance? "Thus," Peppe continued, "you will perhaps be merciful when I confess my position. I made most solemn oath to the man I met at Acquasparta on that luckless day, that I would never reveal his identity. What am I to do? If I keep my oath, you will torture me to death perhaps.

Nay, I am in no pain, Madonna, but in a joy more sweet than I have ever known." "Gesu! What a nimble tongue!" gibed the fool from the background. "Are you there, too, Master Buffoon?" quoth Francesco. "And Fanfulla? Is he not here? Why, now I bethink me; he went to Acquasparta with the friar." He thrust his elbow under him for more support.

"It is with Monna Valentina," answered him Francesco, raising head and voice, so that Gonzaga recognised him for the wounded knight of Acquasparta, remembered and scowled. "I am Monna Valentina's captain here," he announced, with arrogance. "And you may deliver to me such messages as you bear."

To this Fra Domenico replied that he had neither unguents nor linen, but Fanfulla suggested that he might get these things from the convent of Acquasparta, hard by, and proffered to accompany him thither. This being determined, they departed, leaving the Count in the company of the jester.

"Such motives as must ever impel a knight to serve a lady in distress," said he, "and perhaps, too, the memory of the charity with which you tended my wounds that day at Acquasparta." For a second their glances met, quivered in the meeting, and fell apart again, an odd confusion in the breast of each, all of which Gonzaga, sunk in moody rumination, observed not.

He had told him that this man whose name he sought, had so feared that his presence that day at Acquasparta should become known, that he had bound the fool by oath not to divulge the secret of it. Of what he had before suspected he was now assured. The man in question was one of the conspirators; probably the very chief of them.

"You choicely-spoken villain! You would learn why you have been taken? Tell me, sir, what did you at Acquasparta on the morning of the Wednesday before Easter?" The Count's impassive face remained inscrutable, a mask of patient wonder. By the sudden clenching of his hands alone did he betray how that thrust had smitten him, and his hands none there remarked.