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Updated: June 17, 2025
He had nothing to do all day, and the prospect of returning home was most depressing. "You are not answerable for being born a fool!" was the rejoinder. "I grant that. Who told Malatesta?" asked the cavaliere, turning sharply toward Baldassare. "He said he had heard it in many quarters. He insisted on having heard it from one who had seen them together."
"Oh! dancing, of course," returned Orsetti. "Don't you see him twirling round like a teetotum, with Marchesa Amici 'of the swan-neck?" And he pointed to a pair who were waltzing with such precision that they never by a single step broke the circle Baldassare gallantly receiving the charge of any free lancers who flung themselves in their path.
And there was yet another, young Baldassare Castiglione, that courtly and handsome boy who had been sent to Milan a few years before to finish his education, and had now followed his master, the Marquis of Mantua, to wait upon the French king.
"When Vanna's a nun you would bid for that, eh, Baldassare?" "I will bid for whatever she will sell me," says he, with a blink. Whereupon the matchmaker made no more music. The scent was too hot for that. Yet for all his adventuring he got little reward; she turned him no more than the round of her cheek.
"How much money did you leave in them, count?" asked the marchesa, with a sneer. "Great is the mercy of God!" ejaculated the count, earnestly, not heeding her. "Sinner as I am, the touch of those hands that blessing purified me. I feel it." "Incredible! Well," cried Baldassare, "the price of that blessing will keep the good man in bread and meat for a year.
"Not at all, cavaliere," replied Baldassare, with assumed indifference; "only I must say that I believe you are the only person in Lucca who has not heard it." "Heard what?" demanded Trenta, angrily. Baldassare knew the cavaliere's weak point; he delighted to tease him.
A young woman of her sort carried her dowry on her back, in her two hands, in her mouth ah! and in what she could put into yours, by our Lord. Rather, it should be the other way. What, now, was Ser Baldassare prepared to lay out upon such a piece of goods? Baldassare shivered, grinned fearfully, and shook his head many times.
"But the marchesa must never hear this scandal about Nobili," added Trenta, suddenly relapsing into gravity. "She hates him so much, it might give her a fit. Have a care, Baldassare have a care, or you may yet incur my severest displeasure."
It is five o'clock in the afternoon of a splendid day early in October the next day, in fact, after the contract was signed at Corellia. The hour for the drive upon the ramparts at Lucca is not till six. This, therefore, is the favorite moment for a lounge at the club. The portico is dotted with black coats and hats. Baldassare lay asleep between two chairs.
"Do you see the count? He is fairly off. Marescotti is too poetical for this world. Unpractical, poor fellow very unpractical. The fit is on him now. Look at him, Baldassare; see how he stares about, and clinches his fist. I hope he will not leap over the parapet in his ecstasy."
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