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Whereupon it was sent for; and one evening they were standing contemplating it in a good light, and admiring its masterly workmanship, when Signora Caterina, the wife of the Count, entered into the room where those noblemen were, together with one of her sons, who had on his wrist one of those green birds called in Verona "terrazzani," because they make their nests on the ground which learn to perch on the wrist, like hawks.
We are always doing each other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We don't see each other's whole nature. But God sees that you could not have committed that crime. Caterina shook her head slowly, and was silent.
A loving sensitive nature was too likely, under such nurture, to have its susceptibility heightened into unfitness for an encounter with any harder experience; all the more, because there were gleams of fierce resistance to any discipline that had a harsh or unloving aspect. For the only thing in which Caterina showed any precocity was a certain ingenuity in vindictiveness.
In the evening there was a dinner-party, and after Caterina had sung a little, Lady Cheverel remembering that she was ailing, sent her to bed, where she soon sank into a deep sleep. Body and mind must renew their force to suffer as well as to enjoy.
Nor shall we make exception to that rule. My Lord of Aquila's head must pay the price of his temerity." "My son," cried Caterina, in a voice of horror. Gian Maria faced her in a passion, his countenance grown mottled. "I have said it," he growled. "I will not sleep until he dies." "Yet never may you wake again," she answered.
Then he looked, as if for help, to Alvari, to Santi, and lastly to Lodi, who had returned while Caterina was speaking. But no word said any of them, and grave were the eyes of all. "Poor-spirited are you all!" he sneered. Then his face grew dark and his tone concentrated. "Not so am I," he assured them, "if in the past I may have seemed it sometimes. I am aroused at length, sirs.
Gilfil's cares was to procure a harpsichord, and have it placed in the drawing-room, always open, in the hope that some day the spirit of music would be reawakened in Caterina, and she would be attracted towards the instrument. But the winter was almost gone by, and he had waited in vain.
Trust in me always, dearest Caterina, as whatever may come your faithful friend and brother, 'Maynard Gilfil. Caterina was at first too terribly stung by the words about Captain Wybrow to think of the difficulty which threatened her to think either of what Sir Christopher would say to her, or of what she could say in reply. Bitter sense of injury, fierce resentment, left no room for fear.
And when, in 1488, Lodovico's niece, Caterina Sforza, turned to him for help against the conspirators who had murdered her husband and seized the Rocca of Forli, a Milanese army under young Galeazzo di Sanseverino was promptly sent to her assistance. The citadel was besieged and captured, and the rights of Caterina and her son Ottaviano were triumphantly vindicated.
Sharp had to procure new clothes, to replace the linen cap, flowered frock, and leathern boots; and now, strange to say, little Caterina, who had suffered many unconscious evils in her existence of thirty moons, first began to know conscious troubles. 'Ignorance, says Ajax, 'is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.
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