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Updated: June 3, 2025
A good way off, at the head of his own table, sat Messer Folco, grave and gray and smiling, his one thought seeming to be that those that came under his roof should be happy in their own way, so long as that way accorded with the decorum expected of Florentine citizens.
"The young lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything I said this afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did the Contessa tell you why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?" "No. She merely said that there had been angry words and that you had asked him to leave the house. She herself was surprised, she said, and wondered what could have brought matters to a crisis at last."
It seems that when the morning came Madonna Beatrice showed herself unexpectedly and unfamiliarly opposed, not merely to her parent's wish, but to her parent's commands. Messer Folco, who had not seen his daughter since the previous night, when she fell swooning in the arms of Messer Tommaso Severo, at first could not believe in her opposition.
Then Folco went in and got a little glass bottle of tablets from his wife's travelling-bag and gave her one. She was subject to headaches and always had the medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better almost as soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave her. "Let me stay and read to you," he said.
Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the world and try to divert his thoughts.
A man gets tired of that in time. It was a great pity you left Paris just when I came, for there are many things we could have enjoyed together there." "I daresay," Marcello answered, not paying much attention to the other's words. "Take my advice, my dear boy," said Folco. "Come away with me for a few days.
"There she has lived ever since. But now Messer Folco, being reassured of her health, brings her to Florence, where her beauty will break hearts, I promise." I think he sighed a little, and I know that I laughed as I spoke. "Well, I that have broken my heart a hundred times will break it again for her, if she pleases." Messer Guido grinned at me a little maliciously.
It was to celebrate the laying of the foundation-stone of his hospital that Messer Folco gave the entertainment of which I have just spoken and whose eventful consequences I have yet to relate. It must, of course, be clearly understood that I was not, and, indeed, could not be, always a witness of the events recorded or a hearer of the words set down in my narrative.
"Aye, but who made it?" he questioned, sententiously, and looked as complacent as if he had said something really wise. Guido saluted him politely. "Ask some one wiser than I." As for me, I grinned to think that I was that some one wiser, and that Guido never suspected it. Messer Folco touched my dear friend lightly on the shoulder.
You can drop me at their hotel, and I shall find my way back alone." "Certainly." "Are you sure you don't mind?" Folco affected to speak anxiously. "Why should I?" "You see," Folco said, without heeding the question, "they let me know that they were there, and as we are such old friends it would be strange if I did not go to see them." "Of course it would," answered Marcello in an absent tone.
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