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Updated: May 12, 2025
Fate, however, determined that Fiammetta and Antonio di Manzecca, the younger brother, should fall in love with each other. "Need I describe to you the fervor of that passion in the Italian springtime, at a period of our history when all the emotions were terrific in their force? "At night, Antonio di Manzecca would slip away to the Castle of Foscone.
To what do you owe this triumph? To his solicitude for you, to his trust in you, which you have abused. Also, as I suspect, to his pity for Fiammetta di Foscone, which I have ill repaid. In fine, we owe the success of this trick to the misuse of fine emotions. That was not the custom of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio." And to me, "Will you forgive us?" All the others looked rather chop-fallen.
There were only two of them left, two brothers, the older bearing the title Lord of Manzecca. The younger brother was that Antonio di Manzecca whose portrait you saw on the wall of my apartment in the city. It is to him, as you observed, that I bear so close a resemblance. "In a hill-castle not far away lived another family, the Foscone.
"The Lord of Foscone, a widower, had only one child left, a daughter seventeen years old. Her name was Fiammetta. Even in Florence it was said that to the north, amid the wilderness of cypress-trees, there dwelt a maiden whose beauty surrounded her with golden rays like a nimbus."
Leonardo turned away. Again Antonio tried to speak. The terror that held us in its grip was communicated to Fiammetta di Foscone. Her countenance became bloodless. Her teeth chattered. She murmured: "What is happening to me? I am so cold!" She sank down, amid billows of violet-colored silk, between Antonio's arms, before the fireplace.
But in the chimney of the great, cold fireplace behind my back the wind still growled its threats; the voice of Nature still menaced these audacious mortals, who were celebrating the humiliation of her laws. Beyond the candle-light the beauty of Fiammetta di Foscone became blinding.
A quivering sigh of assent and relief went round the supper-table. But Fiammetta protested: "I should not care to forget the past. It contained too much happiness. The hours at twilight, when I waited on the platform of the Castle of Foscone, and you clambered up the wall, are not for oblivion!
He even reached forward to touch my knee, then sighed: "You will soon understand why I am sometimes possessed with the idea that I am dreaming." And he resumed his tale: "Antonio di Manzecca was buried. His elder brother found a wife elsewhere. The Lord of Foscone married again, and by that marriage had other children.
At that flicker her eyelids opened. She leaned forward. Under the brush-wood, already writhing in flames, was the fragment of a modern Italian newspaper. One plainly saw the title, part of a head-line, and the date. Fiammetta di Foscone read the date. As Antonio and I, between us, lifted her into a chair, she kept repeating to herself, in a soft, incredulous voice, the date.
"It is this great wind," muttered Leonardo, "that has brought us new air from afar." "Every place has its smell," was Leonello's contribution. "It is natural that the Castle of Manzecca should smell differently from the Castle of Foscone." Antonio thanked his friends with an eloquent look.
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