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Updated: June 28, 2025
On all sanctified days it was Monna Valentina's way to insist that the entire garrison, with the exception of one single sentinel and this only at Francesco's very earnest urging should attend the morning service. Like an inspiration it came to him that such a half-hour as that would be a most opportune season in which to throw open the gates of Roccaleone to the besiegers.
It was as unmeasured and contemptuous as Francesco's erst recriminations, and it terminated in a challenge to the Count to meet him on horse or foot, with sword or lance, and that as soon as might be. But Valentina intervened, and rebuked them both.
And then she bethought her of how Gonzaga had all day long been glued to her side, and she realised, too, that it was she had shunned Francesco's company, grown of a sudden strangely shy.
"I humbly conceive," said Ser Ceccone, "that Messer Francesco's poetic genius will outweigh " "Yes, yes, rub your hands! I hate that notary's trick of yours," interrupted Spini, whose patronage consisted largely in this sort of frankness. "But there comes Taddeo, or somebody: now's the time! What news, eh?" he went on, as two Compagnacci entered with heated looks. "Bad!" said one.
With the assurance that he would obey his wishes Peppe went his errand. A slight delay ensued, and then upon the battlements appeared Gonzaga, sleepy and contentious, attended by a couple of Fortemani's knaves, who came to ask the nature of Francesco's business.
She nodded without speaking, and Gonzaga opened the door, and called Fortemani. A voice answered him from the gloom of the banqueting-hall. "Bring Lanciotto here," he commanded. When Francesco's servant entered, a look of surprise on his face at these mysterious proceedings, it was Valentina who questioned him, and that in a voice as cold as though the issue concerned her no whit.
Francesco's boy, who is older and begins to know the world, sat with a semi-suppressed grin upon his face, as though the humour of the situation was not wholly hidden from him.
When Francesco's son and successor, Duke Galeazzo Maria, was murdered in 1476, his widow, Duchess Bona, had renewed the old alliance with Ferrara, and a marriage had been arranged between her infant daughter Anna Sforza and Duke Ercole's new-born son and heir Alfonso. In May, 1477, this betrothal was proclaimed in Milan, and a fortnight later the nuptial contract was signed at Ferrara.
He advanced towards Valentina, and sinking on one knee, he humbly kissed the hem of her gown. "Your clemency, Madonna, shall give you no regret. I will serve you to the death, lady, and you, lord." At the last words he raised his eyes to Francesco's calm face. Then, without so much as a glance at the disappointed Gonzaga, he rose, and bowing again a very courtier he withdrew.
Yet to Francesco her rebuke was courteous, and ended in a prayer that he should do the best with such resources as Roccaleone offered; to Gonzaga it was contemptuous in the last degree, for Francesco's question which Gonzaga had left unanswered coming at a moment when she was full of suspicions of Gonzaga, and the ends he had sought to serve in advising her upon a course which he had since shown himself so utterly unfitted to guide, had opened wide her eyes.
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