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Updated: May 14, 2025
For if any man in Mondolfo attempts to hasten your going, he shall reckon with me." I laid a hand for an instant in kindliness and friendliness upon her shoulder. "Poor little Luisina," said I, sighing. But she shrank and trembled under my touch. "Pity me a little, for they will not permit me any friends, and who is friendless is indeed pitiful."
And out she poured the story that Rinolfo and his father had run to tell her of how I had shown the fellow violence in the first instance because he had surprised me with Luisina in my arms. The friar's face grew dark and grave as he listened. But ere she had quite done, unable longer to contain myself, I interrupted. "In that he lied like the muckworm that he is," I exclaimed.
Now here in Luisina I had imagined at first that I had discovered a phase of womanhood unsuspected and exceptional. She was driving me to conclude, however, that I had been mistaken, and that here was just a pretty husk containing a very trivial spirit, whose companionship must prove a dull affair when custom should have staled the first impression of her fresh young beauty.
To leave Mondolfo to go out into that world of which I had read so much; to mingle with my fellow-man, with youths of my own age, perhaps with maidens like Luisina, to see cities and the ways of cities; here indeed was matter for excitement.
A score of times did it seem to me that one of these brown-legged, lithe, comely creatures was my little Luisina; and more than once I was on the point of addressing one or another, to discover my mistake and be admonished for my astounding frivolousness by Messer Arcolano.
"Nay," said I, and I looked at Luisina, who stood there so pale and tearful. "I think that for her own sake, poor maid, it were better that she went, since you desire it. But she shall not be whipped hence like a stray dog." "Come, child," I said to her, as gently as I could. "Go pack, and quit this home of misery. And be easy.
"I think that I am growing sane," said I very sadly. She flashed me one of her rare glances, and I saw her lips tighten. "We must talk," she said. "That girl..." And then she checked. "Come with me," she bade me. But in that moment I remembered something, and I turned aside to look for my friend Rinolfo. He was moving stealthily away, following the road Luisina had taken.
He went straight to his father, the seneschal, with a lying tale of my having threatened him with violence and forbidden him ever to enter the garden again because he had caught me there with Luisina as the child was called in my arms.
Swiftly she came down to us, seeming almost to glide over the ground. Not me she addressed, but poor Luisina; and her voice was hoarse with an awful anger. "Who are you, wench?" quoth she. "What make you here in Mondolfo?" Luisina had risen and stood swaying there, very white and with averted eyes, her hands clasping and unclasping. Her lips moved; but she was too terrified to answer.
It was then that I learnt that her name was Luisina, that she was the daughter of one of the women employed in the castle kitchen, who had brought her to help there a week ago from Borgo Taro, where she had been living with an aunt.
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