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Updated: April 30, 2025
Then Arcolano mounted too, puffing over the effort, for he was a corpulent, rubicund man with the fattest hands I have ever seen. I touched my mule with the whip, and the beast began to move. Arcolano ambled beside me; and behind us, abreast, came the men-at-arms. Thus we rode down towards the gateway, and as we went the servants murmured their valedictory words. "A safe journey, Madonnino!"
Indeed, he was almost borne to the ground by it, for his old legs were stiff now from riding. And then how he stared! What oaths he swore! "Madonnino!" he babbled. "Madonnino!" And he shook himself free of my embrace, and stood back that he might view me. "Body of Satan! But you are finely grown, and how like to what your father was when he was no older than are you!
"She broke up my snares," he answered sullenly, "and let the birds go free." "What snares? What birds?" quoth I. "He is a cruel beast," she shrilled. "And he will lie to you, Madonnino." "If he does I'll break the bones of his body," I promised in a tone entirely new to me. And then to him "The truth now, poltroon!" I admonished him.
She suffered it very stonily, like a poor fascinated thing that is robbed by fear of its power to resist the evil that it feels enfolding it. "O Madonnino!" she whispered fearfully, and sighed. "Nay, you must not. It... it is not good."
For never yet had I been so addressed in my lordship of Mondolfo. To all there I was just the Madonnino. But to Falcone, in that supreme hour of his need, I was become his lord. "My lord," he said, then. "Is it your wish that I should go?" I drew back, still wrought upon by my surprise; and then my mother's voice came cold and acid. "The Madonnino's wish is not concerned in this, Mester Falcone.
We went up the steps and into the cool of the great hall. There the soldier, whose every feeling had been outraged no doubt by Rinolfo's attitude towards his lord, ventured to express his sympathy and indignation. "Rinolfo is a black beast, Madonnino," he muttered.
She looked at me again with those timid eyes of hers. "You should be at your studies," said she. "I am," said I, and smiled. "I am studying a new subject." "Madonnino, it is not a subject whose study makes good priests," she announced, and puzzled me again by the foolish inconsequence of her words. Already, indeed, she began to disappoint me.
"God reward you your sweet thought for me. I shall pray for you, Madonnino." "Do, Luisina," said I. "I begin to think I need it." "Indeed, indeed!" said my mother very sombrely. And as she spoke, Luisina, as if her fears were reawakened, turned suddenly and went quickly along the terrace, past Rinolfo, who in that moment smiled viciously, and round the angle of the wall.
Two moist dark eyes looked up appealingly into mine out of a frightened but very winsome, sun-tinted face. "O Madonnino!" she panted. "Protect me! Save me!" Below us, checked midway in his furious ascent, halted Rinolfo, his big face red with anger, scowling up at me in sudden doubt and resentment. The situation was not only extraordinary in itself, but singularly disturbing to me.
And thus I left my home and the gloomy, sorrowful influence of my most dolorous mother. In themselves they contained laughable matter enough, but in the mere relation they may seem dull. Down the borgo, ahead of us, ran the rumour that here was the Madonnino of Mondolfo, and the excitement that the announcement caused was something at which I did not know whether to be flattered or offended.
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