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The Castle of Manzecca reluctantly unveiled itself, bleak, towering, impressive in its decay a ruin that was still a fortress, and that time had not injured so much as had its mortal besiegers; the last of whom had died centuries ago. A gate swung open. Our horses clattered into a courtyard which abruptly blazed with torches. In that dazzle all the omens of our journey were fulfilled.
"The Castle of Manzecca," I ventured, merely to break the silence, "is quite ruined, I suppose?" "No, the best part of it still stands. I have had some rooms restored." "You own it?" "I bought it back a year ago. It is there that I " He buried his face in his hands. "Antonio," I said, "you are in some great trouble." "It is not trouble," he answered, in smothered tones.
"At midnight my plan was complete." As he paused, and the conclusion became clear to me, I was taken with a kind of stupor. "A few days later," he said, "as she stood gazing down through the twilight, a man emerged from the forest, in face and dress the image of that other Antonio di Manzecca.
"No," said he, giving me another of his strange looks, "it is my ancestor, Antonio di Manzecca, who died in the year fifteen hundred." I remembered that somewhere in the hills north of the city there was a dilapidated stronghold called the Castle of Manzecca. Behind those walls, in the confusion of the Middle Ages, Antonio's family had developed into a nest of rural tyrants.
"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.
Again whole, he had returned to avenge himself on his brother, whom he had killed. Meanwhile her father had died. Therefore she had been brought from the Castle of Foscone to the Castle of Manzecca to enjoy the protection of her Antonio, whom she was now free to marry. "All this was what she wanted to believe, so she believed it." But Antonio's face was filled with a new distress.
I remembered our entrance into this castle, my first glimpse of the woman awaiting us in the middle of the hall, and the glow of light around her that appeared to be a radiance expanding from her person. But my friend continued: "Between the two castles there was friendly intercourse. It was presumed that the Lord of Foscone would presently give his daughter in marriage to the Lord of Manzecca.
"I regained Florence with but one thought: how could she be restored to sanity, yet be maintained in that beauty which had triumphed over centuries? As I entered my apartment I saw before me the portrait of that other Antonio di Manzecca, whom I so closely resembled, whom she had loved, whose return she still awaited. I stood there blinded by a flash of inspiration.
The silence, and the tension of all forms, continued even when we left the city behind us and found ourselves speeding northward along a country road. "Northward. To the Castle of Manzecca, then?" I asked myself. The rays from our lamps revealed the trees all bending toward the south.
In the end, as I recalled the matter, Florence had chastened the Manzecca, together with all the other lordlings of that region. The survivors had come to live in the city, where, through these hundreds of years, many changes of fortune had befallen them. My friend Antonio was their last descendant.
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