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Updated: May 28, 2025
"Come, Marcone," said Michele, rising; "we will leave them to think out their scheme. I have to go across to Fognano this afternoon, and I want you to come with me. Vincenzo hasn't sent those cartridges, and they ought to have been here yesterday." When the two men had gone, Martini went up to Gemma and silently held out his hand. She let her fingers lie in his for a moment.
"I have not asked her; she has not spoken since I brought her the news. We had best not disturb her just yet." She did not appear to be conscious of their presence, but they both spoke with lowered voices, as though they were looking at a corpse. After a dreary little pause, Marcone rose and put away his pipe. "I will come back this evening," he said; but Martini stopped him with a gesture.
At the age of fifteen so great was his desire to learn the arts of design that his father placed him under the care of the goldsmith Marcone. At the same time he tells us in his memoirs: "I continued to play sometimes through complaisance to my father either upon the flute or the horn; and I constantly drew tears and deep sighs from him every time he heard me."
"Look at her!" There was no need for further explanations; in saying that he had said all. Marcone turned and looked across the room. She had not moved since their conversation began. There was no doubt, no fear, even no grief in her face; there was nothing in it but the shadow of death. The smuggler's eyes filled with tears as he looked at her.
They sauntered through the market-place together, Michele whistling between his teeth, and the Gadfly trudging along with a bundle over his shoulder, shuffling his feet on the ground to render his lameness less observable. They were waiting for an emissary, to whom important directions had to be given. "There's Marcone, on horseback, at that corner," Michele whispered suddenly.
Marcone added. "We shan't do any good by meddling. God knows, it's hard enough on all of us; but it's worse for her, poor soul!" FOR a week the Gadfly lay in a fearful state.
They had spoken in so quiet an undertone that even the nearest bystanders had not supposed their conversation to refer to anything more dangerous than grass-cutting. Marcone, leading his own mare by the bridle, walked towards the tethered horses, the Gadfly slouching along beside him, and the beggar following them with an outstretched hand and a persistent whine.
As the smuggler came in at the garden gate Martini opened the glass door and stepped out on to the verandah to meet him. "Any news, Marcone? Ah!" The smuggler had pushed back his broad-brimmed straw hat. They sat down together on the verandah. Not a word was spoken on either side. From the instant when Martini had caught sight of the face under the hat-brim he had understood.
"I tell you," Martini answered, "the only thing I can think of is that one of these attacks must have come on, and that he must have struggled against it as long as his strength lasted and have fainted from sheer exhaustion when he got down into the courtyard." Marcone knocked the ashes savagely from his pipe. "Well, anyhow, that's the end of it; we can't do anything for him now, poor fellow."
Having formed a friendship with Piero di Marcone, a Florentine goldsmith, and having become his gossip, Francesco made to Piero's wife, who was also his gossip, after her delivery, a present of a very beautiful design, which was to be painted on one of those round baskets in which food is brought to a newly-delivered woman.
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