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Updated: May 1, 2025
The damp had patched the painting on the ceiling and disfigured the whitewashed walls, on which were hung a few pictures a lithograph of the Madonna di Custonaci, a cheap Crucifixion, a reproduction of the design for the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome, three shiny chromolithographs of English country scenes, representing the four seasons minus one, an absurd French engraving, Education Maternelle and S. Francesco da Paola, with a shell for holy water.
The square is bare and brown, baked by the hot summer suns; but a little further away in the rear, the clear and noisy waters of the Acqua Paola fall bubbling from the three basins of a monumental fountain amidst sempiternal freshness.
Train to Paola, and they would have to leave at 4 A. M. Miss Anthony was the guest of Rev. and Mrs. J. C. Beach. Next morning they started on time in a pouring rain, stopping at a little wayside inn for breakfast at six. The meeting was at eleven, in the Methodist church. After it was over the county superintendent of schools, Mr. Bannister, took them to Ottawa in a lumber wagon.
At the irony of it I could have laughed had any other been in question but Madonna Paola this tender White Flower of the Quince that was like to be rudely wilted by the ruthless hands of scheming men. That night I would have supped in my own quarters but that Filippo sent for me and bade me join him and swell the little court he kept.
But one there was who, though the very centre of all these merry doings, the very one in whose honour and for whose delectation they were set afoot, seemed listless and dispirited in that boisterous crowd. This was Madonna Paola, to whom, rumour had it, that her kinsman, the Lord Giovanni, was paying a most ardent suit.
I answered him that were the subject to my taste, I might succeed in throwing off some passable lines upon it. He pressed gold upon me, and bade me there and then set about fashioning an ode to Madonna Paola, and to forget, when they were done, under pain of a whipping to the bone, that I had written them. I obeyed him with a right good-will.
I bought it and packed it myself. I am waiting for it. You shall see. It bears a Christ on a cross, between the Virgin and Saint John, the date of 1400, and the arms of Malatesta Monsieur Dechartre, you are not listening enough. Listen to me attentively. In 1400 Lorenzo Ghiberti, fleeing from war and the plague, took refuge at Rimini, at Paola Malatesta's house.
Splendid as it is, something has been lost to us by restoration. Paola Uccello, the friend of Donatello and of Brunellesco, was all his life devoted to the study of perspective.
But it is purely adventitious, for noble though you may be, Madonna Paola, you are wedding one who seems no less noble at heart, whatever the parts he may have played in life." He smiled inscrutably, as he added: "I have in mind that you once sought service with me Messer Biancomonte, and if a martial life allures you still, I'll make you lord of something better far than Biancomonte."
I answered him nothing, but I bowed my head in token that I had heard and he signed to the men to proceed with me, whilst turning on his heel he stepped down the hall again to where Madonna Paola, overcome with weakness, had sunk upon a stool.
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