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Updated: June 9, 2025
Valentina's foot tapped the ground impatiently, and into her eyes there came a look of anger that heightened her likeness to her martial uncle. But Peppe it was who spoke. "For all that there seem to be fools enough, already, meddling in this business," he said, in tones of mock lament, "permit that I join their number, Ser Romeo, and listen to my counsel."
Throughout that day Gonzaga hardly stirred from Valentina's side. He talked with her in the morning at great length and upon subjects poetical or erudite, by which he meant to display his vast mental superiority over the swashbuckling Francesco.
A toss of her auburn head was Valentina's interpolation, but her uncle continued relentlessly in his cold, formal tones such tones as those in which he might have addressed an assembly of his captains: "In the present instance we are threatened Babbiano and Urbino by a common foe. And whilst divided, neither of us could withstand him, united, we shall combine to his overthrow.
That evening, after the day spent in Valentina's company and she so sweet and kind to him he began to take heart of grace once more, and his volatile mind whispered to his soul the hope that, after all, things might well be as he had first intended, if he but played his cards adroitly, and did not mar his chances by the precipitancy that had once gone near to losing him.
Thus closed an incident that had worn a mighty ugly look, and it served to open Valentina's eyes to the true quality of the men Gonzaga had hired her. Maybe that it opened his own for that amiable lute-thrummer was green of experience in these matters. She bade Gonzaga care for Francesco, and called one of the grinning pages from the gallery to be his esquire.
Then unfolding the letter, he read it, leaning against one of the merlons of the wall. "If you can devise a means to deliver Roccaleone at once into my hands you shall earn my gratitude, full pardon for your share in Monna Valentina's rebellion, and the sum of a thousand gold florins. As he read, a light of joy leapt to his eyes. Gian Maria's terms were very generous.
"Let me go, good Fra Domenico," the fool whispered, in a voice so earnest that the monk left his way clear. But Valentina's voice now bade him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost. He moved about the room a very dispirited, moody fool with no quip for anyone, for his thoughts were all on Gonzaga and the treason that he was sure he was hatching.
Valentina's eyes were mirthless now as she turned them upon that gleaming, martial figure standing so proudly at her side, and seeming so well-attuned to the proud defiance he hurled at the princely bully below. "Hush, sir!" she murmured. "Do not anger him further." "Aye," groaned Gonzaga, "in God's name say no more, or you'll undo us hopelessly."
"A cook, you? Pish! you tun of convent lard! Your ortolans were burnt, your trout swam in grease, your pasty " What the pasty may have been the company was not to learn, for Fra Domenico, crimson of face, had swooped down upon the fool, and would have caught him but that he dived under the table by Valentina's skirts, and craved her protection from this gross maniac that held himself a cook.
"Then make it an example of mercy," suggested Francesco sweetly. "Well, we shall see," was Valentina's answer. "I like your counsel, Messer Francesco, and yet I see a certain wisdom in Gonzaga's words. Though in such a case as this I would sooner consort with folly than have a man's death upon my conscience. But here he comes, and, at least, we'll give him trial. Maybe he is penitent by now."
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