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Updated: July 26, 2025
Gonzaga bowed, and with a vicious glance at the strangers and an angry "Follow me!" to Beltrame and the others, he departed with the men-at-arms at his heels. Valentina remained with Fanfulla and Peppe, whilst Fra Domenico dressed Francesco's wound, and, presently, when the task was accomplished, they departed, leaving Fanfulla amid the Count alone.
This man had robbed him at once of the love of his people and of Valentina, and thereby had set in his heart the burning desire to outdo him and to prove wrong in their preference both his people and Valentina. He was like a gamer who risks all on a single throw, and his stake was to be the dowry of his bride, the game a tilt with the forces of the Borgia.
He was happy to think that she understood him, and began following the conversation again. Valentina Mihailovna supported her husband, and was, if anything, even more radical in her expressions than he. She could not understand, "simply could not un-der-stand, how an educated young man could hold such antiquated views."
Francesco, ever generous, took his passionate utterances in excellent part. "Messer Gonzaga, I understand your scruples. You do me wrong to think that I should fail in that." He checked the suggestion he was on the point of renewing that, nevertheless, Gonzaga would have been better advised to have laid that letter at once before Monna Valentina.
Then he started to follow her; but as he reached the window the little crook-backed figure of Ser Peppe stood suddenly before him with a tinkle of bells, and a mocking grin illumining his face. "Out of the way, fool," growled the angry Duke. But the odd figure in its motley of red and black continued where it stood. "If it is Madonna Valentina you seek," said he, "behold her yonder."
"Answer me!" she stormed, her small clenched hands beating the table in harsh impatience. And Lanciotto, seeing no help for it, answered: "Messer Francesco del Falco, Count of Aquila." Something that began in a sob and ended in a laugh burst from the lips of Valentina.
Konopatin brought the news." Valentina Mihailovna glanced at Paklin; the latter bowed dejectedly. "And you want to go to town at this hour?" "I think the governor will still be up." "I always said it would end like this," Kollomietzev put in. "It couldn't have been otherwise! But what dears our peasants are really! Pardon, madame, c'est votre frere! Mais la verite avant tout!"
But if they succeeded, and if by love or by force he could bring Valentina to wed him, he was tolerably confident that Guidobaldo, seeing matters had gone too far since Gian Maria would certainly refuse to wed Gonzaga's widow would let them be. To this end no plan could be more propitious than that into which he had lured her.
As he crossed the second courtyard he beheld Valentina's ladies grouped upon the chapel-steps in excited discussion of this happening with Fra Domenico, who, in full canonicals, was waiting to say the morning's Mass. He gave them a courteous "Good morrow," and passed on to the banqueting-hall, leaving Lanciotto without. Here he found Valentina in conference with Fortemani.
Louis needed, first, his temporal aid in an expedition against the duchy of Milan, on which, as we explained before, he had inherited claims from Valentina Visconti, his grandmother; and, secondly, his spiritual aid to dissolve his marriage with Jeanne, the daughter of Louis XI; a childless and hideously deformed woman, whom he had only married by reason of the great fear he entertained far her father.
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