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The athletic cherubs of the "Resurrection," breathing their whole strength into the trumpets that awake the dead; the mailed and winged warriors, keeping guard above the pit of "Hell," that none may break their prison-bars among the damned; the lute-players of "Paradise," with their almost feminine sobriety of movement; the flame-breathing seraphs of the day of doom; the "Gabriel" of Volterra, in whom strength is translated into swiftness: these are the heralds, sentinels, musicians, executioners, and messengers of the celestial court; and each class is distinguished by appropriate physical characteristics.
Meanwhile the affairs of the State were most flourishing. The strong-handed masters of the city not only held the Duke of Milan in check, and prevented him from turning Italy into a kingdom; they furthermore acquired the cities of Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo, Montepulciano, and Cortona, for Florence, making her the mistress of all Tuscany, with the exception of Siena, Lucca, and Volterra.
I asked them my whereabouts and learned that I was four leagues from Volterra and seven from Pomarance. I was south of Volterra, south-west of Siena, but Pomarance was on my road to Arezzo. To Pomarance, therefore, so soon as we were clothed in the one indispensable garment of manhood, we determined to go.
Excavations at Volterra and elsewhere have revealed some thousands of inscriptions which have been in part deciphered; but nothing has thrown so much light on this accomplished people as their habit of providing the ashes of their dead with everything likely to be needed for the next world, whose requirements fortunately so exactly tallied with those of this that a complete system of domestic civilization can be deduced.
Lionardo Buonarroti showed at once a great anxiety to obtain his uncle's bust from Daniele da Volterra. Possibly he ordered it while resident in Rome, engaged in winding up Michelangelo's affairs.
No one quite remembered why the late King had made Volterra a baron, but he undoubtedly had done so, and no one disputed Volterra's right to use the title. Sabina read her letter aloud, and the Baroness listened attentively, with a grave expression. "Your dear mother " she began in a soothing tone. "She is not my 'dear mother' at all," said Sabina, interrupting her.
In the midst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there interspersed with fertile spots, rises the mountain on which Volterra is situated, where the inhabitants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere, almost perpetually cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies; while below, on the banks of the Cecina, which in full sight winds its way to the sea, they die of fevers.
When he reached Ostia, he was met by the cardinals of Sorrento and Volterra, who came in the name of Julius II to ask him to give up the very same citadels which he had refused three days before: the fact was that the pope had learned in the interim that the Venetians had made fresh aggressions, and recognised that the method proposed by Caesar was the only one that would check them.
You have such a clear way of putting things." Even then Malipieri smiled. "I have always believed what I have just told you," he answered. "That was the reason why I hoped that Donna Sabina might yet recover what she should have had from the estate. Volterra is sure that if you can take proper steps, you will recover a large sum, and that is why he is so anxious to marry his son to your daughter.
Malipieri told the whole story, from the time when Volterra had first invited him to come and make a search. The Princess nodded her energetic approval of his view that Sabina had a right to a large share in anything that was found. The poor girl's dowry, she said, had been eaten up by her father's absurd charities and by the bad administration of the estates which had ruined the whole family.
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