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"Accursed Formica!" cried Pasquale, springing up and shaking his clenched fist towards the stage. Torricelli's and Cavalcanti's grave looks of disapproval, however, constrained him to silence and quietness.
Cavalcanti's face was set and rigid. "You place a heavy burden on my shoulders," said he, "when your excellency, my guest, appeals to me against another guest of mine against one who is all but friendless and the son of my own best friend." "And my worst enemy," cried Pier Luigi hotly. "That is your excellency's own concern, not mine," said Cavalcanti coldly.
You may serve me this way. The other way you will but have to endure ultimate arrest, and so leave Bianca at their mercy, which is precisely what they seek." He braced himself at the thought of Bianca. We turned, and in silence we paced back, quite leisurely as if entirely at our ease, for all that Cavalcanti's face had grown very haggard. "I yield me, sir," I said to the familiar.
With a glance at the servants who attended us, he bade me eat, saying that we should talk anon. And as my reaction had brought a sharp hunger in its train, I fell to with the best will in all the world, and from broth to figs there were few words between us. At last, our goblets charged and the servants with-drawn, I repeated my inquiry. "The magic is not mine," said Galeotto. "It is Cavalcanti's.
I looked up at Cavalcanti, baffled, and sick with sudden dismay. I saw Cavalcanti's eye, which had grown dull, kindle anew. He stooped over the prostrate man. "Is the bride here is my daughter in this house?" The fellow whimpered and did not answer until my dagger's edge was at his throat again. Then he suddenly screeched "Yes!"
He then took the great-coat with the large collar, which the groom had left behind in the tilbury, and put it on his back; then he took off Cavalcanti's hat, which he placed upon his own head, and finally he assumed the careless attitude of a servant whose master drives himself. "But, tell me," said Andrea, "am I to remain bareheaded?"
Of the gibe I took little heed. What imported was her warning. And I did not doubt that she had good cause to warn me. I remembered with a shudder her old-time habit of listening at doors. It was very probable that in like manner had she now gathered information that entitled her to give me such advice. It was incredible. And yet I knew that it was true, and I cursed my blindness and Cavalcanti's.
"Yes, doubtless I have promised to give my daughter to a man who loves her, but not to one who does not. See him there, cold as marble and proud like his father. If he were rich, if he had Cavalcanti's fortune, that might be pardoned. Ma foi, I haven't consulted my daughter; but if she has good taste"
I asked one of the pages who lounged there waiting for their master, did he think my lord would be in the library, and the boy was conjecturing upon this unusual tardiness of Cavalcanti's in seeking his bed, when the door opened, and at last he appeared.
We got to the round table myself upon Cavalcanti's left, Galeotto in the place of honour, and Bianca facing her father so that I was on her right. The seneschal bestirred himself, and the silken ministering pages fluttered round us. My Lord of Pagliano was one who kept a table as luxurious as all else in his splendid palace.
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