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Updated: August 19, 2024
Yet from such stuff as this are to come the future ministers, prefects, deputies, financiers, diplomatists, and senators, who are to regenerate the world's old mistress! Alas, poor Italy! The Guinigi Palace opposite forms a striking contrast to Count Nobili's abode. It is as silent as the grave. Every shutter is closed.
The stern and repulsive aspect of the exterior of the Marchesa Guinigi's palace belied the antique magnificence within. Here an anteroom, with Etruscan urns and fragments of mediaeval sculpture let into the walls, gives access to a great sala, or hall, where Paolo Guinigi entertained the citizens and magnates of Lucca with sumptuous hospitality.
Under the influence of the painful thoughts, she turned her head aside and said nothing. One of her hands was raised over her eyes to shade them from the candles; the other rested on her dark dress. If a marriage were really in question, what could be more serious? Was not Enrica's marriage to raise up heirs to the Guinigi heirs to inherit the palace and the heirlooms?
There is a dark closet, with a carved wooden cornice and open raftered roof, the walls covered with stamped leather. Here the family councils assembled. Next comes a long, narrow, low-roofed gallery, where row after row of portraits and pictures illustrate the defunct Guinigi. In that centre panel hangs Francesco dei Guinigi, who, for courtesy and riches, surpassed all others in Lucca.
Then Count Nobili rose, and, in that sweet-toned voice which had fallen like a charm on many a woman's ear, addressed the marchesa. "Marchesa Guinigi, hereditary Governess of Lucca, and Countess of the Garfagnana, I am come to ask in marriage the hand of your niece, Enrica Guinigi. I desire no portion with her. The lady herself is a portion more than enough for me."
"My gracious! who would have thought that old witch, the Guinigi," whispers Carlotta Carlotta owned a little mercery-shop in a side-street running by the palace, right under the tower to her gossip Brigitta, an occasional customer for cotton and buttons, "who would have thought that she gracious! who would have thought she dared to shut up her palace the day of the festival? Did you see?"
First in order after the great hall is a long gallery paneled with dark marble. It has a painted ceiling, and a mosaic floor. Statues and antique busts, presented by the emperor to Paolo Guinigi, are ranged on either side.
Of this collateral branch, all had died out. Antonio Guinigi, of Mantua, Enrica's father, in the prime of life, was killed in a duel, resulting from one of those small social affronts that so frequently do provoke duels in Italy. But the duel in question, fought by Antonio Guinigi, was unfortunately not so. He died on the spot. Enrica, when two years old, was an orphan.
Within a deep alcove, inclosed by a balustrade, stands a bed its gilt cornice reaching to the ceiling, heavily curtained. This is the nuptial-chamber of the Guinigi. Within that alcove, and in that bed, generation after generation have seen the light. Not to be born in the nuptial-chamber, and in that bed within the ancestral palace, is not to be a true Guinigi.
Heated as he was with the fight, it was the evening wind that slew him; for he fell into an ague, and, neglecting it, believing himself sufficiently hardened, it presently killed him, and Pagolo Guinigi ruled in his stead, but without his fortune.
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