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Last of all appeared, rumbling on its ancient wheels, the carroccio, or state-car of the Florentine Republic, bearing their captured flags lowered, and trailing in the dust. Castruccio whose sole representatives are the Marchesa Guinigi and yourself, signorina Castruccio followed. He was seated in a triumphal chariot, drawn by eight milk-white horses. Banners fluttered around him.
Per Bacco! if there had been any thing serious, I should have known it long ago. Who is the lady?" Spite of himself, however, his blue eyes sparkled with curiosity. "The marchesa's niece, Enrica Guinigi." "What!" roared out the cavaliere, striking his stick so violently on the ground that the sound echoed through the solitary street. "Enrica Guinigi, whom I see every day!
"More news!" cried Malatesta. "Gracious heavens! Wave after wave it comes! a mighty sea. I hear the distant roar it dashes high! It breaks! Speak, oh, speak, Adonis!" "The Marchesa Guinigi has left Lucca suddenly." "Who cares? Do you, Pietrino?" asked Franchi of Orsetti, with a contemptuous glance at Baldassare. "Let him speak," cried Malatesta; "Baldassare is an oracle."
He gave promises to both, saying to Bastiano that he would come in person, and to Jacopo that he would send his pupil, Pagolo Guinigi. At the appointed time he sent forward Pagolo by way of Pisa, and went himself direct to Pistoia; at midnight both of them met outside the city, and both were admitted as friends.
"Count Marescotti," he continues, a solemn tone in his voice as he slowly pronounces the words, raising his head at the same time, and gazing fixedly into the other's face Count Marescotti, "I am come here to propose a marriage between you and Enrica Guinigi.
This Sainte Vierge has already been much talked about first, with Nobili, who lives opposite when ma tante was sleeping. Then she spent a day with several men upon the Guinigi Tower, an elegant retirement among the crows. After that old Trenta offered her formally in marriage to Marescotti." "What! After the Guinigi Tower?" put in Malatesta. "Of course Marescotti refused her?"
Was this daughter of her husband's cousin, Antonio a collateral branch about to consign the Guinigi name to the tomb? She could have lifted up her voice and cursed her where she stood. "Enrica, I have sent for you to ask you a question." Spite of her efforts to be calm, there was a strange ring in her voice that made Enrica look up at her. "Enrica, do you still love Count Nobili?"
Not long after, Guinigi fell sick; in truth he was about to die. Seeing, then, that he had a son scarcely thirteen years old, called Pagolo, he gave him into Castruccio's charge, begging him to show the same generosity to his son as he had received from him. And all this Castruccio promised.
At the hottest moment of the twenty-four hours, and in the dog-days, when the rays of a scalding sun pour down upon roof and wall and tower like molten lead, searching out each crack and cranny with cruel persistence, the marchesa was wont stealthily to descend into the very bowels, as it were, of that great body corporate, the Guinigi Palace to see with her own eyes if her orders were obeyed.
On a dais, raised on three broad steps, stands a chair of state, surmounted by a dark-velvet canopy. Above appear the Guinigi arms, worked in gold and black, tarnished now, as is the glory of the illustrious house they represent. Overhead are suspended two cardinal's hats, dropping to pieces with moth and mildew.
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