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The newcomers, after pressing my hand, devoted themselves with grave solicitude to Antonio. He burst forth at them like a man whose nervous tension is nearly unendurable: "Yes, hang it all! I am quite well. Why the devil will you persist in coddling me?" Leonello and Leonardo gave me a mournful look. We now stopped at another door, where there joined us two ladies unknown to me.
She has been so gracious as to marry me between two of her theatrical seasons; in fact, we are here on our honeymoon. Why the deuce have you never married? A wife might keep you out of many a laughable predicament." Leonello hazarded, "He is waiting to marry some lady who can describe, in her trances, the cuisine of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, or the home-life of the Queen of Sheba."
His son Leonello, besides encouraging students by his own example, devoted great pains and expense to the University library which he founded, while his successor, Duke Borso, pensioned poor students, who were clothed and fed at his cost.
While I was still trying to master my feelings, he added: "I have forgotten to explain that Lina is the wife of Leonello, our new Michael Angelo, who did that portrait of me in the wig and costume of the Renaissance. Laura, on the other hand, is the wife of Leonardo. As for our heroine, Fiammetta, she is the bride of your unworthy Antonio.
At his prayer, the Sicilian Hellenist Aurispa, who had travelled to Greece and Constantinople in search of Greek manuscripts, fixed his residence at Ferrara; while Battista Guarino of Verona became the tutor of Niccolo's own son Leonello, and inspired the young prince with that ardour for learning which made him the most accomplished ruler of his time.
What is the best preservative for damask roses?" "Water them with credulity," Leonello suggested. And they all burst out laughing in my face, with the exception of the beautiful Fiammetta. Antonio, rising and bowing to me, spoke as follows: "My friend, the sixteenth century bequeathed to us Florentines a little of its cheerful cruelty and something of its pleasure in vendettas.
They were all seated at the supper-table, which was now decorated with flowers, with baskets of fruit, with plates of bonbons, and with favors in the form of dolls tricked out like little ladies of the Renaissance. The servants wore tail-coats and white-cotton gloves. Leonello and Leonardo, Lina and Laura, even Antonio, had on the evening-dress appropriate to the twentieth century.
This picture was once in the possession of the very reverend Cardinal da Carpi, the son of the said Signor Leonello, and a great lover of our arts; and it should be at the present day in the hands of his heirs.
Under her clutching hand, his fur-trimmed sleeve had slipped up, exposing his forearm. She was staring at his forearm. "The scar?" she whispered. "Was it not here, when you raised your arm to shield yourself against them, that you caught the first knife-thrust? How long does it take for such a scar to pass entirely away?" Lina and Laura sank back in their chairs. Leonello averted his face.
Their smiles seemed tremulous and wan, their movements constrained and timorous. All their efforts at gaiety were impeded by the inertia of fear. At every speech the lips of Lina and Laura quivered, the hands of Leonello and Leonardo were clenched in a nervous spasm. Antonio controlled himself only by the most heroic efforts.
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