Love-at-arms

In a measure the events that followed would almost tend to show that the fool was right. For even if the notion of besieging Valentina and reducing her by force of arms was not...

Peppe's quick eyes had seen Gonzaga crumple and drop the paper, no less than he had observed the courtier's startled face, and his suspicions had been aroused. He was by nature...

Well indeed had it been for Ser Peppe had he restrained his malicious mood and curbed the mocking speech that had been as vinegar to Gian Maria's wounds. For when Gian Maria was...

He had by now regained his composure. He saw that he stood in deadly peril, and the very fear that possessed him seemed, by an odd paradox, to lend him the strength to play his...

The Count leapt from his bed, and hastened to throw wide the door to admit his servant, who with excited face and voice bore him the news that Gian Maria had reached Roccaleone...

When on the morrow, towards the twenty-second hour, the High and Mighty Gian Maria Sforza rode into his capital at Babbiano, he found the city in violent turmoil, occasioned, as...

From the valley, borne aloft on the wings of the evening breeze, rose faintly the tolling of an Angelus bell, and in a goat-herd's hut on the heights above stood six men with he...

And so it befell that whilst by Guidobaldo's orders the preparations for Valentina's nuptials went forward with feverish haste--whilst painters, carvers, and artificers in gold...

From a window of the Palace of Babbiano the Lord of Aquila watched the amazing bustle in the courtyard below, and at his side stood Fanfulla degli Arcipreti, whom he had summone...

Whilst the bustle of preparation went on briskly in Urbino, Gian Maria, on his side, was rapidly disposing of affairs in Babbiano, that he might return to the nuptials for which...

That taunt of his mother's stirred Gian Maria. He rose from his ducal chair and descended from the dais on which it stood, possessed by a tempestuous mood that would not brook h...

This inaction fretted the Count of Aquila, as did the lack of news from Fanfulla; and he wondered vaguely what might be taking place at Babbiano that Gian Maria should be conten...

It was a week after the meeting 'twixt the niece of Guidobaldo and the Count of Aquila, when the latter--his wound being wellnigh healed--rode one morning under the great archwa...

The morning of that Wednesday of Corpus Christi, fateful to all concerned in this chronicle, dawned misty and grey, and the air was chilled by the wind that blew from the sea. T...

They were in the dining-room alone, where the others had left them, and they were still seated at the table at which they had supped. Francesco raised his dark, thoughtful eyes,...

“By St. Paul! How would you have had me address him?” he inquired. “Would you have had me use cajolery with him--the lout? Would you have had me plead mercy from him, and beg hi...

Monna Valentina and her ladies dined at noon in a small chamber opening from the great hall, and thither were bidden Francesco and Gonzaga. The company was waited upon by the tw...

In the morning Francesco set out once more, accompanied by his servants, Fanfulla, and the fool. The latter was now so far restored as to be able to sit a mule, but lest the rid...

The fool sat on a rude stool within the porch of the long gallery, and, moodily eyeing that glistening pavement, ruminated. He was angry, which, saving where Fra Domenico was co...

The thing had begun with the lowering glances that Francesco had observed, and had grown to gibes and insults after he had disappeared. But Lanciotto had preserved an unruffled...

The four great outer walls of Roccaleone stood ranged into a mighty square, of which the castle proper occupied but half. The other half, running from north to south, was a stre...

In after years the Lord of Aquila was wont to aver in all solemnity that it was the sight of her wondrous beauty set up such a disorder in his soul that it overcame his senses,...

In the sunshine of that bright May morning Francesco and his men went merrily to work to possess themselves of the ducal camp, and the first business of the day was to arm those...

“Not so, my lord,” exclaimed Lodi, laying a hand upon the Count's arm. “You must not stay with us. You are our only hope--the only hope of Babbiano. If we are indeed betrayed--t...

The fool and the friar had fallen a-quarrelling, and--to the shame of the friar and the glory of the fool be it spoken--their subject of contention was a woman. Now the friar, f...