amazing bustle in the courtyard below, and at his side stood Fanfulla
degli Arcipreti, whom he had summoned from Perugia with assurances that,
Masuccio being dead, no peril now menaced him.

It was a week after that interview at which Gian Maria had made known his
intentions to his cousin, and his Highness was now upon the point of
setting out for Urbino, to perform the comedy of wooing the Lady
Valentina. This was the explanation of that scurrying of servitors and
pages, that parading of men-at-arms, and that stamping of horses and
mules in the quadrangle below. Francesco watched the scene with a smile
of some bitterness, his companion with one of supreme satisfaction.

"Praised be Heaven for having brought his Highness at last to a sense of
his duty," remarked the courtier.

"It has often happened to me," said Francesco, disregarding his
companion's words, "to malign the Fates for having brought me into the
world a count. But in the future I shall give them thanks, for I see how
much worse it might have been--I might have been born a prince, with a
duchy to rule over. I might have been as that poor man, my cousin, a
creature whose life is all pomp and no real dignity, all merry­making and
no real mirth--loveless, isolated and vain."

"But," cried the amazed Fanfulla, "assuredly there are compensations?"

"You see that bustle. You know what it portends. What compensation can
there be for that?"

"It is a question you should be the last to ask, my lord. You have seen
the niece of Guidobaldo, and having seen her, can you still ask what