across a window-pane. And the Duchess was always laughing.

"When she first came to the villa she was very busy laying out the gardens,
designing grottoes, planting groves and planning all manner of agreeable
surprises in the way of water-jets that drenched you unexpectedly, and
hermits in caves, and wild men that jumped at you out of thickets. She had
a very pretty taste in such matters, but after a while she tired of it, and
there being no one for her to talk to but her maids and the chaplain--a
clumsy man deep in his books--why, she would have strolling players out
from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place,
travelling doctors and astrologers, and all manner of trained animals.
Still it could be seen that the poor lady pined for company, and her
waiting women, who loved her, were glad when the Cavaliere Ascanio, the
Duke's cousin, came to live at the vineyard across the valley--you see
the pinkish house over there in the mulberries, with a red roof and a
pigeon-cote?

"The Cavaliere Ascanio was a cadet of one of the great Venetian houses,
_pezzi grossi_ of the Golden Book. He had been' meant for the Church,
I believe, but what! he set fighting above praying and cast in his lot with
the captain of the Duke of Mantua's _bravi_, himself a Venetian of
good standing, but a little at odds with the law. Well, the next I know,
the Cavaliere was in Venice again, perhaps not in good odor on account of
his connection with the gentleman I speak of. Some say he tried to carry
off a nun from the convent of Santa Croce; how that may be I can't say; but
my grandmother declared he had enemies there, and the end of it was that on
some pretext or other the Ten banished him to Vicenza. There, of course,
the Duke, being his kinsman, had to show him a civil face; and that was how
he first came to the villa.