"At that, said my grandmother, the Duchess gave one look, as the souls in
hell may have looked when the gates closed on our Lord; then she called
Nencia and passed to her chamber.

"What happened there my grandmother could never learn, but that the
Duchess, in great haste, dressed herself with extraordinary splendor,
powdering her hair with gold, painting her face and bosom, and covering
herself with jewels till she shone like our Lady of Loreto; and hardly
were these preparations complete when the Duke entered from the cabinet,
followed by the servants carrying supper. Thereupon the Duchess dismissed
Nencia, and what follows my grandmother learned from a pantry-lad who
brought up the dishes and waited in the cabinet; for only the Duke's
body-servant entered the bed-chamber.

"Well, according to this boy, sir, who was looking and listening with his
whole body, as it were, because he had never before been suffered so near
the Duchess, it appears that the noble couple sat down in great good humor,
the Duchess playfully reproving her husband for his long absence, while the
Duke swore that to look so beautiful was the best way of punishing him.
In this tone the talk continued, with such gay sallies on the part of the
Duchess, such tender advances on the Duke's, that the lad declared they
were for all the world like a pair of lovers courting on a summer's night
in the vineyard; and so it went till the servant brought in the mulled
wine.

"'Ah,' the Duke was saying at that moment, 'this agreeable evening repays
me for the many dull ones I have spent away from you; nor do I remember
to have enjoyed such laughter since the afternoon last year when we drank
chocolate in the gazebo with my cousin Ascanio. And that reminds me,' he
said, 'is my cousin in good health?'