"The lady there--first Duchess of Duke Ercole II."

He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked a door at the farther end of the
room. "The chapel," he said. "This is the Duchess's balcony." As I turned
to follow him the Duchess tossed me a sidelong smile.

I stepped into a grated tribune above a chapel festooned with stucco.
Pictures of bituminous saints mouldered between the pilasters; the
artificial roses in the altar-vases were gray with dust and age, and under
the cobwebby rosettes of the vaulting a bird's nest clung. Before the altar
stood a row of tattered arm-chairs, and I drew back at sight of a figure
kneeling near them.

"The Duchess," the old man whispered. "By the Cavaliere Bernini."

It was the image of a woman in furred robes and spreading fraise, her hand
lifted, her face addressed to the tabernacle. There was a strangeness in
the sight of that immovable presence locked in prayer before an abandoned
shrine. Her face was hidden, and I wondered whether it were grief or
gratitude that raised her hands and drew her eyes to the altar, where no
living prayer joined her marble invocation. I followed my guide down the
tribune steps, impatient to see what mystic version of such terrestrial
graces the ingenious artist had found--the Cavaliere was master of such
arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs
fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how
admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope
of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face--it was a
frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so possessed a human
countenance....