Troilo."

Lelio took the sword, gloves, and hat, and bowing low, walked slowly towards the door.

"Page!" cried Orsini after him, "carry my sword with both hands; it is heavy, and you may drop it."

Lelio drew the gleaming sword like lightning from its scabbard, and brandishing it swiftly around his head, replied with a bold voice, and without stopping:

"Never fear, Sir Troilo, for my heart and hand are strong enough to wield it as a gentleman against any honorable knight. You understand; against any knight."

If he added any other words, they were not heard, as he was so distant.

"See," said Sir Troilo, spitefully, closing the door of the hall, "see how your indiscreet mildness raises around you a troop of insolent fellows."

"I have not observed any insolent ones, although I have an ungrateful one, Sir Troilo."

And, seated side by side, they began to converse in low, but excited tones, and, to judge by their gestures and manner, it could be neither pleasure, kindness, nor any other tender feeling, that influenced this conversation, but reproofs, suspicions, and fears; the Omnipotent having ordained, in His eternal decrees, that man, for his sins, should never be perfectly happy.

Now my readers, especially my lady readers, must understand that three full years had elapsed since the day that Isabella and Troilo had sworn the eternity of an affection that never should have commenced; and three years is a long eternity in love affairs. Eternity! Fancy a word so unsuitable to the lips of man, still less to those of woman. Love engagements usually begin on two sides and end on one. It is the best plan, though one but rarely put into execution, to annul them at a fixed time by mutual consent. Contracts of love have not the same advantages as those of business. In the latter, before making such a contract, the person interested wishes to understand the exchanges, the purchases, the location, and the like, and the advantages accruing to him in the value, the expenses, and the accessories, like one accustomed to be mindful of his own interests in such affairs; but in the former he bargains and binds himself blindfold, awaiting the consummation before he reckons and judges how much he has gained by it. And this sad day of reckoning had come and passed for Isabella and Troilo, and by this time who knows how often they had summed it up! The truth of this history obliges us to confess that the lady had found herself at a great disadvantage, which fact contributed in no small degree to alienate the lovers. Indeed Isabella possessed an ardent love for true art, and for the pleasures of science; an apt and happy talent, and a very great enthusiasm; great kindness of disposition, sympathetic feelings, noble manners, lady-like elegance, and a courtesy truly regal. The sentiment of love remains. I cannot say that the power of loving was wanting in her, for it would not be true; but she was deceived, believing that that was an unconquerable necessity of the heart, which was merely an impulse of the imagination; and as there is nothing more ethereal than the fancy, or more ready to evaporate, she often not only wondered, but was terrified, to find herself cold towards persons and things for whom and which she had shortly before felt an ardent fondness. Happy would it have been for her if nature or art had balanced more equally her heart and her brain. Grave masters and solemn teachings had not been wanting; but if, when obliged to choose between severe precepts and easy ones, between strict teachings and mild ones, the second seem the pleasanter to follow, it need not be asked why they obtain the preference. In her father's house she was surrounded by the worst examples, and alas! miserable girl! they punished in her, the most innocent of them all, the crimes or consequences of crimes, of which her brothers should more justly have borne the penalties. Indeed, the various chronicles that I have examined concur in the same judgment, expressed in the following manner by one of them:—"Every one said that a remedy should have been adopted before Prince Francesco and her other brothers had made use of her to draw to their wishes other ladies of the city, carrying her out with them every night dressed as a man, and then pretending that she should remain a saint." Isabella, moreover, possessed, or better to express it, was possessed by what is called a poetic temperament—a warm heart in the power of an ardent imagination—like a bold knight on an unbridled horse, a situation replete with the saddest consequences.

And how did Troilo appear on the day of reckoning? Troilo of the pallid brow, the heavy eyebrow, and the falcon eye. If we consider his figure, few were the knights in Italy who could sustain any comparison with him. He was well formed in person, and of so handsome a face that artists of note had begged him to sit to them as a model, and he had consequently grown very vain. His hair was short and his face smooth, with the exception of a dark imperial and moustache. Having heard that Alexander the Great leaned his head upon his right shoulder, Troilo, not to be inferior to him, imitated the habit. He always dressed in black velvet; was usually sad and pensive, speaking rarely, not because he imagined himself a poor conversationalist, for he ranked himself on the contrary far above Cicero, but it was natural to him. When he said but little, people were persuaded that he was a man of remarkable talents and a keen observer of human affairs; but if he conversed at greater length the vanity of his mind was clearly manifested, as our ancestors aver the solidity of the vase to be proved by sounding it. How the Fates had placed such a head on such a body is a question not easily answered. It is very certain that he would have driven to despair those who undertake to discover by external signs the passions and imaginations of the soul. He surpassed all the noblemen of that age in prowess and courage. In the bloody quarrels of the barons, for which the streets of Rome were then notorious, he was always the first to commence and the last to retreat. Naturally strong, he fought with strength, although treason was the height of his ambition; and his favorite hero, the famous Alphonso Piccolomini, a celebrated highwayman whom Ferdinand dei Medici, as Cardinal, once saved from the gallows, but afterwards, as Grand Duke, hung. But in the battles where skill rather than strength is requisite, or where the one should be tempered by the other, he showed himself so incompetent that he could not be trusted with the rank even of a colonel of infantry; nor did he succeed any better in business transactions, for sometimes by his obstinate silence he inspired suspicion, and sometimes by his vain eloquence, even more obstinate, contempt. Hence the Medicis abstained from employing him, and kept him at home, like the Bucentaur, the ornamented and useless galley which the Venetians used to bring out on the occasion of the marriage of the Doge with the Adriatic; so his commissions consisted of congratulations, as his three embassies to France bear witness, where he was sent the first time to congratulate the Duke d'Anjou upon the victory which he had gained at Moncontour over the Admiral Coligny; the second was when Charles IX. espoused Elizabeth, the second daughter of the Emperor Maximilian; the third and last when the Duke d'Anjou, afterwards Henry III., was chosen King of Poland. And yet so vainglorious was he, that he never ceased reminding Isabella of the many and great sacrifices which he had made for her, in not fighting battles which he never would have fought, and constantly longed for the victories which he never could have achieved. His love for Isabella was idleness, the impulse of youthful blood, pride in conquering a woman so handsome and so deservedly celebrated. He soon grew