The garden that hitherto had been Bianca's own sacred domain,
the garden into which I had never yet dared set foot, was overrun now by
the Duke's gay suite--a cloud of poisonous butterflies. There in the
green, shaded alleys they disported themselves; in the lemon-grove, in the
perfumed rose-garden, by hedges of box and screens of purple clematis they
fluttered.
Bianca sought to keep her chamber in those days, and kept it for as long on
each day as was possible to her. But the Duke, hobbling on the terrace--
for as a consequence of his journey on horseback he had developed a slight
lameness, being all rotten with disease--would grow irritable at her
absence, and insistent upon her presence, hinting that her retreat was a
discourtesy; so that she was forced to come forth again, and suffer his
ponderous attentions and gross flatteries.
And three days later there came another to Pagliano, bidden thither by the
Duke, and this other was none else than my cousin Cosimo, who now called
himself Lord of Mondolfo, having been invested in that tyranny, as I have
said.
On the morning after his arrival we met upon the terrace.
"My saintly cousin!" was his derisive greeting. "And yet another change in
you--out of sackcloth into velvet! The calendar shall know you as St.
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