"
"Then you mistake my intention," rejoined Cavalcanti, with an icy dignity.
"You appeal to me for judgment. And between guests I must hold the scales
dead-level, with no thought for the rank of either. Of your chivalry, my
lord Duke, you must perceive that I could not do else."
It was the simplest way in which he could have told Farnese that he cared
nothing for the rank of either, and of reminding his excellency that
Pagliano, being an Imperial fief, was not a place where the Duke of Parma
might ruffle it unchecked.
Messer Pier Luigi hesitated, entirely out of countenance. Then his eyes
turned to Bianca, and his expression softened.
"What says Madonna Bianca?" he inquired, his manner reassuming some measure
of its courtliness. "Is her judgment as unmercifully level?"
She looked up, startled, and laughed a little excitedly, touched by the
tenseness of a situation which she did not understand.
"What say I?" quoth she. "Why, that here is a deal of pother about some
foolish words."
"And there," cried Pier Luigi, "spoke, I think, not only beauty but
wisdom--Minerva's utterances from the lips of Diana!"
In glad relief the company echoed his forced laugh, and all sat down again,
the incident at an end, and my contempt of the Duke increased to see him
permit such a matter to be so lightly ended.
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