He was as full of confidence for the issue as he was full of eager
anticipation of the fray itself.
Is it wonderful that--never having known any but artificial men; men of
court and ante-chamber; men of dainty ways and mincing, affected tricks
of speech; in short, such men as circumstance ordains shall surround the
great--Monna Valentina's eyes should open very wide, the better to behold
this new pattern of a man, who, whilst clearly a gentleman of high
degree, carried with him an air of the camp rather than the camerion, was
imbued by a spirit of chivalry and adventure, and ignored with a certain
lofty dignity, as if beneath his observance, the poses that she was wont
to see characterising the demeanour of the gentlemen of his Highness, her
uncle.
He was young, moreover, yet no longer callow; comely, yet with a strong
male comeliness; he had a pleasantly modulated voice, yet one that they
had heard swell into a compelling note of command; he had the most
joyous, careless laugh in all the world--such a laugh as endears a man to
all that hear it--and he indulged it without stint.
Gonzaga sat glum and moody, his heart bursting with the resentment of the
mean and the incompetent for the man of brilliant parts. But the morrow
was to bring him worse.
The Duke of Urbino arrived next morning, and rode up to the moat in
person, attended only by a trumpeter, who, for the third time, wound a
note of challenge to the fortress.
As on the previous day, Valentina answered the summons, attended by
Francesco, Fortemani and Gonzaga--the latter uninvited yet not denied,
and following sullenly in her train, in a last, despairing attempt to
assert himself one of her captains.
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