Saracinesca eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 567 pages of information about Saracinesca.

Saracinesca eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 567 pages of information about Saracinesca.

“I am sorry to have cut short our ride,” he said, coldly.  “My wife found it chilly in the valley.”

Anastase looked curiously at Giovanni’s pale face, and wondered whether anything was wrong.  Corona herself seemed strangely agitated.

“Yes,” answered Gouache, with his gentle smile; “the mountain air is still cold.”

So the three rode silently back to the castle, and at the gate Gouache dismounted and left them, politely declining a rather cold invitation to come in.  Giovanni and Corona went silently up the staircase together, and on into a small apartment which in that cold season they had set apart as a sitting-room.  When they were alone, Corona laid her hands upon Giovanni’s shoulders and gazed long into his angry eyes.  Then she threw her arms round his neck and drew him to her.

“My beloved,” she cried, proudly, “you are all I thought—­and more too.”

“Do not say that,” answered Giovanni.  “I would not have lifted a finger to save that hound, but for you.”

“Ah, but you did it, dear, all the same,” she said, and kissed him.

On the following evening, without any warning, old Saracinesca arrived, and was warmly greeted.  After dinner Giovanni told him the story of Del Ferice’s escape.  Thereupon the old gentleman flew into a towering rage, swearing and cursing in a most characteristic manner, but finally declaring that to arrest spies was the work of spies, and that Giovanni had behaved like a gentleman, as of course he could not help doing, seeing that he was his own son.

* * * * *

And so the curtain falls upon the first act.  Giovanni and Corona are happily married.  Del Ferice is safe across the frontier among his friends in Naples, and Donna Tullia is waiting still for news of him, in the last days of Lent, in the year 1866.  To carry on the tale from this point would be to enter upon a new series of events more interesting, perhaps, than those herein detailed, and of like importance in the history of the Saracinesca family, but forming by their very nature a distinct narrative—­a second act to the drama, if it may be so called.  I am content if in the foregoing pages I have so far acquainted the reader with those characters which hereafter will play more important parts, as to enable him to comprehend the story of their subsequent lives, and in some measure to judge of their future by their past, regarding them as acquaintances, if not sympathetic, yet worthy of some attention.

Especially I ask for indulgence in matters political.  I am not writing the history of political events, but the history of a Roman family during times of great uncertainty and agitation.  If any one says that I have set up Del Ferice as a type of the Italian Liberal party, carefully constructing a villain in order to batter him to pieces with the artillery of poetic justice, I answer that I have done nothing of the kind.  Del Ferice is indeed a type, but a

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Saracinesca from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.