In the hall, while passing a platter of figs, Foresto praised the new garment obsequiously.  He murmured: 

“And what a fine skin it is made of!  So soft, so delicate, so lustrous in its finish!  Is it pigskin, master?  Ah, no; it is finer than that.  Kidskin?  But a kid could not furnish a skin as large as this one.  No doubt it is made from some queer foreign animal, perhaps from a beast of Greece or Arabia?”

While speaking these words, Foresto flashed one look, mournful and eloquent, at Madonna Gemma, then softly withdrew from the hall.

She sat motionless, wave after wave of cold flowing in through her limbs to her heart.  She stared, as though at a basilisk, at Lapo’s new vest, in which she seemed to find the answer so long denied her.  The hall grew dusky; she heard a far-off cry, and when she meant to flee, she fainted in her chair.

For a week Madonna Gemma did not rise from her bed.  When finally she did rise she refused to leave her room.

But suddenly Lapo Cercamorte was gayer than he had been since the fall of Grangioia Castle.  Every morning, when he had inquired after Madonna Gemma’s health, and had sent her all kinds of tidbits, he went down to sit among his men, to play morra, to test swordblades, to crack salty jokes, to let loose his husky guffaw.  At times, cocking his eye toward certain upper casements, he patted his fine vest furtively, with a gleeful and mischievous grin.  To Baldo, after some mysterious nods and winks, he confided: 

“Everything will be different when she is well again.”

“No doubt,” snarled old Baldo, scrubbing at his mail shirt viciously.  “Though I am not in your confidence, I agree that a nice day is coming, a beautiful day—­like a pig.  Look you, Cercamorte, shake off this strange spell of folly.  Prepare for early trouble.  Just as a Venetian sailor can feel a storm of water brewing, so can I feel, gathering far off, a storm of arrows.  Do you notice that the crows hereabouts have never been so thick?  Perhaps, too, I have seen a face peeping out of the woods, about the time that Foresto goes down to pick berries.”

“You chatter like an old woman at a fountain,” said Lapo, still caressing his vest with his palms.  “I shall be quite happy soon—­yes, even before the Lombard league takes the field.”

Baldo raised his shoulders, pressed his withered eyelids together, and answered, in disgust: 

“God pity you, Cercamorte!  You are certainly changed these days.  Evidently your Arabian has given you a charm that turns men’s brains into goose-eggs.”

Lapo stamped away angrily, yet he was soon smiling again.

And now his coarse locks were not unkempt, but cut square across brow and neck.  Every week he trimmed his fingernails; every day or so, with a flush and a hangdog look, he drenched himself with perfume.  Even while wearing that garment—­at thought of which Madonna Gemma, isolate in her chamber, still shivered and moaned—­Cercamorte resembled one who prepares himself for a wedding, or gallant rendezvous, that may take place any moment.