r her, a chorus of elders. Finally, she knelt to him, wound
her arms about his hips, put up her entreating face. The comedy was
played out. Amilcare showed himself shaken; he stooped to her, lifted
her in his arms, embraced her. "O mouth of singular favour!" etc. The
convocation broke up in sobs, psalmody, and kisses on the cheek.
Amilcare and his wife were led to the broad window and out on to the
loggia. There stood Molly in all the glow of her happy toil,
quick-breathing, enraptured, laughing and afire. The crown was on her
head, by her side her sceptred lord; and below the people cheered and
howled. "Udite, citt adini, il vostro Capitano!" cried the heralds.
"Duca! duca! Evviva Amilcare, Duca!" cried the throng. Then Amilcare
pointed to the crowned girl. "Evviva la Madonna di Nona!" he brayed like
a tube of brass. So as Madonna di Nona they knew her to the end.
Amilcare was crowned with his laurel wreath in the Santi Apostoli; _Te
Deum_ was sung. Nona started on her new career--benevolent despotism
tempered by a girl's kisses.

V

GRIFONE--AMATEUR OF SENSE

Grifone must now be lifted into the piece, Grifone the grey-eyed,
self-contained little Secretary, whose brain seemed quicksilver, whose
acts those of a deliberate cat, whose inches were few, whose years only
tender. One of Amilcare's rare acts of unpremeditated humanity had been
to snatch him, a naked urchin of nine, from Barga, when (after a night
surprise) he was raining fire and sword and the pains of hell upon that
serried stronghold of the hills.

"Eh, Signore, Signore!" had whined the half-famished imp, padding by the
condottiere's stirrup.

"Va via, vattene al diavolo!" a musketeer growled at him, and tried to
club him down.

Amilcare looked, as one might idly glance at a shrew-mouse in the path.
He saw a brown body pitifully lean, a shock black head, a pair of
piercing grey eyes. Further, he saw that the child had not on a stitch
of clothing, and that he was splashed to the knees with drying blood.

"What now, Baby?" he asked.

"Lift me into the saddle, Signore," said the boy, with a propitiating
grin; "I am getting my feet wet."

The little dog had a humorous twist to his eyebrow, and it was true
enough that the kennels were running red.

"Whose blood is that on your legs, my lad?" Passavente stayed his
charger.

Grifone shrugged. "Misericordia! Who knows? My father's perhaps; my
mother's more certainly, since my father ran away.