ic first. Selvaggia,
in fact, laughed at him (he turned once to call her a Jew for that)
egged on as she was by her brother and her own vivacious habit. She had
no Nicoletta at Pitecchio, no mother anywhere, and a scheming father too
busy to be anything but shrugging towards poets. She accepted his rhymes
(she would probably have been scared if they ceased), his services, his
lowered looks, his bent knee; and then she tripped away with an arm
round Gianbattista's neck to laugh at all these praiseworthy attentions.
As for Cino, Selvaggia was become his religion, and his rhyming her
reasonable service. His goddess may have been as thirsty as the Scythian
Artemis; may be that she asked blood and stripes of her devotees. All
this may well be; for, by the Lord, did she not have them?

Ridolfo and Ugolino Vergiolesi, the two elder brothers of Selvaggia, had
stayed behind in Pistoja to share the fighting in the streets. They had
plenty of it, given and received. Ridolfo had his head cut open, Ugolino
went near to losing his sword arm; but in spite of these heroic
sufferances the detested Cancellieri became masters of the city, and the
chequer-board flag floated over the Podesta. Pistoja was now no place
for a Ghibelline. So the two young men rode up to the hill-fortress,
battered, but in high spirits. Selvaggia flew down the cypress-walk to
meet them; they were brought in like wounded heroes. That was a bad
day's work for Messer Cino the amorist; Apollo and the Muses limped in
rags, and Mars was the only God worth thinking about, except on Sundays.

Ridolfo, with his broken head-piece, was a bluff youth,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed, a great eater, grimly silent for the
most part. Ugolino had a trenchant humour of the Italian sort. What this
may be is best exampled by our harlequinades, in which very much of
Boccaccio's bent still survives. You must have a man drubbed if you want
to laugh, and do your rogueries with a pleasant grin if you are inclined
to heroism. Ridolfo, reading Selvaggia's sheaf of rhymes that night, was
for running Master Cino through the body, jurist or no jurist; but
Ugolino saw his way to a jest of the most excellent quality, and
prevailed. He was much struck by the poet's preoccupation with his
sister's eyes.

"Candles, are they," he chuckled, "torches, fires, suns, moons, and
stars? You seem to have scorched this rhymester, Vaggia."

"He has frequently told me so, indeed," said Selvaggia.

"It r