This patronage I owed solely to my own fame and not, as has been
asserted, to the favour of his daughter-in-law, Catherine de' Medici,
for that princess had no love for her supposed half-brother Alessandro,
or for his Florentine familiars.

Though I could never have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an
unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's
satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had
seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child Duchess, I thanked
God that Lorenzino had no such squeamish conscience.

And yet,--as in the virgin purity of the orange-blossom, the voluptuous
perfume yearningly foretells the luscious, perfect fruit, and the blush
of the peach-bloom shows the flower coyly but triumphantly conscious
that it will one day ripen into mouth-watering deliciousness,--so even
then there were hints and prophecies in Margaret's budding womanliness
that the time was approaching when she would not only awaken love but
would herself know the joy of loving.

The time and the man were nearer than I thought.

It was a matter of but six years subsequent to our first meeting that,
chancing to be again in Rome, I next encountered Ottavio Farnese.

He was no longer the pretty page who had served the Duchess at the Villa
Madama, but had grown into a tall, handsome youth, with the first down
of manhood upon his lip. Though much lighter in weight than myself and
his rapier as slender as a child's toy, he had been well taught in
fencing, as I learned when meeting him by chance in front of St. Peter's
church, he, to my utter surprise, fell upon me crying out that I was a
scurvy knave unfit to live.

As I am not the man to swallow insults of this sort we slashed at one
another without further ceremony until the Papal guards, rushing from
the Vatican, separated us. Recognising Ottavio as the grandson of the
Pope (for Cardinal Farnese had on the death of Clement VI. succeeded to
the tiara), they demanded why we fought. I replied that I had not the
least idea, but Ottavio declared that it was to force me to confess what
I had done with the casket which I had been commissioned to bring to the
Duchess Margaret at Florence.

Laughing a little at his own zeal, but with all due deference I told him
how the casket had been carried away by the Moors, on the evening when I
repaired to Villa Madama to fetch it, and I had the happiness to
convince him of the truth of my