I
have won the love of the peerless Marie de' Medici. For me she has
discarded the King of France, and has promised to meet me at this spot
and at this very hour and fly with me to El Dorado. I left her stricken
to the heart by my misfortunes. If I desert her now her death will be
upon my head. See you not the Gonzaga barge is approaching in which she
promised to forsake the world with me."

"Make yourself easy on the score of my mistress," exclaimed Malespini.
"You have kept your appointment, but when she made hers she had no
intention of keeping it with a man of your quality. Under a strange
hallucination she has fancied all along that you were the King of
France, and her fainting fit was occasioned by her dismay and
humiliation on discovering that you were only the king of poets. I will
not say that she did not find you agreeable. She was pleased when she
learned that your friend had arrived in time to rescue you, and ere she
left for Florence this afternoon bade me wish you _bon voyage_, and to
thank you for much merry entertainment."

The Earl of Essex whistled softly, and an expression of infinite relief
relaxed the contorted features of Brandilancia. "I have learned how the
women of the Medici love," he murmured. "Thank God, our English women
love in a different fashion."

[Illustration: COLONNA]

CHAPTER VIII

THE LADIES OF PALLIANO

(BEING A RELATION BY THE CONDOTTIERE LUIGI RODOMONTE GONZAGA OF CERTAIN
OF HIS ADVENTURES DURING THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1525 TO 1528)

I

THE NEST OF THE PHOENIX

'Tis an incredible fable that of the phoenix, the crimson wonder-bird,
which springs in immortal youth from the flames which destroy its eyrie.
But it is not more strange than one which I could tell of how I found
Fenice, and snatched the joy and glory of my life from the conflagration
of her ancestral town and castle, in which, but for my efforts, her pure
soul would have vanished from the earth.

Fenice, flame-bird, radiant and peerless, I had named her at our first
meeting, long before the tragic burning of Palliano, for it seemed to me
that in her vivacity and brilliancy she resembled a little dancing
flame. I well remember also how at that time the longing came to me to
warm my numbed heart forever in her presence.

I am no poet, but a plain man of war, and this phantasy of the phoenix
came into my head in a very natural and simple way, for Fenice when
first I saw her was sending up little fire-ballo