ves of his
relatives at Palliano, but leaving the wounded in the care of the
monks we escorted the ladies to the Colonna palace at Rome which was
thereafter my sister's residence.

[Illustration: Villa Madama--Interior]

By all the canons of romance-writing my story should end here at its
climax, but this is not the way of real life, which goes on spinning new
threads, and intertwining them so with the old that there is no coming
to the end until the shears of death cut the skein.

My duty as the Pope's body-guard kept me at his side, and my cousin
Ferrante Gonzaga having less to do, was constantly at the Colonna
palace, where he incontinently fell in love with Fenice. This had indeed
been planned out long before by his mother, for the Marchesa had lived
long enough in the Colonna palace to fall under its spell and she had
marked the Colonna heiress as a suitable parti for Ferrante.

Therefore at the great reconciliation between the Emperor and the Pope
which took place at Bologna, where Clement crowned Charles, and they
parcelled out to their favourites the dignities of Italy, Ferrante
Gonzaga besought the hand of Fenice in recognition of the services of
his house. To this request both the Emperor and the Pope agreed, but
when the parties to be contracted were called into their presence,
Cardinal Pompeo Colonna and I came with them and forbade the banns.
Being asked why we thus defied the will of the greatest powers of
Christendom, I confessed how in the crimson dawn of the peace of
Palliano, being determined that no power in heaven or earth or hell
should henceforth jeopardise our happiness, Fenice and I had been
secretly but soundly married by the Cardinal, deferring only the public
festivities of the wedding to a merrier morn.

With that the Emperor declared the jest a good one, and that one Gonzaga
was as good as another. "And better," whispered his Holiness in my ear,
as I knelt before him for his blessing.

II

OTHER BIRDS OF THE FLAMING NEST

Centuries ago--here the Colonna came,
Vittoria with them, Angelo himself
Gazing upon her as she gravely moved,
And sighing for her, while Fabrizio's sword
Clanged on the gravel--here the d'Este came
From Tivoli, where o'er dark cypresses
Their villa looks above the billowy land
Of the Campagna.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

It was with the Villa Conti-Torlonia at Frascati that Story rightly
associated the men and women of the Colonna in the li