Angela and I were so absorbed in the beauty of the painting that we had quite forgotten about Zelphine's quest, when a voice at our side exclaimed, triumphantly:
"I have solved the riddle. The palace on the Square of the Annunziata was a Riccardi palace at the time of Mr. Browning's poem, and at the window toward which Duke Ferdinand's eyes are turned there was a bust of a lady as late as 1887. The present Palazzo Riccardi, now the Prefettura, was once a Medici palace; it was sold many years later to the Riccardi family. Here Duke Ferdinand made his feast on the night of the wedding, the one and only time that the lovers met:
"'Face to face the lovers stood,
A single minute and no more,
While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued—
Bowed till his bonnet touched the floor—
For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,
As the courtly custom was of yore.'
"Cannot you see it all?" continued Zelphine, breathlessly, quite regardless of the interest that her animated face and eager words were exciting in the little group around us,