'I crave your pardon, gentlemen, for this annoyance,' she mumbled, 'but my illustrious lady, Madonna Lena Griffi, has lost her favourite animal—a rabbit with a blue ribbon round its neck. We have searched two hours for it, but vainly.'
'There are no rabbits here,' said Messer Niccolò, angrily; 'go to the devil!' And he was about to eject her, but suddenly checked himself, and having looked at her narrowly, both with and without his spectacles, he cried:—
'Monna Alvigia! Is it really you, you old witch? I thought the devil had long ago roasted your old carcase!'
The woman blinked and cowered, answering his polite greeting with a sorry smile.
'Oh, Messer Niccolò! how many years, how many winters since we have seen each other! I had never expected God would give us this pleasure again!'
Machiavelli invited the old woman to follow him to the kitchen for a crack; but Leonardo, providing himself with a book and seating himself in a corner, begged them to remain. Then Messer Niccolò sent for wine with a lordly air, as if he were the most honoured guest in the inn.
'Hark ye, friend,' he said to the servant who took his order, 'bid that skinflint, your master, beware how he serve us that acid stuff we had yesterday, for Monna Alvigia and I are like Arlotto the priest, who would not kneel if the wine were bad.'
Monna Alvigia forgot her rabbit and Niccolò his Livy; over their pitcher of wine they gossiped like old friends. Alvigia told tales of her youth when she had been fair to see and much courted, and she had done what she wished and it had not mattered what she did. Had she not once in Padua lifted the mitre from the head of the bishop and placed it upon her own? But years passed by, and her beauty faded, and her lovers abandoned her, and she had to support herself by hiring rooms and by taking in washing. Then she fell ill, and she thought of sitting among the beggars at the church door, and even of ending herself by poison. But the Holy Virgin came to her aid and rescued her from death. With the aid of an old abbot, who was in love with the young wife of a blacksmith, she entered upon a trade far more profitable than that of a laundress.
The story was interrupted by a summons from Madonna Lena, who required pomade for her monkey's wounded paw, and Boccaccio's Decameron, which she always kept under her pillow beside her prayer-book.
The old woman gone, Messer Niccolò mended a pen, took paper, and began his report to the Magnificent Signori of Florence, on the dispositions and actions of the Duke of Valentinois, a piece of profound statesmanship, written in easy, almost jocular style.