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.