As Count Nobili descends the three steps into the piazza, he is conscious that all eyes are fixed upon him; that every head is uncovered. He pauses, casts his eyes round at the upturned faces, raises his hat and smiles, then puts his hand into his pocket, and takes out a gold-piece, which he gives to the nearest beggar. The beggar, seizing the gold-piece, blesses him, and hopes that "Heaven will render to him according to his merits." Other beggars, from every corner, are about to rush upon him; but Nobili deftly escapes from these as he had escaped from the Marchesa Boccarini and her daughters, and is gone.
"A lucky face," mumbles old Carlotta, working her under lip, as she fixes her bleared eyes on him—"a lucky face! He will choose the winning number in the lottery, and the evil eye will never harm him."
The music had now ceased. The mass was over. The vast congregation poured through the triple doors into the piazza, and mingled with the outer crowd. For a while both waved to and fro, like billows on a rolling sea, then settled down into one compact current, which, flowing onward, divided and dispersed itself through the openings into the various streets abutting on the piazza.
Last of all, Carlotta, Brigitta, and Cassandra, leave their corner. They are speedily engulfed in the shadows of a neighboring alley, and are seen no more.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MARCHESA GUINIGI.
The stern and repulsive aspect of the exterior of the Marchesa
Guinigi's palace belied the antique magnificence within.
Turning to the right under an archway from the damp, moss-grown court over which the tower throws a perpetual shadow, a broad staircase, closed by a door of open ironwork, leads to the first story (the piano nobile). Here an anteroom, with Etruscan urns and fragments of mediaeval sculpture let into the walls, gives access to a great sala, or hall, where Paolo Guinigi entertained the citizens and magnates of Lucca with sumptuous hospitality.
The vaulted ceiling, divided into compartments by heavy panels, is profusely gilt, and painted in fresco by Venetian masters; but the gold is dulled by age, and the frescoes are but dingy patches of what once was color. The walls, ornamented with Flemish tapestry, represent the Seven Labors of Hercules—the bright colors all faded out and blurred like the frescoes. Above, on the surface of polished walnut-wood, between the tapestry and the ceiling, are hung suits of mail, helmets, shields, swords, lances, and tattered banners.
Every separate piece has its history. Each lance, in the hand of some mediaeval hero of the name, has transfixed a foe, every sword has been dyed in the life-blood of a Ghibelline.