The marchesa takes up each object and examines it. She counts the gold-pieces, putting them back again one by one in rows, by tens and twenties. She handles the crisp bank-notes. She does this over and over again so slowly and so carefully, it would seem, as if she expected the money to grow under her fingers. She has placed all in order before her—the jewels on one side, the money and the notes on the other. As she moves them to and fro on the smooth marble with the points of her long fingers, she shakes her head and sighs. Then she touches a secret spring, and a drawer opens from under the table. Into this drawer she deposits all that lies before her, her fingers still clinging to the gold.
After a while she rises, and casting a parting glance at the portrait of Castruccio—among all her ancestors Castruccio was the object of her special reverence—she moves leisurely onward through the various apartments lying beyond the presence-chamber.
The doors, draped with heavy tapestry curtains, are all open. It is a long, gloomy suite of rooms, where the sun never shines, looking into the inner court.
The marchesa's steps are noiseless, her countenance grave and pale. Here and there she pauses to gaze into the face of a picture, or to brush off the dust from some object specially dear to her. She pauses, minutely observing every thing around her.
There is a dark closet, with a carved wooden cornice and open raftered roof, the walls covered with stamped leather. Here the family councils assembled. Next comes a long, narrow, low-roofed gallery, where row after row of portraits and pictures illustrate the defunct Guinigi. In that centre panel hangs Francesco dei Guinigi, who, for courtesy and riches, surpassed all others in Lucca. (Francesco was the first to note the valor of his young cousin Castruccio, to whom he taught the art of war.) Near him hangs the portrait of Ridolfo, who triumphantly defeated Uguccione della Faggiola, the tyrant of Pisa, under the very walls of that city. Farther on, at the top of the room, is the likeness of the great Paolo himself—a dark, olive-skinned man, with a hard-lipped mouth, and resolute eyes, clad in a complete suit of gold-embossed armor. By Paolo's side appears Battista, who followed the Crusades, and entered Jerusalem with Godfrey de Bouillon; also Gianni, grand-master of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John—the golden rose presented to him by the pope in the corner of the picture.
After the gallery come the armory and the chapel. Beyond at the end of the vaulted passage, lighted from above, there is a closed door of dark walnut-wood.
When the marchesa enters this vaulted passage, her firm, quick step falters. As she approaches the door, she is visibly agitated. Her hand trembles as she places it on the heavy outside lock. The lock yields; the door opens with a creak. She draws aside a heavy curtain, then stands motionless.
There is such a mist of dust, such a blackness of shadow, that at first nothing is visible. Gradually, as the daylight faintly penetrates by the open door, the shadows form themselves into definite shapes.
Within a deep alcove, inclosed by a balustrade, stands a bed—its gilt cornice reaching to the ceiling, heavily curtained. This is the nuptial-chamber of the Guinigi. Within that alcove, and in that bed, generation after generation have seen the light. Not to be born in the nuptial-chamber, and in that bed within the ancestral palace, is not to be a true Guinigi.
The marchesa has taken a step or two forward into the room. There, wrapped in the shadows, she stands still and trembles. A terrible look has come into her face—sorrow, and longing, and remorse. The history of her whole life rises up before her.