"Nay, I am not miserable," she answered; but then, recollecting the keen insight of the man she spoke to, she paused and added, "If I am, 'tis but in fits. As an old wound, I am told, long healed, will smart with a change of weather, so at times my heart will ache when something comes to weaken it. But enough of this, maestro. Look at those pictures on the wall. Those three are by one hand, and that the hand of a youth. Are they not beautiful?"
"Nay, they are sublime," replied Leonardo. "Who is the painter? He will one day be one of the mighty men of his day."
"His name is Buonaroti Simoni," replied Leonora, "I brought them with me from Florence. My father has two more, which he will show you."
She thus changed the subject to one of colder interest; but when Leonardo left her, some of his words lingered in her mind, and brought back to her thoughts things which had better been forgotten.
"'Perhaps I might find truth where I least thought,'" said Leonora to herself. "Those were his words. What can he mean? 'There may be those, seemingly more happy, who are more miserable still.' There is something beneath all this; but it is vain--vain--all vain. I will think of it no more;" and yet she thought.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
"Prefect of Romagna!" said Ramiro d'Orco to himself, walking up and down his private cabinet in the castle of Imola; "that may create a conflict of jurisdictions with the vicars of the Church. It is an awkward office to give or to hold."
He spoke in a low voice to himself, and though his words were serious, and implied a difficulty of some magnitude, there was an unwonted smile upon his lip, as if there was something that satisfied him well.
He rang a little silver bell which stood upon the table, and when a servant appeared, ordered him to seek for Father Peter and bring him thither. The man was a long time absent, but Ramiro d'Orco sat quietly, with that well-pleased smile on his lip, gazing at some papers before him, but quite unconscious of the characters with which they were covered. What were his meditations, who can say? for some smiles are not altogether pleasant; and his was far from being benign.
At length the friar appeared--now in reality a friar, for there were strange transformations in those days; assassins sometimes became friars, and friars were not unfrequently assassins.