The result is well known. A large sum of money, part of which found its way into the purses of the king's counsellors, and vague promises of alliance and security, were all that the Florentines had to pay; and the lesson of the morning was sufficiently impressive to produce better discipline and forbearance amongst the French troops than they had exercised elsewhere.
CHAPTER XX.
On, those days of happiness, how soon they come to an end! Poets and philosophers have attempted in vain to convey to the mind by figures and by argument the brevity of enjoyment, and the great master only came near the truth when he declared it was--
"Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say--Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up."
Enjoyment is the most brief of all things, for its very nature is to destroy time. Like the fabled monster of one of the Indian tribes--we drink up the waters in which we float, and leave ourselves at last on a dry and arid shore. But if enjoyment be so transient, hope is permanent. Well did the ancients represent her as lingering behind after all else had flown out of the casket of Pandora. She does linger still in the casket of every human heart, whether it be joys or evils that pass away.
"Quando il miser dispera
La speranza parla e dice,
Sta su, tienti, vivi, e spera
Che sarai ancor felice.
* * * *
"Ogni casa al mondo manca
La speranza mai si perde."
So sang Serafino l'Aquilano, a poet of the days of Lorenzo and Leonora, and for a time at least they found the song true.
Hope remained after happiness had passed; but yet how bright were those days and nights of happiness which the two young lovers passed in Florence!
Are you old enough to have forgotten, reader, how, in your early youth, you deified the object of your love? How her very presence seemed to spread an atmosphere of joy around her? How her look was sunshine and her voice the song of a seraph? Can you remember it? Then think what must have been the feelings of Lorenzo Visconti and Leonora d'Orco, at an age when the fire of passion is the brightest, because the purest--where all those attributes of beauty, and grace, and excellence with which imagination is wont to invest the beloved objects were really present, and when the fancy of the heart spread her wings from a higher point than she commonly can find on earth. Think what must have been their feelings when in a lovely climate, amidst beautiful scenes, in a land of song, where the treasures of ancient and of modern art were just beginning to unfold themselves--the one issuing from the darkness of the past, the other dawning through the twilight of the future; think what must have been their feelings, when, in such scenes and with such accessories to the loving loveliness in their own hearts, they were suffered, almost unrestrained, to enjoy each other's society to the full, when and where they liked.
The old cardinal, plunged deep in politics and worldly schemes and passions, took little heed of them. Mona Francesca was no restraint upon them. Sometimes in long rambles by the banks of the Arno, sometimes mingling with the gay masked multitudes that thronged the streets on the clear soft autumnal nights, sometimes seated in the beautiful gardens of the city of flowers, sometimes reposing in the luxurious apartments of the Casa Morelli, the days and greater part of the nights were passed during the stay of the French army in Florence. It was a dream of joy, and it passed as a dream.