Messer Gambera touched a spring and it flew apart, showing an exquisite little model of white marble, some twelve inches high.
"Oh! it is beautiful!" said Graziosa, and Visconti looked at her with sparkling eyes.
"You think so? Yes, it will be beautiful—the church of all Lombardy."
"It will be like this, of marble?" she asked, breathless.
"Every inch—from the porch to the pinnacles, and the floor shall be precious mosaic, and the altars crystal and serpentine, jasper and amethyst; men shall spend their lives in carving one pillar, and the price of cities shall pay for the gold that shall be lavished on it. Not in our life will this be done, nor in the lives of those that reign after us—or even they that follow, but finished it shall be, and one of the wonders of the world—and I shall be remembered as he who planned it—to the glory of God and the house of Visconti!"
He turned with shining eyes to the architect, who gazed on him with admiration, with a face that reflected the speaker's own fervor.
"Yes, mine will be the glory, though I shall never see the pinnacles kiss the sky, or hear the mass beneath that marble roof—mine will be the glory—even though I am not buried there, it will be my monument to all eternity!"
Graziosa gazed at him in silence: she could not understand. Gian glanced down at her with a smile.
"Would it not be a worthy tomb, even for a king, Graziosa?"
"For an emperor—but we will not talk of tombs, my lord," she answered, "but of pleasant things, and—and—of something that I have to ask you."