SARACINI.
Most humble greeting!
Duke Ercole informs your Excellence
This week the wedding-train forsakes Ferrara.
[The Maids of Honour clap their hands.
[Lucrezia springs up, snatching the hat-brim from her hair, which streams round her in dripping gold, as she childishly dances in a giddy circle.
[She pauses breathless and laughing before Messer Saracini.
LUCREZIA.
Ah, you bring joy!
And joy is in my feet as in the lyre-strings
The golden music.
Messer Saracini,
Is the great cortege for my capture started?
Oh, caught in dancing as a mermaiden,
And carried to Ferrara! Shortly
His Holiness will enter Rome, and shortly
The bells will clamour joy above our heads
Till the air dances, and the sunshine dances!
Girls, I will send my jester
Dressed in my newest clothes—the gold-scaled petticoat,
And crimson sleeves—to dance out to the people
My joy, and cry up Viva la Duchcessa,
Viva il Papa! Girls....
[To Saracini.] Oh, you are grave and full of wisdom’s smiling
Behind the gravity!
Clarice, my hat!
Tent me again for the Ambassador.
[Clarice spreads her hair once more over the frame.
SARACINI.
Your future father, the Duke Ercole,
Sends me these pearls, his noble Duchess wore,
For Don Alfonso’s bride—ancestral pearls,
Not lately sea-washed, held by sovereign fingers
While years made generations.