In the ensuing silence, which quivered from that cry, there stole
into the heart of Madonna Gemma an emotion more precious, just then,
than the peace that follows absolution--a new-born sense of feminine
dignity, a glorious blossoming of pride, commingled with the
tenderness of an immeasurable gratitude.
About to part for the night, they exchanged a look of tremulous
solemnity.
Her beauty was no longer bleak, but rich--all at once too warm,
perhaps, for a divinity whose only office was the guidance of a
troubadour toward asceticism. His frail comeliness was radiant from
his poetical ecstasy--of a sudden too flushed, one would think, for
a youth whose aspirations were all toward the intangible. Then each
emerged with a start from that delicious spell, to remember the
staring servants.
They said good-night. Madonna Gemma ascended to her chamber.
It was the horse-boy Foresto who, with a curious solicitude and
satisfaction, lighted Raffaele Muti up to bed.
But old Baldo, strolling thoughtfully in the courtyard, caught a
young cricket chirping in the grass between two paving-stones. On
the cricket's back, with a straw and white paint, he traced the Muti
device--a tree transfixed by an arrow. Then he put the cricket into
a little iron box together with a rose, and gave the box to a
man-at-arms, saying:
"Ride to Lapo Cercamorte and deliver this into his hands.
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