Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/287

Rh has fewer crusts than teeth, poor soul, but has mingled with the highest. She will be all that you could wish, and you more than she could hope for. Think of it, lady, think of it."

"I will," said Olimpia, who had already done so. There is no doubt that she and the Mosca understood each other.

They were now riding up the long lime-tree avenue which leads to the Sea-Gate of Ferrara; soon they entered Ferrara itself, that city of warm red brick, of broad eaves, of laughter, and, as it were, a fairy-tale, bowered in rustling green. The streets ran wide between garden walls and the massy fronts of great square houses; they were full of a traffic which seemed that of a prosperous people bent upon pleasure. Happy ladies rode by with hawks or leashed dogs, or crowns of flowers. Cavaliers, in white and yellow, ribboned, slashed, curled, and feathered, went in and out of the throng to keep an assignation, or to break one. The priests joked with the women, the very urchins coaxed for kisses. Every street corner had its lovers' tryst, never a garden walk without its loitering pair, never a lady came out of a church door but there stood a devout adorer to beg a touch of holy water from her finger-tip.

"How happy this people is," cried Bellaroba, flushed and sparkling, to her little lord. "Everybody loves everybody else."

"My dear, we have nothing to do with their loves; we are going to be married," replied Angioletto, looking straight before him.

"Yes, Angioletto," said she, as meek as a mouse.