Whereupon, cringes into the presence-chamber of the angry dame, shaking in his shoes, and with many a profound obeisance, an old acquaintance of our own—no other than gossiping Messer Leon Cobelli, musician, painter, ballet master, and historian! He, in his capacity of painter, while dreaming of festivals to be arranged, enjoyed, and afterwards chronicled by himself, had mingled those tints in so detestable mesalliance. [Sidenote: LEON COBELLI.] Off to the gate-house prison with him, there to meditate on the difference between scribbling his history, when his lords had enacted it, and presuming to arrange it for them beforehand. So poor Cobelli is forthwith marched off in high dudgeon, and had awful thoughts,[122] in his anger, of condemning his liege lady to sudden and irreparable forfeiture of an immortality of glory by burning his chronicle of her deeds; but the reflection, that in that case he, Leon Cobelli, ballet-master to the court, would himself share in the condemnation, happily arrested his hand before the sacrifice was consummated. So thoroughly did the high and haughty dame impress on the frightened Forlìvesi the expediency of holding their tongues and not opening too wide their eyes in respect to matters of such delicate nature, and so much above them, that when, not long afterwards, there really was somewhat of the sort to talk about, such a discreet silence was observed, as almost to have defeated the detective investigations of Mnemosyne herself. Tommaso Feo was, as has been seen, governor of the citadel of Forlì for Catherine, having been placed there by herself on a very critical occasion. It has been seen, also, how well and zealously he acquitted himself of his trust in the difficult circumstances following upon the assassination of the Count. He came from Savona, Girolamo's birthplace, and had been for many years a faithful follower of the fortunes of the Riarii. Now, this Tommaso Feo had a brother, Giacomo, not yet twenty years old, a remarkably handsome youth, "very tall, excellently well-made, of a beautiful pink complexion, courteous and pleasant with all, both high and low, and well skilled in all manly and knightly exercises."[123] This well-favoured youth had been looked on with a very approving eye by the high and puissant dame, his sovereign lady. And the circumstance of her having, a short time previously, given a lady, who was a relative of her own, in marriage to Tommaso Feo, his brother, made it seem natural that both the young men should be admitted more freely into the society of the Countess than might otherwise have been expected.