Leaving Gismondo with his company to follow, I pushed on with the ladies at full gallop towards the villa: they were both expert horsewomen, and quite outstripped me, as we flew along the sandy marino. Their merry laughter and taunting cries of "Fi! fi! Signor Capitano," were very galling to me; for I was considered the best horseman (except Lascelles) on the Sicilian staff, and had twice won the regimental and brigade cup at the Palermitan races. "On my honour! ladies, if I held the reins of my brave English grey instead of those of a chubby Calabrian horse, you would not have distanced me thus," said I, when they halted to let me come up with them. The battery erected by the soldiers of Sir Louis de Watteville was now abandoned and demolished; the cannon were away, and the platforms overgrown with luxuriant grass. How stirringly my time had passed since the morning when our army landed on the beach close by! The moment we rode into the quadrangle of the villa, the clattering hoofs roused the whole household, as the blast of a trumpet would have done. To be brief: great was the joy diffused by our arrival. We disturbed the old viscontessa from cards, with which she was rapidly gaining from old Adriano all the ducats she had paid at confessional an hour before for peccadilloes. The young visconte, pale and worn with long illness of mind and body, received the trembling Francesca to his arms as if she had been restored to him from the tomb. The Italians are peculiarly exciteable, and his transports were wild in the extreme. He had expected to behold his bride no more; and now she was hanging on his bosom, free, happy, and more beautiful than ever. As I had long foreseen, he placed in my hand that of his blushing cousin, Bianca; while the venerable viscontessa wept and prayed with joy, scattered a handful of cards and counters over us, in her confusion, and embraced us by turns. The whole household, male and female, from Andronicus the chasseur to the little ragazzo who turned the spits, joined in a general chorus of joy; they commenced the furious tarantella in the quadrangle, and the whole mansion rang with shouts: which were soon to be changed for those of a less agreeable nature.