Vain! vain! as every scheme of man regarding the future. Fate stands behind the door and laughs while lovers lay their plots. Half the schemes of Lorenzo were needless, and the other half proved impracticable. The cardinal detained them but a short time, and when he returned Lorenzo found he had been throwing away stratagems. "Haste! hand the dear child from her litter," he said, "and both of you come with me. Mona Francesca agrees to receive and protect her as her own child, provided you will give her the security of a French guard; for she mightily fears the Swiss and the Gascons. I have assured her that you will leave twenty men here for the present, and that I will obtain the consent of King Charles to your being quartered with all your troops in the court and the lower story; the men must be quartered somewhere, you know." "Certainly," replied Lorenzo, with almost too much readiness, "and why not here--if it be the wish of your Eminence--as well as elsewhere?" While speaking he advanced to the side of the litter, and aided Leonora to descend. She was somewhat paler than usual, for the feeling of being in a strange city, occupied suddenly by foreign troops, upon whom there was no knowing how soon a fierce and active population might rise, was more terrible to her than even the sight of actual war. Expectation almost always goes beyond reality both in its fears and in its hopes. It is uncertainty which gives its sting to dread. The cardinal, however, took her by the hand and led her into the court-yard, where a few old men and two or three younger, but perhaps not more serviceable persons, were assembled in arms, and turning sharp to the right ascended the great staircase to the principal apartments of the palace. A magnificent hall and several large saloons intervened between the first landing and the smaller cabinet in which Mona Francesca awaited her visitors. What a different personage presented herself at length to the eyes of Leonora and Lorenzo from that which either had expected to behold.