The one had pictured her distant cousin as a tall, thin, acerb-looking Madonna, more fitted for the cloister than the world. The other had figured her as a portly commanding dame, to whose behests all were to bow obsequiously. But there sat the future guardian of Leonora, the picture of good-humoured indolence. The remains of a very beautiful face, a countenance rather sweet than firm, a figure which might have once been pretty, but which was now approaching the obese, a pretty foot stretched out from beneath her dress, with fine hair and teeth, made up almost altogether the sum of Mona Francesca. She had been for ten years a virtuous wife. She had been for twelve or thirteen years a discreet and virtuous widow. She loved her ease and her independence too well to risk again matrimony, once tried, and with some feelings of devotion, and a good deal both of time and money to spare, she had gained with the clergy and with the religious orders of Florence almost the character of a saint--by doing nothing either wrong or right. She welcomed Leonora kindly, and perhaps none the less that she was accompanied by a young and handsome cavalier,--for though her weaknesses never deviated into indiscretions, he had a great taste for the beautiful, and was a true connoisseur of masculine beauty. She made Leonora sit beside her, and gave Lorenzo her jewelled hand to kiss, entering with him at once into a conversation which might have been long, had not the impatient cardinal interfered. "Well, well," he exclaimed, "you can talk with him about all that hereafter. You will have plenty of time. At present we must follow the king to the Podesta." "Stay, stay," cried Mona Francesca. "Do not forget he is to leave twenty men on guard. Ah! I fear those dreadful Frenchmen terribly! They tell me the widows suffered more than any at Vivizano." "I doubt it," said the cardinal; but Lorenzo consoled her, by assuring her that twenty men should certainly be left to protect her, without adding that they were all those dreadful Frenchmen whom she seemed to fear so much; and then followed the cardinal to the court-yard, where his arrangements were soon made. A French ensign was hung out above the great gate, a couple of soldiers stationed on guard in the street, and a sufficient force left within to ensure the safety of the place against any body of those licentious stragglers which followed all armies in those days in even greater numbers than they do at present.