"Lorenzo Visconti is our cousin, sir," replied Charles, somewhat sternly; "and, were he not so, we suffer no one to comment on our will in ordaining how we shall be served. If Pierre de Terrail hesitates at the honour we confer on him so young, because we name our own kindred to a higher command at a younger age, let him remain as he is. We will not resent such conduct, but we will make him feel that we are King of France." There was sufficient irritation in his tone to induce the young officer to withdraw; and he left the king's presence, repeating to himself, "Our cousin! I see not how that is; but we are all cousins in Adam, God wot; and the affinity must be somewhere thereabout, I take it. Well, God send me some royal cousins, or right noble ones, for 'tis the only road to promotion in this world." CHAPTER IV. It was early in the month of September. The grapes were already purple with the draughts of sunshine which they had drunk in through a long, ardent summer, and the trees had already begun to display "the sear and yellow leaf"--early, early, like those who exhaust in life's young day all the allotted pleasures of man's little space. The autumn had fallen upon them soon. Yet it was a lovely scene, as you gazed from one of those little monticules which stud the Lombard plains. There is something in the descent from the mountains into Italy which seems to anticipate the land--not so much in its physical as in its moral features; a softness, a gentleness, a gracefulness which is all its own, while round about, unseen, but felt in every breeze, is the dark, pestilential swamp, gloomy and despairing, or else a brighter but more treacherous land, fair to the eye, but destructive to vitality, which lures but to destroy. One easily conceives the character of a large portion of the people of the middle ages in Italy from the aspect of the land. But it is of the people of the middle ages only. One can hardly derive any notion of the ancient Roman from the characteristics of the country till one plunges into the Campagna, where the stern, hard features of the scenery seem to represent that force which, alas! has passed away.