It was, indeed, an evening and a scene such as Lorenzo Visconti had described as fitted for the telling of his own history. All was still and quiet around; the leaves of the vines hardly moved with the light air, the glow of the western sky faded off into deep purple as the eye was raised from the horizon to the zenith; no moving object--no, not a floating cloud, could be seen on any side; and the murmur of the fountain seemed to add to, rather than detract from, the stillness. The three young people--I need not tell the reader who they were---had ranged themselves as their nature or their temporary feelings prompted. On the lowest step Bianca Maria had placed herself, looking up with her sweet confiding eyes towards the young companion whom she almost idolized. On the step above was her cousin Lorenzo; and on a step above them both, but leaning with her elbow on her knee, and her cheek resting on her hand, a little to the right of Lorenzo and the left of Bianca, was Leonora d'Orco, with her dark eyes bent down, drinking in the words of the young soldier. It was a group such as Bronzino might have delighted to paint; for not only were there those colours in it which all Italians love, and all Italian artists take pleasure in blending and harmonizing--the deep browns, which characterise the complexion of their country, with the rarer and exceptional fairness sometimes found among them---the flowing flaxen hair of the North, and its rich crimsons, but in the dress of the three also there were those strong contrasts of harmonious hues, if I may use what may seem at first sight (but only at first sight) a contradiction in terms--the rich red, and the deep green, and the yellow touching upon brown, and the pale blue. How charming, how satisfactory was the art of those old painters in reproducing on the canvas the combinations which nature produces every day. And yet Art, following Nature in its infinite variety, has shown us, in the works of Murillo and some other Spanish artists, that perfect harmony of colouring can afford as much pleasure as harmonized contrasts, and that in painting also there may be Mozarts as well as Beethovens. The evening light fell beautifully upon that young group, as they sat there on the steps of the terrace, and, just glancing round the angle of an old ruined building of Roman date in the gardens below, touched gently and sweetly upon the brow and eyes of Bianca Maria, lighted up the face of Lorenzo, and shone full upon the whole figure of Leonora, as she gazed down upon the speaker.