But Orosi led onward without letting me tarry to analyze my sensations. We were at a doorway before which a pair of valets in the Forli livery squatted on the pavement killing their time with dice. They leaped up very nimbly, and their caps came off with abject bows at the upraised finger of my conductor. Orosi guided me at once into a dim hall, lighted by high and heavily curtained windows, and motioned to a spacious armchair. “Eccellenza, if you will but deign to repose yourself a little, I will at once seek his Eminence and Madonna. They did not of course expect your fair advent so speedily, but I am sure you have not long to wait.” Before I could answer, I heard the heavy tassels of the arras clicking behind him; I was alone, alone waiting Marianna. The chamber was a veritable segment of Italy. Forli had evidently travelled with all necessary furniture to make himself at home. The chairs were of dark wood, with elegant Florentine carving, and luxurious taffeta upholsteries; the rugs were from Constantinople, the walls were hidden by a series of tapestry cartoons depicting the taking of Carthage by Scipio the Younger. A genuine Roman brazier charged with charcoal sent off its fumes in one corner, dispelling the springtime chill. A Venetian lamp, swung from silver chains over my head, sent a faint ruby gleam through its dome of red crystal. There were books on the table; they proved to be a set of Poggio’s _Facetiae_, and kindred free and merry stories, charmingly bound in white and purple vellum. The odor of the brazier, the dimly mysterious light, the looming of the vague figures on the cartoons, the red twinkling from the lamp, all produced for an instant an effect nigh intoxicating. I threw myself into the cushioned chair, and felt old memory and habits of mind surging back upon me like the billows cast up by an ever advancing tide of ocean. Either because I was not expected or because of design I was held some slight time waiting. At last in a distant chamber I heard a step. Instantly all my senses quivered. I knew I was being profoundly affected, albeit very differently from the manner that other step had moved me when I waited in beggar’s rags at the cold grille by Quedlinburg convent. Suddenly it came over me how even now I was very shabbily clad, and what a mean impression I must make upon any one beholding me. I was execrating all the luck which had involved me in this immediate adventure, when the tapestry parted; Marianna di Forli came straight into my presence. She wore a light blue cendal gown that fell straight down from her shoulders, the height of art in its simplicity. A thin gold chain was her girdle. Her only ornament was a large brooch on her shoulder, but the brooch was set with a Greek antique cameo of vast beauty and price. In the great coil of her dark hair she had set a single white spring flower. In that twilight her face seemed to stand out as a thing self illumined, diffusing its own white light.