In the herse were two persons--a boy and a girl--fast clasped in each other's arms: she sobbing upon his breast, he comforting her with hot kisses upon her lips. They were Pietro de' Buonaventuri and Bianca de' Cappelli. The elopement was complete, and all Pietro's manhood rose as he held his sweetheart in a strong embrace: he would guard her with his life, come what might. He knew they were safe from present pursuit, for to none had he revealed his plans; but he also knew that a price would be set upon their heads, and daggers dodge their course. Stepping lightly ashore with his sweetheart, the young man paid his boatmen and bade them not hurry back to Venice. Then the young couple took the road to Bologna, on their way to Florence. They had very little money between them, but Bianca had stuffed into her pocket her jewellery and Pietro had just received his quarter's salary. At the Cappello mansion, on the morrow, was a scene of wild confusion. Messer Bartolommeo Cappello was like a madman; he demanded his daughter at the hand of her faithful maid, Maria del Longhi, and laid the matter at once before the Supreme Council. On enquiry, Pietro Buonaventuri, who had been for long Bianca's most favoured admirer, was neither at the Salviati bank, where he was occupied as a clerk, nor at his lodgings. The daughter of a Venetian patrician gone off with a banker's clerk! The idea maddened the old man--he would trace them, and punish them, and all who had assisted their flight. Messer Giovanni Battista Buonaventuri, Pietro's uncle, the manager of the bank; Bianca's maid and her parents; the two _gondolieri_ and their wives; and ever so many others were cast into prison. No news came of the erring couple, and now they were well ahead of pursuit. Two thousand ducats was the blood-money offered for Pietro, dead or alive. Assassins bought for gold followed on the road to Florence, but never caught up their quarry. Messer Bartolommeo's vengeance knew no bounds, and his new wife, Madonna Lucrezia de' Grimani-Contarini fanned the flames. She hated Bianca. The winter sun had long ago set beyond the stone-pines of Monte Oliveto, and the deep blue Tuscan sky had turned to sober slate, purpled with the fading glow of northern crimson. It was a night near Christmas, and Ser Zenobio Buonaventuri sat at his table, in his modest little one-storied house on the Piazza San Marco, putting the finishing touches to his _précis_ of the day's notarial work, in the Corte della Mercanzia. His worthy spouse, Madonna Costanza's weary fingers had just completed the stitching of the last of twelve pairs of kid gloves, for her employers, of the Guild of the Fur and Skin Merchants--the Salvetti, who were her relatives.