certain personages of exalted station
and of choleric temper, quick and able to revenge any imputation upon
their honour were concerned in the adventures of the casket, so that I
deemed it prudent during their lifetime to withhold a recital which I
trust my present reader may find of a diverting nature.

This casket was conceded by all connoisseurs in such matters to be the
most admirable work of its kind hitherto produced. It was crowned by a
statuette of Hercules, with other most exquisite figurines at the
four corners, set upon feet of crouching sphinxes, half women and half
panthers, and was further enriched by reliefs of laughing boys holding
garlands, by grotesque masks and foliages of the most graceful and
ingenious design that could possibly be conceived.

[Illustration: Villa Madama--Interior]

I had been to infinite pains, as was but fitting since the Duke proposed
to present it to his betrothed, Margaret Duchess of Parma, daughter of
the Emperor Charles the Fifth, to whom he was to be married at Naples on
the return of her father from his glorious expedition against the
Turkish Corsairs. This marriage had been arranged for his "nephew" by
Pope Clement VII. on his pacification with the Emperor after the taking
of Rome, but its consummation had been hitherto delayed on account of
the tender age of the bride. Now, however, she was upon her way to meet
her father. Therefore the Duke requested me to serve as his messenger in
presenting these gifts, whose excellencies I of any person in the world
was most competent to explain and extol.

Instructed that the Duchess Margaret would rest upon her journey at the
villa which Raphael had built for the Pope upon the slopes of Monte
Mario, and which Clement had bestowed upon her as a part of her dowry, I
repaired thither before entering the gates of Rome.

I had been told by the Duke to ask upon my arrival not for the Duchess
but for Monna Afra, who had been installed as housekeeper of the villa
by the Pope when he was as yet only young Cardinal Giulio de' Medici,
and his personal affairs were not submitted to the glare which surrounds
the tiara.

Whatever these may have been, Monna Afra, though once a Moorish slave,
and of dark complexion and uncertain temper, was not without a certain
savage beauty, or would have been but for the marks of tattooing between
her eyes, and, though well advanced in years, carried herself erect with
a dignity worthy of royal descent.