statement.

Dismissing the guards he strolled with me in the most amicable manner,
informing me of many events which had happened during my absence in
France.

The first in importance to himself was the fact that he was more madly
than ever in love with the Duchess, and that she having experienced the
brutality of one husband had no mind to venture another, and had
announced her firm intention to remain a widow for the rest of her
life.

In spite of this he had told her of his love, but she had treated him as
a child and made sport of his passion.

"I shall die of her disdain," he said to me, "for my love is beyond my
power to conquer."

Taking him by the hand and perceiving that he was in a fever, and that
unless some hope was extended to him he must lose either his life or his
reason, I counselled him to keep a stout heart. "For," said I, "though
you are young it is a fault which will lessen as years go by, and the
Emperor surely will not look upon his daughter's repugnance to marriage
with approval. Rumour hath it that he is on his way to punish, for a
second time, the Moorish pirates who are back in their old nest at
Tunis. When he visits Rome you should persuade the Pope to intercede
with him in your behalf."

"As if I had not already thought of that!" Ottavio replied. "I have
freely opened my heart to my grandfather, and he has negotiated with the
Emperor, who is as favourable to an alliance with a Farnese Pope as he
was to a similar compact with the Medici. Charles could force his
daughter to accept me, as he compelled her to marry Alessandro; but I
will not win her in that way, and she despises me, doubtless, for what
she considers my pusillanimity.

"When I pleaded with her but yesterday bidding her set me any task to
accomplish as a proof of my love--she laughed scornfully, saying that
she had no lack of pages to fetch and carry unless it were to demand of
Benvenuto Cellini the casket which he had forgotten to return to her.

"Then, though I knew that you, Benvenuto, were accounted a desperate
man, I swore to her that I would not enter her presence again until I
had fulfilled her behest. Yea, and I will fulfil it, for I will sail
with the Emperor on this expedition to Tunis and will find the hag Afra
and wrest it from her."

"Your determination," I replied, "is a good one, and, as the adventure
appeals to me, I will go with you. I have already met Hayraddin,
commander of the Corsairs and brother o