It was riveted upon me, and its expression was one I could not understand.
"Of the love-songs of the Lord Giovanni Sforza," answered he.

"They resemble those poems infinitely more than they resemble the epic you wrote two years ago." I stammered something about the similarity being merely one of subject.
But he shook his head at that, and took good note of my confusion.
"No," said he, "the resemblance goes deeper.

There is the same facile beauty of the rhymes the same freshness of the rhythm--remotely resembling that of Petrarca, yet very different.

Conceits similar to those that were the beauty spots of the Lord Giovanni's verses are ubiquitous in yours, and above all there is the same fervent earnestness, the same burning tone of sincerity that rendered his strambotti so worthy of admiration." "It may be," I answered him, my confusion growing under the steady gaze of Madonna Paola, "it may be that having heard the verses of the Lord Giovanni, I may, unconsciously, have modelled my own lines upon those that made so deep an impression on me." He looked at me gravely for a moment.
"That might be an explanation," he answered deliberately, "but frankly, if I were asked, I should give a very different one." "And that would be ?" came, sharp and compelling, the voice of Madonna.
He turned to her, shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

"Why, since you ask me," he said, "I should hazard the opinion that Lazzaro, here, was of considerable assistance to the Lord Giovanni in the penning of those verses with which he delighted us all--and you, Madonna, I believe, particularly." Madonna Paola crimsoned, and her eyes fell.