"Have you naught to say ?" "What would you have me say, Madonna?
If this wedding accords with your own wishes, then am I glad." "Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not." "How should I know it, Madonna ?" "Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me.

Think you this petty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceive affection for?
Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded us here; but my love--that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for some very different man.

When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight, a gentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address." "An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonna mia.

But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him ?" "Are there, then, no such men ?" "In the pages of Bojardo and those other poets whom you have read too earnestly there may be." "Nay, there speaks your cynicism," she chided me.

"But even if my ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni--a weak-spirited craven, as witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle him; a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to seek no further instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool, devoid of wit and barren of ambition?
Such is the man they would have me wed.