Yet here sits the Lord Giovanni making merry with balls and masques and burle and banquets, wholly unprepared, wholly unconscious of his peril.

There may be no hand to write a warning on his walls--or else, as in the case of Babylon, the hand will write when it is too late to avert the evil--yet there are not wanting other signs for those that have the wit to read them; nor is a wondrous penetration needed." "And you think then--" she began.
"I think that if you are obdurate with him, he and your brother may hurry you by force into this union.

But if you temporise with half-promises, with suggestions that before Christmas you may grow reconciled to his wishes, he will be patient." "But what if Christmas comes and finds us still in this position ?" "It will need a miracle for that; or, at least, the death of Cesare Borgia--an unlikely event, for they say he uses great precautions.
Saving the miracle, and providing Cesare lives, I will give the Lord Giovanni's reign in Pesaro at most two months." We had halted now, and were confronting each other in the descending gloom.
"Lazzaro, dear friend," she cried, almost with gaiety, "I was wise to take counsel with you.

You have planted in my heart a very vigorous growth of hope." We turned soon after, and started to retrace our steps, for she might be ill-advised to remain absent overlong.
I left her on the terrace in a very different spirit from that in which she had come to me, bearing with me her promise that she would act as I had advised her.

No doubt I had taken a load from her gentle soul, and oddly enough I had taken, too, a load from mine.
Things fell out as I said they would in far as Giovanni Sforza and Filippo were concerned.