.

THE MERCY OF FRANCESCO.
Monna Valentina and her ladies dined at noon in a small chamber opening from the great hall, and thither were bidden Francesco and Gonzaga.

The company was waited upon by the two pages, whilst Fra Domenico, with a snow-white apron girt about his portentous waist, brought up the steaming viands from the kitchen where he had prepared them; for, like a true conventual, he was something of a master in the confection--and a very glutton in the consumption--of delectable comestibles.

The kitchen was to him as the shrine of some minor cult, and if his breviary and beads commanded from him the half of the ecstatic fervour of his devotions to pot and pan, to cauldron and to spit, then was canonisation indeed assured him.
He set before them that day a dinner than which a better no prince commanded, unless it were the Pope.

There were ortolans, shot in the valley, done with truffles, that made the epicurean Gonzaga roll his eyes, translated through the medium of his palate into a very paradise of sensual delight.