But he was restless and discontented.

He longed to begin the fight, and could not sleep for thinking of it.

Like Giovanni, he was strong and revengeful; but Giovanni had from his mother a certain slowness of temperament, which often deterred him from action just long enough to give him time for reflection, whereas the father, when roused, and he was roused easily, loved to strike at once.

It chanced one evening, in a great house, that Saracinesca came upon the Cardinal standing alone in an outer room.

He was on his way into the reception; but he had stopped, attracted by a beautiful crystal cup of old workmanship, which stood, among other objects of the kind, upon a marble table in one of the drawing-rooms through which he had to pass.