Then, one day, Taquisara carried him out to the gate, and set him in the carriage, and Veronica took him for a short drive.  The poor people were, most of them, at their work, but the very old men and the boys and girls turned out, and flocked after the victoria as it moved slowly through the narrow street.  Some of them called out words of simple blessing on the couple, but others hushed them and said that the princess was not really married yet.  Gianluca smiled as he looked into Veronica’s face, and she smiled, too, but less happily.

The weather changed.  There had been a short touch of cold in the air at the end of August, and breezes from the north that poured down from the heights behind the castle, into the tremendous abyss below, and shot up again to the walls and the windows, even as high as the dungeon tower.  Then, at the new moon, the weather had changed, the sky grew warm again, the little clouds hung high and motionless above the peaks, melting from day to day to a serene, deep calm, in which, all the earth seemed to be ripening in a great stillness while heaven held its breath, and the mountains slept.  In the rich valley the grapes grew full and dark, and the last figs cracked with full sweetness in the sun, the pears grew golden, and the apples red, and all the green silver of the olive groves was dotted through and through its shade, with myriad millions of dull green points, where the oil-fruit hung by little stems beneath the leaves.

An autumn began, such as no one in Muro remembered—­an autumn of golden days and dewy moonlight nights, soft, breathless, sweet, and tender.  It was a year of plenty and of much good wine, which is rare in the south, for when the wine is much it is very seldom good.  But this year all prospered, and the people said that the Blessed Mother of God loved the young princess and would bless her, and hers also, and give her husband back his strength, even by a miracle if need should be.

Gianluca clung to the place where he was happy, and would not be taken away.  His mother humoured him, and the old Duca, yearning for his little fair-haired daughter, went alone at last to Avellino.

Then came long conversations at night between the Duchessa and Veronica.  The Duchessa loved her son very dearly, but since he was so much better, she was tired of Muro.  She wished to see her other children.  It was ridiculous to expect that she and her husband should relieve each other as sentries of propriety in Veronica’s castle, the one not daring to go till the other came back.  Why should Veronica not send for the syndic and have the formalities fulfilled?  Once legally, as well as christianly, man and wife, the two could stay in Muro as long as they pleased.