There is a dark closet, with a carved wooden cornice and open raftered roof, the walls covered with stamped leather.  Here the family councils assembled.  Next comes a long, narrow, low-roofed gallery, where row after row of portraits and pictures illustrate the defunct Guinigi.  In that centre panel hangs Francesco dei Guinigi, who, for courtesy and riches, surpassed all others in Lucca. (Francesco was the first to note the valor of his young cousin Castruccio, to whom he taught the art of war.) Near him hangs the portrait of Ridolfo, who triumphantly defeated Uguccione della Faggiola, the tyrant of Pisa, under the very walls of that city.  Farther on, at the top of the room, is the likeness of the great Paolo himself—­a dark, olive-skinned man, with a hard-lipped mouth, and resolute eyes, clad in a complete suit of gold-embossed armor.  By Paolo’s side appears Battista, who followed the Crusades, and entered Jerusalem with Godfrey de Bouillon; also Gianni, grand-master of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John—­the golden rose presented to him by the pope in the corner of the picture.

After the gallery come the armory and the chapel.  Beyond at the end of the vaulted passage, lighted from above, there is a closed door of dark walnut-wood.

When the marchesa enters this vaulted passage, her firm, quick step falters.  As she approaches the door, she is visibly agitated.  Her hand trembles as she places it on the heavy outside lock.  The lock yields; the door opens with a creak.  She draws aside a heavy curtain, then stands motionless.

There is such a mist of dust, such a blackness of shadow, that at first nothing is visible.  Gradually, as the daylight faintly penetrates by the open door, the shadows form themselves into definite shapes.

Within a deep alcove, inclosed by a balustrade, stands a bed—­its gilt cornice reaching to the ceiling, heavily curtained.  This is the nuptial-chamber of the Guinigi.  Within that alcove, and in that bed, generation after generation have seen the light.  Not to be born in the nuptial-chamber, and in that bed within the ancestral palace, is not to be a true Guinigi.

The marchesa has taken a step or two forward into the room.  There, wrapped in the shadows, she stands still and trembles.  A terrible look has come into her face—­sorrow, and longing, and remorse.  The history of her whole life rises up before her.

“Is the end, then, come?” she asks herself—­“and with me?”

From pale she had turned ashy.  The long shadows from the dark curtains stretch out and engulf her.  She feels their dark touch, like a visible presence of evil, she shivers all over.  The cold damp air of the chill room comes to her like wafts of deadly poison.  She cannot breathe; a convulsive tremor passes over her.

She totters to the door, and leans for support against the side.  Yet she will not go; she forces herself to remain.  To stand here, in this room, before that bed, is her penance.  To stand here like a criminal!  Ah, God! is she not childless?  Why has she (and her hands are clinched, and her breath comes thick), why has she been stricken with barrenness?