“Dear dame, you are always so biting.  You know you said you wished to retire into a convent, and I was too troublesome a charge for you.  But you delight in rebuking me, justly or unjustly.”

“My task is over,” said Ursula, with a deep-drawn sigh.

The boy answered not; and the old woman retired with a heavy step, and, it may be, a heavier heart.  When he joined her in their common apartment, he observed what his joy had previously blinded him to—­that Ursula did not wear her usual plain and sober dress.  The gold chain, rarely assumed then by women not of noble birth—­though, in the other sex, affected also by public functionaries and wealthy merchants—­glittered upon a robe of the rich flowered stuffs of Venice, and the clasps that confined the vest at the throat and waist were adorned with jewels of no common price.

Angelo’s eye was struck by the change, but he felt a more manly pride in remarking that the old lady became it well.  Her air and mien were indeed those of one to whom such garments were habitual; and they seemed that day more than usually austere and stately.

She smoothed the boy’s ringlets, drew his short mantle more gracefully over his shoulder, and then placed in his belt a poniard whose handle was richly studded, and a purse well filled with florins.

“Learn to use both discreetly,” said she; “and, whether I live or die, you will never require to wield the poniard to procure the gold.”

“This, then,” cried Angelo, enchanted, “is a real poniard to fight the robbers with!  Ah, with this I should not fear Fra Moreale, who wronged thee so.  I trust I may yet avenge thee, though thou didst rate me so just now for ingratitude.”

“I am avenged.  Nourish not such thoughts, my son, they are sinful; at least I fear so.  Draw to the board and eat; we will go betimes, as petitioners should do.”

Angelo had soon finished his morning meal, and sallying with Ursula to the porch, he saw, to his surprise, four of those servitors who then usually attended persons of distinction, and who were to be hired in every city, for the convenience of strangers or the holyday ostentation of the gayer citizens.

“How grand we are today!” said he, clapping his hands with an eagerness which Ursula failed not to reprove.

“It is not for vain show,” she added, “which true nobility can well dispense with, but that we may the more readily gain admittance to the palace.  These princes of yesterday are not easy of audience to the over humble.”

“Oh! but you are wrong this time,” said the boy.  “The Tribune gives audience to all men, the poorest as the richest.  Nay, there is not a ragged boor, or a bare-footed friar, who does not win access to him sooner than the proudest baron.  That’s why the people love him so.  And he devotes one day of the week to receiving the widows and the orphans;—­and you know, dame, I am an orphan.”

Ursula, already occupied with her own thoughts, did not answer, and scarcely heard, the boy; but leaning on his young arm, and preceded by the footmen to clear the way, passed slowly towards the palace of the Capitol.