“Ugh!” she cried, shutting it up quickly and making a wry face.  “It is full of salts—­horrible!  I thought it was something good to smell!  Did she think I was going to faint on the way?”

“You do not look like fainting,” remarked San Giacinto, who looked gigantic in a wide fur pelisse.  He put out his great hand, which closed with a sort of rough tenderness over hers, completely hiding it as well as the smelling-bottle she held.  “So it is a satisfaction, is it?” he asked, with a gleam of pleasure in his deep-set eyes.

“If you had been educated under the supervision of the eccellentissima casa Montevarchi, you would understand what a blessed institution marriage is!  You—­what shall I call you—­your name is Giovanni, is it not?”

“Yes—­Giovanni.  Do you like the name?”

“No—­it reminds me of the head of John the Baptist.  I will call you—­let me see—­Nino.  Yes—­that sounds so small, and you are so immensely big.  You are Nino, in future.  I am glad you are big.  I do not like little men.”  She nestled close to the giant, with a laugh that pleased him.

San Giacinto suddenly found that he was very much more in love than he had supposed.  His life had been very full of contrasts, but this was the greatest which had yet presented itself.  He remembered a bright summer’s morning a few years earlier, when he had walked back from the church in Aquila with Felice Baldi by his side.  Poor Felice!  She had worn a very pretty black silk frock with a fine gold chain around her neck, and a veil upon her head, for she was not of the class “that wear hats,” as they say in Rome.  But she had forced her stout hands into gloves, and Giovanni the innkeeper had been somewhat proud of her ladylike appearance.  Her face was very red and there were tears of pleasure and timidity in her eyes, which he remembered very well.  It was strange that she, too, should have been proud of her husband’s size and strength.  Perhaps all women were very much alike.  How well he remembered the wedding collation, the little yellow cakes with a drop of hard pink sugar in the middle of each, the bottles of sweet cordial of various flavours, cinnamon, clove, aniseseed and the like, the bright red japanned tray, and the cheaply gaudy plates whereon were painted all manner of impossible flowers.

Felice was dead, buried in the campo santo of Aquila, with its whitewashed walls of enclosure and its appalling monuments and mortuary emblems.  Poor Felice!  She had been a good wife, and he had been a good husband to her.  She was such a simple creature that he could almost fancy her spirit shedding tears of satisfied pride at seeing her Giovanni married to a princess, rich and about to be metamorphosed into a prince himself.  She had known that he was a Marchese of a great family, and had often begged him to let her be called the Signora Marchesa.  But he had always told her that for people in their position it was absurd.