Excerpt from Valentino an Historical Romance of the Sixteenth Century in ItalyWithin the enclosure an armorer worked in leisurely fashion at a corselet, a few soldiers were wiping off their harness, two bent over a grindstone, but all of them ever and anon cast a look towards the cook's stalls, where hung a score of slaughtered sheep and pigs, while a dozen menials busied themselves in preparations: for to-night was a feast in honor of the nuptial cor tege from Ferrara Which should presently pass the gates of Rome and betake itself to the Vatican to lay its homage before Lucretia Borgia, on behalf of her new husband, and the garrison was to be regaled with meat stew, and puddings scalded with olive oil, and tuns of the wine of Velletri. The commander surveyed the scene - the passers on the bridge, the neat walk along the rampart ¿anked with heaps of cannon balls and iron bolts for the cross-bowmen, the groups within the walls. Then turning towards the doorway, he called.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.