The Villa, which originally was in possession of the Medici family, and subsequently of the Strozzi’s, was afterwards purchased by Count Juliano, one of the most distinguished of the Florentine nobility.
With every personal advantage--youth, high station, and immense wealth, he was married to one his equal in every respect, and might thus have seemed an exception to the lot of humanity, his life realising, as it were, every possible element of happiness. Still he was not happy; amid all the voluptuous enjoyments of a life passed in successive pleasures, the clouded brow and drooping eye told that some secret sorrow preyed upon him, and that his gay doublet in all its bravery covered a sad and sorrowing heart. His depression was generally attributed to the fact that, although now married three years, no child had been born to their union, or any likelihood that he should leave an heir to his great name and fortune. Not even to his nearest friends, however, did any confession admit this cause of sorrow; nor to the Countess, when herself lamenting over her childless lot, did he seem to shew any participation in the grief.
The love of solitude, the desire to escape from all society, and pass hours, almost days, alone in a tower, the only admittance to which was by a stair from his own chamber, had now grown upon him to that extent, that his absence was regarded as a common occurrence by the guests of the castle, nor even excited a passing notice from any one. If others ceased to speculate on the Count’s sorrow, and the daily aversion he exhibited to mixing with the world, the Countess grew more and more eager to discover the source. All her blandishments to win his secret from him were, however, in vain; vague answers, evasive replies, or direct refusals to be interrogated, were all that she met with, and the subject was at length abandoned,--at least by these means.
Accident, however, disclosed what all her artifice had failed in--the key of the secret passage to the tower, and which the Count never entrusted to any one, fell from his pocket one day, when riding from the door; the Countess eagerly seized it, and guessing at once to what it belonged, hastened to the Count’s chamber.