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As observed above, Niccolo Piccinino was abandoned by King Alfonso, and the count having been aggrandized by the assistance of the Florentines, attacked and routed him near Fermo, where, after losing nearly the whole of his troops, Niccolo fled to Montecchio, which he fortified in such a manner that in a short time he had again assembled so large an army as enabled him to make head against the count; particularly as the season was now come for them to withdraw into quarters.
Through the narrow winding streets of graceful Vicenza, across the arcaded market-place of old Verona, past the stately ruins of Montecchio, till the road reached the foothills of the Alps. Then up by hairpin turns, gaining an ever wider view of the vast plain lying in a morning haze beyond which you knew was Venice and the blue Adriatic, then down by winding ways into a valley.
In default of pleasant stories of filthy intrigue or lewd jest, men like Cinthio and Bandello will gabble off occasionally some tragic story, picked out of a history book or recently heard from a gossip: the stories of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, of Disdémona and the Moorish Captain, of Roméo Montecchio and Giulietta Cappelletti, of the Cardinal d'Aragona and the Duchess of Amalfi, of unknown grotesque Persian Sophis and Turkish Bassas stories of murder, massacre, rape, incest, anything and everything, prattled off, with a few words of vapid compassion and stale moralizing, in the serene, cheerful, chatty manner in which they recount their Decameronian escapades or Rabelaisian repartees.
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