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"Admirably," I answered, adding, as I looked at the appetising dish which sent up its grateful odours from the table, "Put out another plate, knife and fork, and so on; and tell `el capitano' that we shall be very pleased if he will join us at breakfast." The lad stared at us in mute astonishment for a moment, flushing like a bashful girl meanwhile.
We regret that Michelangelo could not carry out a work so congenial to his talent as this ideal portrait of the mighty Signer Capitano would have been; but we may console ourselves by reflecting that even his energies were not equal to all tasks imposed upon him. The real matter for lamentation is that they suffered so much waste in the service of vacillating Popes.
This suspicion increasing, multiplied oppressions; which again, instead of diminishing the suspicion, augmented it; so that most men lived in the utmost discontent. To put a period to the outrageous conduct of Giorgio, it happened that a servant of his accused Giovanni di Cambio of practices against the state, but the Capitano declared him innocent.
"This is natural. And now, Signor Capitano," added Andrea, glancing at, the podest
"One calls himself the Capitano Ciabatti, the other Cavaliere Dursi, at your service," answered Freccia, indifferently. "Good swearers both and hard drinkers filled with stock phrases, such as 'our distinguished dear friend, Ferrari, 'wrongs which can only be wiped out by blood' all bombast and braggadocio! These fellows would as soon be on one side as the other."
The road being narrow, and the men riding two abreast in it, I left the track and rode out into the rough ground as if I wished to reach the chief, crying out "Capitano!" as I passed the leading men, that being about all the Spanish I knew.
And I put my three sous back in my pocket. Capi and Dulcie bent their heads resignedly, but Zerbino, who was not so good, and who besides was a gourmand, continued to growl. I looked at him severely. "Capi, explain to Zerbino, he doesn't seem to understand," I said to faithful Capitano. Capi at once tapped Zerbino with his paw. It seemed as though an argument was taking place between the two dogs.
It is the famous letter of Michelangelo, preserved among the Buonarotti archives, in which he makes a complaint to the Capitano of Cortona, that Signorelli, sick with the ingratitude of the Medici "for the love of whom he would have had his head cut off," had borrowed of him eighty juli with which to return to Cortona; that on application for the money, Luca declared it to have been already repaid, so that now he Michelangelo sees no other way of obtaining his own but by application to the Capitano for justice.
See Perkins's Italian Sculptors, pp. 46, 47. Istoria della Vita e Fatti dell' eccellentissimo Capitano di guerra Bartolommeo Colleoni, scritta per Pietro Spino. Republished, 1859. See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 310, note 2. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap, xvi., may be consulted as to the several claims of the two brothers.
"We won't go into the port, Santa Virgine! We won't go in to be shivered to pieces on the rocks." At this moment our experienced capitano fancied we had got into shoal-water; the surf was seen running in foaming circles, as if in a whirlpool. Now, indeed, our capitano did yelp; now did the crew yelp, invoking all the saints of the Roman calendar, instead of attending to the ship.
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