United States or Nauru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He went out, leaving Galeotto and Falcone alone, and the condottiero flung himself into a chair and sat there moodily, deep in thought, still in his dusty garments and with no thought for changing them. Falcone stood by the window, looking out upon the gardens and not daring to intrude upon his master's mood. Thus Cavalcanti found them a hour later when he returned.
"Messer Fabrizio!" murmured Paolo, seeking to restrain his eulogistic interlocutor, what time a faint tinge crept into his bronzed cheeks. But Da Lodi continued, all unheeding: "And shall you, my lord, who have borne yourself so valiantly as a condottiero in the service of the stranger, hesitate to employ your skill and valour against the enemies of your own homeland? Not so, Excellency.
"You need a condottiero, my lord; and you may come to need one even more than you do now." "I have the Lord of Mondolfo," said the Duke. Galeotto stared at him with round eyes. "The Lord of Mondolfo?" quoth he, intentionally uncomprehending. "You have not heard? Why, here he stands." And he waved a jewelled hand towards Cosimo, a handsome figure in green and blue, standing nearest to Farnese.
True there was also Falcone to overhear, appreciate, and grin under cover of his great brown hand. "Does this mean that you are come to your senses on the score of a stipend, Ser Galeotto?" quoth the Duke. "I am not a trader out of the Giudecca to haggle over my wares," replied the burly condottiero. "But I nothing doubt that your magnificence and I will come to an understanding at the last."
The fall of Capua was very shortly followed by that of Gaeta, and, within a week, by that of Naples, which was entered on August 3 by Cesare Borgia in command of the vanguard of the army. "He who had come as a cardinal to crown King Federigo, came now as a condottiero to depose him."
But at sight of this condottiero, whose true aims he was far from suspecting, and whose services he was eager to enlist, the Duke heaved himself up from his seat and went down the staircase shouting greetings to the soldier, and playfully calling him Galeotto in its double sense, and craving to know where he had been hiding himself this while.
"It is not. I am a dolt, a dotard; and I have been the cause of it. Then I shall pay the price." "What price?" quoth the condottiero, pondering the other with an eye that held no faintest gleam of hope. "Within an hour you shall have in your hands the necessary papers to set Agostino at liberty; and you shall carry them yourself to Rome. It is the amend I owe you. It shall be made."
The Lord of Pagliano could not meet the gaze of those steel coloured eyes. "O God!" he groaned. "How shall I tell you?" "Is he dead?" asked Galeotto, his voice hard. "No, no not dead. But... But..." The plight of one usually so strong, so full of mastery and arrogance, was pitiful. "But what?" demanded the condottiero. "Gesu!
He had come to respect and, in his rough way, even to love their masterful Provost, and since learning his true identity, in the hour of arresting him, his admiration had grown to something akin to reverence for the condottiero whose name to the men-at-arms of Italy was like the name of some patron saint.
He dressed himself with sober rigour for once in his foppish life, and descended, after night had fallen, to a tavern in a poor street behind the Duomo, hoping that there, among the dregs of wine, he might find what he required. By great good fortune he chanced upon an old freebooting captain, who once had been a meaner sort of condottiero, but who was sorely reduced by bad fortune and bad wine.
Word Of The Day