Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
I have alluded to the curious, almost inexplicable delight it afforded me to feel in my hands the balance of a pike for the first time. Fain would I tell you something of all that I felt when first my fingers closed about a sword-hilt, the forefinger passed over the quillons in the new manner, as Falcone showed me. But it defies all power of words.
A man-at-arms lounged out of the guardhouse to inquire our business. "Is Madonna Bianca wed yet?" was the breathless greeting I gave him. He peered at me, and then at Falcone, and he swore in some surprise. "Well, returned my lord! Madonna Bianca? The nuptials were celebrated to-day. The bride has gone." "Gone?" I roared. "Gone whither, man?" "Why, to Piacenza to my Lord Cosimo's palace there.
We left Milan that same day, and there followed for some months a season of wandering through Lombardy, going from castle to castle, from tyranny to tyranny, just the three of us Galeotto and myself with Falcone for our equerry and attendant.
At last, when I questioned him, he admitted that during their wanderings, my father, with that recklessness that alternated curiously with his caution, had ventured into the city of Bologna notwithstanding that it was a Papal fief, for the sole purpose of studying with Marozzo that Falcone himself had daily accompanied him, witnessed the lessons, and afterwards practised with my father, so that he had come to learn most of the secrets that Marozzo taught.
And he tapped a document upon the table. Then he fixed his prominent eyes upon Cosimo. "You are aware of its contents?" he asked. Cosimo bowed, and Galeotto moved at last, for the first time since the trial's inception. Until now he had sat like a carved image, save when he had thrust out a hand to restrain Falcone, and his attitude had filled me with an unspeakable dread.
So it was to Falcone that fell the charge of that sweet burden. The last thing I remember was Cavalcanti's laugh, as, from the high ground we had mounted, he stopped to survey a ruddy glare above the city of Piacenza, where, in a vomit of sparks, Cosimo's fine palace was being consumed.
There were grey-headed painters who had hardly been absent more than a few days in five and twenty years from their accustomed tables at such places as the Falcone, the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never joined in any of these little circles for longer than a month or two, by which time he had exhausted the stock of his companions' ideas, and returned to solitude and his own thoughts.
He laughed for answer, with something of exultation in his voice. He swung me to his shoulder, and held me poised there, looking up at me. And then he laughed again. "Dost hear the whelp?" he cried to Falcone. "Still with his milk-teeth in his head, and already does he yelp for battle!" Then he looked up at me again, and swore one of his great oaths. "I can trust you, son of mine," he laughed.
I was on the point of denouncing the deed as it deserved, of denouncing your mother for it to her face. And then I remembered you. I remembered the love I had borne your father, and my duty to him, to see that no such wrong was done you in the end as that which I feared. I reflected that if I spoke the words that were burning my tongue for utterance, I should go as Gino Falcone had gone.
I had thought that even old Falcone might laugh at one predestined to the study of theology, desiring to enter into the mysteries of sword-craft. But my fears were far indeed from having a foundation. There was no laughter in the equerry's grey eyes, whilst the smile upon his lips was a smile of gladness, of eagerness, almost of thankfulness to see me so set.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking