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Updated: June 11, 2025
An hour later he had left the citadel, and on the stones of the courtyard lay ten golden ducats which he had scattered there, and which not one of the greedy grooms or serving-men could take courage to pick up, so fearful a curse had old Falcone laid upon that money when he cast it from him. That evening my mother talked to me at longer length than I remember her ever to have done before.
"It was on the night that Gino Falcone left us, driven forth by her because she accounted it her duty. Do you remember, Agostino?" "O, I remember!" I answered. "That night," he pursued, "I was angered righteously angered to see so wicked and unchristian an act performed in blasphemous self-righteousness.
Presently he reached a small door close to Sant' Eustachio, one of the several entrances to the ancient Falcone, an inn which has existed for centuries upon the same spot, in the same house, and which affords a rather singular variety of accommodation.
Foreigners did not often find their way into the Nazionale. They were almost as few in number as women, who were very few, for as women in Rome never dined, or so I gathered from my observations at the Posta, the Falcone and the Cavour, they never drank coffee.
It is a musty odour, an odour of staleness which perhaps an open window and the fresh air of heaven might relieve but could not dissipate; and to this is wed, but so subtly that it would be impossible to say which is predominant, the slight, sickly aroma of wax. We supped there that night in silence at about the hour that poor Gino Falcone would be taking his departure.
And then one night, six years later, a scarred and grizzled veteran, coming none knew whence, dropped from exhaustion in the courtyard of our citadel, whither he had struggled. Some went to minister to him, and amongst these there was a groom who recognized him. "It is Messer Falcone!" he cried, and ran to bear the news to my mother, with whom I was at table at the time.
"There stands my foster-brother, who has borne witness to my true identity; there Falcone, who has been my equerry these thirty years; and there are the brothers Pallavicini, who tended me and sheltered me when I lay at the point of death from the wounds that disfigured me at Perugia."
He must suffer more in the knowledge of my unworthiness to be called the son of that master whom he had worshipped than in the destitution that might await him. I reached the door. "My lord! My lord!" he cried after me despairingly. On the very threshold I stood arrested by that heartbroken cry of his. I half turned. "Falcone... " I began. And then my mother's white hand fell upon my wrist.
I must ride on alone." He lay on his back and stared up at me, and his eyes had a glassy stare. Then he roused himself by an effort, and raised himself upon his elbow. "That is it, boy ride on alone. Take Falcone. Listen, there are three score men of mine at Pagliano who will follow you to Hell at a word that Falcone shall speak to them from me. About it, then, and save her. But wait, boy!
With us, too, was Fra Gervasio, our chaplain. It was grim news that old Falcone brought us. He had never quitted my father in those six weary years of wandering until now that my father was beyond the need of his or any other's service. There had been a rising and a bloody battle at Perugia, Falcone informed us.
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