Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
"Look you, Ser Agostino, I could kill you and take joy in it. I could, by God!" His eyes upon me, he drew from his breast a folded paper. "Instead, I bring you liberty. I open your doors for you, and bid you escape. Here, man, take this paper. Present it to the officer at the Fodesta Gate. He will let you pass. And then away with you, out of the territory of Piacenza."
I dug my heels into the mule's sides and started across the silent, empty square, then plunged into a narrow street where the gloom was almost as of midnight, and so pushed on. I came out into the open space before the Porta Fodesta, and so to the gate itself.
Behind us the flames began to lick out from the ground floor of Cosimo's palace. We reached the Porta Fodesta, and peremptorily bade the guard to open for us. He answered, as became his duty, with the very words that had been addressed to me at that place on a night two years ago: "None passes out to-night."
Presently I drew rein again with exclamations of delight and surprise to see the wonderful bridge of boats that spanned the river a little higher up. But we had reached our destination. Arcolano called a halt at the gates of a villa that stood a little way back from the road on slightly rising ground near the Fodesta Gate.
And so did they now, here at the Fodesta Gate, but with this difference, that, at last, I overheard for once what was said, for there was one who did not whisper. "There goes the leman of my Lord Gambara," quoth a gruff, sneering voice, "the light of love of the saintly legate who is starving Domenico to death in a cage for the sin of sacrilege."
Our great fear was lest we should find the gates of Piacenza closed on our arrival. But we covered the ten miles in something under an hour, and the head of our little column was already through the Fodesta Gate when the first hour of night rang out from the Duomo, giving the signal for the closing of the gates.
We went by way of the Fodesta Gate, and passed the old Castle of Sant' Antonio, then in ruins for Gambara was demolishing it and employing the material to construct a barrack for the Pontifical troops that garrisoned Piacenza.
As we were passing the Porta Fodesta, a little group of country-folk that had gathered there fell away before us, all eyes upon the dazzling beauty of Giuliana as, indeed, had been the case ever since we had come into the town, so that I had been singularly and sweetly proud of being her escort.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking