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What mercy did you ever show to any that you dare ask now for mercy?" He looked at me with dazed eyes, and from me to Galeotto. He shuddered and turned a greenish hue. His knees were loosened by terror, and he sank back into the chair from which he had risen. "At least... at least," he gasped, "let me have a priest to shrive me. Do not... do not let me die with all my sins upon me!"
Of a law denying all aliens to enter into China, and forbidding all the inhabiters under a great penalty to let in any stranger into those countries, shall you read in the report of Galeotto Petera, there imprisoned with other Portuguese, as also in the Japanese letters, how for that cause the worthy traveller Xavierus bargained with a barbarian merchant for a great sum of pepper to be brought into Canton, a port in Cathay.
"Ser Cosimo," he said, "has pronounced this memorial a false and lying document. Is there anything that you, Messer Galeotto, as its author, can have to tell the Court?" Instantly the condottiero rose, his great scarred face very solemn, his eyes brooding.
I looked at him helplessly, and from him to Galeotto who stood there, his black brows knit; watching me with intentness as if great issues hung upon my answer. And Gervasio's words touched in my mind some chord of memory. They were words that I had heard before or something very like them, something whose import was the same. Then I groaned miserably and took my head in my hands.
Since Galeotto placed his resources at my disposal, to be repaid him later when I should have entered upon the enjoyment of my heritage of Mondolfo, I did not scruple to draw upon them for my needs. I accepted the fine linen and noble raiment that he offered, and I took pleasure in the brave appearance that I made in them, my face shorn now of its beard and my hair trimmed to a proper length.
Extortion had reduced them to poverty and despair and their very houses were being pulled down to supply material for the new citadel, the Duke recking little who might thus be left without a roof over his head. "He has gone mad," said Galeotto, and laughed. "Pier Luigi could not more effectively have played his part so as to serve our ends.
Lastly "And that is the price he consented to pay," I cried wildly. "His daughter that sweet virgin was the price! And at this hour, maybe, the price is paid and that detestable bargain consummated. O, Galeotto! Galeotto! Why was I not left to rot in that dungeon of the Inquisition since I could have died happily, knowing naught of this?" "By the Blood of God, boy!
Of this memorial he prepared two copies, and to these as witnesses of all the facts therein related Bianca, Falcone, and I appended our signatures, and Fra Gervasio added his own. One of these copies Galeotto dispatched to the Pope, the other to Ferrante Gonzaga in Milan, with a request that it should be submitted to the Emperor.
Similar in simplicity of construction is another poem, the work of Serafino Aquilano, which deals with the corruption of the Church, and was performed at Rome during the carnival of 1490 . An advance in dramatization is made by an eclogue of Galeotto Del Carretto's, written in 1492, in honour of the newly elected Alexander VI, in that one character enters upon the scene after the other has been discoursing for some time; while another, the work of Gualtiero Sanvitale, contains three speakers, of whom one enters towards the close, and is called upon to decide between the other two.
"Sir," said I, "I could not desire otherwise with any who was my father's friend. You are not, perchance, the Gran Galeotto?" I inquired, remembering the sable device on argent of which the priest had told me. "I am that same," he answered, and I looked with interest upon one whose name had been ringing through Italy these last few years.
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