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Updated: July 19, 2025
He spoke, too, of sending my cousin to Perugia, where a strong hand was needed, as the town showed signs of mutiny against the authority of the Holy See. When he had departed, Messer Fifanti permitted himself one of his bitter insinuations. "He desires a clear field," he said, smiling his cold smile upon Giuliana. "It but remains for him to discover that his Duke has need of me as well."
Besides," I ended, "it is impossible to incriminate me without incriminating Giuliana and, Messer Pier Luigi seems, I should say, unwilling to relinquish the lady to the brutalities of a tribunal." "You are greatly daring," said he, and he was pale now, for in that last mention of Giuliana, it seemed that I had touched him where he was still sensitive. "Daring?" I rejoined.
Do you not see how fiercely love of you is torturing me how I burn that you can so cruelly deny me?" It was Farnese's voice. Cosimo, that dastard, had indeed carried out the horrible compact of which Giuliana had warned me, carried it out in a more horrible and inhuman manner than even she had suggested or suspected.
But since none would give way they were forced in the end to depart together. And whilst Messer Fifanti, as became a host, was seeing them to their horses, I was left alone with Giuliana. "Why do you suffer those men?" I asked her bluntly. Her delicate brows were raised in surprise. "Why, what now? They are very pleasant gentlemen, Agostino."
Doctor Fifanti was writing busily at the table when I intruded. He looked up, thrusting his horn-rimmed spectacles high upon his peaked forehead. "What the devil!" quoth he very testily. "I thought you were in the garden with Madonna Giuliana." "My Lord Gambara is there," said I. He crimsoned and banged the table with his bony hand.
"The teaching might come more aptly from Monna Giuliana," said he, and smiled very boldly across at Fifanti's lady who sat beside me, whilst a frown grew upon the prodigious brow of the pedant. "Indeed, indeed," the Cardinal murmured, considering her through half-closed eyes, "there is no man but may enter Paradise at her bidding."
And there was something else to impose restraint upon me. Hitherto the memory of Giuliana had come to haunt me in my hermitage, by arousing in me yearnings which I had to combat with fasting and prayer, with scourge and dice. Now the memory of her haunted me again; but in a vastly different way.
"Do you think these poor laths can save you from my vengeance, my Lord Gambara?" quoth he, with a chuckle horrible to hear. My Lord Gambara! He mistook me for the Legate! In an instant I saw the reason of this. It was as Giuliana had conceived. The boy had run to warn him wherever he was at Roncaglia, perhaps, a league away upon the road to Parma.
It was no matter that conscience told me that here was no affair of mine; that Giuliana belonged to the past from which I was divorced, the past for which I must atone and seek forgiveness. I must know. And so I rode along the dusty highway in pursuit of Messer Gambara, who was proceeding, I imagined, to join the Duke at Parma. I had no difficulty in following them.
And the greatest blame of all he attached to that Messer Arcolano who had recommended Fifanti to my mother as a tutor for me, knowing full well as he must have known what manner of house the doctor kept and what manner of wanton was Giuliana.
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