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It is I who order your departure." Falcone did not answer her; he affected not to hear her, and continued to address himself to me. "You are the master here, my lord," he urged. "You are the law in Mondolfo. You carry life and death in your right hand, and against your will no man or woman in your lordship can prevail."
Presently, however, as we drew nearer to the Palace, a murmur began to rise. It swelled and grew fierce. Suddenly a cry rose vehement and clear. "Rescue! Rescue!" "He is the Lord of Mondolfo," shouted one tall fellow, "and the Cardinal-legate makes a cat's-paw of him! He is to suffer for Messer Gambara's villainy!" Again he was answered by the cry "Rescue!
And then, I suddenly realized why his face was familiar to me. This was the man who in a monkish robe had stared so insistently at me that day at Mondolfo five years ago. He was a sort of outlaw, a remnant of the days of chivalry and free-lances, whose sword was at the disposal of any purchaser.
"You need a condottiero, my lord; and you may come to need one even more than you do now." "I have the Lord of Mondolfo," said the Duke. Galeotto stared at him with round eyes. "The Lord of Mondolfo?" quoth he, intentionally uncomprehending. "You have not heard? Why, here he stands." And he waved a jewelled hand towards Cosimo, a handsome figure in green and blue, standing nearest to Farnese.
By dawn, having in some three hours put twenty miles or so between myself and Piacenza, I staggered exhausted and with cut and bleeding feet through the open door of a peasant's house. The family, sat at breakfast in the stone-flagged room into which I stumbled. I halted under their astonished eyes. "I am the Lord of Mondolfo," I panted hoarsely, "and I need a beast to carry me home."
An hour or so after our first glimpse of the city, our weary beasts brought us up to the Gate of San Lazzaro. But we did not enter, as I had hoped. Messer Arcolano had had enough of me and my questions at Mondolfo, and he was not minded to expose himself to worse behaviour on my part in the more interesting thoroughfares of this great city.
For if any man in Mondolfo attempts to hasten your going, he shall reckon with me." I laid a hand for an instant in kindliness and friendliness upon her shoulder. "Poor little Luisina," said I, sighing. But she shrank and trembled under my touch. "Pity me a little, for they will not permit me any friends, and who is friendless is indeed pitiful."
He was older than my father by a month or so, and as often happens in such cases, he was brought to Mondolfo to be first my father's playmate, and later, no doubt, to have followed him as a man-at-arms.
It was still early morning when we came into the town of Mondolfo, my peasant escort and I. The day being Sunday there was little stir in the town at such an hour, and it presented a very different appearance from that which it had worn when last I had seen it.
The little troop closed round me, and thus, within a couple of hours of my coming, I departed again from Mondolfo, surrendered to the hangman by the pious hands of my mother, who on her knees, no doubt, would be thanking God for having afforded her the grace to act in so righteous a manner. Once only did my cousin address me, and that was soon after we had left the town behind us.
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