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Updated: June 21, 2025
For never yet had I been so addressed in my lordship of Mondolfo. To all there I was just the Madonnino. But to Falcone, in that supreme hour of his need, I was become his lord. "My lord," he said, then. "Is it your wish that I should go?" I drew back, still wrought upon by my surprise; and then my mother's voice came cold and acid. "The Madonnino's wish is not concerned in this, Mester Falcone.
I cried, remembering my mother and that Mondolfo the only place of safety was closed to me by her cruelly pious hands. "Whither?" he echoed. "What do I care? To Hell anywhere, so that you get out of this." "I'd sooner hang," said I quite seriously. "You'ld hang and welcome, for all the love I bear you," he answered, his impatience growing.
Before me the long, rudely paved street of the borgo sloped away to the market-place of the town of Mondolfo. Beyond that lay the world, itself all at my feet, as I imagined. The knot in my throat was dissolved. My pulses quickened with anticipation. I dug my heels into the mule's belly and pushed on, the portly cleric at my side.
Oh, she had done a cruel, a bitterly cruel wrong. This poor old warrior, all scarred and patched from wounds that he had taken in my father's service, to be turned away in his old age, as we should not have turned away a dog! It was a monstrous thing. Mondolfo was his home. The Anguissola were his family, and their honour was his honour, since as a villein he had no honour of his own.
The head of that considerable family, a grizzled, suntanned peasant, rose from his seat and pondered my condition with a glance that was laden with mistrust. "The Lord of Mondolfo you, thus?" quoth he. "Now, by Bacchus, I am the Pope of Rome!" But his wife, more tender-hearted, saw in my disorder cause for pity rather than irony.
Cosimo stared at him with round eyes, and I stared too, no glimmer of the enormous truth breaking yet upon my bewildered mind. In the court the silence was deathly until Gonzaga spoke. "Do you say that Mondolfo and Carmina did not belong that they never were the fiefs of Agostino d'Anguissola?" he asked.
"The last who legitimately bore that title?" cried Cosimo, very ruffled. "I think, sir, it is your aim to affront me." "And what is more," continued the condottiero, as if Cosimo had not spoken, "not only are the lords of Mondolfo unlucky in themselves, but they are a source of ill luck to those they serve.
I reviewed its beginnings in the greyness of Mondolfo, under the tutelage of my poor, dolorous mother who had striven so fiercely to set my feet upon the ways of sanctity. But my ways had been errant ways, even though, myself, I had sought to walk as she directed.
Soon we could make out the device upon their bannerols a boar's head azure upon an argent field my own device, that of the Anguissola of Mondolfo; and instantly I knew them for Cosimo's men. On the lower parapet six culverins had been dragged into position under the supervision of Falcone who was still with us at Pagliano.
A question here, and a question there, accompanied by a description of the party, was all that was necessary to keep me on their track. And ever, it seemed to me from the answers that I got, was I lessening the distance that separated us. I was weak for want of food, for the last time that I had eaten was yesterday at noon, at Mondolfo; and then but little.
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