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Updated: September 21, 2025
A little lad of seven was I at the time, and well do I remember the martial stir and bustle there was about our citadel of Mondolfo, the armed multitudes that thronged the fortress that was our home, or drilled and manoeuvred upon the green plains beyond the river. I was all wonder-stricken and fascinated by the sight.
Not a doubt but that he would have added more, but that at that moment a woman's shrill voice drowned his utterance. "Silence, Giuffre!" she admonished him fearfully. "Silence, on your life!" I had halted in my stride, suddenly cold from head to foot, as on that day when I had flung Rinolfo from top to bottom of the terrace steps at Mondolfo.
These were, besides myself, Fra Gervasio, my tutor; Messer Giorgio, the castellan, a bald-headed old man long since past the fighting age and who in times of stress would have been as useful for purposes of defending Mondolfo as Lorenza, my mother's elderly woman, who sat below him at the board; he was toothless, bowed, and decrepit, but he was very devout as he had need to be, seeing that he was half dead already and this counted with my mother above any other virtue.2
Gonzaga looked at me. "Did you not say that here was another?" Galeotto smiled sadly. "Ay just one arm and one sword. That is all. Unless this emprise succeeds he is never like to rule in Mondolfo. He may be counted upon; but he brings no lances with him." "I see," said Gonzaga, his lip between thumb and forefinger. "But his name..."
And when I had heard, behold me for the first time indulging the prerogative that was mine by right of birth, and dispensing justice at Mondolfo like the lord of life and death that I was there. "You, Rinolfo," I said, "will set no more snares here at Mondolfo, nor will you ever again enter these gardens under pain of my displeasure and its consequences.
"But they had worse indignities for me, Agostino. They mocked me with a reminder that Giovanni d'Anguissola had been my firmest friend. They told me they knew it to have been my intention that my daughter should become the Lady of Mondolfo, and to cement the friendship by making one State of Pagliano, Mondolfo and Carmina.
To-day the notion of the Tyrant of Mondolfo sitting almost coram populo on the steps of the garden of his castle, clasping the hand of the daughter of one of his scullions, is grotesque and humiliating. At the time the thought never presented itself to me at all, and had it done so it would have troubled me no whit.
I heard a voice which was at once harsh and effeminate and quite detestable, saying in unfriendly tones: "The son of Giovanni d'Anguissola of Mondolfo, eh?" "The same, my lord," said Cavalcanti, adding generously "Giovanni d'Anguissola was my friend." "It is a friendship that does you little credit, sir," was the harsh answer. "It is not well to befriend the enemies of God."
But from where we sat we could look beyond this, our glance meeting the landscape a mile or so away with the waters of the Taro glittering in the sunshine, and the Apennines, all hazy, for an ultimate background. I took her hand, which she relinquished to me quite freely and frankly with an innocence as great as my own; and I asked her who she was and how she came to Mondolfo.
She shuddered under his rough speech. Then answered without looking up, and with no trace of anger in her voice: "You are restored to health and strength by now, Messer Falcone. The seneschal shall have orders to pay you ten gold ducats in discharge of all that may be still your due from us. See that by night you have left Mondolfo."
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