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Updated: September 21, 2025
But he fronted me intrepidly. "I hold my office from my Lady the Countess. I obey none other here." "Body of God! Do you defy me?" I cried. "Am I Lord of Mondolfo, or am I a lackey in my own house? You'ld best obey me ere I break you, Ser Rinolfo. We shall see whether the men will take my orders," I added confidently. The faintest smile illumined his dark face.
Just so had I been in a measure content to carry that name and the memory of her sweet face. To consider her as the possible Lady of Mondolfo when I should once more have come into my own, was to consider things that filled me almost with despair. Again I experienced such hesitations as had kept me from ever seeking her at Pagliano, though I had been given the freedom of her garden.
Swiftly she came down to us, seeming almost to glide over the ground. Not me she addressed, but poor Luisina; and her voice was hoarse with an awful anger. "Who are you, wench?" quoth she. "What make you here in Mondolfo?" Luisina had risen and stood swaying there, very white and with averted eyes, her hands clasping and unclasping. Her lips moved; but she was too terrified to answer.
"Indeed, indeed," Galeotto applauded. "A disbelief in omens can but spring from an ignorance of such matters. You should study them, Messer Cosimo. I have done so, and I tell you that the lordship of Mondolfo is unlucky to all dark-complexioned men. And when such a man has a mole under the left ear as you have in itself a sign of death by hanging it is well to avoid all risks."
He bade one of the grooms get down and open, and presently we ambled up a short avenue between tall banks of laurel, to the steps of the villa itself. It was a house of fair proportions, though to me at the time, accustomed to the vast spaces of Mondolfo, it seemed the merest hut.
Suddenly, like a manna to my starving soul, came the memory of the last talk I had with Fra Gervasio and the solemn warning he had given me. That memory inspired me rightly. To-morrow despite Messer Fifanti's orders I would take horse and ride to Mondolfo, there to confess myself to Fra Gervasio and to be guided by his counsel. My mother's vows concerning me I saw in their true light.
Therefore, I feared the world and the adventuring beyond the shelter of the walls of the castle of Mondolfo; and yet I desired to judge for myself the evil of which I read, the evil which in moments of doubt I even permitted myself to question. My reasoning followed the syllogism that God being good and God having created the world, it was not possible that the creation should be evil.
It was this very reflection that brought me now to consider my condition; to ask myself whither I should turn. Money I had none not so much as a single copper grosso. To sell I had nothing but the clothes I stood in black, clerkly garments that I had got yesterday at Mondolfo. Not so much as a weapon had I that I might have bartered for a few coins.
Nor was such express announcement necessary, for since I was next heir after Ser Agostino to the Tyranny of Mondolfo, it follows that upon his being outlawed and his life forfeit I enter upon my succession." Here, thought I, were we finally checkmated. But Galeotto showed no sign of defeat. "Where is this bull you speak of?" he demanded, as though he were the judge himself.
"And as for that wanton," she commanded, turning fiercely to Giojoso, "let her be whipped hence and out of the town of Mondolfo. Set the grooms to it." But upon that command of hers I leapt of a sudden to my feet, a tightening about my heart, and beset by a certain breathlessness that turned me pale.
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