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Updated: September 21, 2025
At Mondolfo they had so nurtured me and so sheltered me from the stinging blasts of the world that I was grown into a very ripe and succulent fruit for the Devil's mouth. The things to whose temptation usage would have rendered me in some degree immune were irresistible to one who had been tutored as had I.
To reach Mondolfo I had but to follow the river up the valley towards that long ridge of the Apennines arrayed before me, with the tall bulks of Mount Giso and Mount Orsaro, their snow-caps sparkling in the flood of sunshine that poured down upon them. Two hours, or perhaps three at most, along the track of that cool, glittering water, and the grey citadel of Mondolfo would come into view.
And they added that by wedding her to Cosimo d'Anguissola was the way to execute that plan, for Cosimo, Lord of Mondolfo already, should receive Carmina as a wedding-gift from the Duke." "Was such indeed your intention?" I asked scarce above a whisper, overawed as men are when they perceive precisely what their folly and wickedness have cost them.
The conviction that he went to plague and jeer at her, to exult over her expulsion from Mondolfo, kindled my anger all anew. "Stay! You there! Rinolfo!" I called. He halted in his strides, and looked over his shoulder, impudently. I had never yet been paid by any the deference that was my due.
"So, my Lord Cosimo, ere you can proceed further in this matter against my son, you will need to take your brief and your bull back to Rome and get them amended, for there is in Italy no Lord of Mondolfo and Carmina other than myself." Cosimo fell back before him limp and trembling, his spirit broken by this shattering blow. And then Gonzaga uttered words that might have heartened him.
The distance from Mondolfo to Piacenza is a good eight leagues, and though we had set out very early, it was past noon before we caught our first glimpse of the city by the Po, lying low as it does in the vast Aemilian plain, and Arcolano set himself to name to me this church and that whose spires stood out against the cobalt background of the sky.
We passed the Duomo, consecrated to Our Lady of Mondolfo. Its portals stood wide, and in the opening swung a heavy crimson curtain, embroidered with a huge golden cross which was bellying outward like an enormous gonfalon. On the steps a few crippled beggars whined, and a few faithful took their way to early Mass.
For betwixt my father and my mother I became from my earliest years a subject of contentions that drove them far asunder and set them almost in enmity the one against the other. I was his only son, heir to the noble lordships of Mondolfo and Carmina.
And presently we heard that Mondolfo had been conferred by Farnese upon his good and loyal servant and captain, the Lord Cosimo d'Anguissola, subject to a tax of a thousand ducats yearly!
There was the mule; that should yield a ducat or two. But when this was spent, what then? To go a suppliant to that pious icicle my mother were worse than useless. Whither was I to turn I, Lord of Mondolfo and Carmina, one of the wealthiest and most puissant tyrants of this Val di Taro? It provoked me almost to laughter, of a fierce and bitter sort.
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