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Updated: September 24, 2025
"And I think now," said Galeotto when it was done, "that you are just as reckless in the manner of doing charity. For the future, Agostino, you would do well to appoint an almoner." I bit my lip in vexation; but soon I smiled again. Were such little things to fret me? Did we not ride to Pagliano and to Bianca de' Cavalcanti?
"Why, what has that to do with anything?" quoth Gervasio. "More than you think. Answer me, then. What is her name?" "Her name is Bianca," said Caleotto. Something within me seemed to give way, so that I fell to laughing foolishly as women laugh who are on the verge of tears. By an effort I regained my self-control. "It is very well," I said. "I will ride with you to Pagliano."
At Sonnino bad wine was sold for sevenpence the litre, while the same quantity of passable wine might be had at Pagliano, thirty miles off, for twopence halfpenny; so the cost of carrying an article weighing some two pounds for thirty miles was fourpence halfpenny. Wherever governments make roads, prices naturally find their level.
And then his mind became clouded again by the mists of approaching dissolution, and he sank into a sleep, from which he never awakened. We buried him on the morrow in the Chapel of Pagliano, and on the next day Galeotto drew up a memorial wherein he set forth all the circumstances of the affair in which that gallant gentleman had met his end. It was a terrible indictment of Pier Luigi Farnese.
Suddenly a great voice, and I knew it for the voice of Bianca, called me by name. "Agostino!" The vision was dissipated. It was night again and we were riding for Pagliano through the fertile lands of ultra-Po; and there was Bianca clutching at my breast and uttering my name in accents of fear, whilst the company about me was halting. "What is it?" cried Cavalcanti. "Are you hurt?" I understood.
Well might he ask. That name Pagliano had stirred my memory so violently, that of a sudden as in a flash I had seen again the strange vision that visited my delirium; I had seen again the inviting eyes, the beckoning hands, and heard again the gentle voice saying, "Come to Pagliano! Come soon!"
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.
I reached Rome on the fourth day after my setting out with my grim escort, and on that same day, at much the same hour as that in which the door of my dungeon in Sant' Angelo closed upon me, Galeotto rode into the courtyard of Pagliano on his return from his treasonable journey.
Among the collection is the story from which Mr. Fechter's melodrama of "Bel Demonio" was taken, the story of the Cenci, and the story of a certain Duchess of Pagliano, all of them inconceivably horrible and revolting.
Meanwhile the Lord of Pagliano used me in the most affectionate and fatherly manner. But not even this sufficed to encourage me where his daughter was concerned, and I seemed to observe also that Bianca herself, if she did not actually avoid my society, was certainly at no pains to seek it.
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