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Updated: May 11, 2025
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.
I was the very son of Giovanni d'Anguissola. "What force attends the captain?" I inquired. "He has six mounted men with him," replied Rinolfo. "In that case," I answered, "you will bid him begone in my name." "And if he should not go?" was Rinolfo's impudent question. "You will tell him that I will drive him hence him and his braves.
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.
Holding her, therefore, within the shelter of my arms, where in her heedless innocence she had flung herself, and by very instinct stroking with one hand her little brown head to soothe her fears, I became truculent for the first time in my new-found manhood, and boldly challenged her pursuer. "What is this, Rinolfo?" I demanded. "Why do you plague her?"
I appealed me to the friar. "Why, that was after Rinolfo left us. My tale never got so far. It is quite true. I did sit beside her. The child was troubled. I comforted her. Where was the harm?" "The harm?" quoth he. "And you had your arm about her and you to be a priest one day?"
"It is true, Agostino," he said. And as he spoke, Rinolfo limped out of the room to fetch the Captain of Justice, as my mother had bidden him; and his lips smiled cruelly. "Madam mother," I said bitterly, "you do a monstrous thing. You usurp the power that is mine, and you deliver me me, your son to the gallows.
At last I got the story out of them: how Rinolfo had scattered grain in a little clearing in the garden, and all about it had set twigs that were heavily smeared with viscum; that he set this trap almost daily, and daily took a great number of birds whose necks he wrung and had them cooked for him with rice by his silly mother; that it was a sin in any case to take little birds by such cowardly means, but that since amongst these birds there were larks and thrushes and plump blackbirds and other sweet musicians of the air, whose innocent lives were spent in singing the praises of God, his sin became a hideous sacrilege.
"The Captain of Justice?" quoth my mother at length, her voice startled. "What does he seek?" "The person of my Lord Agostino d'Anguissola," said Rinolfo steadily. She sighed very heavily. "A felon's end!" she murmured, and turned to me. "If thus you may expiate your sins," she said, speaking more gently, "let the will of Heaven be done. Admit the captain, Ser Rinolfo."
"Madonna, I cannot think that it is so," said I. "These men have known me since I was a little lad. Many of them have followed the fortunes of my father. They'll never turn their backs upon his son in the hour of his need. They are not all so inhuman as my mother." "You mistake, sir," said Rinolfo. "Of the men you knew but one or two remain.
We went up the steps and into the cool of the great hall. There the soldier, whose every feeling had been outraged no doubt by Rinolfo's attitude towards his lord, ventured to express his sympathy and indignation. "Rinolfo is a black beast, Madonnino," he muttered.
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