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Updated: June 25, 2025
But you might serve me better by returning to Babbiano and watching the events there, sending me word of what befalls for great things will befall soon if my cousin returns not and the Borgia advances. It is upon this that I am founding such hopes as I have." "But whither shall I send you word? To Roccaleone?" Francesco reflected a moment.
"You rave, fool!" answered him Gonzaga. "We have no counts at Roccaleone." "Surely, sir sentinel," replied the voice, "my master, Messer Francesco del Falco, is here. Throw me a rope, I say." "Messer Fran " began Gonzaga. Then he made a noise like a man choking. It was as if a sudden light of revelation had flooded his brain. "Get a rope," he harshly bade the sentry. "In the armoury yard.
"I tell you that a company of men-at-arms some twenty strong went last night from Urbino to Roccaleone." "To Roccaleone?" echoed the captain, with a musing air, more attentively than before, as if the repetition of that name had suggested something to his mind. "Why, it is the castle of Monna Valentina." "True, sapient sir. But what of the company, and why was it travelling so, by night?"
Guidobaldo might besiege them in Roccaleone and might eventually reduce them by force of arms a circumstance, however, which, despite his words, he deemed extremely remote. But if only he could wed Valentina before they capitulated, he thought that he would have little cause to fear any consequences of Guidobaldo's wrath.
Then he looked it over again, and this is what he had written: "I have it in my power to stir the garrison to mutiny and to throw open the gates of Roccaleone. Thus shall the castle fall immediately into your hands, and you shall have a proof of how little I am in sympathy with this rebellion of Monna Valentina's. What terms do you offer me if I accomplish this?
To wash down these good things there was stout red wine of Puglia and more delicate Malvasia, for in his provisioning of the fortress Gonzaga had contrived that, at least, they should not go thirsty. "For a garrison awaiting siege you fare mighty well at Roccaleone," was Francesco's comment on that excellent repast. It was the fool who answered him.
On all sanctified days it was Monna Valentina's way to insist that the entire garrison, with the exception of one single sentinel and this only at Francesco's very earnest urging should attend the morning service. Like an inspiration it came to him that such a half-hour as that would be a most opportune season in which to throw open the gates of Roccaleone to the besiegers.
Next he passed on to his own apartments, and there he sat himself by a window overlooking the castle gardens, with his unpleasant thoughts for only company. But presently his mood lightened and he took courage, for he could be very brave when peril was remote. It was best, he reflected, that Valentina should leave Roccaleone. Such was the course he would advise and urge.
Yet to Francesco her rebuke was courteous, and ended in a prayer that he should do the best with such resources as Roccaleone offered; to Gonzaga it was contemptuous in the last degree, for Francesco's question which Gonzaga had left unanswered coming at a moment when she was full of suspicions of Gonzaga, and the ends he had sought to serve in advising her upon a course which he had since shown himself so utterly unfitted to guide, had opened wide her eyes.
Would you believe me if I told you that here, in Roccaleone, we have an agent of the Count of Aquila one who in the Count's interest is protracting this siege with the pretended aim of driving Gian Maria off." "Gonzaga " she began, more than half guessing the drift of his explanation. But he interrupted her with unusual brusqueness.
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