United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
While he was engaged in this final disposal of his property, a deputation arrived to inform him that a meeting had been held that day in the Dominican hall of La Rosa, at which the Bishop of Como, Landriano, general of the Umiliati, Castiglione, Archbishop of Bari, and Francesco Bernardino Visconti were chosen to form a provisional committee of public safety, and that these councillors had decided to make terms with Trivulzio and admit the French.
Perhaps even now they wandered through the streets, fearing arrest if they revealed themselves by venturing to engage a carriage, at every turn of his thoughts Odo was mocked by some vision of disaster; and an hour of perplexity yielded no happier expedient than that of repairing to the meeting-place behind the Umiliati.
Monks again Frati Umiliati, or Humbled Brethren, from Ognissanti, with a glorious tradition of being the earliest workers in the wool-trade; and again more monks Vallombrosan and other varieties of Benedictines, reminding the instructed eye by niceties of form and colour that in ages of abuse, long ago, reformers had arisen who had marked a change of spirit by a change of garb; till at last the shaven crowns were at an end, and there came the train of untonsured secular priests.
It was agreed that at Vercelli Odo was to set down his companions at an inn whence, alone and privately, they might gain their friend's house; that on the morrow at daybreak he was to take them up at a point near the convent of the Umiliati, and that thence they were to push forward without a halt for Boffalora.
But to return to his works: he painted for the Company of S. Bastiano in Camollia, beyond the Church of the Umiliati, on a banner of cloth which is carried in processions, in oils, a nude S. Sebastian, bound to a tree, who is standing on the right leg, with the left in foreshortening, and raises the head towards an Angel who is placing a crown upon it.
Meanwhile Girolamo Landriano, the General of the Umiliati, who had been the first to yield Milan to the French, was actively engaged in plotting the restoration of Lodovico, with the help of the leading ecclesiastics in the city.
Beneath him lay the piazza of Vercelli, bathed in the vertical brightness of a summer noon; and as he stared out on this inexorable scene, the clock over the Hospital struck twelve. Twelve o'clock! And he had promised to meet Vivaldi at dawn behind the Umiliati! As the truth forced itself on Odo he dropped into a chair and hid his face with a groan.
Word Of The Day