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I have read of the awful doings of the Lord Bernabo Visconti at Milan in the olden time, but I believe that compared with this monster of Cesena that same Bernabo was no worse than a sucking dove. How it befell that men permitted him to live, how it was that none bethought him to put poison in his wine or a knife in his back, is something that I shall never wholly understand.
About the same time Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti murdered Bernabo his uncle and took the entire sovereignty upon himself; and, not content with being duke of Milan and sovereign of the whole of Lombardy, designed to make himself master of Tuscany; but while he was intent upon occupying the province with the ultimate view of making himself king of Italy, he died.
"Mortified," said Bernabo, "by the loss of my money, and the dishonour which I deemed to have been done me by my wife, I was so overcome by wrath that I had her put to death by one of my servants, who brought me word that her corpse had been instantly devoured by a pack of wolves."
Bernabo acknowledged the accuracy of his description of the room, and that the articles did really belong to his wife, but objected that Ambrogiuolo might have learned characteristic features of the room from one of the servants, and have come by the things in a similar way, and therefore, unless he had something more to say, he could not justly claim to have won the bet.
Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his own portion of the Visconti domain by his son Gian Galleazzo. Now began one of those long, slow, internecine struggles which were so common between the members of the ruling families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons schemed to get possession of the young prince's estate.
On the brink of ruin, ravaged by plague, Pisa turned to confront her hard, merciless foe. For months Florence ravaged her territory, while she, too weak to strike a blow in her own honour, could but hold her gates. Then the plague left her, and she rose. Bernabò Visconti was sending her help for 150,000 florins.
Bernabo replied, somewhat angrily, that 'twas a boon conferred upon him by God, who was rather more powerful than the Emperor.
Among the merchants who thus gossiped was a young man, Ambrogiuolo da Piacenza, by name, who, when Bernabo thus concluded his eulogy of his wife, broke out into a mighty laugh, and asked him with a leer, whether he of all men had this privilege by special patent of the Emperor.
Among the merchants who discoursed thus was a young man called Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza, who fell to making the greatest mock in the world of this last commendation bestowed by Bernabo upon his wife and asked him scoffingly if the emperor had granted him that privilege over and above all other men.
This story gave such occasion for laughter to all the company that there was none whose jaws ached not therefor, and all the ladies avouched with one accord that Dioneo spoke sooth and that Bernabo had been an ass.
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