he memory of the
Borgia; for he, at least, was a great captain and a great ruler, and he
knew how to endear to himself the fold that he governed; so that when I
was a lad--thirty years ago--there were still those in the Romagna who
awaited the Borgia's return, and prayed for it as earnestly as pray the
faithful for the second coming of the Messiah, refusing to believe that
he was dead. But this Pier Luigi!" He thrust out a lip contemptuously.
"He is no better than a thief, a murderer, a defiler, a bestial,
lecherous dog!"

And with that he began to relate some of the deeds of this man; and his
life, it seemed, was written in blood and filth--a tale of murders
and rapes and worse. And when as a climax he told me of the horrible,
inhuman outrage done to Cosimo Gheri, the young Bishop of Fano, I begged
him to cease, for my horror turned me almost physically sick.1

1 The incident to which Agostino here alludes is fully set forth by
Benedetto Varchi at the end of Book XVI of his Storia Fiorentina.

"That bishop was a holy man, of very saintly life," Galeotto insisted,
"and the deed permitted the German Lutherans to say that here was a new
form of martyrdom for saints invented by the Pope's son. And his father
pardoned him the deed, and others as bad, by a secret bull, absolving
him from all pains and penalties that he might have incurred through
youthful frailty or human incontinence!"

It was the relation of those horrors, I think, which, stirring my
indignation, spurred me even more than the thought of redressing the
wrongs which the Pontifical or Farnesian government would permit my
mother to do me.

I held out my hand to Galeotto. "To the utmost of my little might,"
said I, "you may depend upon me in this good cause in which you have
engaged."

"There speaks the son of the house of Anguissola," said he, a light
of affection in his steel-coloured eyes. "And there are your father's
wrongs to right as well as the wrongs of humanity, remember. By this
Pier Luigi was he crushed; whilst those who bore arms with him at
Perugia and were taken alive..." He paused and turned livid, great beads
of perspiration standing upon his brow. "I cannot," he faltered, "I
cannot even now, after all these years, bear to think upon those horrors
perpetrated by that monster."

I was strangely moved at the sight of emotion in one who seemed
emotionless as iron.

"I left the hermitage," said I, "in the hope that I might the better be