es, and had sacked the Treasury with their greedy and
eager hands. After them, came the middle classes, and those solemn
upstarts and hypocrites, like leathern bottles blown out with wind,
acting the tyrant and lying without the least shame, disowned their
former promises, and would soon have given the finishing stroke to the
unfortunate city, which was already at its last shifts.

"Discontent was increasing, and the _sbirri_[24] could scarcely find
time to tear the seditious placards, which had been posted up by unknown
hands, from the walls.

[Footnote 24: Italian police officers.--TRANSLATOR]

"But now that the old _podestat_ had died in exile, worn out with grief,
and that his children, who had been brought up under monastic rules, and
were accustomed to nothing so much as to praying, thought only of their
own salvation, there was nobody who could take his place.

"And so these kinglets profited by the occasion to strut about at their
ease like great nobles, to cram themselves with luxurious meals, to
increase their property by degrees, to put everything up for sale, and
to get rid of those who, later on, could have called for accounts, and
have nailed them to the pillory by their ears.

"Their arrogance knew no bounds, and when they were questioned about
their acts, they only replied by menaces or raillery, and this state of
affairs lasted for twenty years, when, as war was imminent with Lucca,
the Council raised troops and enrolled mercenaries. Several battles were
fought in which the enemy was beaten and was obliged to flee, abandoning
their colors, their arms, prisoners, and all the booty in their camp.

"The man who had led the soldiers from battle, whom they had acclaimed
as triumphant and laurel-crowned Caesar, around their campfires, was a
poor _condottiere_[25], who possessed nothing in the world except his
clothes, his buff jerkin and his heavy sword.

[Footnote 25: Italian mercenary or free-lance, in the Middle
Ages.--TRANSLATOR.]

"They called him _Hercules_, on account of his strong muscles, his
imposing build, and his large head, and also _Malavista_, because in
those butcheries he had no pity, no weakness, but seemed, with his great
murderous arms, as if he had the long reach of death itself. He had
neither title, deeds, fortune, nor relations, for he had been born one
night in the tent of a female camp follower; for a long time, an old,
broken drum had been his cradle, and he had grown up any