I was prenatally made a votive offering for the preservation of my father's
life, for his restoration to my mother safe and sound. That restoration
she had, as you have seen; and yet, had she been other than she was, she
must have accounted herself cheated of her bargain in the end. For betwixt
my father and my mother I became from my earliest years a subject of
contentions that drove them far asunder and set them almost in enmity the
one against the other.
I was his only son, heir to the noble lordships of Mondolfo and Carmina.
Was it likely, then, that he should sacrifice me willingly to the seclusion
of the cloister, whilst our lordship passed into the hands of our renegade,
guelphic cousin, Cosimo d'Anguissola of Codogno?
I can picture his outbursts at the very thought of it; I can hear him
reasoning, upbraiding, storming. But he was as an ocean of energy hurling
himself against the impassive rock of my mother's pietistic obstinacy.
She had vowed me to the service of Holy Church, and she would suffer
tribulation and death so that her vow should be fulfilled. And hers was a
manner against which that strong man, my father, never could prevail.
She would stand before him white-faced and mute, never presuming to return
an answer to his pleading or to enter into argument.
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