In
particular I pondered the meaning of the crowd's strange attitude. Nor was
it a riddle difficult to resolve. It was evident that believing Gambara,
as they did, to be Giuliana's lover, and informed perhaps--invention
swelling rumour as it will--that the Cardinal-legate had ridden late last
night to Fifanti's house, it had been put about that the foul murder done
there was Messer Gambara's work.
Thus was the Legate reaping the harvest of all the hatred he had sown, of
all the tyranny and extortion of his iron rule in Piacenza. And willing to
believe any evil of the man they hated, they not only laid Fifanti's death
at his door, but they went to further lengths and accounted that I was the
cat's-paw; that I was to be sacrificed to save the Legate's face and
reputation. They remembered perhaps the ill-odour in which we Anguissola
of Mondolfo had been at Rome, for the ghibelline leanings that ever had
been ours and for the rebellion of my father against the Pontifical sway;
and their conclusions gathered a sort of confirmation from that
circumstance.
Long upon the very edge of mutiny and revolt against Gambara's injustice,
it had needed but what seemed a crowning one such as this to quicken their
hatred into expression.
It was all very clear and obvious, and it seemed to me that to-morrow's
trial should be very interesting.
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