I think you are showing me the way, Ser
Galeotto."
CHAPTER III
PIER LUIGI FARNESE
We left Milan that same day, and there followed for some months a season of
wandering through Lombardy, going from castle to castle, from tyranny to
tyranny, just the three of us--Galeotto and myself with Falcone for our
equerry and attendant.
Surely something of the fanatic's temperament there must have been in me;
for now that I had embraced a cause, I served it with all the fanaticism
with which on Monte Orsaro I sought to be worthy of the course I had taken
then.
I was become as an apostle, preaching a crusade or holy war against the
Devil's lieutenant on earth, Messer Pier Luigi Farnese, sometime Duke of
Castro, now Duke of Parma and Piacenza--for the investiture duly followed
in the August of that year, and soon his iron hand began to be felt
throughout the State of which the Pope had constituted him a prince.
And to the zest that was begotten of pure righteousness, Galeotto cunningly
added yet another and more worldly spur. We were riding one day in late
September of that year from Cortemaggiore, where we had spent a month in
seeking to stir the Pallavicini to some spirit of resistance, and we were
making our way towards Romagnese, the stronghold of that great Lombard
family of dal Verme.
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