But she went further than she
was bidden--she took the veil in the Convent of Santa Chiara, and so
retired from the world.
The State began to ferment in secret at so much and such harsh tyranny.
Farnese was acting in Piacenza as Tarquin of old had acted in his garden,
slicing the tallest poppies from their stems. And soon to swell his
treasury, which not even his plunder, brigandage, and extortionate
confiscations could fill sufficiently to satisfy his greed, he set himself
to look into the past lives of the nobles, and to promulgate laws that were
retroactive, so that he was enabled to levy fresh fines and perpetrate
fresh sequestrations in punishment of deeds that had been done long years
ago.
Amongst these, we heard that he had Giovanni d'Anguissola decapitated in
effigy for his rebellion against the authority of the Holy See, and that my
tyrannies of Mondolfo and Carmina were confiscated from me because of my
offence in being Giovanni d'Anguissola's son. And presently we heard that
Mondolfo had been conferred by Farnese upon his good and loyal servant and
captain, the Lord Cosimo d'Anguissola, subject to a tax of a thousand
ducats yearly!
Galeotto ground his teeth and swore horribly when the news was brought us
from Piacenza, whilst I felt my heart sink and the last hope of Bianca--the
hope secretly entertained almost against hope itself--withering in my soul.
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