"You will come back to me, Agostino?" Bianca said to me at parting.
"I will come back," I answered, and bowing I left her, my heart very heavy.
But as we rode the prospect of the thing to do warmed me a little, and I
shook off my melancholy. Optimism coloured the world for me all of the
rosy hue of promise.
We slept in Piacenza that night, in a big house in the street that leads to
the Church of San Lazzaro, and there was a company of perhaps a dozen
assembled there, the principals being the brothers Pallavicini of
Cortemaggiore, who had been among the first to feel the iron hand of Pier
Luigi; there were also present Agostino Landi, and the head of the house of
Confalonieri.
We sat after supper about a long table of smooth brown oak, which reflected
as in a pool the beakers and flagons with which it was charged, when
suddenly Galeotto span a coin upon the middle of it. It fell flat
presently, showing the ducal arms and the inscription of which the
abbreviation PLAC was a part.
Galeotto set his finger to it. "A year ago I warned him," said he, "that
his fate was written there in that shortened word. To-morrow I shall read
the riddle for him."
I did not understand the allusion and said so.
"Why," he explained, not only to me but to others whose brows had also been
knit, "first 'Plac' stands for Placentia where he will meet his doom; and
then it contains the initials of the four chief movers in this
undertaking--Pallavicini, Landi, Anguissola, and Confalonieri.
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