But a bird of the air carried the matter to the Grand Duke; else how should he have heard of it? He, ready enough to fight conspirators with their own weapons, communicated secretly with Ippolito's steward, Giovan Andrea di Borgho San Sepolcro, and covenanted with him to do a certain deed for a certain sum of money.
Meantime, Strozzi negotiated with the leaders of the fuorusciti, who, knowing his character for craft and treachery, were not at all ready to meet him half way, and sometimes drove him to such desperation with their answers to his advances that he was almost minded to throw up conspiracy altogether, and retire upon his enormous fortune to Venice, and live quietly like an honest man. Well if he had!
The Cardinal, meantime, hearing that the Emperor was fitting out an expedition to Tunis, resolved to follow him thither, accompanied by certain of the fuorusciti, and lay his complaints before him in person.
No sooner had he decided on this step than he hastened his preparations for departure. He loved action and the bruit of arms: he would have made a pretty good soldier: probably a noted commander. To supply himself with the necessary funds, he broke up and sold all his plate, and borrowed ten thousand ducats of Felippo Strozzi. Having hired twenty horses for his personal attendants and four Florentines who were to accompany him, he started from Rome at the latter end of July, 1535, en route for the little town of Itri, near Fondi, where he purposed awaiting the vessel in which he was to embark at Gaeta.
The reason he meant to wait at Itri rather than Gaeta was that he believed Giulia to be at Fondi—in which he was mistaken.
As he was in the act of mounting his beautiful mare, she fell beneath him, without any apparent reason; which was afterwards looked back on as an evil omen.