"Never mind," said Lorenzo, well understanding what he meant; "only tell me what you know, and leave the rest to me."
"All I know is very little, signor," replied the man. "A little before daybreak, when it was just grey, I heard a great many horses go by my house yonder, coming this way, and, thinking it strange, I got up and looked after them. I then saw it was a great band of armed men. My heart misgave me, for my poor Judita was up here helping the people at the villa. As fast as I could I crept through the vines; but of course they were a long way before me, and I found that the way to the villa was guarded. I know not how long I stayed, for if it had been but a minute it would have seemed an hour, but I saw after awhile a bright light in the windows of that big old tower, and then the windows of the great new hall were all in a blaze. Everything had been silent till then--at least I could not hear anything where I lay hid by that big stone, covered with the old uva Sant Angelica--but just when the glare came in the windows, there were sounds made themselves heard--cries, and shrieks, and such noises as make men's hair stand on end. Then a whole party came hurrying out, with a fine, handsome man at their head--and he was laughing, too--who said to the first of those that followed, 'Put them on the horses and away. You are sure that fire has taken everywhere.' What the other answered I do not know, for just then I caught sight of the women they were dragging out."
"Who were they?" said Lorenzo, eagerly. "It must have been day by that time. You must have seen their faces."
"I saw no one but my daughter, signor," said the poor man, simply; and after a pause, he added, "and she was soon out of sight for ever. Her body will be in the Arno or the Mugnione to-morrow, and we shall be childless."
Lorenzo's head drooped, and for some moments he kept silence. There was an intensity of grief in the poor parent's tone which awed even his grief.
"Could you distinguish any of these men," he asked at length, "so as to know them again?"
"I saw nothing very clearly," replied the other--"nothing but Judita; only I know that one of the men called the other 'Monsignore.' He looked to me more like a devil than a cardinal, and yet he was a handsome man too."
"My lord, you can see the band from here," said one of Lorenzo's troop; they are taking the Pisa road. "They will fall in with our outposts, if they do not mind."
"Well, they must be followed, and, if possible, cut off," replied his lord, who had now recovered some presence of mind. "If they take their way toward Pisa we shall have them."
"Your pardon, my lord," said Antonio, "but will it not be better to go up to the monastery, and make inquiries there? Depend upon it, the good fathers did not stand looking on at the burning of the villa without marking all, if they did not do all they could. They had no daughters in the villa, and saw more than this poor man, depend upon it. Five minutes will take you thither. You can see one of the towers up yonder, just above the tree-tops."