[15] I do not give the names because, though the tradition is probably true enough of somebody, the particular names introduced were decidedly incorrect historically. [↑]
1
SCIARRA COLONNA.
There were two of the Colonna. One was Sciarra; I don’t know the name of the other. They were always fighting against the pope of their time.[1] At last they took him and shut him up in a tower in the Campagna, and kept him there till they had starved him to death; and when the people found him afterwards, what do you think?—in his extremity he had gnawed off all the tips of his fingers.
When these two Colonna found they had actually killed a Pope, they got so frightened that they ran away to hide themselves. They ran away to France, to Paris, and at last, when all the money they were able to carry with them was spent, they were obliged to take a place as stablemen in the king’s palace, and they washed the carriages and cleaned down the horses like common men. But they couldn’t hide that they were great lords; the people saw there was something different from themselves about them, and they watched them, and saw that they waited on each other alternately every day at table, and you could see what great ceremony they were used to. Then other things were seen, I forget what now, but little by little, and by one thing and another, people suspected at last who they really were.
Then some one went and told the king of France, and he had them called up before him.
They came just as they were, in their stable clothes, wooden shoes[2] and all.
The king sat to receive them in a raised seat hung all round with cloth of gold, and he said:
‘Now, I know one thing. You two are hiding from justice. Who you are I don’t know exactly for certain. I believe you are the Colonna. If you confess you are the Colonna, I will make the affair straight for you; but, if you will not say, then I will have you shut up in prison till I find out who you are, and what you have done.’