And with that he began to relate some of the deeds of this man; and his life, it seemed, was written in blood and filth—a tale of murders and rapes and worse. And when as a climax he told me of the horrible, inhuman outrage done to Cosimo Gheri, the young Bishop of Fano, I begged him to cease, for my horror turned me almost physically sick.1
1 The incident to which Agostino here alludes is fully set forth by Benedetto Varchi at the end of Book XVI of his Storia Fiorentina.
“That bishop was a holy man, of very saintly life,” Galeotto insisted, “and the deed permitted the German Lutherans to say that here was a new form of martyrdom for saints invented by the Pope's son. And his father pardoned him the deed, and others as bad, by a secret bull, absolving him from all pains and penalties that he might have incurred through youthful frailty or human incontinence!”
It was the relation of those horrors, I think, which, stirring my indignation, spurred me even more than the thought of redressing the wrongs which the Pontifical or Farnesian government would permit my mother to do me.
I held out my hand to Galeotto. “To the utmost of my little might,” said I, “you may depend upon me in this good cause in which you have engaged.”
“There speaks the son of the house of Anguissola,” said he, a light of affection in his steel-coloured eyes. “And there are your father's wrongs to right as well as the wrongs of humanity, remember. By this Pier Luigi was he crushed; whilst those who bore arms with him at Perugia and were taken alive...” He paused and turned livid, great beads of perspiration standing upon his brow. “I cannot,” he faltered, “I cannot even now, after all these years, bear to think upon those horrors perpetrated by that monster.”
I was strangely moved at the sight of emotion in one who seemed emotionless as iron.
“I left the hermitage,” said I, “in the hope that I might the better be able to serve God in the world. I think you are showing me the way, Ser Galeotto.”