"Listen, Adone!" he said in his deep, melodious voice, grave and
sweet as a mass of Palestrina. "Listen, and I will tell you the tale
of yonder donjon and village, and of the valley of the Edera, so far
as I have been able to make it out for myself."

According to the writers whose manuscripts he had discovered the town
of Ruscino, like Cremona, had existed before the siege of Troy, that
is, six hundred years before the foundation of Rome. Of this there
was no proof except tradition, but the ruins of the walls and the
tombs by the riverside and in the fields proved that it had been an
Etruscan city, and of some considerable extent and dignity, in those
remote ages.

"The foundations of the Rocca," he continued, "were probably part of
a great stronghold raised by the Gauls, who undoubtedly conquered the
whole of this valley at the time when they settled themselves in what
is now the Marches, and founded Senegallia. It was visited by
Asdrubal, and burned by Alaric; then occupied by the Greek free
lances of Justinian; in the time of the Frankish victories, in common
with greater places, it was forced to swear allegiance to the first
papal Adrian. After that it had been counted as one of the fiefs
comprised in the possessions of the Pentapolis; and later on, when
the Saracens ravaged the shores of the Adriatic, they had come up the
Valdedera and pillaged and burned again. Gregory the Ninth gave the
valley to the family of its first feudal lords, the Tor'alba, in
recompense for military service, and they, out of the remains of the
Gallic, Etruscan, and Roman towns, rebuilt Ruscino and raised the
Rocca on the ruins of the castle of the Gauls. There, though at feud
many time with their foes, the Della Rovere, the Malatesta, and the