he laughed again.

"Dost hear the whelp?" he cried to Falcone. "Still with his milk-teeth in
his head, and already does he yelp for battle!"

Then he looked up at me again, and swore one of his great oaths.

"I can trust you, son of mine," he laughed. "They'll never make a
shaveling of you. When your thews are grown it will not be on thuribles
they'll spend their strength, or I'm a liar else. Be patient yet awhile,
and we shall ride together, never doubt it."

With that he pulled me down again to kiss me, and he clasped me to his
breast so that the studs of his armour remained stamped upon my tender
flesh after he had departed.

The next instant he was gone, and I lay weeping, a very lonely little
child.

But in the revolt that he led he had not reckoned upon the might and vigour
of the new Farnese Pontiff. He had conceived, perhaps, that one pope must
be as supine as another, and that Paul III would prove no more redoubtable
than Clement VIII. To his bitter cost did he discover his mistake. Beyond
the Po he was surprised by the Pontifical army under Ferrante Orsini, and
there his force was cut to pieces.

My father himself escaped and with him some other gentlemen of Piacenza,
notably one of the scions of the great house of Pallavicini, who took a
wound in the leg which left him lame for life, so that ever after he was
known as Pallavicini il Zopo.