BELLARION THE FORTUNATE _A Romance_ BY RAFAEL SABATINI BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1926 COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY RAFAEL SABATINI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [Figure 01] [Figure 02] CONTENTS BOOK I I. The Threshold II. The Grey Friar III. The Door Ajar IV. Sanctuary V. The Princess VI. The Winds of Fate VII. Service VIII. Stalemate IX. The Marquis Theodore X. The Warning XI. Under Suspicion XII. Count Spigno XIII. The Trial XIV. Evasion BOOK II I. The Miracle of the Dogs II. Facino Cane III. The Countess of Biandrate IV. The Champion V. The Commune of Milan VI. The Fruitless Wooing VII. Manœuvres VIII. The Battle of Travo IX. De Mortuis X. The Knight Bellarion XI. The Siege of Alessandria XII. Visconti Faith XIII. The Victuallers XIV. The Muleteer XV. The Camisade XVI. Severance XVII. The Return XVIII. The Hostage BOOK III I. The Lord Bellarion II. The Battle of Novi III. Facino's Return IV. The Count of Pavia V. Justice VI. The Inheritance VII. Prince of Valsassina VIII. Carmagnola's Bridges IX. Vercelli X. The Arrest XI. The Pledge XII. Carmagnola's Duty XIII. The Occupation of Casale XIV. The Vanquished XV. The Last Fight BELLARION BOOK I CHAPTER I THE THRESHOLD Half god, half beast,' the Princess Valeria once described him, without suspecting that the phrase describes not merely Bellarion, but Man. Aware of this, the anonymous chronicler who has preserved it for us goes on to comment that the Princess said at once too much and too little. He makes phrases in his turn--which I will spare you--and seeks to prove, that, if the moieties of divinity and beastliness are equally balanced in a man, that man will be neither good nor bad. Then he passes on to show us a certain poor swineherd, who rose to ultimate eminence, in whom the godly part so far predominated that naught else was humanly discernible, and a great prince--of whom more will be heard in the course of this narrative--who was just as the beasts that perish, without any spark of divinity to exalt him. These are the extremes. For each of the dozen or so intermediate stages which he discerns, our chronicler has a portrait out of history, of which his learning appears to be considerable.