More reckless than malicious, the young lieutenant looked upon the world as a great playground and the war as a splendid chance to execute daring schemes unhindered. He saw the abduction of the poor small abandoned orphan, Myga, as a daring, playful scheme, an honourable thing as far as he was concerned, and had taken it into his addled pate to carry it out only after having convinced his friend with difficulty to agree to it. What did this Genoese good-for-nothing care about the affairs of the rebel provinces and His Spanish Catholic Majesty? Heretic women could be very pretty and female members of the one true church extremely ugly. Leone definitely preferred charming heretics to ugly Catholics and did all that he could not to depart from the old proverb that went the rounds in Italy about his home town, namely that Genoa has a sea without fish, a landscape without trees and men who cannot be trusted. In the Golden Lion he had, as we know already from the tale told by Jan Norris, made the final arrangements with Antonio Valani as to the planned abduction. If this came off and the Andrea Doria got back safely from its expedition, the black galley would either have been taken as a prize or sunk. Who would dare then to point the finger at the victors? If the galleon did not come back, then its last deed would have been worthy of its end. The possibility of a third state of affairs, in which the Andrea Doria returned home without having seen the enemy ship, was unthinkable and held by Leone della Rota to be beneath his dignity. The captain allowed himself to be led by Leone however and wherever he wished. The two friends from Genoa had taken not the slightest part in the pursuit of the bold sea beggar. They wandered arm in arm through the streets in which an excited crowd was milling in the direction of the quayside. "We'd have been fools to have run after that scoundrel!" laughed Leone. "Leave it to others to chase that audacious beggar. By the doves of Aphrodite, since I've been serving the formerly cold Antonio Valani as a pathfinder in the magic kingdom of love, my soul hovers high over this land of mists. Oh Love, tamer of hearts, I follow your battle standard, oh goddess of Cythera, place us under your divine protection!" "I beg you, Leone, be sensible. Don't be a fool. I'm in a strange mood. In all my life I have never had such a feeling in my breast. Leone, it's as if--Leone, all day and all night I have such strange thoughts. Leone, be prepared, perhaps you will soon take over from me as captain of the Andrea Doria..." "And you'll be a rear admiral to Federigo Spinola." "Or a corpse at the bottom of the sea," murmured the captain.