The arguments of Verrina overcame the doubts of the count, and he resolved to proceed with the general plan then worked out. He instructed Foderato to communicate to Trivulzio his desire that the original compact with Gonzaga be observed in every particular. In the meantime he came into closer relations with Paul III., by means of the Pontiff’s nephew the cardinal; and to complete all his preparations he resolved to go to Piacenza and confer with the duke. It is of importance to observe that Fieschi, following the counsels of Verrina, declined the proffer of French troops and galleys. Some paint this friend of the count as a species of demon. They tell us that he wished to murder the nobility and appropriate their goods, because he was overwhelmed with debts, and to raise the count to the office of Doge, or rather to make him the tyrant of Genoa. In truth, we find these fables in all the historians, even in the least passionate and partisan, who seem to have taken no pains to sift testimony, but to have accepted the Spanish slanders without question. In a city like Genoa, but recently deprived of the popular liberty which she had enjoyed for centuries, the idea of destroying free institutions could not have entered the brain of a sane politician. Neither Verrina nor the count were so short-sighted as to believe that an enterprise which the emperor, with the support of all the nobles, had found impossible could be easily executed by them. The ancient story is repeated in our times. The victors have written the history of the vanquished with the sword. This seems to us the place to describe an atrocious deed, which shows, on the one hand, the great affection of the count for the members of his family; and, on the other, how deeply he felt injuries and how terribly he avenged them. The tragedy of which we now speak still lives in tradition on the spot where it was enacted. We have drawn the history of it from old documents, which agree in general with the account written by Bandello, who received it from the lips of Catando d’Arimini, an intimate friend of Gianluigi.[38]