Meantime, Strozzi negotiated with the leaders of the _fuorusciti_, who, knowing his character for craft and treachery, were not at all ready to meet him half way, and sometimes drove him to such desperation with their answers to his advances that he was almost minded to throw up conspiracy altogether, and retire upon his enormous fortune to Venice, and live quietly like an honest man. Well if he had! The Cardinal, meantime, hearing that the Emperor was fitting out an expedition to Tunis, resolved to follow him thither, accompanied by certain of the _fuorusciti_, and lay his complaints before him in person. No sooner had he decided on this step than he hastened his preparations for departure. He loved action and the bruit of arms: he would have made a pretty good soldier: probably a noted commander. To supply himself with the necessary funds, he broke up and sold all his plate, and borrowed ten thousand ducats of Felippo Strozzi. Having hired twenty horses for his personal attendants and four Florentines who were to accompany him, he started from Rome at the latter end of July, 1535, _en route_ for the little town of Itri, near Fondi, where he purposed awaiting the vessel in which he was to embark at Gaeta. The reason he meant to wait at Itri rather than Gaeta was that he believed Giulia to be at Fondi--in which he was mistaken. As he was in the act of mounting his beautiful mare, she fell beneath him, without any apparent reason; which was afterwards looked back on as an evil omen. CHAPTER XIV. WHAT BEFEL BARBAROSSA. The Emperor Charles the Fifth had been very indignant when he heard of the sack of Fondi, and the attempt to seize the Duchess. Some months afterwards, when Muley Hassan, whom Barbarossa had driven from Tunis, appealed to him for assistance, Charles, who was ambitious of military renown, resolved at once to rid the coast of a dangerous invader, and avenge an injured prince, by heading an expedition against Hayraddin. The united strength of his dominions was therefore called out upon this enterprise, which he intended to increase his already brilliant reputation. As the redresser of wrongs, his cause was popular, and drew on him the applause of Christendom. A Flemish fleet conveyed his troops from the Low Countries; the galleys of Naples were loaded with the Italian auxiliaries, and the Emperor himself embarked at Barcelona with the flower of his Spanish nobility, and considerable reinforcements from Portugal. Andrea Doria commanded the Genoese galleys, and the Knights of Malta equipped a small but powerful squadron, and hastened to the rendezvous at Cagliari. All this mighty armament to hunt down a Lesbian pirate, the son of an obscure potter!