Grouped about the upper end of this table sat four men of the peasant type, sun-tanned, bearded, and rudely garbed in loose jerkins and cross gartered leg cloths. A silence had fallen upon them as I entered, and they too were now inspecting me with a frank interest which in their simple way they made no attempt to conceal. I sank wearily to the stool, paying little heed to them, and in answer to the girl's invitation to command her, I begged for meat and bread and wine. Whilst she was preparing these, one of the men addressed me civilly; and I answered him as civilly but absently, for I had enough of other matters to engage my thoughts. Then another of them questioned me in a friendly tone as to whence I came. Instinctively I concealed the truth, answering vaguely that I was from Castel Guelfo--which was the neighbourhood in which I had overtaken my Lord Gambara and Giuliana. “And what do they say at Castel Guelfo of the things that are happening in Piacenza?” asked another. “In Piacenza?” quoth I. “Why, what is happening in Piacenza?” Eagerly, with an ardour to show themselves intimate with the affairs of towns, as is the way of rustics, they related to me what already I had gathered to be the vulgar version of Fifanti's death. Each spoke in turn, cutting in the moment another paused to breathe, and sometimes they spoke together, each anxious to have the extent of his information revealed and appreciated. And their tale, of course, was that Gambara, being the lover of Fifanti's wife, had dispatched the doctor on a trumped-up mission, and had gone to visit her by night. But that the suspicious Fifanti lying near by in wait, and having seen the Cardinal enter, followed him soon after and attacked him, whereupon the Lord Gambara had slain him. And then that wily, fiendish prelate had sought to impose the blame upon the young Lord of Mondolfo, who was a student in the pedant's house, and he had caused the young man's arrest. But this the Piacentini would not endure. They had risen, and threatened the Governor's life; and he was fled to Rome or Parma, whilst the authorities to avoid a scandal had connived at the escape of Messer d'Anguissola, who was also gone, no man knew whither. The news had travelled speedily into that mountain fastness, it seemed. But it had been garbled at its source. The Piacentini conceived that they held some evidence of what they believed--the evidence of the lad whom Fifanti had left to spy and who had borne him the tale that the Cardinal was within. This evidence they accounted well-confirmed by the Legate's flight. Thus is history written. Not a doubt but that some industrious scribe in Piacenza with a grudge against Gambara, would set down what was the talk of the town; and hereafter, it is not to be doubted, the murder of Astorre Fifanti for the vilest of all motives will be added to the many crimes of Egidio Gambara, that posterity may execrate his name even beyond its already rich enough deserts.