“It sets forth here,” cut in Galeotto with assurance, “that the fief of Mondolfo and Carmina are confiscated from Agostino d'Anguissola. Now I submit to your excellency, and to your worthinesses,” he added, turning aside, “that this confiscation is grotesque and impossible, since Mondolfo and Carmina never were the property of Agostino d'Anguissola, and could no more be taken from him than can a coat be taken from the back of a naked man--unless,” he added, sneering, “a papal bull is capable of miracles.” Cosimo stared at him with round eyes, and I stared too, no glimmer of the enormous truth breaking yet upon my bewildered mind. In the court the silence was deathly until Gonzaga spoke. “Do you say that Mondolfo and Carmina did not belong--that they never were the fiefs of Agostino d'Anguissola?” he asked. “That is what I say,” returned Galeotto, towering there, immense and formidable in his gleaming armour. “To whom, then, did they belong?” “They did and do belong to Giovanni d'Anguissola--Agostino's father.” Cosimo shrugged at this, and some of the dismay passed from his countenance. “What folly is this?” he cried. “Giovanni d'Anguissola died at Perugia eight years ago.” “That is what is generally believed, and what Giovanni d'Anguissola has left all to believe, even to his own priest-ridden wife, even to his own son, sitting there, lest had the world known the truth whilst Pier Luigi lived such a confiscation as this should, indeed, have been perpetrated. “But he did not die at Perugia. At Perugia, Ser Cosimo, he took this scar which for thirteen years has served him for a mask.” And he pointed to his own face. I came to my feet, scarce believing what I heard. Galeotto was Giovanni d'Anguissola--my father! And my heart had never told me so! In a flash I saw things that hitherto had been obscure, things that should have guided me to the truth had I but heeded their indications. How, for instance, had I assumed that the Anguissola whom he had mentioned as one of the heads of the conspiracy against Pier Luigi could have been myself? I stood swaying there, whilst his voice boomed out again. “Now that I have sworn fealty to the Emperor in my true name, upon the hands of my Lord Gonzaga here; now that the Imperial aegis protects me from Pope and Pope's bastards; now that I have accomplished my life's work, and broken the Pontifical sway in this Piacenza, I can stand forth again and resume the state that is my own. “There stands my foster-brother, who has borne witness to my true identity; there Falcone, who has been my equerry these thirty years; and there are the brothers Pallavicini, who tended me and sheltered me when I lay at the point of death from the wounds that disfigured me at Perugia.” “So, my Lord Cosimo, ere you can proceed further in this matter against my son, you will need to take your brief and your bull back to Rome and get them amended, for there is in Italy no Lord of Mondolfo and Carmina other than myself.”