The Strolling Saint   By: Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)

Being the Confessions of the High & Mighty Agostino D'Anguissola Tyrant of Mondolfo & Lord of Carmina, in the State of Piacenza

By Raphael Sabatini

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

THE OBLATE

CHAPTER

I. NOMEN ET OMEN

II. GINO FALCONE

III. THE PIETISTIC THRALL

IV. LUISINA

V. REBELLION

VI. FRA GERVASIO

BOOK TWO

GIULIANA

I. THE HOUSE OF ASTORRE FIFANTI

II. HUMANITIES

III. PREUX CHEVALIER

IV. MY LORD GAMBARA CLEARS THE GROUND

V. PABULUM ACHERONTIS

VI. THE IRON GIRDLE

BOOK THREE

THE WILDERNESS

I. THE HOME COMING

II. THE CAPTAIN OF JUSTICE

III. GAMBARA'S INTERESTS

IV. THE ANCHORITE OF MONTE ORSARO

V. THE RENUNCIATION

VI. HYPNEROTOMACHIA

VII. INTRUDERS

VIII. THE VISION

IX. THE ICONOCLAST

BOOK FOUR

THE WORLD

I. PAGLIANO

II. THE GOVERNOR OF MILAN

III. PIER LUIGI FARNESE

IV. MADONNA BIANCA

V. THE WARNING

VI. THE TALONS OF THE HOLY OFFICE

VII. THE PAPAL BULL

VIII. THE THIRD DEGREE

IX. THE RETURN

X. THE NUPTIALS OF BIANCA

XI. THE PENANCE

XII. BLOOD

XIII. THE OVERTHROW

XIV. THE CITATION

XV. THE WILL OF HEAVEN

BOOK I. THE OBLATE

CHAPTER I. NOMEN ET OMEN

In seeking other than in myself as men will the causes of my tribulations, I have often inclined to lay the blame of much of the ill that befell me, and the ill that in my sinful life I did to others, upon those who held my mother at the baptismal font and concerted that she should bear the name of Monica.

There are in life many things which, in themselves, seeming to the vulgar and the heedless to be trivial and without consequence, may yet be causes pregnant of terrible effects, mainsprings of Destiny itself. Amid such portentous trifles I would number the names so heedlessly bestowed upon us.

It surprises me that in none of the philosophic writings of the learned scholars of antiquity can I find that this matter of names has been touched upon, much less given the importance of which I account it to be deserving.

Possibly it is because no one of them ever suffered, as I have suffered, from the consequences of a name. Had it but been so, they might in their weighty and impressive manner have set down a lesson on the subject, and so relieved me who am all conscious of my shortcomings in this direction from the necessity of repairing that omission out of my own experience.

Let it then, even at this late hour, be considered what a subtle influence for good or ill, what a very mould of character may lie within a name.

To the dull clod of earth, perhaps, or, again, to the truly strong minded nature that is beyond such influences, it can matter little that he be called Alexander or Achilles; and once there was a man named Judas who fell so far short of the noble associations of that name that he has changed for all time the very sound and meaning of it.

But to him who has been endowed with imagination that greatest boon and greatest affliction of mankind or whose nature is such as to crave for models, the name he bears may become a thing portentous by the images it conjures up of some mighty dead who bore it erstwhile and whose life inspires to emulation.

Whatever may be accounted the general value of this premiss, at least as it concerns my mother I shall hope to prove it apt.