Marjorie Bowen

“ GIAN GALEAZZO MARIA VISCONTI It is a day in early summer, as beautiful as such days were in the Southern lands of 500 years ago. It is Italy steeped in golden sunlight which lies like a haze over the spreading view; the year 1360, when cities were beautiful and nature all-pervading. Here is Lombardy, spread like a garden in the hollow of the hills, ringed about with the purple Apennines, covered with flowers, white, yellow, purple, and pink. This wide road, one of the finest in Italy, winds from Milan to Brescia, its whole length through chestnut woods and plains covered with flowering myrtle. ”

“ The wealthy grew their own fruit and vegetables, the poorer could not afford to buy. Crushed by hopeless oppression into a perpetual dull acceptance, the crowd trudged along, with shuffling feet and bent heads, unheeding the beauty and the sunshine, unnoticing the glory of the spring, with dull faces from which all the soul had been stamped out, and "fear" writ large across the blank. Every movement showed them slaves, every line in their bent figures told they lived under a rule of terror, too potent for them to dare even to raise their eyes to question. ”

“ And the Visconti banner floated out dreamily upon the light spring breeze, and the rider rode at ease and read from the parchment with a smiling face.
Suddenly the old man rose, and threw out his hands with a wild gesture toward the crouching peasants. His frantic cry was stifled on his lips, and a cut from the whip sent him back to his seat with a snarl of impotent fury. The woman sobbed aloud, but sat still, for the tease of the whip followed their slightest movements, though the horseman seemed to heed nothing but the parchment from which he read. ”