I was a man transformed that day, and I could have sung in spite of the chill December wind that buffeted me, so full of joy and gladness was my heart.
At Biancomonte I was likely to spend my days as little better than a peasant, but surely a peasant's estate with such a companion as was to be mine was preferable to an emperor's throne without her.
The bleak landscape seemed to me invested with a beauty that at no other time I should have noticed.

God was good.

I swore a thousand times, the world was a good world--so good that Heaven could scarce be better.
I had come, perhaps, the better half of the distance I had to travel, and I was giving full rein to my joyous fancy, when suddenly I espied ahead a company of horsemen.

They were approaching me at a brisk pace, but I took no thought of them, accounting myself secure from any molestation.

If it so happened that it was a search party from Pesaro, seeking two men disguised as monks who had ravished the coffin of Madonna Paola di Santafior, what should they want of Lazzaro Biancomonte?
And so, in my confidence, I advanced even as they trotted quickly towards me.
Not until they were within a matter of a hundred paces did I raise my eyes to take their measure; and then I halted on my step, smitten of a sudden by an unreasoning and unreasonable fear, to see at their head the bulky form of the Governor of Cesena.