Never since Phidippides, the Athenian courier, do I believe that any man had run as desperately and doggedly as I ran that night.
By dawn, having in some three hours put twenty miles or so between myself and Piacenza, I staggered exhausted and with cut and bleeding feet through the open door of a peasant's house.
The family, sat at breakfast in the stone-flagged room into which I stumbled.

I halted under their astonished eyes.
"I am the Lord of Mondolfo," I panted hoarsely, "and I need a beast to carry me home." The head of that considerable family, a grizzled, suntanned peasant, rose from his seat and pondered my condition with a glance that was laden with mistrust.
"The Lord of Mondolfo--you, thus ?" quoth he.

"Now, by Bacchus, I am the Pope of Rome!" But his wife, more tender-hearted, saw in my disorder cause for pity rather than irony.
"Poor lad!" she murmured, as I staggered and fell into a chair, unable longer to retain my feet.

She rose immediately, and came hurrying towards me with a basin of goat's milk.

The draught refreshed my body as her gentle words of comfort soothed my troubled soul.