Rafael Sabatini

The Strolling Saint Rafael Sabatini

That was in the year in which the battle of Pavia was fought and won by the Emperor. My father, who had raised a condotta to lend a hand in the expulsion of the French, was left for dead upon that glorious field. Afterwards he was found still living, but upon the very edge and border of Eternity; and when the news of it was borne to my mother I have little doubt but that she imagined it to be a visitation-a punishment upon her for having strayed for that brief season of her adolescence from the narrow flinty path that she had erst claimed to tread in the footsteps of Holy Monica.