, if he would give them a month's pay; the sum was
discussed; Gaston considered that they asked too much for their
withdrawal; the Swiss broke off the negotiation; but "to the great
astonishment of everybody," says Guicciardini, "they raised the siege and
returned to their own country." The pope was besieging Bologna; Gaston
arrived there suddenly with a body of troops whom he had marched out at
night through a tempest of wind and snow; and he was safe inside the
place whilst the besiegers were still ignorant of his movement. The
siege of Bologna was raised. Gaston left it immediately to march on
Brescia, which the Venetians had taken possession of for the Holy League.
He retook the town by a vigorous assault, gave it up to pillage, punished
with death Count Louis Avogaro and his two sons, who had excited the
inhabitants against France, and gave a beating to the Venetian army
before its walls. All these successes had been gained in a fortnight.
"According to universal opinion," says Guicciardini, "Italy for several
centuries had seen nothing like these military operations."

We are not proof against the pleasure of giving a place in this history
to a deed of virtue and chivalrous kindness on Bayard's part, the story
of which has been told and retold many times in various works. It is
honorable to human kind, and especially to the middle ages, that such men
and such deeds are met with here and there, amidst the violence of war
and the general barbarity of manners.

Bayard had been grievously wounded at the assault of Brescia; so
grievously that he said to his neighbor, the lord of Molart, "'Comrade,
march your men forward; the town is ours; as for me, I cannot pull on
farther, for I am a dead man.' When the town was taken, two of his
archers bare him to a house, the most conspicuous they saw thereabouts.
It was the abode of a very rich gentleman; but he had fled away to a
monastery, and his wife had remained at the abode under the care of Our
Lord, together with two fair daughters she had, the which were hidden in
a granary beneath some hay. When there came a knocking at her door, she
saw the good knight who was being brought in thus wounded, the which had
the door shut incontinently, and set at the entrance the two archers, to
the which he said, 'Take heed for your lives, that none enter herein
unless it be any of my own folk; I am certified that, when it is known to
be my quarters, none will try to force a way i