the Arte della Lana, the guildhouse of the
wool weavers. The armorial design of the art, embossed above the portal,
is a lamb bearing a cross.

"Two of my friends, who lived on a side street in the neighborhood, were
Michael di Lando, a wool-comber who had considerable influence with his
guild, and Ser Nuto, a bailiff of the Signory.

"I had been in Florence six months and married more than a month when
Sir John disposed of our services to the eight commissioners of war;
when, with great unwillingness, I was forced to leave wife and home and
resume command of my three hundred horsemen.

"After having been thus engaged for more than four months, I procured a
furlough, expecting to have ten days of quiet at home. It was the month
of May and the city at its loveliest. On the third night after my
return, my wife and I were eating a late lunch, after a visit to her
brother's palace, when the servant announced that a man was at the door
with a message from Sir John, asking that I come at once to the inn of
the Golden Hat on the Via de Bardi.

"Buckling on armor and sword, and telling the good wife not to wait up
for me, I accompanied the messenger.

"When crossing the Ponte Vecchio in the darkness of its many butcher
stalls, the messenger, walking behind, leaped upon my back, seeking to
throw me to the floor. He was almost instantly aided by a half-dozen men
wearing black robes and cowls covering the head, having eyeholes only;
in other words, dressed as friars of the order of Misericordia. One of
these struck me on the head with a heavy short sword, and when I
regained consciousness I learned I was a prisoner in a dungeon under the
cloisters of the monastery of Agnoli. My friend, Ser Nuto, had
engineered the capture, which had been ordered by the Bologna legate for
my gross insults to him and consequently to the church. My captors, who
belonged to the Guelph faction, had cheerfully executed the commission
because of my relationship by marriage with the Medici family.

"My dungeon was simply a cistern of huge stones beneath the floor of the
cell of a friar of the order and the same size as his cell. The only
aperture was in the floor of the cell above and closed by a heavy
grating, the key to which, kept by the head of the order, was never
entrusted to the friar, who was as powerless to open the grating as I.

"The walls of immense stone were made the more impervious by iron bars,
which prevented contact with them, and