Page:Matteo Bandello - twelve stories (IA cu31924102029083).pdf/17

 and manuscripts behind. After various vicissitudes, he accepted the offer of Cesare Fregoso and his wife, Costanza Rangoni, to accompany them to France, since in Italy he could find no permanent home. Fregoso, at one time a distinguished Venetian general, had espoused the French cause, and possessed a beautiful château at Bassen, near Agen, in Aquitaine. Here with these friends Bandello remained, living, as he himself tells us, "tranquilly for the muses and for himself." Through the influence of friends, some of his manuscripts were eventually recovered from the Spaniards, and he now spent this period of leisure in revising and re-writing his stories with a view to their publication.

In 1541 Bandello lost his patron, for Fregoso, who had gone to Venice as ambassador of Francis I., was assassinated at Milan, by order of the Governor, the Marchese del Vasto. However, for this misfortune Matteo had a recompense when nine years later Henry II. made him Bishop of Agen, as an acknowledgment of his allegiance to France during the Italian wars. Bandello, nevertheless, exercised his Episcopal functions as little as possible, leaving the government of his diocese to a