Free Baudolino by Umberto Eco Page B

haven't seen. Oh, why has it become so dark?"
    Baudolino, who was a liar, told him not to worry, because night was falling. Just as noon was striking, Otto exhaled a hiss from his now hoarse throat, and his eyes remained open and fixed, as if he were looking at his Prester John enthroned. Baudolino closed his teacher's eyes, and shed honest tears.

    Saddened by Otto's death, Baudolino went back to Frederick for a few months. At first he consoled himself with the thought that, seeing
the emperor again, he would also see the empress. He saw her, and was saddened still more. We must not forget that Baudolino was approaching his sixteenth year and if, before, his falling in love might have seemed a boyish perturbation, of which he himself understood very little, now it was becoming conscious desire and complete torment.
    Rather than remain at court and languish he always followed Frederick into the field, and he had witnessed things he was far from liking. The Milanese destroyed Lodi for the second time, or, rather, first they sacked it, taking away livestock, forage, and goods from every household; then they drove all the citizens outside the walls, telling them that if they didn't clear out to Hell and gone, every last one of them would taste the sword: women, old people, and children, including babes still in the cradle. The citizens of Lodi abandoned in the city only their dogs, and went off into the countryside, on foot, under the rain, even the nobles, who had been deprived of their horses, and the women with infants at their breast, and at times they fell by the wayside, or rolled brutally into the ditches. They took refuge between the Adda and the Serio; there they managed to find only some hovels where they slept, piled one upon another.
    This in no way placated the Milanese, who came back to Lodi, imprisoning the very few who had refused to leave. They cut down all the vines and the trees and then set fire to the houses, destroying also most of the dogs.
    These are not things that an emperor can tolerate, hence Frederick once again went down into Italy, with a great army made up of men from Burgundy, Lorraine, Bohemia, Hungary, Swabia, France, and any other imaginable place. First of all, he founded a new Lodi at Montegezzone, then he encamped before Milan, enthusiastically supported by the people of Pavia and Cremona, Pisa, Lucca, Florence and Siena, Vicenza, Treviso, Padua, Ferrara, Ravenna, Modena, and more, all allied with the empire to humiliate Milan.
    And Milan was truly humiliated. By the end of the summer the
city had capitulated and, in an effort to save it, the Milanese subjected themselves to a ritual that humiliated Baudolino himself, though he had no feelings for Milan. The defeated passed in a sad procession, all barefoot and in sackcloth, including the bishop, with the men-at-arms wearing their swords hung around their neck. Frederick, at this point his magnanimity returning, gave the humiliated the kiss of peace.
    "Was it worth it," Baudolino asked himself, "to act so overbearing with Lodi, and then have to humble themselves like this? Is it worth living in these lands where everyone seems to have made a vow of suicide, and one side helps the other kill themselves? I want to leave." In reality, he also wanted to get away from Beatrice, because finally he had read somewhere that distance can cure the love illness (and he had not yet read other books where, on the contrary, it is said that distance is precisely that which fans the flames of passion). So he went to Frederick to remind him of Otto's advice and to have himself sent to Paris.
    He found the emperor sad and wrathful, pacing back and forth in his chamber, while in one corner Rainald of Dassel was waiting for him to calm down. At a certain point Frederick stood still, looked into Baudolino's eyes, and said: "You are my witness, boy, that I am bending every effort to bring all the cities of Italy under a single law, but, every time, I have to