Read "Bellarion the Fortunate" by Rafael Sabatini online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On the ground that they had far to travel, but in reality to spare this unwelcome prisoner, Bellarion was mounted on the crupper of Squarcia's great horse, his lightly pinioned wrists permitting him to hang on by the kennel-master's belt.
Thus he made his first entrance into the fair city of Milan as dusk was descending. Some impression of the size and strength of it Bellarion gathered when, a couple of miles away, they made a momentary halt on a slight eminence in the plain. And though instruction had prepared him for an imposing spectacle, it had not prepared for what he actually beheld. He gazed in wonder on the great spread of those massive red walls reflected in a broad navigable moat, which was a continuation of the Ticinello, and, soaring above these, the spires of a half-dozen churches, among which he was able from what he had read to identify the slender belfry of Sant' Eustorgio and the octagonal brick and marble tower, surmounted by its headless gilded angel, belonging to the church of Saint Gotthard, built in honour of the sainted protector of the gouty by the gout-ridden Azzo Visconti a hundred years ago.