. Heroines of Genoa and the Rivieras . e conspirator in chief, wasthe grandson of a former Gianluigi—the richestman in Genoa, whose average yearly income was200,000 crowns (= circa £30,000) : his father,Sinibaldo, on the other hand, was a mode of life and entertainments were upona regal scale, and the womenfolk of the familywere noted, even in the city of bedizened nobleladies, for the magnificence of their jewelleryand the splendour of their garments. Themother of Gianluigi Fiesco was Contessa Maria,daughter of Bartolommeo Grosso della Rovereand niece of Pope Giulio II.—a wom
. Heroines of Genoa and the Rivieras . e conspirator in chief, wasthe grandson of a former Gianluigi—the richestman in Genoa, whose average yearly income was200,000 crowns (= circa £30,000) : his father,Sinibaldo, on the other hand, was a mode of life and entertainments were upona regal scale, and the womenfolk of the familywere noted, even in the city of bedizened nobleladies, for the magnificence of their jewelleryand the splendour of their garments. Themother of Gianluigi Fiesco was Contessa Maria,daughter of Bartolommeo Grosso della Rovereand niece of Pope Giulio II.—a woman of greatpersonal attractiveness but consumed with am-bition and insatiable love of intrigue. Thelad, then in his teens, was so precociously welldeveloped physically, and so highly endowedintellectually, that every woman and girl inGenoa called him II Sebastiano —the saintlyfeminine model of manly perfection. Like hismother, fearless, unscrupulous and grasping, ateighteen his fathers death gave him the headship 156 iiwaiiHH^^. _J e zn > O 5 - m n 3 wo S Palaces and Plots of his House, and he made his accession to thatdignified position the occasion of a gross insultto the Doria and Spinola—his hereditary foes. Who, he asked, are these miserable mush-rooms ? Andrea Doria is nothing better thanthe son of a common silk-weaver, he is a nobody,and he has not got a drop of blood like ours inhis veins. Battista and Luca Spinola are of noaccount whatever. They are but the spigotsof their wine-casks, keen-eyed money-grubbers—out upon the lot of them ! The widowed Contessa Maria retired to theCastle of Montobbio, the Fiesco stronghold, abovethe gorge of the Trebbia near the road to Pia-cenza, not so very far away from the legendarycell of the Irish missionary Saint she fixed her residence, as firm as anoak •—her family cognisance—to watch thecourse of events in Genoa, and, at the same time,to use all the power she possessed in poisoningher sons mind ag
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