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“I came with Guillarte my servant to a certain town called Aquapendente, which as you come from Rome to Florence is the last which the Pope holds; and in an osteria or inn where I alighted I found the Earl Arnesto, my mortal enemy, who with four servants went disguised, and went, as I conceive, more from curiosity than from being a Catholic, to Rome. I did verily believe that he had not known me; I shut myself up in my lodging with my servant, and there kept myself close, and with a great deal of care and vigilance, and with a determination and purpose at the shutting-in of night to get me gone, and to change that my lodging for a safer. But I did not do it, because the great carelessness which I observed in the Earl and his followers did assure me that he did not know me. I supped in my lodging; I made fast the door, stood upon my guard with my sword in my hand; I recommended myself to God, and would not that night go to bed. Myself and my servant lay down on a bench to take a little rest and sleep, and myself was half fallen asleep.

“But a little after midnight they awakened me with purpose to make me sleep an eternal sleep. Four pistols, as I afterwards understood, the Earl and his servants discharged against me, leaving me for dead; and having their horses already in a readiness, they presently put foot in stirrup and went away, bidding the host of the inn that he would see me fairly buried, for that I was a man of principal note and quality. My servant, as mine host afterwards told me, awakened with the noise, out of very fear leapt down from a window that looked out into a base-court, crying out, ‘O miserable and unfortunate that I am! they have slain my lord and master!’ and having said this he hied him out of the inn, and that with such fear and haste that he did not so much as look back or make any stay till he came to London, so that it was he who brought the news of my death.

“They of the inn got up, found me shot athwart my body with four bullets and wounded with many other lesser shot, but all of them lighting on such parts that there was not one mortal wound amongst them all. I begged for confession and all the sacraments, like a Catholic Christian. They gave me them, and cured me, but it was two months and longer before I was able to travel.

“At the end whereof I came to Genoa, where I found no other passage save in two small boats which myself and two other principal Spaniards hired, the one to go before as a vessel of advice for discovery, and the other we went in ourselves.

“With this security we embarked ourselves; sailing along the shore with intention not to go out to sea. But coming over against that place which they call Las Tres Marias, or The Three Marys, which is on the coast of France, and our first boat going forward to see if she could discover anything, in an unlucky hour there came forth two Turkish galleys that lay lurking there in a little creek of the sea, and the one of them putting herself forth to the sea and the other keeping close by the land, when we meant to run ashore, we were prevented in our course, and taken by the Turks. We went on board, and they stripped us of all that we had even to our naked skins. They rifled the boats of all that they had, and suffered them to run ashore, without offering to sink them, saying that they would serve another time to bring them another galima (for by this name they call those spoils and booties which they take from the Christians).