Chapter 28 Summary

The twenty-eighth chapter ushers in the Republican army, arrest by whom Battista and her husband only narrowly escape. They establish a French-style government in which Cosimo is even nominated to serve for a short time, and it is during this stint that he writes his "Constitutional Project for a Republican City with a Declaration of the Rights of Men, Women, Children, Domestic and Wild Animals, Including Birds, Fishes and Insects, and All Vegetation, whether Trees, Vegetables or Grass". Sadly, it never garners much notice.

Cosimo spends his time continuing to protect the underdogs, now the locals with livestock or crops the French might take for taxes, and the young men who flee to the woods for shelter from conscription. He remains loyal to the French out of principal only in his refusal to retract his previous actions, but protects the people and their...