Nor ought we to omit that opinion which, according to the same author, was expressed by Catando d’Arimini who lived on intimate terms with the count. Catando said:--“In a conference held at Montebrano by the Fregosi, you, my masters, justly commended Gian Aloise Fieschi, for he truly deserved your praise. But I think that the most of you honoured his memory with your good opinion on the basis of the current estimate of his great virtues and singular mental accomplishments. But if you had known him as familiarly as I, the day would be too short to express your admiration. If I wished to recount to you all his merits, it would be easy to begin but impossible to finish my discourse. I shall omit then his birth which opened for him the paths to honour, his boyhood which impressed all the Genoese with boundless expectation of his future, the prematurely ripened intelligence which he used in winning the love of the people and the good will of the nobility, so that the people adored him and the nobles admired and esteemed him. I forbear to enlarge on the repute which he had among the peasants of the Eastern Riviera and in the mountains towards Parma and Piacenza; on the fact that his vassals never complained of the slightest injustice, and that he was so liberal when they were in want that they adored him as a Providence, and that his neighbours had the highest respect for his wisdom. I pass by his affection for his brothers whom he wished to be honoured as himself, that he loved and aided his friends with fraternal warmth and avenged injuries with a prompt hand.” The orator concluded by saying that the most distinguished proof of Fieschi’s greatness was that he attempted great enterprises. We shall not dwell on the people’s grief over the death of Gianluigi. It kept alive his memory in national songs and mariner’s hymns, which are so full of patriotic fervour that they deserve to be collected and preserved. To justify this opinion, we give two stanzas of a popular song preserved in a codex of Beriana the subject of which is the death of the count, the sorrow felt by the Genoese at his loss and their high estimate of his merits.
E se l’alto e magnanimo desìre La fallace fortuna fece vano, Non vi si può imputar, non si può dire Che v’abbi offeso alcun valore umano; Che per voler nel mondo voi ferire Non era in terra così ardita mano: Ma un elemento solo ebbe per sorte Di farsene sepolcro e darvi morte.