Despite Madonna Paola's dismissal, I remained in Pesaro. Indeed, had
I attempted to leave, it is probable that the Lord Filippo would have
deterred me, for I was much grown in his esteem since the disclosures
that had earned me the disfavour of Madonna. But I had no thought of
going. I hoped against hope that anon she might melt to a kinder mood,
or else that by yet aiding her, despite herself, to elude the Borgia
alliance, I might earn her forgiveness for those matters in which she
held that I had so gravely sinned against her.

The epithalamium, meanwhile, was forgotten utterly and I spent my days
in conceiving wild plans to save her from the Lord Ignacio, only to
abandon them when in more sober moments their impracticable quality was
borne in upon me.

In this fashion some six weeks went by, and during the time she never
once addressed me. We saw much during those days of the Governor of
Cesena. Indeed his time seemed mainly spent in coming and going 'twixt
Cesena and Pesaro, and it needed no keen penetration to discern the
attraction that brought him. He was ever all attention to Madonna, and
there were times when I feared that perhaps she had been drawn into
accepting the aid that once before he had proffered. But these fears
were short-lived, for, as time sped, Madonna's aversion to the man grew
plain for all to see. Yet he persisted until the very eve, almost, of
her betrothal to Ignacio.

One evening in early December I chanced, through the purest accident,
to overhear her sharp repulsion of the suit that he had evidently been
pressing.

"Madonna," I heard him answer, with a snarl, "I may yet prove to you
that you have been unwise so to use Ramiro del' Orca."

"If you so much as venture to address me again upon the subject," she
returned in the very chilliest accents, "I will lay this matter of your
odious suit before your master Cesare Borgia."

They must have caught the sound of my footsteps in the gallery in which
they stood, and Ramiro moved away, his purple face pale for once, and
his eyes malevolent as Satan's.

I reflected with pleasure that perhaps we had now seen the last of him,
and that before that threat of Madonna's he would see fit to ride home
to Cesena and remain there. But I was wrong. With incredible effrontery
and daring he lingered. The morrow was a Sunday, and, on the Tuesday or
Wednesday following, Cesare Borgia and his cousin Ignacio were expected.
Filippo was in the best of moo