at had cost
the fellow his life. But my concern was little with the effect my words
might produce upon his followers.

"By to-morrow you will know whether I have lied or not. Nay, before then
shall you know it, for by midnight Cesare Borgia should be at Cesena.
Vitellozzo Vitelli's letter is in his hands by now."

At that Ramiro burst into a laugh. So convinced was he of the
impossibility of my having got the letter to the Duke, even if what I
had said of its abstraction were true, that he gathered assurance from
what seemed to him so monstrous an exaggeration.

"By your own words are you confounded," said he. "Out of your own mouth
have you proven your lies. Assuming that all you say were true, how
could you, who since last night have been a prisoner, have got a
messenger to bear anything from you to Cesare Borgia?"

I looked at him with a contemptuous amusement that daunted him.

"Where is Mariani?" I asked quietly. "Where is the father of the lad you
so brutally and wantonly slew yesternight? Seek him throughout Cesena,
and when you find him not, perhaps you will realise that one who had
seen his own son suffer such an outrageous and cruel death at your
brigand's hands would be a willing and ready instrument in an act that
should avenge him."

Vergine santa! What a consternation was his. He must have missed Mariani
early in the day, for he took no measure, asked no questions that might
confirm or refute the thing I announced. His face grew livid, and his
knees loosened. He sank on to a chair and mopped the cold sweat from his
brow with his great brown hand. No thought had he now for the eyes of
his officers or their opinions. Fear, icy and horrid, such fear as in
his time he had inspired in a thousand hearts was now possessed of his.
Sweet indeed was the flavour of my vengeance.

His officers instinctively drew away from him before the guilt so
clearly written on his face, and their eyes were full of doubt as to
how they should proceed and of some fear--for it must have been passing
through their minds that they stood, themselves, in danger of being
involved with him in the Duke's punishment of his disloyalty.

This was more than had ever entered into my calculations or found room
in my hopes. By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I might
work my salvation in this eleventh hour.

Madonna watched the scene with eyes that suggested to me that the same
hope had arisen in her own mind. My halberdiers