eri he
contemptuously said that he accounted them fools for not having known
how to choose a more favourable moment in which to harm him, and that
they would presently find such a fire burning under their feet as would
call for more water to quench it than such men as these disposed of.

Meanwhile, the success of those rustics of Urbino who had risen, and
the ease of their victories, had fired others of the territory to follow
their example. Fossombrone and Pergola were the next to rebel and to put
the Borgia garrisons to the sword; but, in their reckless audacity,
they chose their moment ill, for Michele da Corella was at hand with his
lances, and, although his orders had been to repair straight to Pesaro,
he ventured to depart from them to the extent of turning aside to punish
the insurgence of those towns by launching his men-at-arms upon them and
subjecting them to an appalling and pitiless sack.

When Cesare heard the news of it and the details of the horrors that had
been perpetrated, he turned, smiling cruelly, to Macchiavelli, who
was with him, and, "The constellations this year seem unfavourable to
rebels," he observed.

A battle of wits was toward between the Florentines' Secretary of State
and the Duke of Valentinois, each mistrustful of the other. In the end
Cesare, a little out of patience at so much inconclusiveness, though
outwardly preserving his immutable serenity, sought to come to grips by
demanding that Florence should declare whether he was to account her his
friend or not. But this was precisely what Macchiavelli's instructions
forbade him from declaring. He answered that he must first write to the
Signory, and begged the duke to tell him what terms he proposed should
form the treaty. But there it was the duke's turn to fence and to avoid
a direct answer, desiring that Florence should open the negotiations and
that from her should come the first proposal.

He reminded Macchiavelli that Florence would do well to come to a
decision before the Orsini sought to patch up a peace with him, since,
once that was done, there would be fresh difficulties, owing, of course,
to Orsini's enmity to the existing Florentine Government. And of such a
peace there was now every indication, Paolo Orsini having at last
sent Cesare proposals for rejoining him, subject to his abandoning the
Bologna enterprise (in which, the Orsini argued, they could not bear
a hand without breaking faith with Bentivogli) and turning ag