may serve you again."

"I could not, Lazzaro! I could not!" she exclaimed, recoiling, yet
without any show of deeming presumptuous my words or of being offended
by them.

"If you would make me the reward that you say I have earned, you will
do this for me. It will make me happier, Madonna. Take it"--I thrust it
into her unwilling hand--"and if ever you should need me send it back to
me. That ring and the name of the place where you abide by the lips of
the messenger you choose, and with a glad heart, as fast as horse can
bear me, shall I ride to serve you once again."

"In such a spirit, yes," said she. "I take it willingly, to treasure it
as a buckler against danger, since by means of it I can bring you to my
aid in time of peril."

"Madonna, do not overestimate my powers," I besought her. "I would have
you see in me no more than I am. But it sometimes happens that the mouse
may aid the lion."

"And when I need the lion to aid the mouse, my good Lazzaro, I will send
for you."

There were tears in her voice, and her eyes were very bright.

"Addio, Lazzaro," she murmured brokenly. "May God and His saints protect
you. I will pray for you, and I shall hope to see you again some day, my
friend."

"Addio, Madonna!" was all that I could trust myself to say ere I fled
from her presence that she might not see my deep emotion, nor hear the
sobs that were threatening to betray the anguish that was ravaging my
soul.

PART II. THE OGRE OF CESENA

CHAPTER XI. MADONNA'S SUMMONS

However great the part that my mother--sainted woman that she was--may
have played in my life, she nowise enters into the affairs of this
chronicle, so that it would be an irrelevance and an impertinence to
introduce her into these pages. Of the joy with which she welcomed me to
the little home near Biancomonte, in which the earnings of Boccadoro the
Fool had placed her, it could interest you but little to read in detail,
nor could it interest you to know of the gentle patience with which
she cheered and humoured me during the period that I sojourned there,
tilling the little plot she owned, reaping and garnering like any born
villano. With a woman's quick intuition she guessed perhaps the canker
that was eating at my heart, and with a mother's blessed charity she
sought to soothe and mitigate my pain.

It was during this period of my existence that the poetic gifts I had
discovered myself possessed of whilst at Pesaro, burst into full