posed, "that our Excellency is in some error.
This gentleman is Lazzaro Biancomonte, a poet of whom Italy will one day
be proud, despite the fact that for a time he acted as the Lord Giovanni
Sforza's Fool."

Ramiro looked at his interlocutor, as the mastiff may look at the lap
dog. He grunted, and blew out his cheeks.

"There is yet another part he played," said he, "as I have good cause
to remember--for he is the only man that can boast of having unhorsed
Ramiro del' Orca. He was for a brief season the Lord Giovanni Sforza
himself."

"How?" asked the profoundly amazed Filippo, whilst all present pressed
closer to miss nothing of the disclosure that seemed to impend. Myself,
I groaned. There was naught that I could say to stem the tide of
revelation that was coming.

"Do you then keep this paladin here arrayed like a clerk?" quoth Ramiro
in his sardonic way. "And can it be that the secret of his feat of arms
has been guarded so well that you are still in ignorance of it?"

Filippo's wits worked swiftly, and swiftly they pieced together the
hints that Ramiro had let fall.

"You will tell us," said he, "that the fight in the streets of Pesaro,
in which your Excellency's party suffered defeat, was led by Biancomonte
in the armour of Giovanni Sforza?"

Ramiro looked at him with that displeasure with which the jester visits
the man who by anticipation robs his story of its points.

"It was known to you?" growled he.

"Not so. I have but learnt it from you. But it nowise astonishes me."

And he looked at his sister, whose eyes devoured me, as if they would
read in my soul whether this thing were indeed true. Under her eyes I
dropped my glance like a man ashamed at hearing a disgraceful act of his
paraded.

"Had it indeed been the Lord Giovanni, he had been dead that day,"
laughed Ramiro grimly. "Indeed it was nothing but my astonishment
at sight of the face I was about to stab, after having broken the
fastenings of his visor that stayed my hand for long enough to give him
the advantage. But I bear you no grudge for that," he ended, turning on
me with a ferocious smile, "nor yet for that other trick by which--as
Boccadoro the Fool--you bested me. I am not a sweet man when thwarted,
yet I can admire wit and respect courage. But see to it," he ended,
with a sudden and most unreasonable ferocity, his visage empurpling if
possible still more, "see to it that you pit neither that courage nor
that wit against me again