llen too low to
ever rise again, and no dreams indulged in a sunset hour, and inspired,
perhaps, by a child who was beautiful as one of the saints of God, would
ever come to be realised by poor Boccadoro.

Night was falling as we clattered through the slippery streets of
Fossombrone.

CHAPTER V. MADONNA'S INGRATITUDE

We stayed in Fossombrone little more than a half-hour, and having made a
hasty supper we resumed our way, giving out that we wished to reach Fano
ere we slept. And so by the first hour of night Fossombrone was a league
or so behind us, and we were advancing briskly towards the sea. Overhead
a moon rode at the full in a clear sky, and its light was reflected by
the snow, so that we were not discomforted by any darkness. We fell,
presently, into a gentler pace, for, after all, there could be no
advantage in reaching Pesaro before morning, and as we rode we talked,
and I made bold to ask her the cause of her flight from Rome.

She told me then that she was Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, and
that Pope Alexander, in his nepotism and his desire to make rich and
powerful alliances for his family, had settled upon her as the wife for
his nephew, Ignacio Borgia. He had been emboldened to this step by the
fact that her only protector was her brother, Filippo di Santafior, whom
they had sought to coerce. It was her brother, who, seeing himself in a
dangerous and unenviable position, had secretly suggested flight to
her, urging her to repair to her kinsman Giovanni Sforza at Pesaro. Her
flight, however, must have been speedily discovered and the Borgias, who
saw in that act a defiance of their supreme authority, had ordered her
pursuit.

But for me, she concluded, that pursuits must have resulted in her
capture, and once they had her back in Rome, willing or unwilling, they
would have driven her into the alliance by means of which they sought
to bring her fortune into their own house. This drew her into fresh
protestations of the undying gratitude she entertained towards me,
protestations which I would have stemmed, but that she persisted in
them.

"It is a good and noble thing that you have done," said she, "and I
think that Heaven must have directed you to my aid, for it is scarce
likely that in all Italy I should have found another man who would have
done so much."

"Why, what, after all, is this much that I have done?" I cried. "It is
no less than my manhood bade me do; no less than any other