pecunious pedant? Or perhaps you imagine that it was from Gambara?
In time that grasping prelate might have made the Duke pay. But pay,
himself? By the Blood of God! he was never known to pay for anything.

"Or, yet again, do you suppose her finery was afforded her by
Caro?--Messer Annibale Caro--who is so much in debt that he is never
like to return to Piacenza, unless some dolt of a patron rewards him for
his poetaster's labours.

"No, no, my shaveling. It was I who paid--I who was the fool. God! I
more than suspected the others. But you. You saint... You!"

He flung up his head, and laughed bitterly and unpleasantly. "Ah,
well!" he ended, "You are to pay, though in different kind. It is in the
family, you see." And abruptly raising his voice he shouted to the men
to wait.

Thereafter he rode ahead, alone and gloomy, whilst no less alone and
gloomy rode I amid my guards. The thing he had revealed to me had torn
away a veil from my silly eyes. It had made me understand a hundred
little matters that hitherto had been puzzling me. And I saw how utterly
and fatuously blind I had been to things which even Fra Gervasio had
apprehended from just the relation he had drawn from me.

It was as we were entering Piacenza by the Gate of San Lazzaro that I
again drew my cousin to my side.

"Sir Captain!" I called to him, for I could not bring myself to address
him as cousin now. He came, inquiry in his eyes.

"Where is she now?" I asked.

He stared at me a moment, as if my effrontery astonished him. Then
he shrugged and sneered. "I would I knew for certain," was his fierce
answer. "I would I knew. Then should I have the pair of you." And I saw
it in his face how unforgivingly he hated me out of his savage jealousy.
"My Lord Gambara might tell you. I scarcely doubt it. Were I but
certain, what a reckoning should I not present! He may be Governor of
Piacenza, but were he Governor of Hell he should not escape me." And
with that he rode ahead again, and left me.

The rumour of our coming sped through the streets ahead of us, and out
of the houses poured the townsfolk to watch our passage and to point me
out one to another with many whisperings and solemn head-waggings. And
the farther we advanced, the greater was the concourse, until by the
time we reached the square before the Communal Palace we found there
what amounted to a mob awaiting us.

My guards closed round me as if to protect me from that crowd. But I
was strange