e wild approach of this unknown rider.

Seeing him unsupported, some of the count's men detached themselves
to return and meet this single foe and oblige him with the death he so
obviously appeared to seek.

They hedged him about--we do not know their number--and, engaging him,
they drew him from the road and down into the hollow space of a ravine.

And so, in the thirty-second year of his age, and in all the glory of
his matchless strength, his soul possessed of the lust of combat, sword
in hand, warding off the attack that rains upon him, and dealing death
about him, he meets his end. From the walls of Viana his resplendent
armour renders him still discernible, until, like a sun to its setting,
he passes below the rim of that ravine, and is lost to the watcher's
view.

Death awaited him amid the shadows of that hollow place.

Unhorsed by now, he fought with no concern for the odds against him,
and did sore execution upon his assailants, ere a sword could find an
opening in his guard to combine with a gap in his armour and so drive
home. That blade had found, maybe, his lungs. Still he swung his sword,
swaying now upon his loosening knees. His mouth was full of blood.
It was growing dark. His hands began to fail him. He reeled like a
drunkard, sapped of strength, and then the end came quickly. Blows
unwarded showered upon him now.

He crashed down in all the glory of his rich armour, which those
brigand-soldiers already coveted. And thus he died--mercifully,
maybe happily, for he had no time in which to taste the bitterness of
death--that awful draught which he had forced upon so many.

Within a few moments of his falling, this man who had been a living
force, whose word had carried law from the Campagna to the Bolognese,
was so much naked, blood-smeared carrion--for those human vultures
stripped him to the skin; his very shirt must they have. And there,
a stark, livid corpse, of no more account than any dog that died
last Saturday, they left Cesare Borgia of France, Duke of Romagna and
Valentinois, Prince of Andria, and Lord of a dozen Tyrannies.

The body was found there anon by those who so tardily rode after their
leader, and his dismayed troopers bore those poor remains to Viana.
The king, arriving there that very day, horror-stricken at the news and
sight that awaited him, ordered Cesare a magnificent funeral, and so he
was laid to rest before the High Altar of Sainte Marie de Viane.

To rest? May the s