unately we had no opportunity of taking counsel
with one another. Still she had been accustomed too long to
self-reliance to hesitate for that reason, and divining by a flash of
woman's intuition how this spectacle might be converted into an
opportunity of escape, she consented gracefully to Cesare's plans,
requesting only that the French troops should march as her guard.

To this arrangement Cesare gave his ready acquiescence, promising also
of his own accord that I should ride directly behind her and beside her
children. It was well thought out, for she had counted not alone upon my
assistance, but had determined to use every detail of the programme
which Cesare had devised to rouse the populace of Rome to aid in her
rescue.

She robed herself therefore in most becoming though sable garments,
allowing her veil of thinnest gauze to flutter artfully and display her
beautiful face while the long velvet sleeves open to the shoulder showed
the double manacles at the wrist and above the elbow, made purposely too
tight and cutting into the lovely rounded arm.

Growls of indignation from the men and cries of sympathy from the women
rose as they marked her fatigue, and how ruthlessly the men-at-arms who
led her dragged her on, and the demonstration was a triumph to Caterina
rather than to Cesare. As the float representing the dismantled citadel
of Forli tottered by with her little girls upon the battlements,
waving, the one the bull-blazoned ensign of the Borgias and the other
the reversed and degraded arms of the Medici, shouts of "Shame, shame!"
were heard, and the riotous crowd surged so close to the float that it
was impossible for it to proceed. We had reached at this critical
juncture the Porta del Popolo and through its open gates the via
Flaminia stretching straight to the north across the free Campagna was
discernible. With that sight I comprehended Caterina's intention and at
the same instant the boy-girl Giovanni let fall the Borgia emblem, which
was instantly trampled in the mire by the mob, and snatching the banner
bearing the Medici balls from his sister's hand he waved it triumphantly
in its proper position, crying "Palle, palle! Rescue, rescue!"

Then it was that Caterina had counted on my trusty Frenchmen to sweep
her and her children on to liberty while the mob hindered pursuit. But
alas! Cesare had suspected some such plot, and had interposed between
the prisoners and my brave troopers his own corps of ve