tirrups, his eyes ablaze with the jealous wrath
that possessed him.

"Ser Martino!" he roared hoarsely to his captain. "Couch lances and go
through them at the gallop!"

The burly Swiss hesitated, brave man though he was. Alvaro de' Alvari
and Gismondo Santi looked at each other in alarm, and the intrepid
old statesman, in whose heart no pang of fear had been awakened by the
rabble's threatening bay, changed colour as he heard that order given.

"Highness," he implored the Duke, "You cannot mean this."

"Not mean it?" flashed back Gian Maria, his eye travelling from Santi to
the hesitating captain. "Fool!" he blazed at the latter. "Brute beast,
for what do you wait? Did you not hear me?"

Without a second's delay the captain now raised his sword, and his deep,
guttural voice barked an order to his men which brought their lances
below the horizontal. The mob, too, had heard that fierce command, and
awakening to their peril, those nearest the cavalcade would have fallen
back but that the others, pressing tightly from behind, held them in the
death-tide that now swept by with clattering arms and hoarse cries.

Shrieks filled the air where lately threats had been loudly tossed. But
some there were in that crowd that would be no passive witnesses of this
butchery. Half the stones of the borgo went after that cavalcade, and
fell in a persistent shower upon them, rattling like giant hail upon
their armour, dinting many a steel-cap to its wearer's sore discomfort.
The Duke himself was struck twice, and on Santi's unprotected scalp an
ugly wound was opened from which the blood flowed in profusion to dye
his snowy locks.

In this undignified manner they reached, at last, the Palazzo Ducale,
leaving a trail of dead and maimed to mark the way by which they had
come.

In a white heat of passion Gian Maria sought his apartments, and came
not forth again until, some two hours later, the presence was announced
him of the emissary from Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who sought
an audience.

Still beside himself, and boiling with wrath at the indignities he
had received, Gian Maria--in no mood for an interview that would
have demanded coolness and presence of mind from a keener brain than
his--received the envoy, a gloomy, priestly-faced Spaniard, in the
throne-room of the Palace. The Duke was attended by Alvari, Santi, and
Fabrizio da Lodi, whilst his mother, Caterina Colonna, occupied a chair
of crimson velvet on which