Messer Gonzaga may be an idle
lute-thrummer, a poor-spirited coward; but a traitor----! And to betray
Monna Valentina! No, no."

But the fool was far from reassured. He had had the longer acquaintance
of Messer Gonzaga, and his shrewd eyes had long since taken the man's
exact measure. Let Francesco scorn the notion of betrayal at Romeo's
hands; Peppe would dog him like a shadow. This he did for the remainder
of that day, clinging to Gonzaga as if he loved him dearly, and
furtively observing the man's demeanour. Yet he saw nothing to confirm
his suspicions beyond a certain preoccupied moodiness on the courtier's
part.

That night, as they supped, Gonzaga pleaded toothache, and with
Valentina's leave he quitted the table at the very outset of the meal.
Peppe rose to follow him, but as he reached the door, his natural enemy,
the friar--ever anxious to thwart him where he could--caught him by the
nape of the neck, and flung him unceremoniously back into the room.

"Have you a toothache too, good-for-naught?" quoth the frate. "Stay you
here and help me to wait upon the company."

"Let me go, good Fra Domenico," the fool whispered, in a voice so
earnest that the monk left his way clear. But Valentina's voice now bade
him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost.

He moved about the room a very dispirited, moody fool with no quip for
anyone, for his thoughts were all on Gonzaga and the treason that he
was sure he was hatching. Yet faithful to Francesco, who sat all
unconcerned, and not wishing to alarm Valentina, he choked back the
warning that rose to his lips, seeking to convince himself that his
fears sprang perhaps from an excess of suspicion. Had he known
how well-founded indeed they were he might have practised less
self-restraint.

For whilst he moved sullenly about the room, assisting Fra Domenico with
the dishes and platters, Gonzaga paced the ramparts beside Cappoccio,
who was on sentry duty on the north wall.

His business called for no great diplomacy, nor did Gonzaga employ much.
He bluntly told Cappoccio that he and his comrades had allowed Messer
Francesco's glib tongue to befool them that morning, and that the
assurances Francesco had given them were not worthy of an intelligent
man's consideration.

"I tell you, Cappoccio," he ended, "that to remain here and protract
this hopeless resistance will cost you your life at the unsavoury hands
of the hangman. You see I am frank with you."

Now fo