hey rode, time not serving for full joyance of their love, for they
feared pursuit, they held converse thereof, and from time to time
exchanged a kiss. Now it so befell, that, the way being none too well
known to Pietro, when, perhaps eight miles from Rome, they should have
turned to the right, they took instead a leftward road. Whereon when they
had ridden but little more than two miles, they found themselves close to
a petty castle, whence, so soon as they were observed, there issued some
dozen men at arms; and, as they drew near, the damsel, espying them, gave
a cry, and said:--"We are attacked, Pietro, let us flee;" and guiding her
nag as best she knew towards a great forest, she planted the spurs in his
sides, and so, holding on by the saddle-bow, was borne by the goaded
creature into the forest at a gallop. Pietro, who had been too engrossed
with her face to give due heed to the way, and thus had not been ware, as
soon as she, of the approach of the men at arms, was still looking about
to see whence they were coming, when they came up with him, and took him
prisoner, and forced him to dismount. Then they asked who he was, and,
when he told them, they conferred among themselves, saying:--"This is one
of the friends of our enemies: what else can we do but relieve him of his
nag and of his clothes, and hang him on one of these oaks in scorn of the
Orsini?" To which proposal all agreeing, they bade Pietro strip himself:
but while, already divining his fate, he was so doing, an ambuscade of
full five-and-twenty men at arms fell suddenly upon them,
crying:--"Death, death!" Thus surprised, they let Pietro go, and stood on
the defensive; but, seeing that the enemy greatly outnumbered them, they
took to their heels, the others giving chase. Whereupon Pietro hastily
resumed his clothes, mounted his nag, and fled with all speed in the
direction which he had seen the damsel take. But finding no road or path
through the forest, nor discerning any trace of a horse's hooves, he
was--for that he found not the damsel--albeit he deemed himself safe out
of the clutches of his captors and their assailants, the most wretched
man alive, and fell a weeping and wandering hither and thither about the
forest, uttering Agnolella's name. None answered; but turn back he dared
not: so on he went, not knowing whither he went; besides which, he was in
mortal dread of the wild beasts that infest the forest, as well on
account of himself as of the da