But his words, despite the unsavoury thing of which they seemed to hold a promise, fell sweetly on my ear, inasmuch as for the time they relieved my fears touching Madonna.  It was not to advise me of her capture that he had had me haled into his odious presence.  I gathered courage.

“Have you not fools enough already at Cesena?” I asked him.

A moment he looked as if he were inclining to anger.  Then he burst into a coarse laugh, and turned to one of his gossips.

“Did I not tell you, Lampugnani, that his wit was quick and penetrating?  Hear him, rogue.  Already has he discerned your quality.”  He laughed consumedly at his own jest, and turning to me he pointed to a crimson bundle on a chair beside me.  “Take those garments,” he roughly bade me.  “Go dress yourself in them, then come you back and entertain us.”

Without answering him, and already anticipating the nature of the clothes he bade me don, I lifted one of the garments from the heap.  It was a foliated jester’s cap, with a bell hanging from every point, which gave out a tinkling sound as I picked it up.  I let it fall again as though it had scorched me, the memory of what stood between Madonna Paola and me rising like a warning spectre in my mind.  I would not again defile myself by the garb of folly; not again would I incur the shame of playing the Fool for the amusement of others.

“May it please your Excellency to excuse me,” I answered in a firm tone.  “I have made a vow never again to put on motley.”

He eyed me sardonically for a moment, as if enjoying in anticipation the pleasure of compelling me against my will.  He sat back in his chair and threw one heavily-booted leg across the other.

“In the Citadel of Cesena,” said he, “we fear neither God nor Devil, and vows are as water to us—­things we cannot stomach.  It does not please me to excuse you.”

I may have paled a little before the sinister smile with which he accompanied his words, but I stood my ground boldly.

“It is not,” said I, “a question of what a vow may be to you and yours, but of what a vow is to me.  It is a thing I cannot break.”

“Sangue di Cristo!,” he snarled, “we will break it for you, then—­that or your bones.  Resolve yourself, beast, the motley or the rack—­or yet, if you prefer it, there is the cord yonder.”  And he pointed to the far end of the chamber where some ropes were hanging from a pulley, the implements of the ghastly torture of the cord.  Of such a nature was this monster that he made a torture-chamber of his dining-hall.

“Let the rogue make acquaintance with it,” laughed Lampugnani, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth behind the black beard that bushed his lips.  “I’ll swear his dancing would afford us more amusement than his quips.  Swing him up, Illustrious.”

But the Illustrious seemed to ponder the matter.

“You shall have five minutes in which to decide,” he informed me presently.  “They say that I am cruel.  Behold how patient is my clemency.  Five minutes shall you have where many another would hang you out of hand for bearding him as you have done me.”