Away by the buffet old Mariani looked on with a face as grey as ashes, his eyes protruding in horror at the thing they witnessed.  One glimpse I had of him, and I scarce know which was the sight that sickened me more, the fathers anguish or the twitching limbs of the burning child.  Two legs and two arms protruded from the blaze and writhed and wriggled horribly what time the flames peeled the garments from them and licked the flesh from the bones.  At length they fell still and sank down into the white heat of the logs, a hideous, pungent odour spreading through the chamber.  From the old man by the buffet, who had stood spellbound during this ghastly scene, there broke at last an anguished cry.

“Mercy, my lord, mercy!”

The Governor of Cesena straightened himself from his task, pulled the pike from the flames, and restored it to the man-at-arms.  Then turning to Mariani: 

“Fetch me wine,” he bade him curtly, as he seated himself once more upon the chair from which he had risen to perform that deed of ghastly ruthlessness.

A torch spluttered suddenly in its sconce, and the fierce hissing of the fire—­like some monster licking its chops over a bloody meal—­were the only sounds that disturbed the stillness that ensued.

Every man there, including Ramiro’s table companions, was white to the lips; for accustomed though they might be to horrors in that brigand’s nest, this was a horror that surpassed anything they had ever witnessed.  The silence irked Messer Ramiro.  He looked round from under his shaggy brows, and he spluttered out an oath.

“Will you bring me this wine, pig?” he growled at the almost senseless Mariani, and in his air and voice there was a promise of such terrific things that the old man put aside his horror to make room for his fears, and mechanically seizing another flagon he hurried forward to minister to the wants of his fearful lord.

Ramiro eyed him with cynical amusement.

“Your hand shakes, Mariani,” he derided him.  “Are you cold?  Go warm yourself,” he added, with a brutal laugh and a jerk of his thumb towards the fire.

My eyes have looked upon some gruesome sights, and I have heard such tales of ruthless cruelty as you would deem almost passing possibility.  I have read of the awful doings of the Lord Bernabo Visconti at Milan in the olden time, but I believe that compared with this monster of Cesena that same Bernabo was no worse than a sucking dove.  How it befell that men permitted him to live, how it was that none bethought him to put poison in his wine or a knife in his back, is something that I shall never wholly understand.  Could it be that these robbers of whom he made a hedge for his protection were no better than himself, or was it that the man’s terrific brutality was on such a scale that it filled them with an almost supernatural awe of him?  To men better versed than am I in the mysterious ways of human nature do I leave the answering of these questions.