By the nape of his great neck I caught him from behind, and setting my knee at his spine I wrenched him backward, and so flung him over on the floor.  Down I went with him, my hand reaching for the dagger at his jewelled girdle, and I had found and drawn it in that swift action of mine ere he had bethought him of his hands.  Up it flashed and down.  I sank it through the crimson velvet of his rich doublets straight at the spot where his heart should be—­if he were so human as to have a heart.  The next instant I turned cold and sick.  My desperate effort had been all for nothing.  In my hand I was left with the bronze hilt of his great poniard; the blade had broken off against the mesh of steel the coward wore beneath his finery.

There was a rush of feet about us, a piercing scream from Madonna Paola, and it was to her that I owed my life in that grim moment.  A dozen blades were naked and would have transfixed me as I lay, but that she covered my body with her own and bade them strike at me through her.

A moment later and the powerful hands of the Governor of Cesena were at my throat.  I was lifted and tossed aside, as though I had been a hound and he the bull I had beset.  And as he swung me over and crushed me to the ground, he knelt above me and grinned horribly into my purpling face.

A second we stayed so, and I thought indeed that my hour was come, when suddenly I felt the blood in my head released once more.  He had taken his hands from my throat.  He seized me now by the collar and dragged me rudely to my feet.

“Take this knave and lock him in his chamber,” he bade a couple of his bravi.  “I may have need of him ere he dies.”

“Messer Ramiro,” came the interceding voice of Madonna Paola, “what he did, he did for me.  You will not let him die for it?”

There was a pause during which he looked at her, whilst the men were roughly dragging me across the hall.

“Who knows, Madonna?” he said, with a bow and an infernal smile.  “If you were to beg his life, it might even come to pass that I might spare it.”

He did not wait for her answer, but stepping after me he called to the men that led me.  In obedience they halted, and he came forward.  We were now at the foot of the staircase.

“Boccadoro,” said he, planting himself before me, and eyeing me with eyes that were very full of malice, “you will recall the punishment I promised you if I came to discover it was you had thwarted me in Pesaro.  It is the second time you have fooled Ramiro del’ Orca.  There does not live the man who can boast that he did it thrice, nor will I risk it that you be that man.  Make your peace with Heaven, for at sunset—­in an hour’s time—­you hang.  There is one little thing that might save you even yet, and if you find life sweet, you would do well to pray that that little thing may come to pass.”

I answered him nothing, but I bowed my head in token that I had heard and he signed to the men to proceed with me, whilst turning on his heel he stepped down the hall again to where Madonna Paola, overcome with weakness, had sunk upon a stool.