Vergine santa!  What a consternation was his.  He must have missed Mariani early in the day, for he took no measure, asked no questions that might confirm or refute the thing I announced.  His face grew livid, and his knees loosened.  He sank on to a chair and mopped the cold sweat from his brow with his great brown hand.  No thought had he now for the eyes of his officers or their opinions.  Fear, icy and horrid, such fear as in his time he had inspired in a thousand hearts was now possessed of his.  Sweet indeed was the flavour of my vengeance.

His officers instinctively drew away from him before the guilt so clearly written on his face, and their eyes were full of doubt as to how they should proceed and of some fear—­for it must have been passing through their minds that they stood, themselves, in danger of being involved with him in the Duke’s punishment of his disloyalty.

This was more than had ever entered into my calculations or found room in my hopes.  By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I might work my salvation in this eleventh hour.

Madonna watched the scene with eyes that suggested to me that the same hope had arisen in her own mind.  My halberdiers and the carnifex alone stood stolidly indifferent.  Ramiro was to them the man that hired them; with his intriguing they had no concern.

For a moment or two there was a silence, and Ramiro sat staring before him, his white face glistening with the sweat of fear.  A very coward at heart was this overbearing ogre of Cesena, who for years had been the terror and scourge of the countryside.  At last he mastered his emotion and sprang to his feet.

“You have had the laugh of me,” he snarled, fury now ringing in his voice.  “But ere you die you may regret it that you mocked me.”

He turned to the executioner.

“Strip him,” he commanded fiercely.  “He shall not hang as I intended—­at least not before we have torn every bone of his body from its socket.  To the cord with him!” And he pointed to the torture at the end of the hall.

The executioner made shift to obey him when suddenly Madonna Paola leapt to her feet, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with a new excitement.

“Is there none here,” he cried, appealing to Ramiro’s officers, “that will draw his sword in the service of his overlord, the Duca Valentino?  There stands a traitor, and there one who has proven his loyalty to Cesare Borgia.  The Duke is likely to demand a heavy price for the life of that faithful one to whose warning he owes his escape of assassination.  Will none of you side now with the right that anon you may stand well with Cesare Borgia when he comes?  Or, by idly allowing this traitor to have his way, will you participate in the punishment that must be his?”

It was the very spur they needed.  And scarce was that final question of hers flung at those knaves, when the answer came from one of them.  It was that same sturdy Lupone.