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"Now may God bless this fool for the most opportune of traitors!" he exclaimed, in surprise at which Fortemani's mouth fell open, and the eyes of Peppe grew very round. "Ercole, my friend, here is a bait to trap that lout my cousin, such as I could never have devised myself." "You mean ?"
But the sterner rebuke fell from the lips of Valentina. "Knave?" she questioned, with flushed countenance. "If you would not have me regret your admittance, Messer Francesco, I pray you curb your words. Here are no knaves. That, sir, is the captain of my soldiers." Francesco bowed submissively, as patient under her reproof as he had been hasty under Fortemani's.
"On no account," cried Gonzaga, now passing from anger to alarm, and snatching the skirts of Fortemani's cloak as the captain was in the act of going out to execute his threat. "Ser Ercole be reasonable, I beg of you. Are we to alarm the castle and disturb Monna Valentina over a trumpery affair such as this? Man, they will laugh at you." "Eh?"
With the assurance that he would obey his wishes Peppe went his errand. A slight delay ensued, and then upon the battlements appeared Gonzaga, sleepy and contentious, attended by a couple of Fortemani's knaves, who came to ask the nature of Francesco's business.
A nameless, homeless adventurer; a swashbuckling bully, reeking of blood and leather, and fit to drive such a pack as Fortemani's. But with a lady what shalt such an oaf attain, how shall he prevail?" He laughed the incipient jealousy to scorn, and his brow grew clear, for now he was in an optimistic mood perhaps a reaction from his recent tremors.
From this it might result that Gian Maria should move at any moment and that his action might be of a desperate character. Now through the ranks of Fortemani's men there had run an inevitable dismay at Francesco's arrest, and a resentment against Valentina who had encompassed it.
Simultaneously he raised his whip, and would have laid the lash of it across the broad of Fortemani's back for it had angered him beyond words to have a ruffian of this fellow's quality seeking to ruffle it with him but at that moment a female voice, stern and imperative, bade them hold in their quarrel.
Confidence, too, did Ercole gather from that magnetism of Francesco's unfaltering confidence; for he seemed to treat the matter as a great jest, a comedy played for the Duke of Babbiano and at that same Duke's expense. And just as Francesco's brisk tone breathed confidence into Fortemani and Valentina, so, too, did it breathe it into Fortemani's wretched followers.
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