'I neither doubt nor hesitate,' he quietly answered. 'I know where my path lies, and I follow it.' She made a noise in her throat. 'And at the window? Gian Maria and that other. Did you see them?' 'I saw. I am not afraid. It would need more courage than theirs to express in deed their hatred. Besides, their need of me is too urgent.' 'One day it may not be so.' 'Let us leave that day until it dawn.' 'Then it will be too late. This is your hour. Have they not told you so?' 'They have told me nothing that I did not know already--those in the streets and those at the window. Come, madonna.' And the Countess, raging as she stepped beside him, from between her teeth cursed the day when she had mated with a man old enough to be her father who at the same time was a fool. CHAPTER V THE COMMUNE OF MILAN 'They deafen us with their acclamations of you, those sons of dogs!' Thus the Duke, in angry greeting of the great condottiero, who was not only the last of his father's captains to stand beside him in his hour of need, but the only one who had refrained from taking arms against him. Nor did he leave it there. 'Me they distracted with their howling lamentations when I rode abroad this morning. They need a lesson in loyalty, I think. I'll afford it them one of these fine days. I will so, by the bones of Saint Ambrose! I'll show them who is Duke of Milan.' There was a considerable concourse in the spacious chamber known as the Hall of Galeazzo, in which the Duke received the condottiero, and, as Facino's wide-set, dark eyes raked their ranks, he perceived at once the influence that had been at work during his few months of absence. Here at the Duke's elbow was the sinister della Torre, the leader of the Guelphic party, the head of the great House of the Torriani, who had striven once with the Visconti for supremacy in Milan, and in the background wherever he might look Facino saw only Guelphs, Casati, Bigli, Aliprandi, Biagi, Porri, and others. They were at their ease, and accompanied by wives and daughters, these men who two years ago would not have dared come within a mile of the Visconti Palace. Indeed, the only noteworthy Ghibelline present, and he was a man so amiably weak as to count for little in any party, was the Duke's natural brother, Gabriello Maria, the son who had inherited the fine slender height, good looks, and red-gold hair of Gian Galeazzo. Facino was moved to anger. But he dissembled it. 'The people perceive in me the possible saviour of your duchy.' He was smiling, but his eyes were hard. 'It is well to propitiate those who have the power to serve us.' 'Do you reprove his highness?' wondered della Torre, scowling. 'Do you boast your power?' growled the Duke. 'I rejoice in it since it is to be used in your potency's service, unlike Buonterzo's which is being used against you.' Behind Facino his Countess watched, and inwardly smiled. These fools were stirring her lord, it seemed, where she could not stir him.