It was della Torre, tall and dark at his master's side, who came to the Duke's assistance. 'You are a bold man, Lord Count, so to address your prince.' 'Bold, aye!' growled the Duke, encouraged by that support. 'Body of God! Bold to recklessness. One of these days ...' He broke off, the coarse lips curling in a sneer. 'But you spoke of sacrifices?' The cunning that lighted his brutishness fastened upon that. It boded, he hoped, a tale of losses that should dim the lustre of this popular idol's achievement. Facino rendered his accounts, and it was then that he proclaimed Bellarion's part; he related how Bellarion's wit had devised the whole plan which had reversed the positions on the Trebbia, and he spoke sorrowfully of how Bellarion and his hundred Swiss had laid down their lives to make Facino's victory certain. 'I commend his memory to your highness and to the people of Milan.' If the narrative did not deeply move Gian Maria, at least it moved the courtiers present, and more deeply still the people of Milan when it reached them later. The outcome was that after a Te Deum for the victory, the city put on mourning for the martyred hero to whom the victory was due; and Facino commanded a Requiem to be sung in Saint Ambrose for this Salvator Patriæ, whose name, unknown yesterday, was by now on every man's lips. His origin, rearing, and personal endowments were the sole subjects of discussion. The tale of the dogs was recalled by the few who had ever heard of it and now widely diffused as an instance of miraculous powers which disposed men almost to canonise Bellarion. Meanwhile, however, Facino returning exacerbated from that audience was confronted by his lady, white-faced and distraught. 'You sent him to his death!' was the furious accusation with which she greeted him. He checked aghast both at the words and the tone. 'I sent him to his death!' 'You knew to what you exposed him when you sent him to hold that ford.' 'I did not send him. Himself he desired to go; himself proposed it.' 'A boy who did not know the risk he ran!' The memory of the protest she had made against Bellarion's going rose suddenly invested with new meaning. Roughly, violently, he caught her by the wrist. His face suddenly inflamed was close to her own, the veins of his brow standing out like cords. 'A boy, you say. Was that what you found him, lady?' Scared, but defiant, she asked him: 'What else?' 'What else? Your concern suggests that you discovered he's a man. What was Bellarion to you?' For once he so terrified her that every sense but that of self-preservation abandoned her on the instant. 'To me?' she faltered. 'To me?' 'Aye, to you. Answer me.' There was death in his voice, and in the brutal crushing grip upon her wrist. 'What should he have been, Facino?' She was almost whimpering. 'What lewdness are you dreaming?' 'I am dreaming nothing, madam. I am asking.'