'Why, then,' laughed the Duke, 'the tale should please you, madonna, of how with a hundred men this rascal held the ford against Buonterzo's army for as long as the trick's success demanded.' 'He did that?' she asked, incredulous. 'He did more. He laid down his life in doing it. He and his hundred were massacred in cold blood. That is why on Wednesday, at Saint Ambrose, a Requiem Mass is to be sung for him who in the eyes of my people deserves a place in the Calendar beside Saint George.' His aim in this high praise was less to bestow laurels upon Bellarion than to strip them from Facino. 'And I am not sure that the people are wrong. _Vox populi, vox Dei_. This Bellarion was oddly gifted, oddly guarded.' In illustration of this he passed on to relate that incident which had come to be known by then in Milan as 'The Miracle of the Dogs.' He told the tale without any shame at the part he had played, without any apparent sense that to hunt human beings with hounds was other than a proper sport for a prince. As she listened, she was conscious only of horror of this monstrous boy, so that the flesh of her arm shrank under the touch of his short, broad-jewelled paw, from which the finger-nails had been all but entirely gnawed. Anon, however, in the solitude of the handsome chamber assigned to her, she came to recall and weigh the things the Duke had said. This Bellarion had laid down his life in the selfless service of adoptive father and country, like a hero and a martyr. She could understand that in one of whom her knowledge was what it was of Bellarion as little as she could understand the miracle of the dogs. CHAPTER X THE KNIGHT BELLARION That Requiem Mass at Saint Ambrose's for the repose of the soul of Bellarion was never sung. And this because, whilst the bells were solemnly tolling in summons to the faithful, Messer Bellarion, himself, very much in the flesh, and accompanied by Werner von Stoffel, who had been sent to recover his body, marched into the city of Milan by the Ticinese Gate at the head of some seventy Swiss arbalesters, the survivors of his hundred. There was some delay in admitting them. When that dusty company came in sight, swinging rhythmically along, in steel caps and metal-studded leather tunics, crossbows shouldered, the officer of the gate assumed them to be one of the marauding bands which were continually harassing the city by their incursions. By the time that Bellarion had succeeded in persuading him of his identity, rumour had already sped before him with the amazing news. Hence, in a measure as he penetrated further into the city, the greater was his difficulty in advancing through the crowd which turned out to meet him and to make him acquainted with the fame to which his supposed death had hoisted him.