'A contingency only,' della Torre untruthfully assured him. 'Yet if realised the alliance would be consolidated. It would become a family affair.' 'Give me air! Let me think.' He rose, thrusting della Torre away by a sweep of his thin arm. Ungainly in his gaudy red and white, shuffling his feet as he went, he crossed to the window where Lonate made way for him. There he stood a moment looking out, whilst between Lonate and della Torre a look of intelligence was flashed. Suddenly the boy swung round again, and his grotesque countenance was flushed. 'By God and His Saints! What thought does it ask?' He laughed, slobberingly, at the picture in his mind of a Facino Cane ruined beyond redemption. Nor could he perceive, poor fool, that he would be but exchanging one yoke for another, probably heavier. Still laughing, he dismissed della Torre and Lonate, and sent for Facino. When the condottiero came, he was given Filippo Maria's letter, which he spelled out with difficulty, being little more of a scholar than the Duke. 'It is grave,' he said when he had reached the end. 'You mean that Vignate is to be feared?' 'Not so long as he is alone. But how long will he so continue? What if he should be joined by Estorre Visconti and the other malcontents? Singly they matter nothing. United they become formidable. And this bold hostility of Vignate's may be the signal for a league.' 'What then?' 'Smash Vignate and drive him out of Alessandria before it becomes a rallying-ground for your enemies.' 'About it, then,' rasped the Duke. 'You have the means.' 'With the Burgundians enlisted after Travo, my condotta stands at two thousand three hundred men. If the civic militia is added ...' 'It is required for the city's defence against Estorre and the other roving insurgents.' Facino did not argue the matter. 'I'll do without it, then.' He set out next day at early morning, and by nightfall, the half of that march to Alessandria accomplished, he brought his army, wearied and exhausted by the June heat, to rest under the red walls of Pavia. To proceed straight against the very place which Vignate had seized and held was a direct course of action in conflict with ideas which Bellarion did not hesitate to lay before the war-experienced officers composing Facino's council. He prefaced their exposition by laying down the principle, a little didactically, that the surest way to defeat an opponent is to assault him at the weakest point. So much Facino and his officers would have conceded on the battle-ground itself. But Bellarion's principle involved a wider range, including the enemy's position before ever battle was joined so as to ensure that the battle-ground itself should be the enemy's weakest point. The course he now urged entailed an adoption of the strategy employed by the Athenians against the Thebans in the Peloponnesian war, a strategy which Bellarion so much admired and was so often to apply.