Bellarion, however, saw in Venegono's warning no more than an attempt to use him for the execution of a private vengeance. Three days later he thought he had confirmation of this. It came in a letter bearing Facino's signature, but penned in the crabbed and pointed hand of the Countess, who had been summoned from Melegnano to minister to her lord. It informed Bellarion that the physician Mombelli had come at last in response to Facino's request, and that Facino hoped soon to be afoot again. Indeed, there was already a perceptible improvement in his condition. 'So much for Venegono's rumours that Mombelli has been murdered,' said Bellarion to himself, and laughed at the scaremongering of that credulous hot-head. But he thought differently when after another three days a second letter reached him signed by the Countess herself. 'My lord begs you to come to him at once,' she wrote. 'He is so ill that Messer Mombelli despairs of him. Do not lose a moment, or you may be too late.' He was more deeply stirred by that summons than by anything he could remember. If those who accounted him hard and remorselessly calculating could have seen him in that moment, the tears filming his eyes at the very thought of losing this man whom he loved, they must have formed a gentler opinion of his nature. He sent at once for Carmagnola, and ordered a strong horse to be saddled and twenty lances to prepare to ride with him. Ride with him, however, they did not. They followed. For he rode like one possessed of devils. In three hours he covered the forty miles of difficult road that lay between Bergamo and Pavia, leaving one horse foundered and arriving on a second one that was spent by the time he reached Filippo Maria's stronghold. Down he flung from it in the great courtyard, and, staggering and bespattered, he mounted the main staircase so wide and of such shallow steps that it was possible to ascend it on horseback. Without pausing to see the Prince, he had himself conducted straight to Facino's chamber, and there under the damask-hung canopy he found his adoptive father supine, inert, his countenance leaden-hued, looking as if he were laid out in death, save for his stertorous breathing and the fire that still glowed in the eyes under their tufted, fulvid brows. Bellarion went down on his knees beside the bed, and took, in both his own that were so warm and strong, the cold, heavy hand that lay upon the coverlet. The grey head rolled a little on its pillow; the ghost of a smile irradiated the strong, rugged face; the fingers of the cold hand faintly pressed Bellarion's. 'Good lad, you have lost no time,' he said, in a weak, rasping voice. 'And there is no time to lose. I am sped. Indeed, my body's dead already. Mombelli says the gout is mounting to my heart.' Bellarion looked up. Beyond the bed stood the Countess, fretful and troubled. At the foot was Mombelli, and in the background a servant.