Clearly, from his hesitancy, Mombelli had been unprepared for the question. 'It ... it is a sort of podagric affection,' he mumbled. 'And your thumb? Why is that bandaged?' Terror leapt to Mombelli's eyes. His toothless jaws worked fearfully. 'That? That is naught. An injury.' 'Take off the bandage. Take it off, man. I desire to see this injury. Do you hear me?' At last Mombelli with shaking fingers stripped the bandage from his left thumb, and displayed it naked. Bellarion went white, and his eyes were dreadful. 'You have been tortured, master doctor. Gian Maria has subjected you to his Lent.' This Lent of Gian Maria's invention was a torment lasting forty days, on each of which one or more teeth were torn from the patient's jaws, then day by day a finger nail, whereafter followed the eyes and finally the tongue, whereupon the sufferer being rendered dumb and unable to confess what was desired, he was shown at last the mercy of being put to death. Mombelli's livid lips moved frantically, but no words came. He reeled where he stood until he found the wall to steady him, and Bellarion watched him with those dreadful, searching eyes. 'To what end did he torture you? What did he desire of you?' 'I have not said he tortured me. It is not true.' 'You have not said it. No. But your condition says it. You have not said it, because you dare not. Why did he do this? And why did he desist?' Bellarion gripped him by the shoulders. 'Answer me.' To what did the torments undergone suffice to constrain you? Will you answer me?' 'O God!' groaned the physician, sagging limply against the wall, and looking as if he would faint. But there was no pity in Bellarion's face. Come with me,' he said, and it was almost by main force that he dragged the wretched doctor across that hall out to the gallery, and down the wide steps to the great court. Here under the arcade some men-at-arms of Facino's bodyguard were idling. Into their hands Bellarion delivered Mombelli. 'To the question chamber,' he said shortly. Mombelli, shattered in nerve and sapped of manhood by his sufferings, cried out, piteously inarticulate. Pitilessly Bellarion waved him away, and the soldiers bore him off, screaming, to the stone chamber under the north-eastern tower. There, in the middle of the uneven stone floor, stood the dread framework of the rack. Bellarion, who had followed, ordered them to strip him. The men were reluctant to do the office of executioners, but under the eyes of Bellarion, standing as implacable as the god of wrath, they set about it, nevertheless, and all the while the broken man's cries for mercy filled that vaulted place with an ever-mounting horror. At the last, half-naked, he broke from the men's hands and flung himself at Bellarion's feet. 'In the name of the sweet Christ, my lord, take pity on me! I can bear no more. Hang me if you will, but do not let me be tortured again.'