At long length he put forth his hand again to the bell. This time Bellarion did not interfere. He perceived in the act the young Prince's surrender to the forces of greed and lust which Bellarion himself had loosed against him. He took his leave, and went out with the sad knowledge that greed and wantonness would make of the woman, too, a ready prey. His work was done. She should have the thing she coveted, and find in it her punishment ... CHAPTER VII PRINCE OF VALSASSINA As Bellarion had calculated and disposed, so things fell out, and Filippo Maria Visconti in the twenty-second year of his age led to the altar the widowed Countess of Biandrate who was thirty-nine. As a young girl, she had married, at the bidding of ambition, a man who was twenty years her senior; as a middle-aged woman now, and for the same reason, she married one who was almost as much her junior. She had not the foresight to perceive that the grievance on the score of disparity of years which she had nursed against Facino would be nursed against herself to her ultimate destruction by this sly, furtive, and cruel Prince to whom now she gave herself and her vast possessions. That, however, is no part of the story I have set myself to tell. Estorre Visconti defended in vain his usurped dominion against Gian Maria's legitimate successor. Filippo Maria, with Carmagnola in command of some seven thousand men, laid siege to Milan, whilst Bellarion went north to make an end of the Bergamo resistance. Because in haste to have done, he granted Malatesta easy terms of surrender, permitting him to ride out of the city with the honours of war, lance on thigh. Thereafter, having restored order in Bergamo and left there a strong garrison under an officer of trust, he marched with the main army to join Filippo Maria who was conducting operations from the mills on Monte Lupario, three miles from Milan. Some four weeks already had he spent there, with little progress made. Estorre had enrolled and constrained to the defence of the city almost every man of an age to bear arms. It was necessary to make an end, and Bellarion himself with a few followers entered the Castle of Porta Giovia which was being held against Estorre by Vimercati, the castellan. From its walls, having attracted the people by trumpet-blast, he published Filippo Maria's proclamation, wherein the Prince solemnly undertook that if the city were at once surrendered to him it should have nothing to fear; that there should be no pillage, executions, or other measures punitive of this resistance to the State's legitimate lord. The news flew in every direction, with the result that before nightfall all those whom Estorre had constrained to follow him had fallen away, and he was left with only his mercenaries. With these, next morning, he hacked a way out through the Comasina Gate as the people were throwing open to the new Duke the gates of the city on the other side.