Bellarion, entirely at his ease, looked at them with amused contempt, and finally at Carmagnola in whose face he laughed. 'God save you, Carmagnola! I often wonder what will be the end of you.' 'I am no longer wondering what will be the end of you,' he was furiously answered, which only went to increase his amusement. 'And you others, you were equally deceived. The letter and Carmagnola's advocacy of my falseness and treachery were not to be resisted?' 'I have not been deceived,' Stoffel protested. 'I was not classing you with those addled heads, Stoffel.' 'It will need more than abuse to clear you,' Tenda warned him angrily. 'You, too, Ugolino! And you, madonna, and even you Lord Marquis! Well, well! It may need more than abuse to clear me; but surely not more than this letter. Falsehood is in every line of it, in the superscription, in the seal itself.' 'How, sir?' the Princess asked him. 'Do you insist that it is forged?' 'I have your word that it is not. But read the letter again.' He tossed it to them. 'The Marquis Theodore pays your wits a poor compliment, Carmagnola, and the sequel has justified him. Ask yourselves this: If I were, indeed, Theodore's friend and ally, could he have taken a better way than this of putting it beyond my power to serve him further? It is plainly superscribed to me, so that there shall be no mistake as to the person for whom it is intended and it bears his full signature, so that there shall be no possible mistake on the score of whence it comes. In addition to that, he has sealed it with his arms, so that the first person into whose hands it falls shall be justified in ascertaining, as you did, what Theodore of Montferrat may have occasion to write to me.' 'It was expected that the soldiers who caught the clown would bear him straight to you,' Carmagnola countered. 'Was it? Is there no oddness in the fact that the clown should walk straight into your own men, Carmagnola, on a section of the line that does not lie directly between Vercelli and Quinto? But why waste time even on such trifles of evidence. Read the letter itself. Is there a single word in that which it was important to convey to me, or which would not have been conveyed otherwise if it had been intended for any purpose other than to bring me under this suspicion? Almost has Theodore overreached himself in his guile. Out of his intentness to destroy me, he has revealed his true aims.' 'The very arguments I used with them,' said Stoffel. Bellarion looked in amazement at his lieutenant. 'And they failed?' he cried, incredulous. 'Of course they failed, you foul traitor!' Carmagnola bawled at him. 'They are ingenious, but they are obvious to a man caught as you are.' 'It is not I that am caught; but you that are in danger of it, Carmagnola, in danger of being caught in the web that Theodore has spun.' 'To what end? To what end should he spin it? Answer that.'