'Always you overreach yourself,' he mocked him. He turned to Gian Giacomo. 'You could not refuse me if I asked it. But I do not ask it. I only desired to show the value of Carmagnola's offer.' 'You have some decency still,' Carmagnola told him. 'Whilst you cannot lay claim even to that. God made you a fool, and that's the end of the matter.' 'Take him away.' Already it seemed they had their orders. They laid hands upon him, and, submitting without further words, he suffered them to lead him out. As the door closed upon him, Stoffel exploded. He raged and stormed. He pleaded, argued, and vituperated them, even the Princess herself, for fools and dolts, and finally threatened to raise the army against them, or at least to do his utmost with his Swiss to prevent them from carrying out their evil intentions. 'Listen!' Carmagnola commanded sternly, and in the silence they heard from the hall below a storm of angry outcries. 'That is the voice of the army, answering you: the voice of those who were maimed last night as a result of his betrayal. Saving yourself, there is not a captain in the army, and saving your own Swiss, hardly a man who is not this morning clamouring for Bellarion's death.' 'You are confessing that you published the matter even before Bellarion was examined here! My God, you villain, you hell-kite, you swaggering ape, who give a free rein to the base jealousy in which you have ever held Bellarion. Your mean spite may drive you now to the lengths of murder. But look to yourself thereafter. You'll lose your empty head over this, Carmagnola!' They silenced him and bore him out, whereafter they sat down to seal Bellarion's fate. CHAPTER XI THE PLEDGE Unanimously the captains voted for Bellarion's death. The only dissentients were the Marquis and his sister. The latter was appalled by the swiftness with which this thing had come upon them, and shrank from being in any sense a party to the slaying of a man, however guilty. Also not only was she touched by Bellarion's forbearance in the matter of trial by battle against her brother, but his conduct in that connection sowed in her mind the first real doubt of his guilt. Urgently she pleaded that he should be sent for trial before the Duke. Carmagnola, in refusing, conveyed the impression of a great soul wrestling with circumstances, a noble knight placing duty above inclination. It was a part that well became his splendid person. 'Because you ask it, madonna, for one reason, because of the imputations of malice against me for another, I would give years of my life to wash my hands of him and send him to Duke Filippo Maria. But out of other considerations, in which your own and your brother's future are concerned, I dare not. Saving perhaps Stoffel and his Swiss, the whole army demands his death. The matter has gone too far.' The captains one and all proved him right by their own present insistence.