His Swiss, being without baggage, travelled lightly and swiftly. They left their camp before Vercelli on the night of Wednesday, and on the evening of the following Friday, Bellarion brought them into the village of Pavone, where Koenigshofen had established himself in Facino's old quarters of three years ago. There they lay for the night. But whilst his weary followers rested, himself he spent the greater part of the night in the necessary dispositions for striking camp at dawn. And very early on that misty November morning he was off again with Giasone Trotta, Koenigshofen, and all the horse, leaving Stoffel to follow more at leisure with the foot, the baggage, and the artillery. Before nightfall he was at San Salvatore, where his army rested, and on the following Sunday morning at just about the time that Barbaresco was reaching Vercelli, Bellarion, Prince of Valsassina, was approaching the Lombard Gate into Casale, by the road along which he had fled thence years before, a nameless outcast waif whose only ambition was the study of Greek at Pavia. He had travelled by many roads since then, and after long delays he had reached Pavia, no longer as a poor nameless scholar, but as a condottiero of renown, not to solicit at the University the alms of a little learning, but to command whatever he might crave of the place, holding even its Prince in subjection. Greek he had not learnt; but he had learnt much else instead, though nothing that made him love his fellow man or hold the world in high regard. Therefore, he was glad to think that here he touched the end of that long journey begun five years ago along this Lombard Road; the mission upon which he had set out blindly that day was, after many odd turns of Fortune, all but accomplished. When it was done, he would strip off this soldier's harness, abdicate his princely honours, and return on foot--humbler than when he had set out, and cured of his erstwhile heresy--to the benign and peaceful shelter of the convent at Cigliano. There was no attempt to bar his entrance into the Montferrine capital. The officer commanding the place knew himself without the necessary means to oppose this force which so unexpectedly came to demand admittance. And so, the people of Casale, issuing from Mass on that Sunday morning, found the great square before Liutprand's Cathedral and the main streets leading from it blocked by outlandish men-at-arms--Italians, Gascons, Burgundians, Swabians, Saxons, and Swiss--whose leader proclaimed himself Captain-General of the army of the Marquis Gian Giacomo of Montferrat. It was a proclamation that not at all reassured them of their dread at the presence of a rapacious and violent soldiery. The Council of Ancients, summoned by Bellarion's heralds, assembled in the Communal Palace, to hear the terms of this brigand captain--as they conceived him--who had swooped upon their defenceless city.