It was the winter of 1502. Snow lay deeply round Cesena. In the Citadel the governor was at supper by the hearth, where huge logs blazed and crackled. Halberdiers were standing in attendance; and, on the walls wax torches flamed in their sockets, for the sun was set and the first hour of the night was come. Messer Ramiro d’Orco called for wine; and a page brought a fresh flagon from the buffet. He stumbled among the rushes on the floor in coming, tripped over the feet of a guard; and the falling flagon spilled the wine on the ankle of Messer Ramiro d’Orco. That monster made no more ado. He took the lad by the belt, and slung him into the fire, seizing the nearest halberd and pinning the twitching body to the flaming logs. The hair, in a flash, was gone. The slim legs violently writhed outward, and fell still. Hose and leathern jerkin peeled, and the white flesh hissed and blackened. Then, naught but small ash showed where a boy had died; and the smell of roasted human flesh mingled with the smell of the meats. Again, Messer Ramiro d’Orco called for wine, unmoved, only inconvenienced. He was the governor of Cesena: he had but punished a clumsy serving-boy. That is the kind of man who could rule in the Romagna: and it easily will be understood that acting in this way, armed with plenipotentiary authority, Messer Ramiro d’Orco froze his district into a state of comparative tranquillity—a state which gave him the opportunity of looking further afield, and, so it happened, fatally for himself. A very little cruelty of this callosity goes far. Even truculent Cesena grew faint with horror of this fiend. Duke Cesare acted upon the principle that it is better to be feared than loved—_if one must choose_: but he knew that there is a point beyond which no wise ruler goes: he knew the supreme art of making an end. Murmured rumours of atrocities reached his ears. Sooner or later he would have to bear the odium of the ill-deeds of his deputy. He never shirked responsibility. To shine in the reflected glare of Messer Ramiro d’Orco’s evil fame would not suit his purpose. And there were other things. On the twenty-second of December, when the setting sun cast long blood-red lights across the snow, without warning Duke Cesare gallopped into Cesena with an armed escort of lancers. The cowed Cesenesi, turning out of doors to do him reverence, caught bare glimpses of flashing mail and the bull-bannerols of Borgia passing over the drawbridge of the citadel. Presently, from that citadel came Messer Cipriano di Numai, the Duke’s secretary, to the house of Messer Domenico d’Ugolini, the treasurer; seeking the governor in the city. Messer Ramiro d’Orco was arrested, and conducted to the presence of his chief. Surmise that night was rife as to the import of these acts. New vengeance? New taxes? New horror? None could say.