"I will go and fetch it," I stammered, for the request was a demand, and the thought came to me that I might cut out all reference to the Lady of Forli from the letter. "I think we shall not need to trouble you to do so," cried the lynx-eyed Cesare. "Your pouch is open, and if I mistake not that is the handwriting of the Cardinal." He had snatched the letter, and it was in his father's hand before he had said half these words. I am not a man given to prayer, but from the bitterness of my despair my soul cried silently in that instant, "O God, save her, for vain is the help of man!" The Pope ran his eye quickly along the lines without speaking until he came to the name of the Lady of Forli. "As to Caterina Sforza Riario de' Medici and her children"--he read aloud with illy suppressed excitement, and then in his eagerness to know more he turned two pages at once, without perceiving that the one which should have followed next adhered to that which he had just read--"As to Caterina Sforza Riario de' Medici and her children," he repeated, "they must be returned to Florence, as the King desires the good will of the Medici." In utter stupefaction, I could not at first understand how this misreading had chanced. "Hem, hem!" grunted the Pope--"but she is only the widow of a member of the cadet branch, a person of no importance. I see not why the King of France should concern himself with her fate. Nevertheless, since our prisoners have his patronage, they shall be detained no longer. I will write to the Florentine signory commending the lady and her children to their loving watch-care, and as you, Sir Yves, have been their conductor hither, so shall you escort them to their destination." Cesare could not gainsay his father's command. An hour later the gates of St. Angelo opened for the departure of the Lady of Forli and her children. I waited not for any chance of fate to turn backward the wheel of fortune, and as my faithful troop galloped into line about her litter, I gave the triumphant order-- "To Florence." She dwells there even as I write these chronicles, in the Medicean villa of Castello, and as at first she dared not keep her little son with her (the men of the Medici being banished from Florence), she confided him, still habited in girlish disguise, to the care of a community of nuns, who kept a seminary for the daughters of noble families. But at length, on the restoration of the Medici, he issued from that retreat, and is now being bred to the profession of arms, in the which he bids fair to realise the ambitions confided to me as we rode from Forli, what time I deemed him the most unmannerly little princess which it had been my lot to meet. CHAPTER II THE FINDING OF APOLLO (AN ESCAPADE OF BAZZI'S) I _Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (called Sodoma) to Giulio Romano, painter and architect at Mantua._ _Good Friend and sometime Pot-Comrade:_