But even in that hour the letter was my first thought, and I found a way to thrust it farther under my girdle so that it should not be seen. At last I reached the hall, half-stunned, and with all the misery of defeat and the certainty of the futility of my death to further torture my last moments. Over me stood Ramiro, his dagger upheld, ready to strike. “Dog!” he taunted me, “your sands are run.” “Mercy, Magnificent,” I gasped. “I have done nothing to deserve your poniard.” He laughed brutally, delaying his stroke that he might prolong my agony for his drunken entertainment. “Address your prayers to Heaven,” he mocked me, “and let them concern your soul.” And then, like a flash of inspiration came the words that should delay his hand. “Spare me,” I cried “for I am in mortal sin.” Impious, abandoned villain, though he was, he said too much when he boasted that he feared neither God nor Devil. He was prone to forget his God, and the lessons that as a babe he had learnt at his mother’s knee—for I take it that even Ramiro del’ Orca had once been a babe—but deep down in his soul there had remained the fear of Hell and an almost instinctive obedience to the laws of Mother Church. He could perform such ruthless cruelties as that of hurling a page into the fire to punish his clumsiness; he could rack and stab and hang men with the least shadow of compunction or twinge of conscience, but to slay a man who professed himself to be in mortal sin was a deed too appalling even for this ruthless butcher. He hesitated a second, then he lowered his hand, his face telling me clearly how deeply he grudged me the respite which, yet, he dared not do other than accord me. “Where shall I find me a priest?” he grumbled. “Think you the Citadel of Cesena is a monastery? I will wait while you make an act of contrition for your sins. It is all the shrift I can afford you. And get it done, for it is time I was abed. You shall have five minutes in which to clear your soul.” By this it seemed to me—as it may well seem to you—that matters were but little mended, and instead of employing the respite he accorded me in the pious collecting of thoughts which he enjoined, I sat up—very sore from my descent of the stairs—and employed those precious moments in putting forward arguments to turn him from, his murderous purpose. “I have lived too ungodly a life,” I protested, “to be able to squeeze into Paradise through so narrow a tate. As you would hope for your own ultimate salvation, Excellency, I do beseech you not to imperil mine.”