“It asks no skill,” I assured him. “Put on your armour, take a sword and lay about you. The most ignorant scullion in your kitchens could perform it given that he had the spirit.” He moistened his lips with his tongue, and his eyes looked dead as a snake’s. Suddenly he rose and took a step towards the armour that was piled about a great leathern chair. Then he paused and turned to me once more. “Help me to put it on,” he said in a voice that he strove to render steady. Yet scarcely had I reached the pile and taken up the breast-plate, when he recoiled again from the task. He broke into a torrent of blasphemy. “I will not sacrifice myself,” he almost screamed. “Jesus! not I. I will find a way out of this. I will live to return with an army and regain my throne.” “A most wise purpose. But, meanwhile, your men are waiting for you; Madonna Paola di Santafior is waiting for you, and—hark!—the bellowing crowd is waiting for you.” “They wait in vain,” he snarled. “Who cares for them? The Lord of Pesaro am I.” “Care you, then, nothing for them? Will you have your name written in history as that of a coward who would not lift his sword to strike one blow for honour’s sake ere he was driven out like a beast by the mere sound of voices?” That touched him. His vanity rose in arms. “Take up that corselet,” he commanded hoarsely. I did his bidding, and, without a word, he raised his arms that I might fit it to his breast. Yet in the instant that I turned me to pick up the back-piece, a crash resounded through the chamber. He had hurled the breastplate to the ground in a fresh access of terror-rage. He strode towards me, his eyes glittering like a madman’s. “Go you!” he cried, and with outstretched arms he pointed wildly across the courtyard. “You are very ready with your counsels. Let me behold your deeds, Do you put on the armour and go out to fight those animals.” He raved, he ranted, he scarce knew what he said or did, and yet the words he uttered sank deep into my heart, and a sudden, wild ambition swelled my bosom. “Lord of Pesaro,” I cried, in a voice so compelling that it sobered him, “if I do this thing what shall be my reward?” He stared at me stupidly for a moment. Then he laughed in a silly, crackling fashion. “Eh?” he queried. “Gesu!” And he passed a hand over his damp brow, and threw back the hair that cumbered it. “What is the thing that you would do, Fool?” “Why, the thing you bade me,” I answered firmly. “Put on your armour, and shut down the visor so that all shall think it is the Lord Giovanni, Tyrant of Pesaro, who rides. If I do this thing, and put to rout the rabble and the fifty men that Cesare Borgia has sent, what shall be my reward?”