Lowering her face toward the red embers, she whispered: 

“A beast believes all men to be beasts.”

“Kiss of Judas!  Are women really trapped, then, by that gibberish?  Madonna, these miaowing troubadours have concocted a world that they themselves will not live in.  Have I not sat swigging in tents with great nobles, and heard all the truth about it?  Those fellows always have, besides the lady that they pretend to worship as inviolate, a dozen others with whom the harp-twanging stage is stale.”

“All false, every word,” Madonna Gemma answered.

“Because ladies choose to think so the game goes on.  Well, Madonna, remember this.  From the moment when I first saw you I, at least, did you no dishonour, but married you promptly, and sought your satisfaction by the means that I possessed.  I was not unaware that few wives come to their husbands with affection.  Certainly I did not expect affection from you at the first, but hoped that it might ensue.  So even Lapo Cercamorte became a flabby fool, when he met one in comparison with whom all other women seemed mawkish.  Since it was such a fit of drivelling, let us put an end to it.  At sunrise the horses will be ready.  Good night.”

Leaving her beside the dying embers, he went out upon the ramparts.  The fog was impenetrable; one could not even see the light in the sorcerer’s window.

“Damned Arabian!” growled Lapo, brandishing his fist.  He sat down beside the gate-tower, and rested his chin on his hands.

“How cold it is,” he thought, “how lonely and dismal!  Warfare is what I need.  Dear Lord, let me soon be killing men briskly, and warming myself in the burning streets of Ferrara.  That is what I was begotten for.  I have been lost in a maze.”

Dawn approached, and Lapo was still dozing beside the gate-tower.

With the first hint of light the sentinel challenged; voices answered outside the gate.  It was old Grangioia and his sons, calling up that they had come to visit their daughter.

“Well arrived,” Lapo grunted, his brain and body sluggish from the chill.  He ordered the gate swung open.

Too late, as they rode into the courtyard, he saw that there were nearly a score of them, all with their helmets on.  Then in the fog he heard a noise like an avalanche of ice—­the clatter of countless steel-clad men scrambling up the hillside.

While running along the wall, Lapo Cercamorte noted that the horsemen were hanging back, content to hold the gate till reinforced.  On each side of the courtyard his soldiers were tumbling out of their barracks and fleeing toward the keep, that inner stronghold which was now their only haven.  Dropping at last from the ramparts, he joined this retreat.  But on gaining the keep he found with him only some thirty of his men; the rest had been caught in their beds.

Old Baldo gave him a coat of mail.  Young Foresto brought him his sword and shield.  Climbing the keep-wall, Cercamorte squinted down into the murky courtyard.  That whole place now swarmed with his foes.