Fool, the gates of Pesaro close at the second hour of night.

Where are your wits ?" Outwardly calm, but inwardly in a panic--more for Madonna's sake than for my own--I promptly held out the hand on which I wore the Borgia ring.

In a flash of inspiration did that counter suggest itself to me.
"There is a key that will open any gate in Romagna at any hour." He looked at the ring, and of what passed in his mind I can but offer a surmise.

He may have remembered that once before I had fooled him with the help of that gold circlet; or he may have thought that I was secretly in the service of the Borgias, and that, acting in their interests, I had carried off Madonna Paola.

Be that as it may, the sight of the ring threw him into a fury.