For instead of putting you to the question and loosening your lying tongue with the rack, I am content to keep you a prisoner until my men return with that which I suspect you to be hiding from me.

But if I then discover that you have sought to fool me, you shall flutter from Ramiro del' Orca's flagstaff." He pointed up to the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom.

He named it well when he called it his "flagstaff," and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena.

Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, "The enemy of God, of pity and of mercy." Forbidding, black-browed men caught me with rough hands and dragged me off to a dank, unlighted prison, as empty of furniture as it was full of noisome smells.

And there they left me to my ugly thoughts and my deeply despondent mood what time the Governor of Cesena supped with his officers in the hall of the Castle.
Ramiro drank deep that night as was his habit, and being overladen with wine it entered his mind that in one of his dungeons lay Lazzaro Biancomonte, who, at one time, had been known as Boccadoro, the merriest Fool in Italy.