In my hand I was left with the bronze hilt of his great poniard; the blade had broken off against the mesh of steel the coward wore beneath his finery.
There was a rush of feet about us, a piercing scream from Madonna Paola, and it was to her that I owed my life in that grim moment.

A dozen blades were naked and would have transfixed me as I lay, but that she covered my body with her own and bade them strike at me through her.
A moment later and the powerful hands of the Governor of Cesena were at my throat.

I was lifted and tossed aside, as though I had been a hound and he the bull I had beset.

And as he swung me over and crushed me to the ground, he knelt above me and grinned horribly into my purpling face.
A second we stayed so, and I thought indeed that my hour was come, when suddenly I felt the blood in my head released once more.

He had taken his hands from my throat.