"I think, Madonna, that we had better move a little farther off.

Ramiro's voice makes indifferent music for a lady's ear." She was white as death at the horrid noise and all the things of which it may have reminded her, and so we passed from the antechamber and sought the more distant places of the castle.
Here let me pause.

We were married on the morrow which was Christmas eve, and in the grey dawn of the Christmas morning we set out for Biancomonte with the escort which Cesare Borgia placed at our disposal.
As we rode out from the Citadel of Cesena, we saw the last of Ramiro del' Orca.

Beyond the gates, in the centre of the public square, a block stood planted in the snow.

On the side nearer the castle there was a dark mass over which a rich mantle had been thrown; it was of purple colour, and in the uncertain light it was not easy to tell where the cloak ended, and the stain that embrued the snow began.