CHAPTER V.MADONNA'S INGRATITUDE.
We stayed in Fossombrone little more than a half-hour, and having made a hasty supper we resumed our way, giving out that we wished to reach Fano ere we slept.

And so by the first hour of night Fossombrone was a league or so behind us, and we were advancing briskly towards the sea.

Overhead a moon rode at the full in a clear sky, and its light was reflected by the snow, so that we were not discomforted by any darkness.

We fell, presently, into a gentler pace, for, after all, there could be no advantage in reaching Pesaro before morning, and as we rode we talked, and I made bold to ask her the cause of her flight from Rome.
She told me then that she was Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, and that Pope Alexander, in his nepotism and his desire to make rich and powerful alliances for his family, had settled upon her as the wife for his nephew, Ignacio Borgia.

He had been emboldened to this step by the fact that her only protector was her brother, Filippo di Santafior, whom they had sought to coerce.