"Fool!" he blazed at the latter.

"Brute beast, for what do you wait?
Did you not hear me ?" Without a second's delay the captain now raised his sword, and his deep, guttural voice barked an order to his men which brought their lances below the horizontal.

The mob, too, had heard that fierce command, and awakening to their peril, those nearest the cavalcade would have fallen back but that the others, pressing tightly from behind, held them in the death-tide that now swept by with clattering arms and hoarse cries.
Shrieks filled the air where lately threats had been loudly tossed.

But some there were in that crowd that would be no passive witnesses of this butchery.

Half the stones of the borgo went after that cavalcade, and fell in a persistent shower upon them, rattling like giant hail upon their armour, dinting many a steel-cap to its wearer's sore discomfort.
The Duke himself was struck twice, and on Santi's unprotected scalp an ugly wound was opened from which the blood flowed in profusion to dye his snowy locks.
In this undignified manner they reached, at last, the Palazzo Ducale, leaving a trail of dead and maimed to mark the way by which they had come.
In a white heat of passion Gian Maria sought his apartments, and came not forth again until, some two hours later, the presence was announced him of the emissary from Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who sought an audience.
Still beside himself, and boiling with wrath at the indignities he had received, Gian Maria--in no mood for an interview that would have demanded coolness and presence of mind from a keener brain than his--received the envoy, a gloomy, priestly-faced Spaniard, in the throne-room of the Palace.