These last two nights your men have behaved riotously within my walls.

There has been hard drinking, there has been dicing, and such brawling once or twice as led me to think there would be throats cut among your ranks.

You were warned by Messer Gonzaga to hold your followers in better leash, and yet to-day, without so much as drunkenness to excuse them, we have this vile affair, with yourself for a ringleader in it." There followed a pause, during which Ercole stood with bent head like one who thinks, and Francesco turned his wonder-laden glance upon this slight girl with the gentle brown eyes which had been so tender and pitiful.

Marvelling at the greatness of her spirit, he grew--all unconsciously--the more enslaved.
Gonzaga, all unconcerned in this, eyed Fortemani in expectation of his answer.
"Madonna," said the bully at last, "what can you look for from such a troop as this?
Messer Gonzaga cannot have expected me to enlist acolytes for a business that he told me bordered upon outlawry.

Touching their drunkenness and the trifle of rioting, what soldiers have not these faults?
When they have them not, neither have they merit.