They hung in the rear of Cappoccio, all ears for what was being said, and their countenances plainly showing how their feelings were in sympathy with their spokesman.
"And you a soldier, Cappoccio ?" sneered Francesco.

"Shall I tell you in what Fortemani was wrong when he enlisted you?
He was wrong in not hiring you for scullion duty in the castle kitchen." "Sir Knight!" "Bah! Do you raise your voice to me?
Do you think I am of your kind, animal, to be affrighted by sounds--however hideous ?" "I am not affrighted by sounds." "Are you not?
Why, then, all this ado about a bunch of empty threats cast at us by the Duke of Babbiano?
If you were indeed the soldier you would have us think you, would you come here and say, 'I will not die this way, or that'?
Confess yourself a boaster when you tell us that you are ready to die in the open." "Nay! That am I not." "Then, if you are ready to die out there, why not in here?
Shall it signify aught to him that dies where he gets his dying done?
But reassure yourself, you woman," he added, with a laugh, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by the others, "you are not going to die--neither here, nor there." "When Roccaleone capitulates----" "It will not capitulate," thundered Francesco.
"Well, then--when it is taken." "Nor will it be taken," the Provost insisted, with an assurance that carried conviction.

"If Gian Maria had time unlimited at his command, he might starve us into submission.

But he has not.

An enemy is menacing his own frontiers, and in a few days--a week, at most--he will be forced to get him hence to defend his crown." "The greater reason for him to use stern measures and bombard us as he threatens," answered Cappoccio shrewdly but rather in the tone of a man who expects to have his argument disproved.