tenance, that Bembo's alarms were all renewed. "Who is it, Migueloto, that presumes to fly the duke's hawks without my allowance?" he said, fiercely. "I have just lost one of my best carrier pigeons, which was seized by a hawk launched from the Tower of Winds, and the letter to my wife, which I despatched by it, is probably lost!"

"It is Uguccione. I have warned him many a time that he displeased your lordship," replied Don Migueloto. "But the hawks are too well trained to have eaten the pigeon; therefore undoubtedly the letter is safe."

"Go and bring the rogue this instant before me; and, by heaven! if the seal is but breathed upon, I will have him hung up as a warning to all such insolent, meddling villains that keep no discipline," said the podestà, whose agitation was so extreme that Ser Niccolò inwardly smiled. Don Migueloto departed, apparently with very good will, on his errand; and striving to resume his equanimity, Remiro invited the guests to seat themselves. Some time elapsed, and although the podestà continued to be much disturbed, the guests did ample honour to their repast. The Orsino, for whatever reason, ate only of such meats as he saw were served to his host; but no one had as yet assailed the crane when the captain of Ronciglione made his re-appearance. His naturally insidious and at the same time ferocious countenance displayed its characteristics now so legibly, that a child could not have mistaken them. He held an open letter in his hand, which he presented to the podestà. "It was not the under-falconer, as I imagined, my lord,"

he said, with a satanic leer, " but a fellow that lately came to the castle, who has dared to amuse himself with flying the duke's hawks; and whom I surprised perusing your letter to Signora Donna Beatrice, your honourable wife!"

"My wife!-then-thou hast not-thou hast not read it too, Migueloto?" exclaimed the podestà, turning deadly pale as he received the epistle.

"Your lordship knows that I am as great a fool in monk-learning as a monk were in soldiery!" replied Migueloto.

"True-that thou hast often said!" observed the podestà, breathing hard, as if relieved from a weight on his chest. "But did not this prying villain read it to thee?"

"By the rood! I gave him not the time!" replied the captain.

"What, my excellent, my faithful Migueloto! thou didst not, in thy passion at his insolence, strike thy dagger into him?" said Don Remiro, hurriedly.

"I caused him to be instantly seized-but I thought it behoved me rather to wait for your lordship's judgment," said the captain.

"Where have you left him? In whose company? Take him at once to the nearest tree!" said the podestà, with increasing agitation. "Doubtless he is some spy employed by our enemies-else wherefore should he read my letters?"

"My lord, he is a freeman, and as such, according to the laws of that same Roman king you so often upbraid us with, he must be fairly adjudged ere he be

put to death," replied the malicious captain, who enjoyed his superior's confusion.

"Let none speak to him. Bring him here gagged, and I will adjudge him fast enough," said Don Remiro, passionately.

"He is at the door-your lordship need not long delay your dinner," said Don Migueloto, stepping eagerly to the portal, which he threw widely open. The burnished casques and spears of the Florentine ambassador's escort suddenly glittered on the startled gaze of the banquetters, filing into the saloon in rapid succession, from the centre of whose opening ranks, with a rapid and fiery step, eyes blazing with wrath, his fine nostrils quivering, his cheek pale with concentrated passion, came Cæsar Borgia! The suddenness of his entry, his wild looks, his dark hair waving like black serpents beneath his cap of white fureven his garb, which was of sable velvet gleaming all over with gems-might have struck terror into men who had no reason to dread his wrath. As it was, Don Remiro stood fixed and pallid as stone-the knights started up and laid their hands on their swords, and the canon broke into the form of exorcism to a fiend.

"Ha, podestà! you are determined then to send me to the gibbet for impertinence !-What then does treason merit?" thundered the terrific master; and turning with a sudden change to the most courtly and blandishing kindness, he said, "Disturb not at this, noble gentlemen, and my dear friend and brother, Orsino!-But assist me to pronounce what

punishment is due to this ungrateful traitor, who is not content with endeavouring to blow into a more furious flame than ever this civil war which we were all striving to extinguish, but desires to blacken my good name with the foulest treachery; to raise not only Rome but all humanity against me, yea, even to set war, and hatred, and suspicion between a father and his child!"

As he spoke, he snatched the paper from the passive hand of the podestà, and read aloud the intercepted letter to his no less passive auditors.

The podestà had indeed been inspired by his evil genius when he penned this epistle. After a loving preamble to his fair wife, and intense regrets expressed at their long separation, Don Remiro cooingly declared that he believed the time of their mutual misery was drawing to a close. He then informed the lady of the arrival of Paolo Orsino and his company at Ronciglione; described the calamities he had suffered on the way; and desired her immediately on the receipt of this letter to hasten to the Apostolic Palace, use the signal he had taught her to obtain a private audience of the Pope, and then to inform his holiness of the event; with the addition, that the podestà knew the whole to have been plotted by the Duke of Romagna to murder his intended brother-in-law, and that unless speedy rescue arrived, the deed would still be accomplished! To prevent which, he advised that the Pope should send a nuncio, with his command to the podestà to bring the Orsino instantly to Rome; and lest the soldiery and seditious captain of Ronciglione should

refuse obedience, he advised that the nuncio should be accompanied by the German ordnance and a muster of the Orsini, allowing them, by way of security, the guard of the Flaminian Gate, until their return. In a private postscript, the uxorious magistrate informed his wife, that as he could no longer live apart from her, and as the duke began to suspect his attachment to the service of his holiness, and was moreover more rapacious than a harpy, cruel than a tiger, and false than a serpent, he did not intend to return to his office, and therefore desired her to send three large carriages, with broad wheels, to convey away his treasures and effects, before the tyrant could arrive. Among the latter was a pearl chain, of the bigness of pigeon eggs, taken from a certain lady of Montefeltro, who was executed for blasphemously pretending to miraculous powers in foretelling events-among which she had dared to include the podestà's approaching destruction,-which he hoped soon to see on the fairest neck in the world.

"Now gentlemen and true knights, deem you the lady of the pigeon-egg pearls ought to be mistaken?" said the Borgia, with a terrible laugh as he concluded reading the epistle.

"If Don Remiro has spoken the truth in this amorous overflow, wherefore would you punish him, Duke of Romagna ?" said the Hospitaller, whether in desperation or defiance, he himself could scarcely have said. But instead of being irritated to madness, as the unhappy canon immediately expected to behold him, Cæsar's fierce eyes suffused with tears,