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Colombino came down upon the Veronese with the swift sudden fury of a summer hurricane. It is a method of campaigning that has distinguished other great soldiers before and since his day, and one that presently came to be regarded as his normal practice.

Della Scala, whose agents were still levying troops in the cantons, was taken completely by surprise. It passed his understanding. Building confidently upon the state of exhaustion of the Rovietan treasury, and the Countess Eufemia’s consequent inability to raise an army against him, he had been going leisurely about his preparations and was still entirely unready. That of all mercenary companies the Company of the Dove should have been hired to invade him, increased his wonder and his rage. He had heard of the exorbitancy of Colombo da Siena. Where had the Countess found the gold Messer Colombo would demand before he would put an army into the field? He set his spies to discover the answer to this question, and he raged the more when eventually they brought it him. If Colombino should, indeed, come to reign in Rovieto, as the consort of the Countess, the Lord of Verona would never again find it possible to sleep in peace. Such a neighbour, he supposed, would keep him constantly alert.

From what had happened by the time Della Scala had news of the compact made, it looked as if that unpleasant future were neither improbable nor distant. The fortresses of the Veronese had been going down before the forward sweep of the invader, like so many Jerichoes, at the mere sound of his trumpets. An inadequate army hastily assembled to hold him in check until reinforcements could be obtained and until Verona could be victualled for the siege that was clearly imminent, was smashed to atoms in a single engagement with the Company of the Dove.

Within a fortnight of crossing the frontiers of the Veronese, Colombino had swept up to the walls of Verona. Since the place was too strong to be carried by assault, at least until hunger should have emaciated its defenders, he drew up his lines of circumvallation, linking them across the river, above and below the city, by chains of barges, and he sat down to besiege it.

Della Scala was reduced to despair. Ruin complete and utter stared him in the face. Odd countrymen who found their way into the city brought him news of dreadful ravages in the countryside. Not only was the Company of the Dove victualling itself by ruthless raids, but Colombino was paying his lances with gold extorted by way of indemnities from the fiefs he had reduced. Della Scala swore in terms picturesquely blasphemous that the man was behaving like a brigand. He swore, too, a frightful reckoning. This when his rage was hottest. In cooler moments, realizing his impotency, he doubted if he would survive to present it. Next, as men do when they see little prospect of help from man, Filippo Della Scala turned his thoughts to Heaven. He ordered public prayers and processions and made extravagant votive offerings. Then coming to doubt the efficacy of even these spiritual measures, he taxed his wits to discover physical means of meeting his difficulties.

Here again, both he and his brother Giacomo discovered in themselves a sterility of invention that was reducing them to hopelessness until Giacomo, remembering something, conceived the notion of buying Colombino. Before attempting, however, to act upon it, the brothers took counsel with their illustrious kinsman, Agostino della Francesca, whom they held in high esteem for his learning, his address and his worldly wisdom.

It was after supper one October evening, by when the siege had endured a fortnight, that whilst they still sat at table, Filippo with gloomy candour exposed his anxieties. One slender hope he still possessed. A captain of his, one Pantaleone, a bold, resourceful and devoted fellow, was abroad awaiting an opportunity to bring a convoy through the lines on some dark night. If he succeeded, then Verona, revictualled, might be in case to hold out until the besiegers should be compelled to go into winter quarters. If that happened, then, by the following Spring, Della Scala reinforced, should be able to give a very different account of himself.

Agostino shook his auburn head. Like his cousins, he was a tall, big-boned man, yet of a peculiar grace which they entirely lacked. Virile, there was yet something oddly effeminate about him, something curiously androgynous in the beauty of his face, and particularly about the mouth which, wide and full-lipped, was at once sensual and cruel.

“Colombo will be as aware of this as you are. From what I know of him, he is capable in such conditions of protracting the siege into winter.”

“That,” cried Filippo, “is impossible. Such a thing has never happened.”

“But it may with this fellow. He has a gift for innovations. Nor in your place should I count for a moment upon Pantaleone’s deceiving the vigilance of his lines.”

This put Filippo out of temper. Whilst he sought advice, he desired none that should destroy his already too slender hopes. The younger Della Scala intervened.

“Impatience will not serve, Filippo, nor is our weakness repaired by being ignored. Let us rather recognize it, and seek how it may be countered.” After which exordium, Giacomo introduced the only notion in which he found grounds for real hope.

But again Agostino shook his head. “To offer a bribe is merely to encourage him by advertising your own weakness.”

“Does that matter if he accepts?”

“Why should you suppose he will?”

“His father was Barberi of Terrarossa. These things run in the blood, and like his father, Messer Colombo will have his price.”

“Maybe. But have you gold enough to pay it? This dove flies high. You tell me, yourselves, that he plays for the sovereignty of Rovieto as the consort of the Countess. What can you set in the scales against that?”

“What then?” roared Filippo, like a goaded bull. “In Hell’s name, what then? Must we sit here inert until we starve?”

“You’ll not avoid it by listening to counsels of despair,” said Agostino.

“There are no other counsels left,” Giacomo flung in. He was irritated almost as deeply as his brother by this logical opposition. “You smile at me, Agostino! My God, you can smile! Yet if we go down in ruin, you will share our fate. You have forgotten that?”

“I have not. I study to be calm, so that I may keep my wits about me.”

“And very fruitful they are proving,” sneered Filippo.

But he did not sneer next morning when Agostino brought him the fruits his wits had borne in the night. They left him aghast. They were of a perfume that slightly nauseated him at first, and awakened that scorn of his kinsman which slumbered in the depths of him, begotten of the difference in their natures.

Agostino propounded his rascally notion without hesitancy or any tinge of shame. Whilst few men really liked or trusted him, he was, and knew himself to be, possessed of that indefinable quality which when exerted women find irresistible. The Histoire Galante of this handsome, swaggering Veronese, a tale of easy and successive triumphs, might well be worth the labour of writing. Something of a fifteenth-century Casanova, his story would delight those who have been enthralled by the memoirs of the later Venetian amorist.

His present scheme was built upon his faith in these powers of his and upon the widely reputed frailty of the Countess Eufemia. The task ahead looked easy to him, and this confidence pervaded his exposition of it to the brothers in that same room where last night they had dined and where they came now to break their fast.

He would slip out of Verona alone, make his way to Rovieto and seek sanctuary at the hands of Madonna Eufemia, representing himself as a fugitive from the ruthlessness of the Scaligeri. This alone should lend him interest in the eyes of the Countess. Having thus won, as it were, across the threshold, it should not take him long to make himself master of the house. That was his own phrase. They found it obscure, so he enlightened them with a laughing frankness scarcely decent.

“I have attractions. At least, so it has been found. And I have some little experience in these affairs. So, I believe, has Madonna Eufemia. We should do very well together.”

The brothers stared at him. Then Filippo swore in his black beard, and asked to know in the name of all the saints how this lewdness should help Verona.

Agostino, looking from one to other of their puzzled faces, laughed outright. “Dullards! Isn’t the sequel plain? When I shall have gathered this fragrant little fruit, when it lies here in the hollow of my hand, let word of it go to Colombino. That will be the moment to approach him with your offer of a bribe. Don’t you see? Not only should it tempt him then, when the situation will show him his risk of losing the greater prize for which he plays, but he will perceive in the acceptance of it the means to square accounts with a faithless jade.”

He threw back his head to challenge their applause, a handsome, glittering figure, as he stood, hand on hip, in a patch of sunlight from one of the arched windows.

The applause, however, was slow to come. Giacomo’s approval was as gloomy as his countenance.

“Ingenious,” he admitted, and added: “Infernally ingenious.”

“Infernally, as you say,” grunted Filippo. “I like things reasonably decent.”

Agostino opened wide his eyes. His cruel mouth grew scornful.

“Is this your thanks? I show you a way to save yourselves, I offer to do the work, myself, and incur the risks, and you, Filippo, can tell me only that you like things decent.” He moved in agitation about the chamber. “You’ll never have heard, I suppose, that necessity knows no laws.”

“Why all this heat?” wondered Filippo, already seeking to retreat from those grounds of decency on which he had thought to stand. It was true enough, as Agostino reminded him, that necessity knows no laws; and the choice of decent weapons was a luxury no longer within his means. So he swallowed his reluctance at a gulp. “Why all this heat?”

“At your ingratitude.”

“You take us by surprise,” said Giacomo, coming to his brother’s aid. “You rob us of breath. That is all. We are not ungrateful. We are amazed, and if we are reluctant it is because we are considering that you may leave your head in the business.”

“Ay,” growled Filippo. “Have you thought of that?”

Mollified, Agostino laughed once more. “Not whilst it has any brains in it,” said he. His faith in himself was as massive as the Mole of Hadrian.