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ON the balcony the new Doge was resuming his harangue; and because the stir of Prospero’s troop was not accomplished without some roughness and some noise, the mob would have passed from protests to menaces and perhaps to violence but for the formidable glitter of that compact and full-armed body.

They won out at last and gained the less encumbered spaces before the Cathedral, where, however, they still had to breast the stream of townsfolk advancing in the opposite direction. Beyond that space, as they ascended a steep street leading to the Campetto, they moved more freely and in orderly formation, their pikes at the slope. Active interference with them none dared to venture. But more than once, recognized for the foreign troops of Prospero Adorno, responsible for the harsh measures of that day, jeers and insults greeted and followed them from some of those who had been repressed. Answering taunt with laughing taunt as they marched, they pressed on, Prospero in the rear with Scipione, his countenance white and wicked.

In the Campetto they were met by another of Prospero’s captains, who with some sixty men he had assembled was on his way downhill in quest of the main body. Thus when at last Prospero reached the red walls of the Castelletto, flushed now by the setting sun, he brought at his heels a force more than two hundred strong.

The arched gateway yawned open, and they went through at the double. The men who sprang forth to challenge them as their accelerated steps clattered past the gatehouse were swept aside like twigs on the edges of a torrent.

In the courtyard, one half of which lay already in shadow, more men confronted them, and the officer in charge, a Provençal of Doria’s following, recognizing the Pontifical Captain, stepped forward briskly.

‘In what can I serve you, Sir Captain?’ The deference of the question was purely mechanical. The Provençal knew enough of what had happened that day in Genoa to be made uneasy by this invasion in strength.

Prospero was short. ‘You will place the Castelletto in my charge.’

Dismay overspread the man’s swarthy countenance. It was a moment before he found his voice. ‘With deference, Sir Captain, that I cannot do. Messer Cesare Fregoso has placed me in command here, and here I must remain until Messer Cesare relieves me.’

‘Or until I sweep you out. You’ve heard me, sir. Willingly or unwillingly, you’ll obey.’

The officer attempted bluster. A big man, his proportions seemed to swell. ‘Sir Captain, I cannot take your orders. I——’

Prospero waved his attention to the men now in ordered ranks behind him. ‘There is the argument that will compel you.’

A gloomy laugh followed upon a grimace of malevolence. ‘Ah, ventrebleu! If you take that tone, what can I do?’

‘What I bid you. It will save trouble.’

‘For me, perhaps. But for you, sir, it may make it.’

‘That is my affair, I think.’

‘I hope you’ll like it.’ The fellow swung on his heel, bawling orders in a voice like a trumpet call. Men came at the double in response to it, formed their ranks across the courtyard, and within ten minutes were marching out of the fortress to the tune of ‘En Revenant d’Espagne.’ The officer going last swept Prospero a bow that was full of mockery and the menace of things to come.

Prospero went in to find his father, and was led by Scipione up a narrow stone staircase to a portal guarded by two sentries, who were summarily dismissed to rejoin their company. Then Prospero unlocked the door, and across an antechamber bare as a prison, came to that little closet tapestried in blue and grey.

On a day-bed set under one of those narrow windows that commanded a view of the city, the harbour, and the gulf beyond, Antoniotto Adorno reclined in a drowsiness of exhaustion. Despite the heat he was wrapped in a long black houppelande that was heavy with dark fur. His lady, slim and youthful in a stiff, high-corsaged gown of purple shot with gold, occupied an armchair at the head of his couch.

A table in mid-chamber was encumbered with the remnants of the very simplest of meals: the half of a loaf of rye bread, a hemisphere of Lombard cheese, a dish of fruit—figs, peaches, and grapes—from some patrician garden, a tall silver beaker of wine, and some glasses.

The creak of the door on its hinges roused Monna Aurelia. She looked over her shoulder and her face went pale under the black, peaked head-dress at the sight of Prospero almost hesitant upon the threshold. Then she was on her feet, with heaving bosom and a cry that caused her lord to raise his heavy eyelids and look round in his turn. Beyond a wider opening of the kindly, generous old eyes, Antoniotto’s countenance showed no change. His voice spoke so quietly that it was impossible to suspect any emotion.

‘Ah! It is you, Prospero. You arrive at a sad moment, as you see.’

But if his father had no further reproach for him, Prospero in that hour was not disposed to be tender with himself. ‘You may marvel, sir, that I should come at all.’ He advanced, Scipione following and closing the door.

‘No, no. I hoped you would. You will have something to tell me.’

‘Only that you have a fool for a son, which will be no news to you, unless you have supposed him also a knave.’ He was bitter. ‘I was too easily duped by that rascal Doria.’

Antoniotto’s nether lip was protruded deprecatingly. ‘No more easily than I,’ said he, and added: ‘Like father, like child.’

Shamed as no invective could have shamed him, Prospero’s pained eyes sought his mother. In a whirl of maternal emotion, she was holding out her hands to him. He stepped quickly to her, caught them in his own, and bowed to kiss each of them in turn.

‘For once your father is just,’ she greeted him. ‘Your fault is no worse than his own, as he says. His obstinacy is to blame for all.’ Her voice hardened shrewishly. ‘He should have done the will of the people. He should have surrendered when they desired it. Then they would have supported him. Instead, he left them to starve into exasperation, and then to mutiny against him at the bidding of the Fregosi. That is where the blame lies.’

Thereafter they wrangled fruitlessly; she intent upon being his advocate, Prospero insistently self-condemnatory. Antoniotto listened listlessly, almost drowsily. At last Scipione, calmly critical spectator, reminded them that it was more important now to discover an issue from their peril than to dispute as to how it had arisen.

‘The issue at least I can provide,’ Prospero asserted. ‘To that extent I can repair my fault. I have a sufficient force at hand.’

‘Is that an issue?’ cried his mother. ‘Flight? Forsaking everything? A fine issue that for the Doge of Genoa, leaving the Fregosi and these Doria rogues triumphant.’

‘In the pass to which things have come, Madonna,’ ventured Scipione, ‘I’ld be glad even to be sure of that for you. Do you suppose, Prospero, that you have men enough? That you will be suffered to reach your galleys? Or, if you reach them, that Doria will allow you to depart?’

Antoniotto roused himself. ‘Ask, rather: Will the Fregosi? It is they who are now the real masters. Can you doubt they will require that no Adorno be left alive to come back and dispute their usurpation?’

‘Whilst I hold this fortress——’

‘Dismiss the thought,’ his father interrupted him. ‘You cannot hold it for a day. Troops must be fed. We are without victuals.’

This was a stab in the back to all Prospero’s hopes. Blank consternation overspread his face. ‘What, then, remains?’

‘Since we haven’t wings, or even a flying-machine, like that idiot who broke his neck off the Tower of Sant’ Angelo, it remains only to recommend our souls to God.’

And there they might have left it had not Scipione brought his wits to their assistance. ‘Your way out,’ he said, ‘lies not in force through the city, but alone by way of the open country.’

Under their questioning eyes he explained himself. The eastern face of the Castelletto rose upon the wall of the city itself. From the roofed battlements that crowned the summit of the fortress to the rocks at the base of the city wall it was a cliff of seventy feet of masonry.

‘You will leave Genoa,’ said Scipione, ‘as Saint Paul left Damascus. In default of a basket, a cradle is easily made, and easily lowered by ropes.’

Antoniotto’s eyes remained unresponsively dull. He reminded them of his condition. His wound put it beyond his power to go that way. It had drained his strength. Besides, what did he matter now? Having lost all that he valued, he was ready to face with indifference whatever might follow. He would be glad, he assured them with a sincerity they could not doubt, to come to rest. Let Prospero and his mother make the attempt, unencumbered by a sick and helpless man.

Neither Prospero nor his mother, however, would give heed to this. Either he went with them or they remained with him. Confronted with these alternatives, Antoniotto ended by yielding, and it remained only to prepare for flight.

By dusk all was ready, and later, under cover of darkness, the improvised cradle, bearing each of the three fugitives in turn, was lowered from the battlements by men acting under the directions of Scipione.

Thus furtively ended the Adorno rule in Genoa, and whilst Madonna Aurelia raged against Doria and Fregosi alike, Prospero reviled only himself for having been used as the instrument of the perfidy that had encompassed the ruin of the father whose faltering steps he supported in that ignominious flight.