He had waited at the camp for the return of the duke until his misery and restlessness had mastered every other sensation. Sleep, he felt, would not come to his eyes, and he craved for action. He should have liked nothing better than to mount his steed on the spot, ride single-handed into Anjou's camp and redeem his honor in the eyes of those who regarded him a bought instrument of the Church. The memory of Ilaria wailed through the dark chambers of his heart. He felt at this moment, more than ever, what she had been to him, and to himself he appeared as a derelict, tossed on a vast and shoreless sea.
For a moment he gazed as one spellbound at the drinkers, then he strode up to the duke and shook him soundly.
"To the rescue, my lord duke!" he shouted, in the excess of his frenzy, till the vaults re-echoed his cry from their farthest recesses. "Conradino has been betrayed by the Frangipani!"
At the sound of the name he hated above all on earth, the duke's nebulous haze fell from him like a mantle.
With a great oath he arose.
"Where is the King?"
"They have taken him to Rome,—or Naples,—or to some fortress near the coast," Francesco replied.
"Into whose hands was he delivered?"
"Anjou's admiral,—Robert of Lavenna!"
The duke paused a moment, as if endeavoring to bring order into the chaos of his thoughts. He scanned Francesco from head to toe, as if there was something about the latter's personality which he could not reconcile with his previous acquaintance.