'It may be little, I confess. But it is a straw that points the way of the wind.'
'A straw, indeed,' Bellarion agreed. 'But in any case, what do you require of me? You have not told me that.'
'That you take a strong detachment of your men and repair at once to Milan to curb the Duke's evil intentions and to deal with della Torre.'
'For that my lord's orders would be necessary. My duty is here, Venegono, and I dare not neglect it. Nor is the matter so urgent. It can wait until Bergamo has been reduced, which will not be long.'
'Too long, it may be.'
But not all the passionate pleading with which he now distressed Bellarion could turn the latter from his clear duty, or communicate to him any of the vague alarms which agitated Venegono. And so, at last, he went his ways in despair, protesting that both Bellarion and Facino were beset with the blindness of those whom the gods wish to destroy.
Bellarion, however, saw in Venegono's warning no more than an attempt to use him for the execution of a private vengeance. Three days later he thought he had confirmation of this. It came in a letter bearing Facino's signature, but penned in the crabbed and pointed hand of the Countess, who had been summoned from Melegnano to minister to her lord. It informed Bellarion that the physician Mombelli had come at last in response to Facino's request, and that Facino hoped soon to be afoot again. Indeed, there was already a perceptible improvement in his condition.
'So much for Venegono's rumours that Mombelli has been murdered,' said Bellarion to himself, and laughed at the scaremongering of that credulous hot-head.
But he thought differently when after another three days a second letter reached him signed by the Countess herself.
'My lord begs you to come to him at once,' she wrote. 'He is so ill that Messer Mombelli despairs of him. Do not lose a moment, or you may be too late.'