Bellarion interrupted him, and suddenly he was very stern.
'In the meantime you will remember that I command. Though I may choose to humour you and her highness, as the shortest way to convince you of error, yet I do not undertake to obey you against my better judgment.'
'By God, Bellarion!' Carmagnola swore at him, 'I'll not have you gay with me. You'll measure your words, or else you'll eat them.'
Very coldly Bellarion looked at him, and observed Valeria's white restraining hand which again was upon Carmagnola's sleeve.
'At the moment I have a task in hand to which I belong entirely. While it is doing if you forget that I command, I shall remove you from the army.'
He left the swaggerer fuming.
'Only my regard for you, madonna, restrains me,' he assured the Princess. 'He takes that tone when he should remember that, if it came to blows between us, the majority of the men here would be upon my side, now that he has sent nearly all his own away.' He clenched his hands in anger. 'Yet for your sake, lady, I must suffer it. There can be no quarrel between his men and mine until we have placed you and your brother in possession of Montferrat.'
These and other such professions of staunch selfless loyalty touched her deeply; and in the days that followed, whilst the troopers, toiling like woodmen, were felling trees and building the bridges above the junction of the rivers, Carmagnola and Valeria were constantly together.
She was driven now to the discomfort of living under canvas, sharing the camp life of these rude men of war, and Carmagnola did all in his power to mitigate for her the hardships it entailed, hardships which she bore with a high gay courage. She would go with him daily to watch the half-naked labourers in the river, bundling together whole trees as if they were mere twigs, to serve as pontoons. And daily he gave her cause to admire his skill, his ingenuity, and his military capacity. That Bellarion should have sneered at this was but another proof of Bellarion's worthlessness. Either he could not understand it, or else of treacherous intent he desired to deprive her of its fruits.
Meanwhile Carmagnola beglamoured her with talk of actions past, in all of which he played ever the heroic part. The eyes of her mind were dazzled by the pictures his words drew for her. Now she beheld him leading a knightly charge that shattered an enemy host into shards; now she saw him at the head of an escalade, indomitably climbing enemy walls under a hail of stones and scalding pitch; now she saw him in council, wisely planning the means by which victory might be snatched from overwhelming opposition.