“Are you not? Why, then, all this ado about a bunch of empty threats cast at us by the Duke of Babbiano? If you were indeed the soldier you would have us think you, would you come here and say, 'I will not die this way, or that'? Confess yourself a boaster when you tell us that you are ready to die in the open.”
“Nay! That am I not.”
“Then, if you are ready to die out there, why not in here? Shall it signify aught to him that dies where he gets his dying done? But reassure yourself, you woman,” he added, with a laugh, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by the others, “you are not going to die—neither here, nor there.”
“When Roccaleone capitulates——”
“It will not capitulate,” thundered Francesco.
“Well, then—when it is taken.”
“Nor will it be taken,” the Provost insisted, with an assurance that carried conviction. “If Gian Maria had time unlimited at his command, he might starve us into submission. But he has not. An enemy is menacing his own frontiers, and in a few days—a week, at most—he will be forced to get him hence to defend his crown.”
“The greater reason for him to use stern measures and bombard us as he threatens,” answered Cappoccio shrewdly but rather in the tone of a man who expects to have his argument disproved. And Francesco, if he could not disprove it, could at least contradict it.
“Believe it not,” he cried, with a scornful laugh. “I tell you that Gian Maria will never dare so much. And if he did, are these walls that will crumble at a few cannon-shots? Assault he might attempt; but I need not tell a soldier that twenty men who are stout and resolute, as I will believe you are for all your craven words, could hold so strong a place as this against the assault of twenty times the men the Duke has with him. And for the rest, if you think I tell you more than I believe myself, I ask you to remember how I am included in Gian Maria's threat. I am but a soldier like you, and such risks as are yours are mine as well. Do you see any sign of faltering in me, any sign of doubting the issue, or any fear of a rope that shall touch me no more than it shall touch you? There, Cappoccio! A less merciful provost would have hanged you for your words—for they reek of sedition. Yet I have stood and argued with you, because I cannot spare a brave man such as you will prove yourself. Let us hear no more of your doubtings. They are unworthy. Be brave and resolute, and you shall find yourself well rewarded when the baffled Duke shall be forced to raise this siege.”
He turned without waiting for the reply of Cappoccio—who stood crestfallen, his cheeks reddened by shame of his threat to get him hence—and conducted Valentina calmly across the yard and up the steps of the hall.