and a pair of riding boots of untanned leather were my further equipment.
In the lining of one of those boots I concealed the Lord Cesare's
package; his money--some twenty ducats--I carried in a belt about my
waist, and his ring I set boldly on my finger.

Few moments did it need me to make ready, yet fewer, it seems, would the
Borgia impatience have had me employ; for scarce was I booted when
someone knocked at my door. I opened, and there entered a very mountain
of a man, whose corselet flashed back the yellow light of my tapers, as
might have done a mirror, and whose harsh voice barked out to ask if I
was ready.

I had had some former acquaintance with this fellow, having first met him
during the previous year, on the occasion of the Court of Pesaro's
sojourn at Rome. His name was Ramiro del' Orca, and throughout the Papal
army it stood synonymous for masterfulness and grim brutality. He was,
as I have said, an enormous man, of prodigious bodily strength, heavy,
yet of good proportions. Of his face one gathered the impression of a
blazing furnace. His cheeks and nose were of a vivid red, and still more
fiery was the hair, now hidden 'neath his morion, and the beard that
tapered to a dagger's point. His very eyes kept tune with the red
harmony of his ferocious countenance, for the whites were ever bloodshot
as a drunkard's--which, with no want of truth, men said he was.

"Come," grunted that fiery, self-sufficient vassal, "be stirring, sir
Fool. I have orders to see you to the gates. There is a horse ready
saddled for you. It is the Lord Cardinal's parting gift. Resolve me
now, which will be the greater ass--the one that rides, or the one that
is ridden?"