Front matter (continued 5)

'Madonna, wilt thou walk apart? I am fain to crave thy private ear a moment.'

She stood like ice.

'Touching whose shortcomings now?' she asked aloud, and with a little cold laugh which disdained that implied confidence.

He gazed at her steadily, though in trouble.

'Nay, I spoke of none. It is of moment. Madonna, I entreat thee.'

For an instant the milk of her sweetened to him. He was such a baby after all. And then she remembered whence he had lately come, and gall flooded her veins—gall not so much of jealousy, perhaps, as of contempt. Doubtless, she thought, he could have ventured himself into that hothouse in the Via Sforza with impunity, since, though spirit he might be, he was of that uninflammability that his virtue amounted to little better than the virtue of sexlessness. She felt almost glad, at last, to have this excuse for dissociating herself from a cause which had always chilled, and had ceased now for some time even to amuse her.

Feel no surprise over the seeming suddenness of her revolt. Apart from her position, this Duchess of Milan was never anything but a typical woman, common-souled, lacking spiritual sensitiveness, leaning to her masculine peers. Breeding was her business, and motherhood her passion. She took no more jar of offence from the intimate custody of babies, than does a cat in licking open the eyes of its seven-days born. Her refinements were adventitious, an accident of her condition. She had felt it no outrage to her stately loveliness to yield it to Tassino's usings. She had that Madonna-like serenity of face which is the expression of an inviolable mindlessness; and no impressions other than physical could long pervade her. Stupidity is the rarest beauty-preserver; and it is to be feared that Bona was stupid.

Now, it is to be remembered that Bernardo had not mentioned shortcomings at all; but her object being to snub rather than answer him, she chose to take refuge in her sex's prerogative of intuition. Dwelling a moment in a rising temper, she suddenly flounced on him.

'If you will seek doubtful company, Messer, you must not cry out to have your fervour misread by it.'

He was about to answer; but she stopped him peremptorily.

'Women will be women, good or bad. We cannot promote a civil war in Milan to avenge some pin-prick to thy conscience. Indeed, sir, we weary a little of this precisianism. Is it come to be a sin to laugh, to warm our hands at a fire, to prefer a fried collop to a wafer? You must forgive us, like the angel that you are. We are human, after all, and pledged to human policies. Our State's before the magistracy. There are things weightier to discuss than a mischief's naughty word. We cannot hear you now.'

She turned away, relenting but a little, though flushed and trembling.

'Come, brother,' she said. 'Shall we not pass to the order of the day?'

Ludovico responded with smooth and smiling alacrity. One could never have guessed by his face the consternation which had seized his soul. Yet, so cleverly had he hoodwinked himself, this sudden leap of light was near staggering him. Merriment and warmth and fried collops? The charge in its utter, its laughable irrelevancy, was, he thought, a little hard on the saint, seeing how the gist of the new creed lay all in a natural enjoyment of life's bounties. What powder had winged such a startling shot?—weariness?—disenchantment?—remorseful hankerings, perhaps, after a discarded suet pudding, which, after all, had been infinitely more native to this woman's taste than the ethereal soufflé, whose frothy prettiness had for the moment appealed to her meat-fed satiety?

The last, most probably. And, in that case——

His brain, through all the mazes of council, went tracing out a busy thread of self-policy. If this were really the end, he must hurry to foreclose on it ere the split widened into a gulf—before ever the first whisper of its opening reached Tassino's ears. The time for temporising was closed.

'It touches, your Grace,' he purred, 'upon the reception to be accorded the envoys of Ferrara and Mantua.'

The wind of a fall, like the wind of an avalanche, runs before the body of it. Messer Bembo, passing out, amazed, from his rebuff, found in himself an illustration of this inevitable human truism. All the envies, spites, and jealousies which his sweetness, under favour, had kept at bay, seemed now gathered in his path to hustle and insult him.

'Good Master Nature,' mocked one, 'hast ever a collop in thy pocket for a starved woodman?'

'See how he stumbles, missing his leading-strings!' cackled another.

A third knocked off his bonnet.

'Prophesy, who is he that smote thee!' he cried, and ducking, came up elsewhere.

'Ay, prophesy!' thundered a fourth voice; and a fist like a rammer crashed upon the assailant's face, spread-eagling it. The man went down in a welter. Bembo fled to Lanti's arms, feebly imprisoning them.

'Thou thing of bloody passions!' he shrieked. 'Wouldst thou so vindicate me?'

Carlo roared over his shoulder:—

'Help his prophecy, ye vermin, when he's ears to hear; and tell him I wait to carve them from his head.'

He bore Bembo with him from the hall, as he might carry a moth fluttering on his sleeve. Murmurs rose in his wake, seething and furious; but he heeded them not. In a deserted court beyond, he shook the pretty spoil from his arm, not roughly but with an air of madness, and stood breathing like a driven ox.

'What now?' he groaned at last—'what now?'

Then all in a moment the boy was sobbing before him.

'O Carlo! dear Carlo! I would the Duke were returned!'

His grief and helplessness moved the other to a frenzy. His chest heaved, he caught at his throat, struggling vainly for utterance of the fears which had of late been tormenting him without definite reason. Seeing his state, Bernardo sought to propitiate it with a smile that trembled out of tears.

'Nay, mind me not—a child to cry at a shadow.'

Lanti choked, and found voice at length.

'The Duke? Monstrous! Call'st thou for him? Forget'st Capello? Art changed indeed.'

'Alas!' cried the boy, 'no change in me. I think only of a more ruling tyranny than mine. Pitiless himself, he made pity sweet in others. I've converted 'em from deeds to words, that's all.'

'The Duke!'

'I begin to see. Thou warned'st me, I remember. The fashion of me passes, like thy shoe's long beaks. Yesterday they were a span; to-day they're shrunk by half; to-morrow, mayhap, ye'll trim them from your feet and run on goat's hooves.'

'Thou ravest. 'Tis for thee, being Duke-deputy, to trim us.'

'Into what? Cherubs or satyrs? Be quick, lest the fashion change while you talk.'

'Go to! Thou art the Duke, I say.'

'Well, a fine puppet, and great at righting wrongs. There's Lucia to witness.'

'She's provided for.'

'With bread. O, I am a very Mahomet. If I but nod my head, the city shall crack and crumble to it.'

'God! What ails thee, boy?'

'Something mortal, I think. A breath withered me just now!'

'A breath? Whose breath?'

'Whose? O Carlo, forgive me! What have I said or done? Look, I'm myself again. It just fell like a frost in June, killing my young olives. I had so hung upon it, too—its help and promise. The harvest seemed so certain.'

'Ah! She's thrown you over?'

'Dreams, dreams!' sighed poor little Nathan; 'to live on dreams—a deaf man's voices, a blind man's vision. I have seen such things, built such kingdoms out of dreams. Carlo! what have I done?'

Lanti ground his teeth.

'Done? Proved woman's constancy a dream—that's all.'

He clapped his chest, and looked earnestly at Bembo, and cried in a broken voice:—

'Boy—before God—tell me—thou hast not learned to desire her?'

The child looked up at him, with a pitiful mouth.

'Ah! I know not what you mean; unless it be that pain with which I see her melt from out my dream when most possessing it.'

'Most? She? She to possess thy dream, thy purpose?' cried Lanti, and drew back in great emotion.

'She is my purpose,' said the boy—'or was, alack!'

'Is and was,' growled the other. 'Well, 'tis true that for the purpose of thy purpose I remain; but then I don't count. What am I to thee?'

'My love, beyond all women.'

'I am? That's much. Now will we do without the Duchess.'

'Alas!'

'Shall we not?'

'She hath so nursed my flock to pasture—the kind ewe-mother. The bell was about her neck. Now, it seems, she will have neither bell nor shepherd, and the flock must stray.'

'Hath she in truth cast thee? On what pretext?'

'Nay, I know not. It seemed the twin-brother of him that once she used for loving me.'

'Ay, it is their way. But scorn, for your part, to show caloric as she cools.'

'Alas!'

'Trust me there. What had you said to chill her?'

'Nothing that I know, but to crave her ear a moment.'

'It is the sink of slander in a woman—a pink shell with a dead fish inside. Yet thy whisper might have sweetened it.'

'Stung it rather. Carlo, I know not what to do.'

'Tell me.'

'Shall I, indeed? I fear thee. Wilt thou be gentle?'

'As a lamb.'

'Well, then, I'll tell thee—I am so lost. Carlo, dear, I know where the ring is.'

'You do? Do you see how calm I am? Where is it?'

'Beatrice hath it—thy Beatrice.'

'You know that?'

'She sent to tell me—last night. God help me, Carlo, for a credulous fool!'

'You went to her? Well?'

'She would give it me, Carlo—O Carlo! on such a condition!'

'Which if you refused——?'

'It shall be a fatal ring to me, she ended.'

'Shall it?—or to her? Well, that's said. And now, wilt thou go rest a little, sweetheart, while I think? I cannot think in company.'

'I will go, but not to rest.'

'Pooh! thy Fool shall drug thy folly with his greater.'

'Alas! he's gone.'

'Gone?'

'He too. Nay, blaspheme not. He had his reasons.'

'For what?'

'For leaving me awhile. "My folly starves on thine ambrosia," he said. "I would fain feed it a little on human flesh."'

'How long's he gone?'

'Some days.'

'Let him keep out of my way when he returns.'

'I'll not love you if you hurt him.'

'Then I'll not hurt him. Thy love is mine, and thy confidence, look you. This ring—speak not a word on it, to Bona or another, till I bid you.'

'Then I will not.'

'That's good. God rest you, sweetling.'

He watched him go, with frowning eyes; then, no message coming to him from the hall, strode off to his own quarters in the palace, and bided there all day.

'These women,' was the burden of his fury—'these women—soulless beasts! To aim at winning heaven by debauching its angel!—there's their morality in a nutshell! But I'll send him back there first. So Beatrice hath the ring! What will she do with it? What shall I with the knowledge? God! if my wits could run with my rage! To forestall her, else——'

His fingers worked, as he tramped, on the jewelled hilt of his poniard.

It was Messer Lanti's misfortune that, in knocking down Bernardo's assailant, he had defaced, literally as well as symbolically, the escutcheon of a powerful family. The fact was brought to the Duchess's notice when, shortly after the event, she passed through the hall in company with her brother-in-law. Hoarse clamour of kinsmen and partisans greeted her, backed, by way of red evidence, by the condition of the victim himself.

Her wrath and emotion knew no bounds. She flushed, and stamped, and wept, and in the midst collapsed. It was outrageous that her authority should be so defied (though, indeed, it had not been) by the brute creature of a creature of her lord's. The Duke had never foreseen or intended such an arrogation of his prerogatives by his deputy. She would teach this swashbuckler a lesson.

Then she broke down and turned, tearful, almost wringing her hands, to her brother-in-law. Sure never woman was cursed in such a false position—impotent and responsible in one. What should she do?

He took her aside.

'These two,' he said, 'are as yet persona gratæ with Galeazzo. At the same time thou canst not with decency or safety ignore the outrage. Seize and confine Messer Lanti out of harm's way until the Duke's return—just a formal and considerate detention, pending his decision. There's thy wise compromise, sister.'

And so indeed it seemed. But undoubtedly the best wisdom lay in his own adroit seizure of a fortuitous situation. He had wanted this Lanti out of the way; had foreseen him, as it were, lurking in the thickets far ahead through which his policy sought a road. Here was the fine opportunity, and without risk to himself, to ambush the ambuscado, and have it laid by the heels.

Bona sobbed and fretted, nursing her grievance.

'Why did this angel come to vex us with his heaven? The world, I think, would be very well but for its schooling by saints and prophets. Children grow naughty under inquisition. There, have it as you will, brother; use or abuse me—it is all one. It is my fate to be persecuted through my best intentions.'

Ludovico put force on himself to linger a little and soothe her. His soul leapt with anxiety to be gone. To instruct Jacopo; to commission Tassino—to loose his long-straining bolt in fact—here was the moment sprung inevitable upon him. He had no choice but to seize it; and then—

'Your Grace must excuse me,' he said at length, smiling. 'I have to go prepare against a journey.'

'A journey!' she exclaimed, aghast.

'Surely,' he answered mildly. 'The matter is insignificant enough to have escaped your burdened memory; but smaller souls must hold to their engagements. My brother Bari and I are to Christmas with the King of France in Tours. We sail from Genoa, whither, in a day or two, I must ride to join him. It is unfortunate, at this pass; but——'

'Go, sir,' she broke in—'go. I see I am to be the scapegoat of all your policies,' and she hurried from him, weeping.

CHAPTER XX

More and more drearily the burden of his long days pressed upon Tassino. He was not built for heroic endurance; and to have to suffer Damocles' fate without the feast was a very death-in-life to him. Here, in this dingy cabin, was no solace of wine to string his nerves; no charm of lights to scare away bogies; no outlook but upon beastliness and squalor. He seemed stranded on a mud-bank amidst the ebbing life of the city, and he despaired that the tide would ever turn and release him.

Listening at his grille, he would often curse to hear the name of his hated rival—'Bembo! Bembe, Bambino!' sing out upon the swarming air. It was the rallying-cry of the new socialism, the popular catchword of the moment; and he hugged himself in the thought of what it would spell to Galeazzo on his return, and by what racking and rending and stretching of necks he would mark his appreciation of its utterers' enthusiasm. If the Duke would only come back! Here was the last of three who desired, it appeared, each for a very different reason, the re-installation of an ogre in his kingdom.

But, in the meanwhile, he cowered in an endless apprehension as to his own safety, which Ludovico's last visit had certainly done nothing to reassure. On the contrary, it had but served to intensify the gloom of mystery in which he dwelt. He had since made sundry feeble-artful attempts to discover from Narcisso what secret attached to the ring, which, it appeared, that amiable peculator was accused of having filched, and why Messer Ludovico was so set on possessing it. Needless to say, his efforts met with no success whatever; and the corrosion of a new suspicion was all that they added to his already palsied nerves. The sick flabbiness and demoralisation of him grew positively pitiful, as he stood day after day at his grille, watching and moping and snivelling, and sometimes wishing he were dead.

Well, the thicker the mud, the more productive the tide when it comes; but he was fairly sunk to his neck before it floated him out.

One day, gazing down, his attention was attracted to a figure which had halted near below his coign of espial. As things went, there was nothing so remarkable in this figure, in its alien speech or apparel, as to make it arresting otherwise than by reason of its contiguity to himself. It was simply that of a crinkled hag, swart, snake-locked, cowled, her dress jingling with sequins, her right hand clawed upon a crutch. She appeared, in fact, just an old Levantine hoodie-crow, of the breed which was familiar enough to Milan in these cataclysmic days, when all sorts of queer, tragic fowl were being driven northwards from overseas before a tidal wave of Islamism. For half Christendom was writhing at this time under the embroidered slipper of the Turk, while other half was fighting and scratching and backing within its own ranks, in a sauve qui peut from Sultan Mahomet's ever nearer-resounding tread.

From Bosnia and Servia and Hungary; from Negropont and the islands of the Greek Archipelago; from new Rome itself, whose desolated houses and markets weeping Amastris had been emptied to repeople; from Trebizond and the Crimea, it came endlessly floating, this waste drift of palaces and temples and antique civilisations, which had been wrecked and scattered by that ruthless hate. Ruined merchants and traders; unfrocked satraps; priests of outlandish garb; girl derelicts blooded and defiled by janissaries; childless mothers and motherless children—scared immigrants all, they wailed and wandered in the towns, denouncing in their despair the creed whose jealousies and corruptions had delivered them to this pass.

In the first of their coming, a certain indignant sympathy had helped to the practical amelioration of their bitter lot. Men scowled and muttered over the histories of their wrongs; took warning for a possible overthrow of the entire Christian Church; talked big of sinking all differences in a kingdom-wide crusade; and, finally, fell to fisticuffs upon the question of a common commander for this problematic host. After which the immigrants, always flocking in thicker, and making civil difficulties, fell gradually subject to an indifference, not to say intolerance, which was at least half as great as that from which they had fled. Fashion, moreover, began to find in the Ser Mahomet a figure more and more attractive, in proportion as he approached it, issuing from the mists of the Orient. It was ravished with, if it did not want to be ravished by, those adorable Spahis, with their tinkling jackets and sashes and melancholy, wicked faces. It adapted prettily to itself the caftan, and the curdee, and the turban; re-read Messer Boccaccio's most Eastern fables; acted them, too, in drawers of rose-coloured damask, and little talpoes, which were tiny jewelled caps of velvet, cocked, and falling over one ear in a tassel. But by that time the cult of immigrancy was discredited du haut en das.

Many of the unhappy wretches were drawn by natural process into such sinks as 'The Vineyard.' The poor are good to the poor, and pitiful—which is strange—towards any fall from prosperity. In the instance of this old woman, it was notable how she was humoured of the drifting populace. The very ladroni, who, outside their own rookery, might have tormented and soused her in the kennel, were content here to rally and banter her a little, showing their white teeth to one another in jokes whose bent she was none the worse for misapprehending. For she had not much Italian, it appeared; though what was hers she was turning to the best possible advantage in the matter of fortune-telling.

Tassino saw many brawny palms thrust out for her shrewd conning; echoed from his eyrie many of the Eccomi perdútos and O mè beátos which greeted her broken sallies. She got a mite here and there, and buzzed and mumbled over it, clutching it to her lean bosom. Presently some distraction, of rape or murder, carried her audience elsewhere, and she was left temporarily alone. Then Tassino, moved by a sudden impulse, reached down his arm through the grate and tapped her reverend crown. She started, and ducked, and peered up. He whispered out to her:—

'Zitto, old mother! Come up here, and tell me my fortune for money.'

She seemed to hesitate; he signified the way; and lo! on a thought she came. He met her at the door, and dragged her in.

'Tell me my fortune,' he said, and thrust out a dirty palm.

She pored over it, chuckling and pattering her little incomprehensible shibboleth. Presently she seemed to pounce triumphantly on a knot. She leered up, her hand still clutching his, her hair falling over her eyes.

'Ah-yah!' she muttered. 'Ringa, ringa!' and shook her head.

He shrugged peevishly:—

'What do you mean, old hag?'

'Ringa!' she repeated: 'no ringa, no fortuna.'

He snatched his hand away.

'What ring, thou cursed harridan?'

She shook her head again.

'No know. Ringa—I see it—green cat-stone—hold off Fortuna. Get, and she change.'

He gnawed his lip, frowning and wondering. There was a ring in question, certainly. Could it be possible its possession was connected somehow with his personal fortunes? If that were so, here was a veritable Pythoness.

Her eyes stared dæmonic: she thrust out a finger, pointing:—

'I see, there: green cat-stone: get, and Fortuna change.'

Superstition mastered him. He trembled before her, quavering:—

'How can I? O mother! how can I?'

A voice in the street startled him. He leapt to the window and back again.

'Narcisso!' he gasped, and ran to bundle out his visitor.

'To-morrow—come again to-morrow—after dark,' he whispered hurriedly. 'I shall be alone—I will pay you—' and he drove her forth. Narcisso met her, issuing from the court below. He growled out a malediction, and came growling into the room.

'You keep nice company, Messer.'

'That is not my fault, beast,' answered Tassino pertly. 'When I choose my own, it is to amuse myself.'

'Well, I hope she amused you?'

'Not so much as I expected. I saw her telling fortunes down below, and called her up to read me mine. Acquaint me of the mystery of a certain ring I asked her; but, oimè! she could enlighten me nothing.'

Narcisso leered at him cunningly, and spat.

'It was as well, perhaps. I see th' art set upon that impertinence; and I'll only say again, "beware!"'

'You may say what you like, old yard-dog,' answered the youth. 'It's your business, chained up here, to snarl.'

But his fat brain was busy all night with the weird Hecate and her necromancy. What did this same ring portend to him, and how was his fate involved in its possession? There was a ring in question, doubtless; but whose? Then, all in an amazed moment inspiration flashed upon him. A green cat-stone! Had he not often seen such a ring on Bona's finger? It might indeed be the Duchess's own troth-ring!

He shrunk and cowered at first in the thought of the issues involved in such a possibility. Was it credible that it had been stolen from her? How could he tell, who had been imprisoned here so long? Only, if it were true that it had been, and he, Tassino, could secure it from whatever ravisher, what a weapon indeed it might be made to prove in his hand!

He exulted in that dream of retribution; had almost convinced himself by morning that its realisation lay within his near grasp. She, that old soothsayer, could surely show him the way to possess himself of what her art had so easily revealed to him for his fortune's talisman. This Eastern magic was a strange and terrible thing. He would pay her all he had for the secret!—make crawling love to her, if necessary.

All day he was in a simmer of agitated expectancy; and when dusk at last gathered and swelled he welcomed it as he had never done before. Fortunately Narcisso went out early, and need not be expected back betimes. He was engaged, the morrow being the feast of the Conception, to confess and prepare to communicate himself fasting from midnight; and it was a matter of religion with him on such occasions to take in an especial cargo against the ordeal. Before the streets were dark, Tassino was sitting alone; and so he sat, shuddering and listening, for another hour.

A step at last on the shallow stair! He held his breath. No, he was deceived. Sweating, on tiptoe, he stole to the door and peered out. All was silent, and dark as pitch. Then suddenly, while he looked, there came a muffled tramp and shuffle in the street, and on the instant a figure rose from the well of blackness below, mounting swiftly towards his door. He had barely time to retreat into the unlighted room before he felt his visitor upon him.

'My God!' he quavered; 'who is it? Keep away!' and he backed in ghastly fear to the wall.

'Hush!' (Ludovico's voice.) 'Are you alone?'

The frightened wretch stole forward a step.

'Messer! I thought you——'

'Never mind,' interrupted the other impatiently. 'Answer me.'

'Quite alone.'

'Humph! I thought you loved the dark less.'

'I—I was about to light the tapers; I swear I was. Wait only one moment, Messer.'

'Stop. No need. The night's the better confidant. Come here.'

Trembling all through, Tassino obeyed. A smooth hand groped, and fastening on his wrist, pressed a hard, round object into his palm. He had much ado not to shriek out.

'What's this?' he gasped.

'Be silent. Have you got it? Put it where it's secure. Well?'

''Tis in the scabbard of my knife, Messer—' (the blade clicked home).

'A good place; keep it there. Now, listen. There's no other here?'

'On my oath, no.'

'Nor on the stair?'

'How can there be between us and Messer's gentlemen?'

'Hark well, then. Thy life depends on it. They 've wind of thee, Tassino.'

'O, O! God pity me!'

'He helps those—you know the saw. 'Tis touch and go—come to this at last; either they destroy you, or you—them.'

'How? O, I shall die!'

'Wilt thou, then? Well, then, if thou wilt. Yet not so much as thy ear-lobe's spark of nerve were needed to forestall and turn the tables on them. They are very fond together, Tassino.'

'Curse them! If I could stab him in the back!'

'Well, why not? Thy scabbard holds the means.'

'My dagger?'

'Better.'

'What?'

'The Duchess's troth-ring.'

'Messer! My God!'

He leapt as if a trigger had clicked at him. Here was to have the gipsy's prophecy, his own fulsome hope, realised at a flash; but with what fearful significances for himself. So this had actually been the ring of contention, and secured at last—he might have known it would be—by Ludovico.

He gave an absurd little shaky laugh, desperately playful.

'How am I to stab with a ring, Messer?'

'Fool! answer for thyself.'

He was crushed immediately.

'By carrying it to the Duke?' he whispered fearfully.

'It is thy suggestion,' said Ludovico—'not for me to traverse. Well?'

'Ah! help me, Messer, for the Lord's sake. I turn in a maze.'

The Prince's thin mouth creased in the dark.

'Nay, 'tis no affair of mine,' he said. 'I am but friendship's deputy.'

Tassino almost whimpered, writhing about in helpless protest.

'He will thunder at me, "Whence reaches me this?"'

'Likely.'

'What shall I reply then?'

'Do you put the case hypothetically? I should answer broadly, on its merits, somehow as follows: "By the right round of intrigue, O Duke, completing love's cycle."'

'O Messer! How am I to understand you?'

'Why, easily—(I speak as one disinterested). Call it the cycle of the ring, and thus it runs: From the husband to the wife; from the wife to her paramour; from the paramour to his doxy; from the doxy back to the husband.'

'His doxy? O beast! Hath he a second?'

'Or had. I go by report, which says—but then I 'm no scandalmonger—that a certain lady, Caprona's widow, finds herself scorned of late.'

'And it comes from her—to me? For what? To destroy them both?'

'A shrewd suggestion. In that case your moods run together.'

'Monna Beatrice! She sends it?'

'Does she? Quote me not for it. It were ill so to requite my over-fond friendship. Thou hast the ring. I wish thee well with it. Dost mark?'

'I mark, Messer.'

'Why, so. Thou shouldst suffer after-remorse, having dragged in my name; and there is hellbane, so they tell me, in remorse.'

'I will die before I mention thee in it.'

'Well, I can trust the grave. That's to know a friend. So might I add something to thy credentials.'

'If it please you, Messer.'

'Why, look you, child, love may very well have its procurer—say a State Secretary, where love is of high standing. And thence may follow the subversion of a State. There's a pretender in Milan, they tell me, something an idol of the people—I know not. Only this I ponder: What if there be, and he that same idol which the Duchess is reported to have raised? Would Simonetta, in such case, join in the hymn of praise? One might foresee, if he did, a trinity very strong in the public worship. His Grace, I can't help thinking, would find himself de trop here at present. You might put it to him—your own way. When will you set out?'

'When?'

'This moment, I 'd advise. To-morrow might mean never. The Duke's at Vigevano—less than six leagues away. A good horse might carry thee there by morning. I've such a one in my stables. He'll honour thee for this service, trust me.'

Tassino's little soul spirted into flame.

'Viva il duca!' he piped, and ran to the door.

He drove it before him—it opened outwards—and, descending the dark stairs with his patron, passed into the night.

An hour later he was spurring for Vigevano, while the Prince was engaged in preparing against his own journey to Genoa on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXI

Carlo kept his room all day, gnawing and tramping out his problem, and extracting nothing from it. Not till it was deep dark did he call for lights, and then he cursed his page, Ercole, who brought them, because they dazzled his brain from thinking. Swerving on his heel, he was in the act of bidding the boy let no one enter, unless it might be Messer Bembo, when, the door being ajar, there hurried into the chamber the figure of a fantastic hag, who, upon noting his company, stopped suddenly, and stood mumbling and sawing the air.

'Begone!' he roared, astounded, and took a furious step towards her.

She laughed harshly. His clenched fists dropped to his sides. There was no mistaking that bitter cackle. He flung his arm to the page, dismissing him.

The moment the door was shut upon them, off went the cloak and sequins, off went the hood and snaky locks, and the Fool Cicada, clean and lithe in a tight suit of jarnsey, stood revealed.

Carlo leapt upon him, mouthing.

'What mummery, beast, and at such a time? Wait while I choke thee.'

In the tumult of his fury he remembered his promise to Bernardo, and fell back, breathing.

'Hast finished?' said Cicada, acrid and unmoved. 'I could retort upon a fool but for lacking time. Where's the boy?'

'Renegade! What concerns it thee to know?'

'I say, where's the boy?'

'If I might trounce thee! Safe, at present, no thanks to thee.'

'Have I asked any? You must take horse and ride after the ring.'

'The ring!'

'I warn thee, lose not a moment. It may be even now upon the road.'

'The road!'

'That echo's a scrivener. Say after me thus, word for word, so thy skull shall keep the record: The ring goes this moment to the Duke at Vigevano, in false witness against our Saint. Narcisso gave it to Beatrice, Beatrice to Ludovic, Ludovic to Tassino—and Tassino carries it, wrapped round with fifty damning lies. Can you fill in the rest?'

'My God! How know you this?'

'I know. Why have I been mumming else?'

'O, thou good Fool!'

'So beatified in a moment? But stay not. To horse, and after, or by luck in front of, this ill-omened popinjay. He must be anticipated, overreached, despoiled, poniarded—anything. I've had my ear to his door—it smarts yet—Ludovic was with him. I was before the Prince and heard him coming—"trapped!" I thought. But the fool looked out—door opens to the stairs—and shut me into its angle against the wall. So again when they left together, and I slipped away behind their worships, and presently ran before. There you've the tale. And so, a' God's name mount and spur, for a minute's delay may kill all. But sith even now it be too late, why, run after to traverse that foul evidence, and the Lord speed thee. Remember—Tassino and the Vigevano road.'

Stunning, bewildering as was the nature of this blast, it served to clear Carlo's brain as a southerly wind clears stagnant water. It meant action, and in action lay his métier. Prompt and comprehensive instantly, now that the sum of things had been worked out for him, he dwelt but on the utterance of a single curse—so black and monstrous that the candle-flames seemed to duck to it—before he turned and strode heavily from the room.

'Mercy!' muttered Cicada, tingling where he stood; 'if Monna Beatrice isn't blinking smut out of her eyes at this very moment, there's no virtue in Hell.'

Ten minutes later, Carlo, booted, spurred, and cloaked, issued hurriedly from his quarters, and made for a postern in the north wall, on t' other side of which Ercole, so he had sped his errand well, should be already in waiting with the cavalier's horse, 'l'Inferno,' saddled and bridled for the hunt.

A thin muffle of snow lay on the pavements, choking echo; a thin, still fog, wreathing upwards from it, made everything loom fantastic—curtains, towers, the high battlemented spectres of the sentries.

He clapped his hand to his hip, in assurance of the firm hilt there, and was clearing his throat to answer the guard's challenge, when, on the moment, a whisk of sudden light seemed to overtake and pass him, and he whipped about, with a catch in his breath, to face an expected onset.

Nothing was there. Only the ghosts of mist and snow peopled the ward he had traversed; but, across it, licking and leaping from a high window in the Armourer's Tower, spat a tongue of flame.

He dwelt a moment, fascinated. Faint cries and hurried warnings reached him. The flame shrunk, broke from its curb, and writhed out again.

'Galeazzo's room!' he muttered; 'a red portent to greet him!' and, turning to pursue his way—ran into a vice of arms and was in a moment a prisoner.

The shock was so stunning, that he found himself bound and helpless before he could realise its import. And then he roared out like a lassoed bull:—

'Dogs! What's this?'

The Provost Marshal answered him, waving aside his capturing sbirri.

'Her Grace's warrant, Messer.'

Lanterns seemed to have sprung like funguses from the ground, grossly multiplying the strong company which surrounded him. He stared about him bewildered; then, all in an instant, drove forward like a battering-ram. There was a clash of pikes and mail; an arquebus exploded, luckily without disaster; and Carlo was down in a writhe of men, pounding with his heels.

It brought him nothing but a full interest of bruises. Shortly he was on his feet again, torn and dishevelled; but this time with a thong about his ankles.

He found wisdom of his helplessness to temporise.

'Save thee, Provost Marshal, I have an important errand toward. Spare me to it, and I'll give my parole to deliver up my person to thee on my return.'

The dummy wagged aside the appeal, woodenly.

'I've my orders.'

Carlo lost his brief command of temper.

'Swine! To truss me like a thief?'

'To hold thy person secure, Messer.'

'With ropes, dog?'

'I'll unbind them, on that same parole.'

For all answer, Carlo dropped and rolled on the ground, bellowing curses and defiance. It was childish; but then, what was the great creature but a child? Despair divorced from reason finds its last resource in kicking; and strength of body was always this poor fellow's convincing argument. The presumption that, by his own impulsive retort on Bernardo's assailant, he had brought this cowardly retaliation on himself, made not the least of his anguish. Why could his thick head never learn the craftier ways of diplomacy? And here, in consequence, was he himself scotched, when most required for killing! He bounded like a madman.

It took a dozen of them, hauling and swaying and tottering, to convey him up, and into, and so down again within, the tower of the dungeons. Jacopo had no orders other than for his safe durance and considerate keep; but no doubt that 'swine' weighed a little on the human balance side of the incorruptible blockhead's decision. There was a cell—one adjoining the 'Hermit's'—very profound and safe indeed, though far less deadly in its appointments (so to speak, for the other had none) than its neighbour. And into this cell, by the Provost Marshal's directions, they carried Master Carlo, still struggling and roaring; and, having despoiled him of his weapons, and—with some apprehension—uncorded him, there locked him in incontinent to the enjoyment of his own clamour, which, it may be said, he made the most of up to midnight.

And then, quite suddenly, he broke into tears—a thing horrible in such a man; and casting himself down by the wall, let the flood of despair pass over his head—literally, it almost seemed, in the near cluck and rustle of waters moving in the moat outside.

CHAPTER XXII

In the fortress of Vigevano the Duke of Milan sat at wine with his gentlemen, his dark face a core of gloom, blighting the revel. Flushed cheeks; sparkling cups; hot dyes of silk and velvet, and the starry splintering of gems; sconces of flaming tapers, and, between, banners of purple and crimson, like great moths, hanging on the walls above the heads of shining, motionless men-at-arms, whose staves and helmets trickled light—all this, the whole rich damasked picture, seemed, while the sullen eye commanded it, to poise upon its own fall and change, like the pieces in a kaleidoscope,—the Duke rose and passed out; and already, with a leap and clatter, it had tumbled into a frolic of whirling colours.

This company, in short, conscious of its deserts, had felt any cold-watering of its spirits at the present pass intolerable. There were captains in it, raw from the icy plains of Piedmont, whence they had come after rallying their troops into winter quarters, against a resumption of hostilities in the spring. Tried men of war, and seasoned toss-pots all, they claimed to spend after their mood the wages of valour, vindicated in many a hard-wrung victory. They had stood, Charles the Bold of Burgundy opposing, for the integrity of Savoy, and had trounced its invaders well over the border. The sense of triumph was in them, and, consequently, of grievance that it should be so discounted by a royal mumps, who till yesterday had been their strutting and crowing cock of conquest. What had happened in the interval, so to return him upon his old damned familiar self?

Something beyond their rude guessing—something which, at a breath, had re-enveloped him in that cloud of constitutional gloom, which action and the rush of arms had for a little dispelled. The change had taken him earlier in the day, when, about the hour of Mass, a little white, cake-fed Milanese had come whipping into Vigevano on a foam-dropping jade, and, crying as he clattered over the drawbridge to the castle, 'Ho there, ho there! Despatches for the Duke!' had been snapped up by the portcullis, and gulped and disposed of; and was now, no doubt—since no man had set eyes on him since—in process of being digested.

It may have been he that was disagreeing with their lord, and sending the black bile to his cheek; or it may have been that second tale-bearer who, riding in about midday from the capital, had brought news of the fire which, the evening before, had gutted his Grace's private closet. Small matters in any case; and in any case, the death's-head having withdrawn itself from the feast, hail the bright reaction from that malign, oppressive gloom! A fresh breeze blows through the hall; the candle-flames are jigging to the rafters; away with mumps and glumps! Via-via! See the arras blossom into a garden; the sentries, leaning to it, relax into smiling Gabriels of Paradise; the wine froth and sparkle at the cup rim! 'Way, way for the Duke's Grace!' the seneschal had cried at the door; and Galeazzo, clumsily ushered by Messer Castellan, that blunt old one-eyed Cyclops, had slouched heavily out, and the curtain had dropped and blotted him from the record.

He turned sharply to the sound of its thud, and gave a quick little stoop and start, as if he were dodging something. The face—that haunting, indefinable ghost—was it behind him again, unlayed, in spite of all the hope and promise? Why not, since its exorcist had proved himself a Judas?

He ground his teeth, and moved on, muttering and maddening. Only yesterday he had been flattering himself with the thought of returning to his capital wreathed in all the glamour of conquest. And now! False fire—false, damning fire. What victor was he, who could not command himself? What vicegerent of the All-seeing, who could nominate a traitor and hypocrite to be his proxy? And he had so believed in the accursed boy!

The prophecy of the monk Capello stuck like a poisonous burr in his soul. He could not shake it off. Now, he remembered, was the near season for its maturing—a superstition aggravated tenfold by the thought that its ripening had been let to prosper in the sun of his own credulous trust. And he could not temporise while the moment struck and passed, for his fate turned upon the moment. Moreover, Christmas was at hand, a time dear to the traditions of his house; and, rightly or mistakenly, he believed that upon a maintenance of those traditions depended his house's prevalence. His acts must continue to compare royally, in seasonable largesse and bounty, with those of Francesco, its yet adored founder; and he could not afford to ignore those obligations. He felt himself trapped, and turning, turning, between the devil and the deep sea.

But he was not without a sort of desperado courage; and fury lent him nerve.

'Lead on, lead on, Castellano,' he snarled, grinning like a wolf. 'The calf by now should be in train for his blooding.'

They found him stalled deep among the foundations of the fortress, in a stone chamber whose kiln-like conformation shaped itself horribly to the needs and privacies of the 'question.' He might, this Tassino, have been a calf indeed, by the deadly pallor of his flesh. From the moment when, still in the glow of his send-off, he had dared, producing his pièce de conviction before the Duke, to incriminate Bona on its evidence, and had been gripped by the neck for his pains, and flung, squealing like a rat, into this sewer, it had never warmed by a degree from this livid hue. Sickened, rather, since here, dreadfully interned throughout the day, like a schoolboy locked in with an impossible imposition, he had been left to writhe and moan, in awful anticipation of the coming inquisition and its likely consequences to himself. They were prefigured for him, in order to the sharp-setting of his wits, in a score or so instruments, all slack and somnolent and unstrung for the time being, but suggestive of hideous potentialities in their tautening. The rack riveted to the floor; the pulley pendent from the ceiling; the stocks in the corner, with the chafing-dish, primed with knobs of charcoal, ready at its foot-holes; the escalero or chevalet, which was a trough for strangling recalcitrant hogs in, limb by limb; the iron dice for forcing into the heels, and the canes for twisting and breaking the fingers; the water-bag and the thumbscrew and the fanged pincers—such, and such in twenty variations of hook and stirrup and dangling monstrosities of block and steel, but all pointing a common moral of terrific human pain, where the inducements to a calmly thought-out self-exculpation which had been offered to Tassino's solitary consideration. No wonder that, when at last the key turned and the harsh door creaked to admit his inquisitors, he should have screamed out with the mortal scream of a creature that finds itself cut off from escape in a burning house.

The Castellan struck him, judicially, across the mouth, and he was silent immediately, falling on his knees and softly chattering bloody teeth. Galeazzo, rubbing his chin, conned him at his smiling leisure; while, motionless and apathetic in the opening of the door, stood a couple of dark, aproned figures, one a Nubian.

'Ebbéne, Messer Tassino,' purred the Duke at length; 'has reconsideration found your indictment open to some revision? Rise, sir—rise.'

He waved his hand loftily. The wretch, after a vain attempt or two, succeeded in getting to his feet, on which he stood like a man palsied. He essayed the while to answer; but somehow his tongue was at odds with his palate.

The Duke, watching him, stealthily lifted his left hand, showing a green stone on one of its fingers.

'Mark ye that?' said he, smiling.

The other's lips moved inaudibly; his glittering eyes were fixed upon the token.

'Say again,' said Galeazzo, 'who charged ye with it to this errand?'

The poor animal mumbled.

'Now hist, now hist, my lord's Grace,' put in the Castellan, the light in his solitary eye travelling like a spark in dead tinder: 'there's an emetic or so here would assist the creature's delivery.'

Tassino gulped and found his voice—or a mockery of it:—

'My lord—spare me—'twas Caprona's widow.'

'And for what purpose?'

The fool, lost in terror, garbled his lesson.

'To destroy the Duchess, whom she hates. I know not: 'twas Messer Ludovic made himself her agent to me.'

'Ho!' cried the Duke, and the monosyllable rolled up and round under the roof, and was returned upon him. 'Here's addition, not subtraction. What more?'

Advancing, with set grinning lips, he thumbed the victim's arm, as he might be a market-wife testing a fowl.

'Plump, plump,' he said, turning his head about. 'Shall we not singe the fat capon, Messer Castellan, before trussing him for the spit?'

At a sign, the two butchers at the door advanced and seized their victim. He struggled desperately in their grasp. Shriek upon shriek issued from his lips. Galeazzo thundered down his cries:—

'Lay him out,' he roared, 'and bare his ribs.'

In a moment Tassino was stretched in the rack, an operator, head and heel, gripping at the spokes of the drums. The Duke came and stood above, contemplative again now, and ingratiatory.

'So!' he said; 'we are in train, at last, for the truth. Tassino, my poor boy, who indeed sent you with this ring to me?'

'O Messer! before God! It was your brother.'

'And acting for whom?'

'The lady, Beatrice.'

'Who had been given it by?'

'Messer Bembo.'

'Ay: and he had received it from——?'

The poor wretch choked, and was silent. Galeazzo glanced aside: the winches creaked.

'Mercy, in God's name! Mercy!' shrieked the miserable creature. 'I will swear that it was won from her Grace by fraud—that she never knowingly parted with it to—to——'

'Ha!' struck in the Duke; and drew himself up, and pondered awhile blackly.

'My brother—my brother,' ran his thought. 'It may be; it may well be. To ruin her in mine eyes—yes: a fond fool. But a loyal fool. She'd not conspire—not she; nor Simonetta, loyal too—who mistrusts him, and whom he 'd drag down with her. What, Ludovic!—too crafty, too overreaching. Yet, conspiracy there may be, and she its unconscious tool.'

He looked down again, glooming, grating his chin.

'Here's some revision, then. Thou whelp, so to have bitten the hand that stroked thee! Shall I not draw thy teeth for it?'

'Pity, pity!' moaned Tassino. 'I spoke under compulsion.'

'And so shall,' snarled the other. 'What! To mend a slander on compulsion! More physic may bring more cure. Perchance hast made this Countess too thy cats-paw?'

'My lord! No! On my soul!'

'She hates the Duchess?'

'Yes, poisonously.'

'Why?'

'My lord!'

'Why, I say?'

'Alas! she covets for herself what the Duchess claims to heaven.'

'Riddles, swine! Covets! What or whom?'

'O, O! Your Grace's false deputy, Messer Bembo.'

'What! false? You'll stick to it?'

'How can I help?—O! dread my lord, how can I help the truth, unless you 'd wrench from me a travesty of it?'

His breast heaved and sobbed. The tyrant gloomed upon him.

'Is it true, then, he's a traitor?'

'O, the blackest—the most subtle! There can I utter without prompting.'

It was true that he believed he could. Remember how, mongrel though he was, his mind had been fed on slander of our saint.

Galeazzo dropped into a moody reverie. A long quivering sigh thereat broke from his prostrate victim. Mean wits are cunning for themselves; and, looking up into the dark eyes bent above him, Tassino thought he saw reflected there a first faint ghost of hope. O, to hold, to materialise it! He must be infinitely cautious.

He moaned, and wagged his head. The Duke broke out again:—

'False! is he false to me? And yet my wife is true, thou sayest? and yet this woman of Caprona's jealous, thou sayest? Of whom?—O, dog, beware!'

'Master, of a shadow. She reads the woman's baseness in the man's.'

'Ho! Not like thou: what, puppy?'

'Before God, no. 'Tis Madonna's very innocence helps his designs.'

'How?'

'By trusting in, and exalting them for heaven's. She'll wake when it's too late, and weep and curse herself for having betrayed thee.'

'She will? Betray? Too late? These be terms meeter to a rebellion than a schism.'

'Yet must I speak them, weeping, though I die.'

The despot gnawed his lip.

'Hast venom in thee, and with reason, to sting the boy?'

'Alas! to warn thee rather from his fang.'

'Ha!'

'It will lie flat against his palate, till the time when with his subtle eyes he shall invite thy hand to stroke his head. No rebellion, lord; no python rearing on his crushing folds. Yet may the little snake be deadlier.'

He was gathering confidence hair by hair. There were glints of coming tempest, well known to him, blooding the corners of Galeazzo's eyes. He believed, by them, that he should presently ride this storm of his own evoking.

'Ah!' he moaned, 'I'm sick. Mercy, lord! Truth 's not itself unless upright.'

The tyrant tossed his hand:—

'Set the dog on his legs.'

The dog so far justified his title that, being released, he crawled abject on all fours to his master's feet, and crouched there ready to lick them.

'Bah!' cried the Duke, and spurned him. 'Get on thy hind legs, ape! The rope's but slackened from thy hanging; the noose yet cuddles to thy neck. Stand'st there to justify thyself, or answer with a separate rack and screw for every lie thou 'st uttered.'

He strode a pace or two like one demented; turned, snarled out a sudden shocking laugh, and came close up again to the trembling, but still confident wretch.

'See, we'll be reasonable,' he said, mockingly insinuative; 'a twin amity of dialecticians, ardent for the truth, cooing like love-birds. "Well, on my faith, he's a traitor," says you; and "your faith shall be mine on vindication, sweet brother," says I. Now, what proves him traitor? I ask.'

'He rules the palace.'

'Why, I set him in my place.'

'You did indeed; but—ah! dare I say what's whispered?'

'You 'd better.'

'Why—O, mercy! Bid me not.'

'I'll not ask again.'

'You force me to it—that, being there, he designs to stay.'

'He'll be Duke?'

'No, no.'

'You shall wince with better reason. Dog, you dog my patience. I'll turn. What then?'

'Only that he sits for Christ. Let them depose him that are devils' men.'

'My men?'

'O! he's subtle. No word against your Grace; only the dumb pleas of love and pity courting comparison.'

'With what?'

'Your Grace's sharper methods.'

'Beast! Did I not waive them for his sake? Did I not leave my conscience in his keeping?'

'Alas! if thou didst, he's used it, like a false friend, in damning evidence against thee.'

'O Judas!'

'Used it to point the moral of his own large tolerance. The people rise to him—cry him in the streets: "Down with Galeazzo! Nature's our God!"'

'Ha! He's Nature?'

'As they read him—lord of the slums.'

'Lord of filthy swine. I'll ring their snouts. Well, goon. God of the slums, is he?'

'God of thy palace, too; mends and amends thy laws—sugars them for sweet palates—gains the women—O, a prince of confectioners! There's the ring to prove.'

'What!'

'I can guess when he wheedled it.'

'Thou canst?'

'The moment thy back was turned. So quick he sped to discredit thee—to reverse thy judgments. The monk thou'd left to starve, a dog well-served—he'd release him, a fine text to open on. But Jacopo was obdurate—would not let him pass, neither him nor Cicada——'

'What! the Fool?'

'O, they're in one conspiracy—inseparable. He's to be Vizier some day.'

'I'll remember that.'

'So he ran off, and presently returned with a pass-token. I guessed not what at the time; now I guess. It was the ring he'd coaxed from Madonna.'

'And saved the monk thereby?'

'Ah-ha! Jacopo had forestalled him; the monk was dead.'

'What did he then?'

'Cursed thy lord's Grace, and ran; ran and hid himself away among the people, he and his Fool, and spat his poison in that sewer, to fester and bear fruit. 'Twas only presently the Duchess heard of him, and persuaded him on sweet promise of amendment back to the Court. He's made the most of that concession since, using it to——'

He checked himself, and whimpered and sprang back. On the instant the storm which he had dreaded while provoking was burst upon him. Credulous and irrational like all tyrants, Galeazzo never thought to analyse interests and motives in any indictment whose pretext was devotion to himself and his safety. Wrapped in eternal unbelief in all men, no man was so easily arrested as he by the first hint of a plausible rogue professing to serve him, or so quick, being inoculated, to develop the very confluent scab of suspicion. It were well only for Autolycus to make the most of his fees during his little spell of favour, and to disappear on the earliest threat of himself falling victim to the disease he had promoted.

Now, for this dumb-struck quartette of knaves and butchers, was enacted one of those little danses-diaboliques in which this fearful man was wont to vent his periodic frenzies. He shrieked and leapt and foamed, racing and twisting to and fro within the narrow confines of the dungeon. Ravings and blasphemies tore and sputtered from his lips; mad destruction issued at his hands. He spurned whatever blocked his path, things living or inanimate; nor seemed to feel or recognise how he bruised himself, but stumbled over, and snatched at, and hurled aside, all that crossed the red vision of his rage. Struggling for coherence, he could force his imprecations but by fits and snatches to rise articulate:—

'Subtle!—I'll be subtler—devil unmasked—no Future?—a specious dog—hell gapes in front—master of my own—to vindicate the monk?—treason against his lord—ha, ha! Jacopo! good servant! good refuter of a sacrilegious hound!'

Then all at once, quite suddenly as it had risen, the tempest passed. Slack, dribbling, hoarse, unashamed, he stopped beside his death-white informer and pawed and mouthed upon him:—

'Why, Tassino! Why—my little honest carver o' joints! Thou mean'st me well, I do believe.'

'O my lord!' cried the trembling rogue, 'if you would but trust me!'

'Why, so I do, Tassino,' urged the Duke, nervously handling and stroking the young man's arm. 'So I do, little pretty varlet. I believe thy story—fie! an impious tale. Deserv'st well of me for that boldness—good courage—the truth needs it. Wilt serve me yet?'

'My lord, to the death.'

'Fie, fie! Not so far, I hope. Yet, listen; 'twere meet this viper were not let to crawl himself within our laurels, and crown our triumph with a poisonous bite. Hey?'

'I understand your Grace.'

'A hint's enough, then. 'Tis no great matter; but these worms will sting.'

'I'll jog Jacopo.'

'You will? He's true to me?'

'O yes!'

'No convert to the other?'

'He hates him well.'

'Does he? A viper has no friends but his kind. This one—hark! a word in your ear. He 'd loose Capello, who damned me, and was damned? Were it not right then the false prophet should take the false prophet's place?'

'Most right.'

'The word's with thee, little chuck. How about the Fool?'

'As bad, or worse, my lord.'

'Hush! Two vipers, do you say?'

'My lord!'

'Be circumspect, that's all. 'Tis our will to give great largesse this Christmastide.'

'The very sound will jingle out his memory—bury the golden calf under gold.'

'Good, little rogue. We'll linger on the Mount meanwhile—just a day or so, to let the promise work. 'Twere a sleeveless triumph through a grudging city. Let these thorns be plucked first from our road.'

'I'll ride at once, saving your Grace.'

'Do so, and tell Jacopo, "Quietly, mind—without fuss."'

'Trust me.'

The Duke flicked his arm and turned, smiling, to the Castellan.

'You shall provide Messer Tassino,' said he smoothly, 'with his liberty, and a swift horse.'

A week later, Sforza the second of Milan set out for his Capital, in all the pomp and circumstance of state which befitted a mighty prince greatly homing after conquest. His path, by all the rules of glory, should have been a bright one; yet his laurels might have been Death's own, from the gloom they cast upon his brow. Last night, looking from his chamber window, he had seen a misty comet cast athwart that track: to-day, scarce had he started, when three ravens, rising from the rice-swamps, had come flapping with hoarse crow to cross it. He had thundered for an arbalest—loosed the quarrel—shot wide—spun the weapon to the ground. An inexplicable horror had seized him. Thenceforth he rode with bent head and glassy eyes fixed upon the crupper. The road of death ran before; behind sat the shadow of his fear, cutting him from retreat. So he reached the Porta Giovia, passed over the drawbridge, in silence dismounted, and for the first time looked up vaguely.

'Black, black!' he muttered to the page who held his horse. 'Let Mass be sung in it to-morrow, and for the chaunts be dirges. See to it.'

Did he hope so to hoodwink heaven, by abasing himself in the vestments of remorse? Likely enough. He had always been cunning to hold from it the worst of his confidence.

But in the thick of the night a voice came to him, blown upon the wind of dreams:—

'No Future, O, no Future! Look to thy Past!'

And he started up in terror, quavering aloud:—

'Who's that that being dead yet speaketh!'

CHAPTER XXIII

It is remarkable how quickly the brute genii will adapt himself to his pint bottle when once the cork is in. Elastic, it must be remembered, has the two properties of expansion and retraction, the latter being in corresponding proportion with the former. Wherefore, the greater its stretching capacity the more compact its compass unstretched.

So it is with life, which is elastic, and mostly lived at a tension. Relax that tension, and behold the buoyant temperament rinding roomier quarters in a straitened confinement than would ever a flaccid one in the same; and this in defiance of Bonnivard, that fettered Nimrod of the mountains, whose heart broke early in captivity, and who, nevertheless, as a matter of fact, did not exist.

The truth is, a pint pot is over-enough to contain the mind of many an honest vigorous fellow; and it is the mind, rather than the body, which struggles for elbow-room. Carlo, in his prison, suffered little from that mere mental horror of circumscription which, to a more sensitive soul, had been the infinite worst of his doom. He champed, and stamped, and raged, sure enough; cursed his fate, his impotence, his restrictions; but all from a cleaner standpoint than the nerves—from one (no credit to him for that) less constitutionally personal. That he should be shut from the possibility of helping in a sore pass the little friend of his love, of his faith, of his adoration—the pretty child who had needed, never so much as at this moment, the help and protection of his strong arm—here was the true madness of his condition. And he bore it hardly, while the fit possessed him, and until physical exhaustion made room for the little reserves of reason which all the time had been waiting on its collapse.

Then, suddenly, he became very quiet; an amenable, wicked, dangerous thing; fed greedily; nursed his muscles; spake his gaolers softly when they visited him; refrained from asking useless questions to elicit evasive answers; brooded by the hour together when alone. They treated him with every consideration; answered practically his demands for books, paper, pens and ink, wine—for all bodily ameliorations of his lot which he chose to suggest, short of the means to escape it. There, only, was there no concession—no response to the request of an insulted cavalier to be returned the weapons of his honour of which he had been basely mulcted. His fingers must serve his mouth, he was told, and his teeth his meat—they were sharp enough. At which he would grin, and click those white knives together, and return to his brooding.

But not, at last, for long. Very soon he was engaged in exploring his dungeon, a gloomy cellar, two-thirds of it below the level of the moat, and lit by a single window, deep-shafted under the massive ceiling. His search, at first, yielded him no returns but of impenetrable induracy—no variations, knock where he might, in the echoless irresponsiveness of dumb-thick walls. Only, with that incessant tap-tapping of his, the trouble in his brain fell into rhythm, chiming out eternally, monotonously, the inevitable answer to a fruitless question with which, from the outset, he had been tormenting himself, and from which, for all his sickness of its vanity, he could not escape.

'What hath Cicada done? Concluded me safely sped? Done nothing, therefore. What hath Cicada done? Concluded me safely sped? Done nothing, therefore.'

So, the villainy was working, and he in his dungeon powerless to counteract it.

He lived vividly through all these phases—of despair, of self-concentration, of resourceful hope—during the opening twenty-four hours of his confinement. And then, once upon a time, very suddenly, very softly, very remotely, there was borne in upon him the strange impression that he was not alone in his underworld.

The first shadow of this conviction came to haunt him during the second night of his imprisonment, when, having fallen asleep, there presently stole into his brain, out of a deep sub-consciousness of consciousness, the knowledge that some voice, extraneous to himself, was moaning and throbbing into his ear.

At the outset this voice appealed to him for nothing more than the emotional soft babble of a dream. It seemed to reach to him from a vast distance, breathing very faint, and thin, and sweet through æons of pathetic memories. He could not identify or interpret it, save in so far as its burden always hinted of a wistful sadness. But, gradually, as the spell of it enwrapped and claimed him, out of its inarticulateness grew form, and out of that form recognition.

It was Bernardo singing to his lute. How could he not have known it, when here was the boy actually walking by his side? They trod a smiling meadow, sweet with narcissus and musical with runnels. The voice made ecstasy of the Spring; frisked in the blood of little goats; unlocked the sap of trees, so that they leapt into a spangled spray of blossoms.

A step—and the turf was dry beneath their feet. The sun smote down upon the plain; the grasshopper shrieked like a jet of fire; the full-uddered cattle lowed for evening and the shadowed stall.

Again, a step—and the leaves of the forest blew abroad like flakes of burning paper; the vines shed fruit like heavy drops of blood; the sky grew dark in front, rolling towards them a dun wall of fog—the music wailed and ceased.

He turned upon his comrade; and saw the lute swung aside, the pale lips yet trembling with their song. He knew the truth at once.

'We part here,' he murmured. 'Is it not? So swiftly run thy seasons. And you return to Spring; and I—O, I, go on! Whither, sweet angel? O, wilt thou not linger a little, that, reaching mine allotted end, I may hurry back to overtake thee?'

Then, clasping his hands in agony, the tears running down his cheeks, he saw how the boy bent to whisper in his ear—words of divine solace—nay, not words, but music—music, music all, of an unutterable pathos.

And he awoke, to hear the shrunk, inarticulate murmur of it still whispering to his heart.

He sat up, panting, in the deep blackness. His hands trembled; his face was actually wet. But the music had not ended with his dream. Grown very soft and far and remote, it yet went sounding on in fact—or was it only in fancy?

His still-drugged brain surged back into slumber on the thought. Instantly the voice began to take shape and reality: he caught himself from the mist—as instantly it fell again into a phantom of itself.

And thus it always happened. So surely as he listened wakeful, straining his hearing, the voice would reach him as a far plaintive murmur, a vague intolerable sweetness, without identity or suggestion save of some woful loss. So surely did his brain swerve and his aching eyes seal down, it would begin to gather form, and words out of form, and expression out of words—expression, of a sorrow so wildly sad and moving, that his dreaming heart near broke beneath the burden of its grief.

A strange experience; yet none so strange but that we must all have known it, what time our errant soul has leapt back into our waking consciousness, carrying with it, on the wind of its return, some echo of the spirit world with which it had been consorting. Who has not known what it is to wake, in a dumb sleeping house, to the certain knowledge of a cry just uttered, a sentence just spoken, of a laugh or whisper stricken silent on the instant, nor felt the darkness of his room vibrate and settle into blankness as he listened, and, listening, lost the substance of that phantom utterance?

But at length for Carlo dream and reality were blended in one forgetfulness.

Morning weakened, if it could not altogether dissipate, his superstitions. Though one be buried in a vault, there's that in the mere texture of daylight, even if the thinnest and frowziest, to muffle the fine sense of hearing. If, in truth, those mystic harmonics still throbbed and sighed, his mind had ceased to be attuned to them. He lent it to the more practical business of resuming his examination of his prison.

At midday, while he was sitting at his dinner, a visitor came and introduced himself to him, leaping, very bold and impudent, to the table itself, where he sat up, trimming his whiskers anticipatory. It was a monstrous brown rat; and self-possessed—Lord! Carlo dropped his fists on the cloth, and stared, and then fell to grinning.

'O, you've arrived, have you!' said he. 'Your servant, Messer Topo!'

It was obviously the gentleman's name. At the sound of it, he lowered his fore-paws, flopped a step or two nearer, and sat up again. Carlo considered him delightedly. He was one of those men between whom and animals is always a sympathetic confidence.

'Is it, Messer Topo,' said he, 'that you desire to honour me with the reversion of a former friendship? What! You flip your whiskers in protest? No friend, you imply, who could educate your palate to cooked meats, and then betray it, returning you to old husks? Has he deserted you, then? Alas, Messer! We who frequent these cellars are not masters of our exits and our entrances. How passed he from your ken, that same unknown? Feet-first? Face-first? Tell me, and I'll answer for his faith or faithlessness.'

The visitor showed some signs of impatience.

'What!' cried Carlo. 'My grace is overlong? Shall we fall to? Yet, soft. Fain would I know first the value of this proffered love, which, to my base mind, seems to smack a little of the cupboard.'

His hand went into the dish. Messer Topo ceased from preening his moustache, and stiffened expectant, his paws erect.

'Ha-ha!' cried Carlo. 'You are there, are you? O, Messer Topo, Messer Topo! Even prisoners, I find, possess their parasites.'

He held out a morsel of meat. The big rat took it confidently in his paws; tested, and approved it; sat up for more.

'What manners!' admired Carlo. 'Art the very pink of Topos. Come, then; we'll dine together.'

Messer Topo acquitted himself with perfect correctness. When satisfied, he sat down and cleaned himself. Carlo ventured to scratch his head. He paused, to submit politely to the attention—which, though undesired, he accepted on its merits—then, the hand being withdrawn, waited a moment for courtesy's sake, and returned to his scouring. In the midst, the key grated in the door, and like a flash he was gone.

'Ehi!' pondered Carlo; 'it is very evident he has been trained to shy at authority.'

It seemed so, indeed, and that authority knew nothing of him. Otherwise, probably, authority would have resented his interference with its theories of solitary confinement to the extent of trapping and killing him.

The prisoner saw no more of his little sedate visitor that evening; but, with night and sleep, the voice again took up the tale of his haunting; and this time, somehow, to his dreaming senses, Messer Topo seemed to be the medium of its piteous conveyance to him. Once more he woke, and slept, and woke again; and always to hear the faint music gaining or losing body in opposite ratio with his consciousness. He was troubled and perplexed; awake by dawn, and harking for confirmation of his dreams. But daylight plugged his hearing.

He had expected Messer Topo to breakfast. He did not come. He called—and there he was. They exchanged confidences and discussed biscuits. The key grated, and Messer Topo was gone.

This day Carlo set himself to solve the mystery of his visitor's lightning disappearances—Anglicè, to find a rat-hole. Fingering, in the gloom, along the joint of floor and wall, he presently discovered a jagged hole which he thought might explain. Without removing his hand, he called softly: 'Topo! Messer Topo!' Instantly a little sharp snout, tipped with a chilly nose, touched him and withdrew. He stood up, as the key turned in the lock once more.

This time it was Messer Jacopo himself who entered, while his bulldogs watched at the door. He came to bring the prisoner a volume of Martial, which Carlo had once had recommended to him, and of which he had since bethought himself as a possible solace in his gloom. The Provost Marshal advanced, with the book in his hand, and seeing his captive's occupation, as he thought, paused, with a dry smile on his lips. Then, with his free palm, he caressed the wall thereabouts.

'Strong masonry, Messer,' he said; 'good four feet thick. And what beyond? A dungeon, deadlier than thine own.'

Carlo laughed.

'A heavy task for nails, old hold-fast, sith you have left me nothing else. Lasciate ogni speranza, hey, and all the rest? I know, I know. Yet, look you, there should have been coming and going here once, to judge by the tokens.'

He signified, with a sweep of his hand, a square patch on the stones, roughly suggestive of a blocked doorway, wherein the mortar certainly appeared of a date more recent than the rest.

The other made a grim mouth.

'Coming, Messer,' he said; 'but little going. Half-way he sticks who entered, waiting for the last trump. He'll not move until.'

Carlo recoiled.

'There's one immured there?'

'Ay, these ten years——'

And the wooden creature, laying the book on the table, stalked out like an automaton.

He left the prisoner gulping and staring. Here, in sooth, was food for his fancy, luckily no great possession. But the horror bit him, nevertheless. Presently he took up the book—tried to forget himself in it. He found it certainly very funny, and laughed: found it very gross, and laughed—and then thought of Bernardo, and frowned, and threw the thing into a corner. Then he started to his feet and went up and down, nervously, with stealthy glances to the wall. Haunted! No wonder he was haunted. Did it sob and moan in there o' nights, beating with its poor blind hands on the stone? Did it——

A thought stung him, and he stopped. The rat! Its run broke into that newer mortar, penetrated, perhaps, as far as the buried horror itself. Was there the secret of the music? Was it wont, that hapless spectre, putting its pallid lips to the hole, to sigh nightly through it its melodious tale of griefs?

He stood gnawing his thumb-nail.

What might it be—man or woman? There was that legend of a nun with child by—Nay, horrible! What might it be? Nothing at this last, surely—sexless—just a spongy chalk of bones, a soft rubble for rats to nest in. O, Messer Topo, Messer Topo! on what dust of human tragedy did you make your bed! Perhaps——

No! perish the thought! Messer Topo was a gentleman—descendant of a long line of gentlemen—no hereditary cannibal. He preferred meats cooked to raw. An hereditary guardian, rather, of that flagrant tomb. And yet—

He lay down to rest that night, lay rigid for a long while, battling with a monstrous soul-terror. A burst of perspiration relieved him at last, and he sank into oblivion.

Then, lo! swift and instant, it seemed, the unearthly music caught him in its spell. It was more poignant than he had known it yet—loud, piercing, leaping like the flame of a blown candle. He awoke, sweating and trembling. The vibration of that gale of sorrow seemed yet ringing in his ears—from the walls, from the ceiling, from the glass rim of his drinking-vessel on the table, which repeated it in a thousand tinkling chimes. But again the voice itself had attenuated to a ghost of sound—a mere Æolian thread of sweetness.

But it was a voice.

Carlo sat up on his litter. He was a man of obdurate will, of a conquering resolution; and the moment, unnerving as it seized him out of sleep, found him nevertheless decided. A shaft of green moonlight struck down from the high grate into his dungeon, spreading like oil where it fell; floating over floor and table; leaving little dark objects stranded in its midst. Its upper part, reflecting the moving waters of the moat outside, seemed to boil and curdle in a frantic dance of atoms, as though the spirit music were rising thither in soundless bubbles.

He listened a minute, scarce breathing; then dropped softly to the floor, and stole across his chamber, and stooped and listened at the wall.

The next moment he had risen and staggered back, panting, glaring with dilated eyes into the dark. There was no longer doubt. It was by way of Messer Topo's pierced channel that the music had come welling to him.

But whence?

Commanding himself by a tense effort, he bent once more, and listened. Long now—so long, that one might have heard the passion in his heart conceive, and writhe, and grow big, and at length deliver itself in a fierce and woful cry: 'Bernardo! my little, little brother!'

With the words, he leapt up and away—tore hither and thither like a madman—mouthed broken imprecations, fought for articulate speech and self-control. The truth—all the wicked, damnable truth—had burst upon him in a flash. No ghostly voice was this of a ten years immured; but one, now recognised, sweet and human beyond compare, the piteous solution of all his hauntings. The run pierced further than to that middle tragedy—pierced to a tragedy more intimate and dreadful—pierced through into the adjoining cell, where lay his child, his little love, perishing of cold and hunger. He read it all in an instant—the disastrous consequences of his own disaster. And he could not comfort or intervene while this, his pretty swan, was singing himself to death hard by.

Pity him in that minute. I think, poor wretch, his state was near the worse—so strong, and yet so helpless. He shrieked, he struck himself, he blasphemed. Monstrous? it was monstrous beyond all human limits of malignity. So the ring had sped and wrought! What had this angel done, but been an angel? What had Cicada, so hide-bound in his own conceit of folly? Curst watchdogs both, to let themselves be fooled and chained away while the wolf was ravening their lamb!

He sobbed, fighting for breath:—

'Messer Topo, Messer Topo! Thou art the only gentleman! I crave thy forgiveness, O, I crave thy forgiveness for that slander! A rat! I'll love them always—a better gentleman, a better friend, bringing us together!'

With the thought, he flung himself down on the floor, and put his ear to the hole. Still, very faint and remote, the music came leaking by it—a voice; the throb of a lute.

He changed his ear for his lips:—

'Bernardo!' he screamed; 'Bernardo! Bernardo!' and listened anew.

The music had ceased—that was certain. It was succeeded by a confused, indistinguishable murmur, which in its turn died away.

'Bernardo!' he screeched again, and lay hungering for an answer.

It came to him, suddenly, in one rapturous soft cry:—

'Carlo!'

No more. The sweet heart seemed to break, the broken spirit to wing on it. Thereafter was silence, awful and eternal.

He called again and again—no response. He rose, and resumed his maddened race, to and fro, praying, weeping, clutching at his throat. At length worn out, he threw himself once more by the wall, his ear to the hole, and lying there, sank into a sort of swoon.

Messer Topo, sniffing sympathetically at his face, awoke him. He sat up; remembered; stooped down; sought to cry the dear name again, and found his voice a mere whisper. That crowned his misery. But he could still listen.

No sound, however, rewarded him. He spent the day in a dreadful tension between hope and despair—snarled over the periodic visits of his gaolers—snarled them from his presence—was for ever crouching and listening. They fancied his wits going, and nudged one another and grinned. He never thought to question them; was always one of those strong souls who find, not ask, the way to their own ends. He knew they would lie to him, and was only impatient of their company. Seeing his state, they were at the trouble to take some extra precautions, always posting a guard on the stairs before entering his cell. Messer Lanti, normal, was sufficiently formidable; possessed, there was no foretelling his possibilities.

But they might have reassured themselves. Escape, at the moment, was farthest from his thoughts or wishes. He would have stood for his dungeon against the world; he clung to his wall, like a frozen ragamuffin to the outside of a baker's oven.

Presently he bethought himself of an occupation, at once suggestive and time-killing. He had been wearing his spurs when captured—weapons, of a sort, overlooked in the removal of deadlier—and these, in view of vague contingencies, he had taken off and hidden in his bed. His precaution was justified; he saw a certain use for them now; and so, procuring them, set to work to enlarge with their rowels the opening of the rat hole. He wrought busily and energetically. Messer Topo sat by him a good deal, watching, with courteous and even curious forbearance, this really insolent desecration of his front door. They dined together as usual; and then Carlo returned to his work. His plan was to enlarge the opening into a funnel-like mouth, meeter for receiving and conveying sounds. It had occurred to him that the point of the tiny passage's issue into the next cell might be difficult of localisation by one imprisoned there, especially if the search—as he writhed to picture it—was to be made in a blinding gloom. If he could only have continued to help by his voice—to cry 'Here! Here!' in this tragic game of hide-and-seek! He wrought dumbly, savagely, nursing his lungs against that moment. But still by night it had not come to be his.

Then, all in an instant, an inspiration came to him. He sat down, and wrote upon a slip of paper: 'From Carlo Lanti, prisoner and neighbour. Mark who brings thee this—whence he issues, and whither returns. Speak, then, by that road—' and having summoned Messer Topo, fastened the billet by a thread about his neck, and, carrying him to his run, dismissed him into it. Wonder of wonders! the great little beast disappeared upon his errand. Henceforth kill them for vermin that called the rat by such a name!

Messer Topo did not return. What matter, if he had sped his mission? Only, had he? There was the torture. Hour after hour went by, and still no sign.

Carlo fell asleep, with his ear to the funnel. That night the music did not visit him. He awoke—to daylight, and the knowledge of a sudden cry in his brain. Tremulous, he turned, and found his voice had come back to him, and cleared it, and quavered hoarsely into the hole, 'Who speaks? Who's there?'

He dwelt in agony on the answer—thin, exhausted, a croaking gasp, it reached him at length:—

'Cicca—the Fool—near sped.'

'The Fool! Thou—thou and none other?' His cry was like a wolf's at night; 'none other? Bernardo!' he screeched.

A pause—then: 'Dead, dead, dead!' came wheezing and pouring from the hole.

'Ah!'

He fell back; swayed in a mortal vertigo; rallied. He was quite calm on the instant—calm?—a rigid, bloodless devil. He set his mouth and spoke, picking his words:—

'So? Is it so? All trapped together, then? When did he die?'

'Quick!' clucked the voice; 'quick, and let me pass. When, say'st? Time's dead and rotten here. I know not. A' heard thee call—and roused—and shrieked thy name. His heart broke on it. A' spoke never again. All's said and done. What more? I could not find the hole—till thy rat came. Speak quick.'

What more? What more to mend or mar? Nothing, now. Hope was as dead as Time—a poxed and filthy corpse. Love, Faith, and Charity—dead and putrid. Only two things remained—two things to hug and fondle: revenge and Messer Topo. He bent and spoke again:—

'Starved to death?'

'Starved——'

The queer, far little mutter seemed to reel and swerve into a tinkle—an echo—was gone. Carlo called, and called again—no answer. Then he set himself to ruminate—a cud of gall and poison.

On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide open.

'Free, Messer,' he said; 'and summoned under urgency to the palace.'

Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and dreaded by a gentler soul.

The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and whispered for Messer Topo.

The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him (the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy), apostrophised him face to face:—

'My true, mine only friend at last,' he said (his voice was thick and choking). 'I must go, leaving him to thee. Be reverent with him for my sake—ah! if I return not anon, to carry out and plant that sweet corse in the daisied grass he loved—not dust to dust, but flower to the dear flowers. Look to it. Shall I never see him more—nor thee? I know not. I've that to do first may part us to eternity—yet must I do it. Come, kiss me God-be-with-ye. Nay, that's a false word. How can He, and this bloody ensign on my brow? My brain in me doth knell already like a leper's bell. Canst hear it, red-eyes? No God for me. Why should I need Him—tell me that? Christ could not save His friend. I must go alone—quite alone at last. Only remember I loved thee—always remember that. And so, thou fond and pretty thing, farewell.'

He put his lips to the little furry head; put the animal gently down; longed to it a moment; then, as it disappeared into its run, turned with a wet and burdened sigh.

But, even with the sound, a black and gripping frost seemed to fall upon him. He drew himself up, set his face to the door, and passed out and on to freedom and the woful deed he contemplated.

CHAPTER XXIV

A despotism (Messer Bembo invitus) is the only absolute expression of automatic government. The fly-wheel moves, and every detail of the machinery, saw, knife, or punch, however distant, responds instantly to its initiative. Galeazzo, for example, had but to make, in Vigevano, the tenth part of a revolution, and behold, in Milan! Messer Jacopo—saw, knife, and punch in one—had 'come down,' automatically, upon the objectives of that movement. Within a few minutes of Tassino's return, Bernardo and his Fool, seized quietly and without resistance as they were taking the air on the battlements, were being lowered with cords into the 'Hermit's Cell.'

Sic itur ad astra.

The Duke of Milan re-entered his capital on the 20th of December. His Duchess met him with happy smiles and tears, loving complaints over his long absence, a sweet tongue ready with vindication of her trust, should that be demanded of her. The last week had done much to reassure her, in the near return to familiar conditions which it had witnessed; and she felt herself almost in a position to restore to her Bluebeard the key, unviolated, of the forbidden chamber. If only he would accept that earnest of her loyalty without too close a questioning!

And, to her joy, he did; inasmuch, you see, as he had his own reasons for a diplomatic silence. It would appear, indeed, that recent great events had altogether banished from his memory the pious circumstances of his departure to them. He had returned to find his duchy as to all moral intents he had left and could have wished to recover it. The fashion of Nature had shed its petals with the summer brocades, and Milan was itself again.

For the exquisite, who had set it, was vanished now some seven days gone; and that is a long time for the straining out of a popular fashion. He had departed, carrying his Fool with him, none—save one or two in the secret—knew whither; but surmise was plentiful, and for the most part rabid. That he had fallen out of home favour latterly was obvious and flagrant; now, the report grew that this alienation had received its first impetus from Piedmont. That whisper in itself was Nature's very quietus. Eleven out of a dozen presumed upon it, and themselves, to propitiate tyranny with a very debauch of reactionism to old licence. Moreover, scandal, in mere self-justification, must run intolerable riot. Nothing was too gross for it in its accounting for this secession. The pure love which had striven to redeem it, it tortured into a text for filthy slanders. The Countess of Caprona had her windows stoned in retaliation one day by a resentful crowd; the wretched girl Lucia was dragged from her bed and suffocated in a muddy ditch. The logic of the mob.

The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the boy no evil; had acted as she did merely in the interests of the State, she told herself. If, for a moment, her thoughts ever swerved to Tassino—now returned, as it was whispered, to his old quarters with the Provost Marshal, and abiding there a readjustment of affairs—she hid the treason under a lovely blush, and vowed herself for ever more true wife and incorruptible.

So for the most part all was satisfactory again; and there remained only to alienate the popular sympathy from its idol. And that the Church undertook to do. The moment the false prophet was exposed and deposed, it rose, shook the crumbs from its lap, and gave him his coup de grâce in the public estimation.

'He but sought,' it thundered, 'to turn ye over, clods; to cleanse your gross soil for the fairer growing of his roses.' A parable: but so far comprehensible to the demos in that it implied its narrow escape from some cleaning process, a vindication of its prescriptive rights to go unwashed, and therefore convincing. Down sank the threatening swine-monster thereon; and, being further played upon with comfits of a festal Christmas-tide, did yield up incontinent its last breath of revivalism, and kick in joyful reassurance of its sty.

So the whole city absolved itself of redemption, and set to making enthusiastic provision for the devil's entertainment against the season of peace and goodwill.

Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit: nor less Bona bona erit. Only there was a rift within the happy wife's lute, which somehow put the whole orchestra out of tune. She saw, for all her sweet chastened sense of relief, that the Duke was darkly troubled. The oppression of his mood communicated itself to hers; and she began to dream—horrible visions of cloyed fingers, and clinging shrouds, and ropey cobwebs that would drop and lace her mouth and nostrils, the while she could not fight free a hand to clear them.

Then, double-damned in his own depression, by reason of its reacting through his partner on himself, the Duke one day sent for the Provost Marshal.

'The season claims its mercies,' gloomed he. 'Take the boy out and send him home to his father.'

'His father!' jeered Jacopo brusquely, grunting in his beard. 'A's been safe in his bosom these three days.'

'What!' gasped the tyrant.

'Dead, Messer, dead, that's all,' said the other impassively; 'passed in a moment, like a summer shower.'

There was nothing more to be said, then. As for poor Patch, he was too cheap a mend-conscience for the ducal mind even to consider. It took instead to brooding more and more on the drawn whiteness of its Duchess's face, hating and sickened by it, yet fascinated. The air seemed full of portents in its ghostly glimmer. His fingers were always itching to strike the hot blood into it. A loathly suspicion seized him that perhaps here, after all, was revealed the illusive face of his long haunting. Constantly he fancied he saw reflected in other faces about him some shadow of its menacing woe. Once he came near stabbing a lieutenant of his guards, one Lampugnani, for no better reason than that he had caught the fellow's eyes fixed upon him.

So the jovial season sped, and Christmas day was come and gone, bringing with it and leaving, out of conviviality, some surcease of his self-torment.

But, on that holy night, Madonna Bona was visited by a dream, more ugly and more definite than any that had terrified her hitherto. Groping in a vast cathedral gloom, she had come suddenly upon a murdered body prostrate on the stones. Dim, shadowy shapes were thronged around; the organ thundered, and at its every peal the corpse from a hundred hideous wounds spouted jets of blood. She turned to run; the gloating stream pursued her—rose to her hips, her lips—she awoke choking and screaming.

That morning—it was St. Stephen's Day—the Duke was to hear Mass in the private chapel of the castello. He rose to attend it, only to find that, by some misunderstanding, the court chaplain had already departed, with the sacred vessels, for the church dedicated to the Saint. The Bishop of Como, summoned to take his place, declined on the score of illness. Galeazzo decided to follow his chaplain.

Bona strove frantically to dissuade him from going. He read some confirmation of his shapeless suspicions in her urgency, and was the more determined. She persisted; he came near striking her in his fury, and finally drove her from his presence, weeping and clamorous.

She was in despair, turning hither and thither, trusting no one. At length she bethought herself of an honest fellow, always a loyal friend and soldier of her lord, of whom, in this distracting pass, she might make use. She had spoken nothing to the Duke of her disposal of his favourite, Messer Lanti, leaving the explanation of her conduct to an auspicious moment. Now, in her emergency, she sent a message for Carlo's instant release, bidding him repair without delay to the palace. She had no reason, nor logic, nor any particular morality. She was in need, and lusting for help—that was enough.

The messenger sped, and returned, but so did not the prisoner with him. Bona, sobbing, feverish, at the wit's end of her resources, went from member to member of her lord's suite, imploring each to intervene. As well ask the jackalls to reprove the lion for his arrogance.

At eleven the Duke set out. His valet and chronicler, Bernardino Corio, relates how, at this pass, his master's behaviour seemed fraught with indecision and melancholy; how he put on, and then off, his coat of mail, because it made him look too stout; how he feared, yet was anxious to go, because 'some of his mistresses' would be expecting him in the church (the true explanation of his unharnessing, perhaps); how he halted before descending the stairs; how he called for his children, and appeared hardly able to tear himself away from them; how Madonna Catherine rallied him with a kiss and a quip; how at length, reluctantly, he left the castle on foot, but, finding snow on the ground, decided upon mounting his horse.