'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.