'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.'