'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!'