left them so weakened."
"Della Scala!" cried Visconti. "I remember, he is in yonder garden; see
he be brought in, da Ribera; out of all Lombardy I can spare him a
tomb!"
The soldier left the room, and the talk went on with little heed of the
interruption; Visconti still busy with the ramparts of Turin and the
defenses of Modena, de Lana disputing the route to Vercelli; but the
secretary was not interested. His head pained him, and he fixed his eyes
on Visconti's triumphant face with a strange fascination. It seemed a
long time before da Ribera returned, and when he did, at something in
his face, a sudden silence fell.
"What is it?" asked Visconti, and, half-reeling, Giannotto leaned
forward to listen for the answer.
Da Ribera did not at once reply.
"What is it?" repeated the Duke angrily.
"We have found Della Scala," returned da Ribera, finding voice, "but not
only his body."
"Ah!" cried Visconti as if a sudden thought had struck him, "who else
then, da Ribera?"
"I cannot tell, only there is a dead lady in the garden; she is laid as
if sleeping on the grass, quite dead."
Visconti rose so suddenly that the sweep of his long sleeve sent the
glasses crashing to the ground, and made Arezzo start.
"It is Isotta d'Este!" he cried. "Mastino's wife!"
"Isotta dead?" cried de Lana, and the words echoed around the room.
"How should she be here, and dead?"
"The dead only can answer you," said Visconti. "Now I can recall what
'twas Mastino said--something about her! Still, it may not be his
duchess. As you say, how should she be dead, and here?"
"How should she be dead?" asked de Lana again. "Yet truly what else----"
he paused, keeping back his words, and his glance met the secretary's.
Giannotto was remembering something: the figure of Visconti standing
sullen, with a moody face, thinking on another dead woman; "Had she
lived I would not have done it!" he had said. The secretary rose; now he
understood.
In this triumphant Visconti there was no sign of the spirit that had
prompted that murmur, but the secretary understood.
Close behind Giannotto was a fresco painting, a panel between the
windows--St Sebastian in a glory, smiling, transfixed with arrows,
brilliant against a background of blue.
Giannotto, standing there half-dazed with his new thought, noticed it,
and clutched the wooden ribbing underneath with something like a prayer
on his lips. Might the saints and martyrs remember to him he had had no
share in this!
Visconti turned to leave the table, and with a clinking of armor and a
dazzling display of scarlet and blue the nobles moved back; the sunshine
was now golden and filling the room.
"Can he be going to look at her?" thought the secretary, dully; then,
stumbling over something as he moved forward, he glanced down and
started. The next moment he looked round sharply to see if any eye was
upon him, stooped quickly, and picked it up.
It was a little stiletto, a thing dropped, perhaps last night, and
overlooked, a tiny thing with a long, glittering blade. Giannotto
slipped it into his dress, he hardly knew why--it gave him a feeling of
security; it was a long time since Visconti's secretary had been armed,
even by so much as this.
"With good horses," said Visconti, drawing on his gloves, "we reach
Magenta--when, de Lana?"
"In two days, my lord."
"And Turin?"
"If there is no resistance----" began de Lana.
Visconti laughed.
"Resistance? Lombardy is ours, my good de Lana! Resistance----"
"Is hardly wise," put in da Ribera.
"And quite useless," said della Torre, with a low bow.
The splendid group was passing Giannotto, standing dully beneath St
Sebastian, when the Duke stopped.
"Come, I may have need of you, Giannotto."
The secretary's hand stole to his breast. He felt the handle of the
stiletto, and wondered why he had picked it up.
The doors were thrown open for the Duke to pass, and as they passed out
into the stairs, Giannotto slunk into his place behind Visconti.
Here were also noise and crowds; the coming and going of soldiers and
courtiers, excited talk and laughter, and in the distance the sound of
the drums, for the army was preparing to march. The front of the palace
was alive with them, the rattle of the new-fashioned artillery, the
shouted commands, the sunshine upon the standards and the armor, and the
fluttering, colored plumes.
But Visconti turned aside to the back of the palace, and descended the
steps that led to the garden. It was quiet here, all sounds subdued and
distant.
The balustrade of the steps and terrace was smothered in roses, white,
pink, and crimson, past their full summer pride, and many lying crushed
across the marble, while tangled trails of leaves and creepers lay torn
from the stone where they had clung.
Visconti noticed it, and looked with a smile at da Ribera, who in his
turn smiled also and passed a light word on at which the laugh was
general.
They were great nobles, princes some of them, yet not one dared to look
grave when Visconti smiled, or was not eager to fawn upon his notice.
At the foot of the steps the grass was crushed and blood-stained, and
from beside the oleanders and olives, drooping in the sun, a little
procession of men was engaged lifting something from the ground.
Visconti stopped.
"Della Scala," said de Lana. "They are moving him, according to your
orders, my lord."
Visconti stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"Bid them set him down again." And he stepped softly down the steps.
Giannotto looked at his smiling face with a cold, strange horror, and
glanced round to see if it were not in the others' faces too, but he did
not see it.
The soldiers, at de Lana's peremptory order, stopped, and laid the
burden they were lifting at Visconti's feet.
Mastino della Scala!
Visconti repeated the name and grasped his dagger.
Mastino della Scala, the man who had checked him, scorned him, foiled
him all his life, the proudest race, the most stainless name in
Lombardy, ended here and in this!
Visconti stepped close and looked down into his enemy's uncovered face.
"He was not beautiful, this Della Scala," he said.
Then he glanced up and round with a wordless, an unutterable
exultation. All he had asked had been given him and more! He, Visconti,
Duke of Milan, could ask for nothing more than this moment gave him--a
perfect triumph.
Da Ribera peered forward curiously. "He is torn to rags," he said. "He
must have fought like a madman----"
"He _was_ mad," said Visconti.
"And the lady?" said de Lana, suddenly, to Visconti. "Where is she, my
lord?"
Visconti, lacing his gold gloves, paused a moment, and answered over his
shoulder, lightly:
"She seems to fill thy thoughts, de Lana!"
"Only, can it be the Duchess?" said da Ribera. "I have never seen Isotta
d'Este, so cannot tell. I left her where I found her--on the grass,
beneath those laurels. But that it is a lady----"
He pointed as he spoke to a distant bush, round which tall lilies grew.
"It is the Duchess!" cried another.
"How should she be dead?" asked de Lana, and his glance again sought the
secretary's.
"How indeed?" said Visconti, with a curious smile. "And yet there are
enough ways of dying abroad. I will see for myself--so that if it indeed
be Isotta d'Este she may have fitting honor----"
The group moved forward. The advance of the army was already marching
past the walls of the garden, past the gate through which Mastino had
ridden; the pennons from their lances showed above the yellow jasmine
that covered the stonework, and the drums beat loud as Visconti and his
company reached the laurel clump and stood looking down at the silent
figure in the crushed and bedraggled white and purple.
"Isotta d'Este!" said Visconti, under his breath, and yet with an
unmoved face, that showed no surprise.
"Dead!" said de Lana, after a pause, and looked at him.
Visconti laughed softly, and turned with shining eyes.
"Did I not tell you Della Scala was mad--did we not see it for ourselves
last night?" he said.
"So it is the Duchess?" whispered da Ribera. "She was very beautiful,
they say."
She lay where they had drawn her from her shelter underneath the
laurels, her dress clinging close, her head turned away. Mastino had
wrapped her round carefully, with a clumsy tenderness; wrapped her veil
about her face, and laid his own cloak over her to shield her from the
night and rain. And his last whisper was for her--an appeal to some
one's humanity to see that Visconti should not look upon his victim's
face, should not defile her with his touch.
It rushed on Giannotto with the certainty of conviction--he had caught
only the ghostly whisper, but he was sure in this moment of the sense of
it; and the music, the colors and sunshine, and splendor and pomp of
triumph, and Gian Visconti's cold, mocking face began to dance before
Giannotto's vision like figures and fancies of a dream. He heard
Visconti speak to Arezzo, saw Arezzo stoop and lift the mantle, and he
moved back a step and put his hand to his breast.
"Isotta d'Este!" said Visconti, turning to the others, and pointing down
to the dead uncovered face. "Now what was she to lose everything for?"
"His wife," said de Lana, and turned his head away.
"Yes, my friend--do not forget it: _Della Scala's_ wife!" and Visconti
touched him on the shoulder warningly.
The group turned to go, and the secretary saw it with a feeling of
relief, when by some sudden impulse Visconti stepped back, and stood
looking down once at the poor white face.
His own showed neither fear, nor remorse, nor wonder, only triumph, and
the secretary felt the blood rise slowly from his heart toward his
brain, and he drew the stiletto half from his breast.
"_Donna mia_," said Visconti, speaking to her with a smile, "we must not
part so coldly, you and I--I will give you a fair tomb in Verona--in red
Verona, _donna mia_."
He dropped on one knee beside her, holding the laurels back and the
lilies that hung above her head.
"This as an earnest," he said, and bent over her and kissed her--kissed
the cold cheek of Mastino's wife.
The group watching stirred among themselves; no smiling faces now: each
eye averted, but still no one spoke.
And Visconti stooped and kissed her again, where the dark hair lay about
her forehead.
Then something gave in Giannotto's brain: a voice seemed to thunder in
his ears--"Judgment!" His hand flew from his breast and up and down upon
the kneeling figure, while he cried out terribly with a white, inspired
face, and Visconti fell forward, stabbed through the back.
"Treachery," cried da Ribera, scarcely seeing who had done it. "The Duke
is stabbed!"
Visconti clutched at the flowers and fell without a word.
"Killed!" screamed de Lana. "Now God is just!"
"Killed--the Duke is killed!"
Guido d'Arezzo bent over him with a white face, but della Torre stamped
in a passion of excitement and dragged at his shoulder.
"Killed!--come away--there are ourselves to think of--come away!"
Arezzo sprang to his feet.
"To Milan!" cried della Torre. "He leaves no heirs."
Visconti was still breathing: he struggled, and Giannotto pushed to his
side and stood above him, bursting into wild words.
"I did it--Visconti!--I did it--do you hear--do you hear! I knew, and I
did it!"
"Keep away!" yelled della Torre, and pulled him back.
Then he dropped to his knee and tore the signet-ring from the hand of
the dying man.
"To Milan!" he cried, springing up. "Haste! to Milan!"
"To Milan!" echoed Arezzo; "to Milan and the army----"
"Back--all of you!" said de Lana, and he raised Visconti. "He is not
dead----"
"He is past life. To Milan!"
The garden was one wild, yelling confusion; the news was spreading like
fire; each thought and acted for himself; and Giannotto, instrument of
vengeance, whimpered on his knees.
The rush to the gate came by so close, the flying feet almost touched
Visconti's face; and as della Torre passed, he struck his glove across
him.
De Lana lifted Visconti from the grass, but with a last effort he
struggled from him and dropped back.
"Milan!" he sobbed.
De Lana bent down eagerly to catch a muttered prayer, but there was
nothing more.
"Milan!"
The voices and shouts rose to a deafening pitch of confusion, the very
air seemed fevered with excitement; a flock of startled doves flew past
in panic, a rainbow of color; flew so low and so close to de Lana as to
blind him for a moment with the whirr of their wings, and in that
moment was a terrible cry.
They passed, beating the lilies down.
"My lord!" cried de Lana. "My lord!"
But even as he spoke, he knew Gian Visconti was dead.
THE END