“ Bembo smiled and sighed.
'There is a proof of his blindness. What, in truth, was thy origin, dear Cicca?'
The Fool came and leaned beside him.
'Canst look on me and ask? I was born in this dark age of tyranny, and of it; I shall die in it and of it. I have never known liberty. Sobriety and reason are empty terms to me. Ask of me no fruit but the fruit of mine inheritance. A drunken woman in labour will bring forth a drunken child. I am Cicada the Fool, lower than a slave, curst pimp to Folly.'
Soft as a butterfly, Bernardo's hand fluttered to his shoulder and rested there. ”

“ I never thought thee beautiful before. O, what an unkind mother, to hide her beauty from her boy!'
'Am I beautiful?'
'Dost not know it? As the moon that rises on the night. It was night just now, and my soul was groping in the dark; and, lo! of a sudden thou wert looking down.'
'Let it be night, I say!'
'What is that in thy voice? I am so happy—always; only not when I think of Carlo. My dear, dear Carlo! Alas! what have they done with him? He will often think of us, and wonder where we are, and frown and gnaw his lip. If I could but hear him speak once more—cry "Bernardo!" ”

“ All in the noonday bright:
"Sooth," to Forever Love said,
"Here may we prosper right."
Sudden, day waned and fled:
Truth saw Forever in night.
"We are deceived," he said;
"Who shall pity our plight?"
Death, winging by o'erhead,
Heard them moan in affright.
"Hold by my hem," he said;
"I go the way to light."'
All the last day Cicada held him in her arms, so quiet, so motionless, that the gradual running down of his pulses was steadily perceptible to her. She felt Death stealing in, like a ghostly dawn—watched its growing glimmer with a fierce, hard-held agony. ”

“ Saint Ambrose! To remodel the world to goodwill, statecraft and all, on the lisp of a red mouth! Wilt be the fashion for just a year and a day, shouldering us, every one, poor gallants, to the wall? Why should I love thee for that? and I love thee nevertheless. There thou goest in a silken doublet, to whip all hell with a lute-string; and I—I had shown less temerity horsed and armoured, and with a whole roaring crusade at my back.'
Bembo smiled very kindly.
'Christ's love was all His sword and buckler,' said he.
'And He was crucified,' said Carlo grimly. ”

“ What message to her, bastard of an Abbot?'
The boy raised his head.
'The season's, Tassino,' he whispered, smiling. 'Peace and goodwill.'
The filthy creature mouthed and snarled.
'Ay. Most sweet. I'll wait thine agony, though, before I give it. She'll cry, then; and I shall be by; and, look you, emotion is the mother of desire. I'll pillow her upon thy corpse, bastard, and quicken her with new lust of wickedness. She'll never have loved me more. God! what a use for a saint!'
Cicada crawled, and rose, from under her sweet burden. ”

“ For, before ever she had precipitated this end, gossip had been busy whispering to her how the saint was beginning to melt in the sun of adulation, to confess the man in the angel, to inform with a more than filial devotion his attitude towards Bona. To have to cherish yet hate that thought had been her torture; to anticipate its consummation her frenzy. She had known him first; he was hers by right. Long wasting in the passion of her desire, she had conceived of its fruition a savour out of all proportion with her experiences. She must conquer him or die. He was hers, not Bona's. ”

“ But, while they scurried aimless, a rumour of the truth rose like a foul emanation, and, circulating among them, darkened men's brows and drove women to a whispering gossip of terror. So yet another of the Duke's inhumanities was at the root of this secession! By degrees the secret leaked out—of that living entombment, of the boy's interference, of his bloody forestalling by the executioner, of his flight, accompanied by his Fool, from the gates. And now he was gone, whither none knew; but of a certainty leaving the curse of his outraged suit on the house he had tried to woo from wickedness. ”

“ Perhaps he was in such a mood now—induced by that passion of the irremediable which occasionally must overtake every just judge—as he leaned upon the battlements, his cheek propped on his palm, and gazed out dreamily over the shining campagna.
'Cicca,' he said suddenly, 'what made thee a Fool?'
'Circumstance,' answered the other promptly.
'Ah!' sighed Bembo—'that blind brute force of Nature, wavering out of chaos. No agent of God—His foe, rather, to be anticipated and circumvented. Providence is the true wise name for our Master. He provideth, of the immensity of His love, for and against. ”

“ It is not so much its dull and filthy circumstance that appals him, though that is noxious enough to a boudoir exquisite; it is the shadow of Messer Ludovico's purpose, shapeless, indistinct, eternally conning him from the dark corners of his imagination, which takes the knees out of his soul. Is he really his friend and patron, as he professes to be? He recalls, with a sick shudder, how once, when in the full-flood of his arrogance, he had dared to keep that smooth and accommodating prince waiting in an ante-room while he had his hair dressed. ”

“ There was a confederacy dreamed of in his day—Genoa, Milan, and Venice; Florence, Sienna, and Bologna. One rampart to the rolling Alps, one wall on which barbarian hordes might burst and waste themselves in foam. Northwards, a baffled sea; south, all Italy a tranquil haven, a watered garden, where knowledge with all its flowers should find space, and breathing-space to grow. Dost thou love Italy? Then why not a republic, Galeazzo?'
The Duke, as utterly impassive as if he were deaf, turned musingly to Lascaris. ”

“ These were Bona, and her little son Gian-Galeazzo. As the other was spring, so was she summer, ripe in figure and mellowed in the passion of motherhood. Her eyes burned with the caress and entreaty of it—appealed in loveliness to the fathers of her desires. Her beauty, her stateliness, the very milk of her were all sweet lures to increase. She loved babies, not men—saw them most lusty, perhaps, in the glossy eyes of fools, the breeding-grounds of Cupids. She was always a mother before a wife.
The Duke led Bernardo to her side. ”

“ And so, talking of his gift to me, brings me to the greater gifts of the Duke.
'O my father! How can I speak my gratitude to heaven and thy teaching, which brought me so swiftly, so wonderfully, to prevail with that dread man! I think evil is like the false opal, which needs but the first touch of pure light to shatter it. I have come with no weapon but my little lamp of sunshine; and behold! in its flash the base is discredited and the truth acknowledged. It is all so easy, Christ guard me! There is a Providence in what men call chance. ”

“ It cannot be—I, Galeazzo the Duke—yet I taunted him with visions: what if I have caught the infection of mine own imagination—too fearful, spare me this once. Lord God, consider—as I put it to Thee—now—like this—listen. To starve with him should be but a fast enlarged. What then? Some, honest ascetics, no Conventuals, so push abstinence to ecstasy as that they may cross the lines of death in a dream, and wake without a pang to heaven gained. If he does not, should he suffer, he is properly condemned for a gross pampered brother, false to his vows, unworthy Thine advocacy. ”

“ Messer Lanti and his party entered Milan, in a very subdued mood, by the Gate of Saint Mark. It had been with an emotion beyond words that Bembo had found himself approaching the walls of this fair city of his dreams. The prosperous contado, watered in every direction by broad dykes; the clustering vines and saintly-hued olive gardens; the busy peasantry; the richness of the very wayside shrines, had all appeared to speak a content and holiness with which the perverse passions of men were at such bitter variance. ”

“ There is no Future, nor ever will be. The past but prolongs itself to the present; and all enterprise, all yearning, are but to recover the ground we have lost. That truth once recognised, the horror of Futurity shall close its gates; its timeless wastes shall be no more to us; and we—we shall be wandering back, by æons of pathetic memories, to trace to its source the love that gushed in Paradise.
Three days later the boy—the Duke being gone—was strolling, again with Cicada his shadow, on the ramparts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For he was subject to evil dreams, was this Galeazzo—hauntings and visions which wrought in him that state that he would become a very madman if so little as the shadow of an opposition crossed his imagination. And even now such a mood was working in him, as he lounged darkly conning the life of the hall from his eyrie.
That was a deep, semi-domed alcove, approached from the main chamber by a short avenue of square-sided pillars, and roofed with a mosaic of ultramarine and gold, into which were wrought the arms of the Sforzas and Viscontis, the lilies of France and the red cross of Savoy. ”

“ 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! ”

“ What new limb ever budded on a maimed beast?'
'Ah! the secret,' sang Bembo's soul—'the secret, or the secret grievance, of the cosmos will yield itself only to love. Useless to try to wrench forth its confession by torture. Let retaliation spell love, for once and for ever, and to the infinite sorrows of life will appear at last their returned Redeemer.'
His heart was full as they rode by the narrow streets. His eyes and ears were tranced with colour, the murmur of happy voices, the clash of melodious bells. He could not think of that late vision of horror but as a dream. ”

“ She does not powder her hair with gold dust; the sun bronzes it for her to the scalp. No spikenard and ambergris make her rags, or perfumed water her body, fragrant for her master's mouthing. Yet is she desirable, and to know her is to taste something of the sweetness of the apple that wrought the first discord. She is still a child of Nature, though Messer Bembo's creed surpasses her best understanding. She loves burnt almonds and barley-sugar, and crunches them joyously whenever some public festival gives her the chance ”

“ This saint is not for thee. O, I am wide awake! Stupid? like enough; but when a wife, the queenliest, parts with her betrothal ring——'
She made a quick, involuntary gesture, stepping forward; then as suddenly checked herself, with a soft, mocking laugh.
'O this bull!' she cried huskily—'this precisian of the new cult! Not for me, quotha, but for another—a saint to all but the highest bidder!'
'Not for you nor any one,' he said savagely.
'What! not Bona either?' she said. 'Be warned by me, rather. Yours is no wit for this encounter. Love is a coil, dear chuck; no battering-ram. ”

“ Carlo gave a little gasp, and his hand shivered down to his sword-hilt. He must die for his Saint, if provoked to that martyrdom; but he would take a desperate pledge or two of the sacrifice with him. One of the women, the younger, watching him, knew what was in his mind, and breathed a little scornfully. The other's eyes were set in a sort of rapture upon the singer's face. A minute may have passed, holding them all thus suspended, when suddenly Galeazzo rose, and, throwing himself at Bembo's feet, broke into a passion of sobs and moans. ”

“ Fanaticism is no respecter of rank or service. Standest thou so well with Bona? She would have racked the racker himself in the first fury of her contrition—torn confession from Jacopo's sullen throat with iron hooks, had not her saint rebuked her. Tassino had been last seen by him in the man's company, but, when they went to look for him, he was gone. When or whither, the fellow swore he knew not. It was like enough, thou being the lure. Will you not produce him now, and save your peace?'
Ludovico, regarding her vehemence from under half-closed lids, exhibited not the slightest tremor. ”

“ O Messer, save me! don't let me be poisoned.'
He pawed and grovelled, looking madly over his shoulder. Ludovico laughed gently, disregarding him.
'Nay, I know not,' he cooed. 'It is a dog that serves more masters than one.'
Narcisso slouched forward, and ducked a sort of obeisance between sullen and deferential.
'What's to-do?' he growled. 'I serve my patron, Messer Duke's son, like an honest man. What call, I say, to warn 'en of me? Do I not earn my wages fairly?'
'Scarcely, fellow,' murmured Ludovico—'unless to betray thine employer be fair.'
Narcisso scowled and lowered. ”

“ Galeazzo Maria Sforza, third Duke of Milan of his line, was very characteristically engaged in a very characteristic room of his resplendent castello of the Porta Giovia, which dominated the whole city from the north-east. This room, buried like a captivating lust in the heart of the Rocca, or inner citadel of the castello, swarmed with those deft procurers to the great, panders between Art and emotion, who are satisfied, by contributing, each his share, to the glorification of a sensual despotism, to partake a rediffused flavour of its sum. ”

“ On the floor at Bembo's feet squatted Cicada, acrid, speaking little, and spending his long intervals of silence in staring at the girl Lucia, who, crouching at a distance away by the fireless forge, in the gloom of the shuttered smithy, seemed given over to an eternal reverie of hate. She, alone of the household, had remained impervious to all the sweet influences of sorrow and pity. Her wrong was such as no angel could remedy.
Cicada spoke now, with a scowl of significance for Montano:—
'Speak plain, master philosopher. Innuendo is the weapon of Fools, and wisdom shall prevail in candour. ”