Maurice Hewlett

“ I vow 'tis your turn.' Why, a pest upon it, how should a man find force to lead armies afield, or preside in council-chambers, or beard the envoys of foreign princes, if his rest is to be broken, his pride humbled, his courage frittered off him like cheese off a grater? Yet thus, and not otherwise, must that man suffer who has Madame Bianca to wife. Yet it comports not with my honour to lead any less a lady to the throne of Milan. ”

“ To a man of great ideas and imagination winged the temptation to say that one word. Death, was not, you would say, to have been resisted. Death to Visconti! and all Lombardy fell crumbling at his feet. ”

“ As for you, mistress," and he turned his face to Madame Bianca, "if you will be a soldier's wife, disdain not to serve him who bleeds. For I care not who the man may be, with him it will never be 'Leave to love thee is my hire' So, fare you heartily well, mistress, and the soldier, your husband. As for me, I am suited here."
So said, he handed Liperata from the daïs, and put the child upon his shoulder. Whistling to the Bilboan, he strode leisurely down the hall over the writhen bodies of the dead and dying, and was seen no more in Milan for that time. ”