They were come from playing pall-mall on the ramparts, and carried over their shoulders the tools of their sport—thin boxwood mallets, painted with emblematic devices in scarlet and blue, and having handle-butts of chased silver. Each gentleman wore red full-hose ending in short-peaked shoes, a plain red biretta, and a little green bodice coat, tight at the waist and open at the bosom to leave the arms and shoulders free play. Montano squinted approval of their flushed faces and strong-breathed lungs.
'Well exercised,' quoth he, in his high-pitched whisper; 'well exercised, and betimes belike.'
'News?' drawled Lampugnani. 'O, construe thyself!'
'The Fool,' answered Montano, 'sees through us, that is all.'
'What!' Visconti's brows came down.
'Hush! He hath warned me—not finally; only he pledges his silence on the discontinuance of my practices on his cub.'
'Well,' said Lampugnani serenely; 'discontinue.'
'Messer, he looks, with certainty, to the boy being won back to court anon. How, then! shall we let him go?'
'No!' rapped out Visconti.
'Yes,' said Lampugnani. 'I trow his good way is after all our best. Let him go back, and make the State so fast in love with Love as to prove Galeazzo impossible. He will sanctify our holocaust for us.'