A Jay of Italy

by Bernard Capes

'Why, I say?'

'Alas! she covets for herself what the Duchess claims to heaven.'

'Riddles, swine! Covets! What or whom?'

'O, O! Your Grace's false deputy, Messer Bembo.'

'What! false? You'll stick to it?'

'How can I help?—O! dread my lord, how can I help the truth, unless you 'd wrench from me a travesty of it?'

His breast heaved and sobbed. The tyrant gloomed upon him.

'Is it true, then, he's a traitor?'

'O, the blackest—the most subtle! There can I utter without prompting.'

It was true that he believed he could. Remember how, mongrel though he was, his mind had been fed on slander of our saint.