The Duke, leaning on his arm as he strolled, had a smile and a word for many. The only visible token of his familiar self which he revealed was the arbitrariness with which he exacted from all a fitting deference towards his protégé. This, however, none, not the greatest, was inclined to withhold, especially on such a morning. Soft-footed cardinals, princes of the blood, nobles and jingling captains, vied with one another in obsequious attentions to our little neophyte of love. The reasons, apart from superstitious reverence, were plentiful: his sweetness, his beauty, his gifts of song—all warm recommendations to a sensuous sociality; the whispered romance of his origin, no less a patent in its eyes because it turned on a title doubly bastard; finally, and most cogently, no doubt, his political potentialities as a favourite in posse.
This last reason above any other may have accounted for the extraordinary complaisance shown him by Messer Ludovico, the Duke's third younger brother, at present at court, who was otherwise of a rather inward and withdrawing nature. He, this brother, had come from Pavia, riding the final stage that morning, and though he had only gathered by report the story of the last twelve hours, thought it worth his while to go and ingratiate himself with the stranger. He found him in the great hall of the castello, awaiting the trial of certain causes, which, as coming immediately under the ducal jurisdiction, it was Galeazzo's sport often to preside over in person. Here he saw the boy, standing at his brother's shoulder by the judgment-seat—the comeliest figure, between Cupid and angel, he had ever beheld; frank, sweet, child-eyed—in every feature and quality, it would seem, the antithesis of himself. Messer Ludovico came up arm in arm, very condescendingly, with his excellency the Ser Simonetta, Secretary of State, a gentleman whom he was always at pains to flatter, since he intended by and by to destroy him. Not that he had any personal spite against this minister, however much he might suspect him of misrepresenting his motives and character to the Duchess Bona, his sister-in-law, to whom he, Ludovico, was in reality, he assured himself, quite attached. His policy, on the contrary, was always a passionless one; and the point here was simply that the man, in his humble opinion, affected too much reason and temperance for a despotic government.
As he approached the tribune he uncapped, a thought on the near side of self-abasement, to his brother, whose cavalier acknowledgment of the salute halted him, however, affable and smiling, on the lowest step of the dais. He was studious, while there, to inform with the right touch of pleasant condescension (at least while Galeazzo's regard was fixed on him) his attitude towards Simonetta, lest the ever-suspicious mind of the tyrant should discover in it some sign of a corruptive intimacy. With heirs-possibly-presumptive in Milan, sufficient for the day's life must be the sleepless diplomacy thereof; and better than any man Ludovico knew on what small juggleries of the moment the continuance of his depended. His complexion being of a swarthiness to have earned him the surname of The Moor, he had acquired a habit of drooping his lids in company, lest the contrastive effect of white eyeballs moving in a dark, motionless face should betray him to the subjects of those covert side-long glances by which he was wont to observe unobserved. Even to his shoulders, which were slightly rounded by nature, he managed, when in his brother's presence, to give the suggestion of a self-deprecatory hump, as though the slight burden of State which they already endured were too much for them. His voice was low-toned; his expression generally of a soft and rather apologetic benignity. His manner towards all was calculated on a graduated scale of propitiation. Paying every disputant the compliment of deferring outwardly to his opinions, he would not whip so little as a swineherd without apologising for the inconvenience to which he was putting him. His dress was rich, but while always conceived on the subdominant note, so to speak, as implying the higher ducal standard, was in excellent taste, a quality which he could afford to indulge with impunity, since it excited no suspicion but of his simplicity in Galeazzo's crude mind. In point of fact Messer Ludovico was a born connoisseur, and, equally in his choice of men, methods, and tools, a first exemplar of the faculty of selection.
Presently, seeing the Duke's gaze withdrawn from him, he spoke to Messer Simonetta more intimately, but still out of the twisted corner of his mouth, while his eyes remained slewed under their lids towards the throne:—
'Indeed, my lord, indeed yes; 'tis a veritable Castalidis, fresh from Parnassus and the spring. Tell me, now—'tis no uncommon choice of my brother to favour a fair boy—what differentiates this case from many?'
The secretary, long caged in office, and worn and toothless from friction on its bars, had yet his ideals of Government, personal as well as political.
'Your Highness,' said he, in his hoarse, thin voice, 'what differentiates sacramental wine from Malvasia?'
'Why,' answered Ludovico, 'perhaps a degree or two of headiness.'
'Nay,' said the secretary, 'is it not rather a degree or two of holiness?'
'Ebbene!' said the other, 'I stand excellently corrected. (Your servant, Messer Tassino,' he said, in parenthesis, to a pert and confident young exquisite, who held himself arrogantly forward of the group of spectators. The jay responded to the attention with a condescending nod. Ludovico readdressed himself to the secretary.) 'How neatly you put things! It is a degree or two, as you say—between the intoxication of the spirit and the intoxication of the senses. And is this pretty stranger sacramental wine, and hath Heaven vouchsafed us the Grael without the Quest? It is a sign of its high favour, Messer Slmonetta, of which I hope and trust we shall prove ourselves worthy.'