'No shame to thee—a lover of thy kind' (the Saint chuckled). 'And no cannibal neither, since we have made game of thy prince.' He chuckled again, and turned merrily on the Duke. 'Is the hare to be prince, or the prince hare? And yet, in either case, O Galeazzo, I see no way for thee out of this thy loving subject's belly!'
The tyrant, half captivated, half furious, started forward.
'Give him,' he roared—and stopped. 'Give him,' he repeated, 'a kick on his breach and send him flying. Nay!' he snarled, 'even that were too much honour. Give him a scudo with which to buy an emetic.'
Bembo smiled and sighed: 'I begin to see daylight'; and Ludovico, after laughing enjoyingly over his brother's pleasantry, exclaimed audibly to Simonetta: 'This is the very wedding of human wit and divine. I seem to see the air full of laughing cherubs having my brother's features.'
Now there brake into the arena one clad like an artificer in a leathern apron; a sinewy figure, but eloquent, in his groping hands and bandaged face, of some sudden blight of ruin seizing prime. And he cried out in a great voice:—
'A boon, lord Duke, a boon! I am one Lupo, an armourer, and thou seest me!'
'Certes,' said the Duke. 'Art big enough.'
'O lord!' cried the shattered thing, 'let me see justice as plain with these blinded eyes.'
'Well, on whom?'
'Lord, on him that took me sleeping, and struck me for ever from the rolls of daylight, sith I had cursed him for the ruin of my daughter.'