'No—not the best, not the best—not to rival heaven! Yet, perhaps, it should be the Duke's privilege.'
The executioner laughed a little.
'The Duke should know how to take it.'
Galeazzo stopped short, quite vacant, staring at him.
'I've heard tell,' said Jacopo, 'how one Nero, a fiddling emperor, came to be acknowledged first fiddle of all.'
He paused, then answered, it seemed, an unspoken invitation: 'He just silenced the better ones.'
Galeazzo got hurriedly to his feet.
'Blasphemer! thou shalt die for the word. What! this Lord's anointed! A natural songster! no art, no culture in his voice—sweet and wild, above human understanding. I said nothing. Be damned, and damned alone! Go hang thyself like Judas!'
'Well, name my successor first,' said Jacopo.
The Duke leapt, and with one furious blow shattered his lute to splinters on the other's steel headpiece, then stamped upon the fragments, his arms flapping like wing stumps, his teeth sputtering a foam of inarticulate words. Jacopo, erect under the avalanche, stood perfectly silent and impassive. Then, as suddenly as it had burst, the storm ended. Galeazzo sank back on his seat, panting and nerveless.