'For God's sake, tell me what is the matter?'
She did not answer, and another, clearly the midwife, ordered him away.
''Tis no place for boys,' she said sternly.
Yet the door was left ajar for a moment, and looking into the disordered room he saw the suffering face of her whom he loved with his hopeless boy's love, her lips parted in a continuous groan.
He turned pale, and hid his face in his hands.
Beside him chattered a group of gossips each with her infallible recipe; snake's skin, a bath in a heated cauldron, decoctions of cochineal and of stag's antlers, the tying of her husband's berretto round the neck of the patient, and so forth.
The Duke entered hurriedly and sank upon a chair, clutching his head with his hands and weeping distractedly.
'Lord God! What torture!' he murmured. 'I cannot support it! I cannot! Ah Bice! Bice! And 'tis all my doing! mine!' Still echoed in his ears the furious cry with which she had greeted his approach.
'Go away! Go away! Go to your Lucrezia!'
One of the busybodies brought him a pewter plate piled with meat.