"When shall I send them, my lord?" asked Ramiro d'Orco.
"This night--this very night," answered Borgia, eagerly; "no time is to be lost. Such things should be hardly thought of ere they be executed. The deed should tread upon the heels of the determination."
"And here?" asked Ramiro.
"Ay, even here," replied Borgia. "Strange people come here sometimes my Ramiro."
"Then I hasten to fulfil your lordship's will," replied his companion. "Lay not your finger on my household gods, and you will find no one to serve you better. I have already given you some proof of it by throwing such nets around my good cousin, the Cardinal Julian, that all his enmity toward your father has proved impotent as yet. In this matter you shall find that I can be serviceable too."
"As to your household gods or goddesses, dear Ramiro," replied Borgia, with a light laugh, "be under no fear. I was a fool about that business of the villa. I knew not that you would take the thing so much to heart, for I am too wise to risk the loss of a strong friend for a light love. You told me just now to swear by something I believed in. I swear by my ambition, Ramiro, that I will never seek your daughter, or trouble her again. May fortune never favour me if I do! You will believe that oath, Ramiro?"
"It is the most binding your Eminence could take," replied d'Orco, drily; "and now I take my leave, for I believe with you, that if this is to be done at all, it should be done at once. Yet one word more; as you seek no incognito, I will send you a man who knows you already, and whom you know. He is better and more trusty than one of those I thought of. He has been bred in a rare school for such operations. Buondoni of Milan was his tutor, and Ludovic the Moor the regent of the university where he studied."
"Ah! who is he?" asked Borgia, with a smile. "He should be a great professor if he have any genius."
"Oh, he is a ripe scholar, and a man of much ability," answered Ramiro. "He knows the course of the jugular vein, and the exact position of the heart, as if he were an anatomist. This is no other than our good friend, Friar Peter. He may come to you to-night without his robes on, but you will find Pierre Mardocchi as good a devil as any friar of them all. But we waste time, and again I take my leave."
What were the feelings of Ramiro d'Orco as he left the Borgia palace would be difficult to say. He was a man of few scruples, and hardened in that worst of all philosophies, which some even in our own day are so eager to teach, the main axiom of which is, that all men are equally bad, and bold crime is superior to timid vice by the great element of courage. It is hardly possible for a misanthropist to be anything but a villain. And yet, although he would not have shrunk from any ordinary crime, there was something in the calm determination of Borgia to murder his own brother--ay, and even in the arguments he had used to palliate, if not justify the act, which had sent the blood back from his cheek and from his lips, and it seemed to stagnate for a moment.