"Hold him up, fool!" said Ramiro, sternly; and, holding the wound, which had been stanched, wide open with one hand till the blood began to flow again, he placed what seemed a small brownish stone, hardly bigger than a pea, in the aperture, and then bound the bandages tightly round the spot.
"That boy comes not," he said; "some of you run and hasten him."
But ere his orders could be obeyed the page returned, with a large silver flagon and a Venice glass on a salver.
"Now, Signor Visconti, drink this," said Ramiro, filling a glass and applying it to his lips.
Lorenzo drank, murmuring,--"It is like fire."
"So is life," answered Ramiro; "but you must drink three times, with a short interval. How feel you now?"
"Sick, sick, and faint," replied Lorenzo. But some lustre had already come back into his eye; and after a short pause, Ramiro refilled the glass, saying,
"Here, drink again."
The young man seemed to swallow more easily than before, and, in a moment or two after he had drunk, he said in a low voice,
"I feel better. That stone, or whatever it is, seems as it were sucking out the burning heat from the wound. I breathe more freely, too."