GUIDO It is thanks to the Eglamore whom you hate that the Duke has ample leisure to indulge in recreations which are reputed to be—curious.
GRACIOSA
I do not understand you, Guido.
GUIDO That is perhaps quite as well. (Attempting to explain as much as is decently expressible.) To be brief, madonna, business annoys the Duke.
GRACIOSA
Why?
GUIDO It interferes with the pursuit of all the beautiful things he asks for in that song.
GRACIOSA
But how does that make Eglamore indispensable?
GUIDO Eglamore is an industrious person who affixes seals, and signs treaties, and musters armies, and collects revenues, upon the whole, quite as efficiently as Alessandro would be capable of doing these things.
GRACIOSA
So Duke Alessandro merely makes verses?
GUIDO And otherwise amuses himself as his inclinations prompt, while Eglamore rules Tuscany—and the Tuscans are none the worse off on account of it. (He rises, and his hand goes to the dagger at his belt.) But is not that a horseman?
GRACIOSA (She too has risen, and is now standing on the bench, looking over the wall.) A solitary rider, far down by the convent, so far away that he seems hardly larger than a scarlet dragon-fly.