"Dost thou not think I can see through this?" interrupted Mastino bitterly. "This offer is but given to get rid of me—a safer way of dismissing me from the court that once cringed to entertain me than a plain refusal. Ten thousand men! I thought better of thee, d'Este."
"Then fifty thousand," replied Ippolito, stung by the reproach.
"A royal number," put in Conrad, but Della Scala turned on them in fury.
"No!" he cried. "Not fifty nor a hundred thousand men, to make sport for Visconti's leisure hours—Visconti who holds nine towns of mine alone, Visconti who is leagued with France and has the Empire at his heels, Visconti who has gained Bergamo, Lodi, and Bologna and has half the mercenaries of Italy in his pay! No, d'Este, I have been too great for that. Since you so forget what I have been, and who my wife is—I will leave thee, nor trouble thy peace for men thou canst not give ungrudgingly. And thou, Carrara, I will leave thee—in thy blind folly, to wait for Visconti's eye to fall on thee; all thy prudence will not save thee then. Meanwhile, I will try in the towns of Tuscany if there be men left in Italy to face a tyrant!"
They sat silent beneath his wrath, and he turned to go, but paused and looked back to them with a glance they could not meet.
"Only hear this before I go," he said passionately; "there is one thing thy faint-heartedness shall not touch, one thing I will achieve without thy aid, though thy meanness leaves me, and that is, at any cost, the freedom"—his voice trembled—"of Isotta, my wife. I will free her," he continued sternly. "Before you all I mean it; she shall be saved, even if mine honor goes to do it."
And he turned away, but Count Conrad rose, roused out of himself by the excitement Mastino had inspired.
"I will follow thee," he cried.
"What wouldst thou have, Mastino?" cried Ippolito after him, half-distraught. "What wouldst thou have?"
Della Scala turned in the middle of the chamber, magnificent in his wrath and pain. "All," he said proudly. "All thou canst give, and above all, thy trust. I am no boy to be put off with a few soldiers. I need Modena, Ferrara, Padua, every town of Lombardy that is in thy hands; all thy money, all thy troops, everything thou canst give—and then I will crush Visconti. When I fell it was through most foul treachery. I will league with no half-hearted friends again."