CHAPTER SEVEN "GRAZIOSA'S BRACELET"
Tisio Visconti, mounted on a white palfrey, rode slowly through the streets of Milan, a lean figure, with a foolish face and vacant eyes.
For the elder Visconti was half-crazed, a fact to which perhaps he owed his life, Gian Galeazzo not fearing his poor disordered intellect enough to deprive him of aught, save his birthright—the sovereignty of Milan.
One or two men-at-arms, in splendid livery, rode behind him, and as he passed the people bowed humbly, respecting him solely as the Duke's brother, for Tisio was powerless for good or ill. Some few there were who pitied him.
About the streets of Milan he was a far more familiar figure than his brother, who was seldom seen, but of whose unscrupulous power Tisio was the living symbol.
Complete liberty was allowed him; still the soldiers behind were rather guards than servants, and charged to see he did not leave the gates. Dropping his loose reins on the palfrey's neck, Tisio Visconti looked around him with lack-luster eyes and a dull smile. He was riding through the long, narrow streets, cobbled and overhung with high straight houses, that lead to the western gate.
Through this gate his father lately, his brothers months ago, had been driven to their deaths; his father, infamously, his mother beside him, in the full light of day to Brescia; his brothers, secretly, at dead of night, to Brescia also, from whence they returned no more.
Yet to Tisio the gate and street had no memory or meaning; he looked ahead of him at the green trees beyond, and his eyes lit up. It was to see them he came. To him the world outside Milan was paradise; sometimes the soul within him rose and chafed at his dull captivity, and then he longed passionately for those green fields and trees, which he knew only from within the city gates.