'You would defend the game, of course, since you excel in it. That is what you love, Bellarion; to excel; to wield mastery.'
'Do we not all? Do not you, yourself, madonna, glory in the power your beauty gives you?'
She looked at Filippo. Her heavy eyelids drooped. 'Behold him turned courtier, my lord. He perceives beauty in me.'
'He would be blind else,' said the fat youth, greatly daring. And the next moment in a reaction of shyness a mottled flush was staining his unhealthy pallor.
Lower drooped the lady's eyelids, until a line of black lashes lay upon her cheek.
'The game,' Gian Giacomo interposed, 'is a very proper one for princes. Messer Bellarion told me so.'
'He means, child,' Filippo answered him, 'that it teaches them a bitter moral: that whilst a State depends upon the Prince—the Prince himself is entirely dependent upon others, being capable in his own person of little more than his meanest pawn.'
'To teach that lesson to a despot,' said Bellarion, 'was the game invented by an Eastern philosopher.'
'And the most potent piece upon the board, as in the State, is the queen, symbolising woman.' Thus Filippo Maria, his eyes full upon the Countess again.
Bellarion laughed. 'Aye! He knew his world, that ancient Oriental!'