“Why, there lies the difficulty,” said he at length. “The dog is dead. He was killed in the affray. May he rot in hell for his obstinate reticence. No, no!” he checked himself hastily. “He's dead, and the secret of this treason, as well as the names of the traitors, have perished with him. Yet I am a clement man, Francesco, and sorely though that dog has wronged me by his silence, I thank Heaven for the grace to say—God rest his vile soul!”
The Count flung himself into a chair, as much to dissemble such signs of relief as might show upon his face, as because he wished to sit.
“But surely Masuccio left you some information!” he exclaimed.
“The very scantiest,” returned Gian Maria, in chagrined accents. “It was ever the way of that secretive vassal. Damn him! He frankly told me that if I knew, I would talk. Heard you ever of such insufferable insolence to a prince? All that he would let me learn was that there was a conspiracy afoot to supplant me, and that he was going to capture the conspirators, together with the man whom they were inviting to take my place. Ponder it, Francesco! Such are the murderous plans my loving subjects form for my undoing—I who rule them with a rod of gold, the most clement, just and generous prince in Italy. Cristo buono! Do you marvel that I lost patience and had their hideous heads set upon spears?”
“But did you not say that two of these conspirators were brought back captive?”
The Duke nodded, his mouth too full for words.
“Then, at their trial, what transpired?”
“Trial? There was no trial.” Gian Maria chewed vigorously for a moment. “I tell you I was so heated with anger at this base ingratitude, that I had not even the wit to have the names of their associates tortured out of them. Within a half-hour of their arrival in Babbiano, the heads of these men whom it had pleased Heaven to deliver up to me were where you saw them to-day.”
“You sent them thus to their death?” gasped Francesco, rising to his feet and eyeing his cousin with mingled wonder and anger. “You sent men of such families as these to the headsman, without a trial? I think, Gian Maria, that you must be mad if so rashly you can shed such blood as this.”
The Duke sank back in his chair to gape at his impetuous cousin. Then, in sullen anger: “To whom do you speak?” he demanded.