“To a tyrant who calls himself the most clement, just and generous prince in Italy, and who lacks the wisdom to see that he is undermining with his own hands, and by his own rash actions, a throne that is already tottering. Can you not think that this might mean a revolution? It amounts to murder, and though dukes resort to it freely enough in Italy, it is not openly and defiantly wrought, as is this.”
Anger there was in the Duke's soul, but there was still more fear—so much, that it shouldered the anger aside.
“I have provided against rebellion,” he announced, with an ease that he vainly strove to feel. “I have given the command of my guards to Martino Armstadt, and he has engaged for me a company of five hundred Swiss lanzknechte that were lately in the pay of the Baglioni of Perugia.”
“And you deem this security?” rejoined Francesco, with a smile of scorn. “To hedge your throne with foreign spears commanded by a foreigner?”
“This and God's grace,” was the pious answer.
“Bah!” answered Francesco, impatient at the hypocrisy. “Win the hearts of your people. Let that be your buckler.”
“Hush!” whispered Gian Maria. “You blaspheme. Does not every act of my self-sacrificing life point to such an aim? I live for my people. But, by my soul, they ask too much when they ask that I should die for them. If I serve those who plot against my life, as I have served these men you speak of, who shall blame me? I tell you, Francesco, I wish I might have those others who escaped, that I might do as much by them. By the living God, I do! And as for the man who was to have supplanted me——” He paused, a deadly smile on his sensual mouth completing the sentence more effectively than lay within the power of words. “Who could it have been?” he mused. “I've vowed that if Heaven will grant me that I discover him, I'll burn a candle to Santa Fosca every Saturday for a twelvemonth and go fasting on the Vigil of the Dead. Who—who could it have been, Franceschino?”
“How should I know?” returned Francesco, evading the question.
“You know so much, Checco mio. Your mind is so quick to fathom matters of this kind. Think you, now, it might have been the Duca Valentino?”
Francesco shook his head.