“Well, then,” said Gonzaga, smiling, “since you are so assured, it is for you and the nobles of Piacenza to be up and doing. The Emperor depends upon you; and you may depend upon him.”
Galeotto looked at the Governor out of his scarred face, and his eyes were very grave.
“I had hoped otherwise,” he said. “That is why I have been slow to move. That is why I have waited, why I have even committed the treachery of permitting Pier Luigi to suppose me ready at need to engage in his service.”
“Ah, there you play a dangerous game,” said Gonzaga frankly.
“I'll play a more dangerous still ere I have done,” he answered stoutly. “Neither Pope nor Devil shall dismay me. I have great wrongs to right, as none knows better than your excellency, and if my life should go in the course of it, why”—he shrugged and sneered—“it is all that is left me; and life is a little thing when a man has lost all else.”
“I know, I know,” said the sly Governor, wagging his big head, “else I had not warned you. For we need you, Messer Galeotto.”
“Ay, you need me; you'll make a tool of me—you and your Emperor. You'll use me as a cat's-paw to pull down this inconvenient duke.”
Gonzaga rose, frowning. “You go a little far, Messer Galeotto,” he said.
“I go no farther than you urge me,” answered the other.
“But patience, patience!” the Lieutenant soothed him, growing sleek again in tone and manner. “Consider now the position. What the Emperor has answered the Pope is no more than the bare and precise truth. It is not clear whether the States of Parma and Piacenza belong to the Empire or the Holy See. But let the people rise and show themselves ill-governed, let them revolt against Farnese once he has been created their duke and when thus the State shall have been alienated from the Holy See, and then you may count upon the Emperor to step in as your liberator and to buttress up your revolt.”