“O, you must be mistaken,” I cried.
“Mistaken?” he echoed. He shook his head, smiling bitterly. “There is no possibility of mistake. I am just come from an interview with the Duke and his fine captain. Together they sought me out to ask my daughter's hand for Cosimo d'Anguissola.”
“And you?” I cried, for this thrust aside my every doubt.
“And I declined the honour,” he answered sternly, rising in his agitation. “I declined it in such terms as to leave them no doubt upon the irrevocable quality of my determination; and then this pestilential Duke had the effrontery to employ smiling menaces, to remind me that he had the power to compel folk to bend the knee to his will, to remind me that behind him he had the might of the Pontiff and even of the Holy Office. And when I defied him with the answer that I was a feudatory of the Emperor, he suggested that the Emperor himself must bow before the Court of the Inquisition.”
“My God!” I cried in liveliest fear.
“An idle threat!” he answered contemptuously, and set himself to stride the room, his hands clasped behind his broad back.
“What have I to do with the Holy Office?” he snorted. “But they had worse indignities for me, Agostino. They mocked me with a reminder that Giovanni d'Anguissola had been my firmest friend. They told me they knew it to have been my intention that my daughter should become the Lady of Mondolfo, and to cement the friendship by making one State of Pagliano, Mondolfo and Carmina. And they added that by wedding her to Cosimo d'Anguissola was the way to execute that plan, for Cosimo, Lord of Mondolfo already, should receive Carmina as a wedding-gift from the Duke.”
“Was such indeed your intention?” I asked scarce above a whisper, overawed as men are when they perceive precisely what their folly and wickedness have cost them.
He halted before me, and set one hand of his upon my shoulder, looking up into my face. “It has been my fondest dream, Agostino,” he said.
I groaned. “It is a dream that never can be realized now,” said I miserably.