'Has he not insulted me by sending a sheriff to demand his dues?'
'Is there nothing further than that?' asked Matteo, looking at his cousin steadily.
Checco lifted his eyes and gazed back into Matteo's.
'Yes,' he said at last; 'eight years ago I was Girolamo's equal, now I am his servant. I was his friend, he loved me like a brother—and then his wife came, the daughter of Francesco Sforza, the bastard—and gradually he has lifted himself up from me. He has been cold and reserved; he begins to show himself master; and now I am nothing more than a citizen among citizens—the first, but not the equal of the master.'
Checco kept silence for a moment, and in his quietness I could see the violence of his emotion.
'This concerns you as well as me, Matteo. You are an Orsi, and the Orsi are not made to be servants. I will be no man's servant. When I think of this man—this bastard of a pope—treating me as beneath him, by God! I cannot breathe. I could roll on the floor and tear my hair with rage. Do you know that the Orsi have been great and rich for three hundred years? The Medici pale before them, for they are burghers and we have been always noble. We expelled the Ordelaffi because they wished to give us a bastard boy to rule over us, and shall we accept this Riario? I swear I will not endure it.'
'Well said!' said Matteo.
'Girolamo shall go as the Ordelaffi went. By God! I swear it.'
I looked at Matteo, and I saw that suddenly a passion had caught hold of him; his face was red, his eyes staring wide, and his voice was hoarse and thick.
'But do not mistake again, Checco,' he said; 'we want no foreign rulers. The Orsi must be the only Lords of Forli.'