Benedetto," said Manto, "and hence will take good heed
not to counsel Mantua to choose thee. No, the Duke I will give her shall be
one without passions to gratify or injuries to avenge, and shall already be
crowned with a crown to make the ducal cap as nothing in his eyes, if eyes
he had."

Benedetto departed in hot displeasure, and the alchemist came forward to
announce that the commissioners waited.

"My projection," he whispered, "only wants one more piece of gold to insure
success, and Eustachio proffers thirty. Oh, give him Mantua in exchange for
boundless riches!"

"And they call thee a philosopher and me a visionary!" said Manto, patting
his cheek.

The envoys' commission having been unfolded, she took not a moment to
reply, "Be your Duke Virgil."

The deputation respectfully represented that although Virgil was no doubt
Mantua's greatest citizen, he laboured under the disqualification of having
been dead more than twelve hundred years. Nothing further, however, could
be extorted from the prophetess, and the ambassadors were obliged to
withdraw.

The interpretation of Manto's oracle naturally provoked much diversity of
opinion in the council.

"Obviously," said a poet, "the prophetess would have us confer the ducal
dignity upon the contemporary bard who doth most nearly accede to the
vestiges of the divine Maro; and he, as I judge, is even now in the midst
of you."

"Virgil the poet," said a priest, who had long laboured under the suspicion
of occult practices, "was a fool to Virgil the enchanter. The wise woman
evidently demands one competent to put the devil into a hole--an operation
which I have striven to perform all my life."

"Canst thou balance our city upon an egg?" inquired Eustachio.

"Better upon an egg than upon a quack!" retorted the priest.

But such was not the opinion of Eustachio himself, who privately conferred
with Leonardo. Eustachio had a character, but no parts; Leonardo had parts,
but no character.

"I see not why these fools should deride the oracle of the prophetess," he
said. "She would doubtless impress upon us that a dead master is in divers
respects preferable to a living one."

"Surely," said Eustachio, "provided always that the servant is a man of
exemplary character, and that he presumes not upon his lord's withdrawal to
another sphere, trusting thereby to commit malpractices with impunity, but
doth, on the contrary, deport himself as ever in his great taskmaster'