ile soul!"

The Count flung himself into a chair, as much to dissemble such signs of
relief as might show upon his face, as because he wished to sit.

"But surely Masuccio left you some information!" he exclaimed.

"The very scantiest," returned Gian Maria, in chagrined accents. "It was
ever the way of that secretive vassal. Damn him! He frankly told me that
if I knew, I would talk. Heard you ever of such insufferable insolence
to a prince? All that he would let me learn was that there was a
conspiracy afoot to supplant me, and that he was going to capture the
conspirators, together with the man whom they were inviting to take
my place. Ponder it, Francesco! Such are the murderous plans my loving
subjects form for my undoing--I who rule them with a rod of gold, the
most clement, just and generous prince in Italy. Cristo buono! Do
you marvel that I lost patience and had their hideous heads set upon
spears?"

"But did you not say that two of these conspirators were brought back
captive?"

The Duke nodded, his mouth too full for words.

"Then, at their trial, what transpired?"

"Trial? There was no trial." Gian Maria chewed vigorously for a moment.
"I tell you I was so heated with anger at this base ingratitude, that I
had not even the wit to have the names of their associates tortured out
of them. Within a half-hour of their arrival in Babbiano, the heads of
these men whom it had pleased Heaven to deliver up to me were where you
saw them to-day."

"You sent them thus to their death?" gasped Francesco, rising to his
feet and eyeing his cousin with mingled wonder and anger. "You sent men
of such families as these to the headsman, without a trial? I think,
Gian Maria, that you must be mad if so rashly you can shed such blood as
this."

The Duke sank back in his chair to gape at his impetuous cousin. Then,
in sullen anger: "To whom do you speak?" he demanded.

"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 a