vinegar without any shouting to help them, as your
Florentine sages would say. You will have the satisfaction of
delivering your city from an incubus by an able stratagem, instead of
risking blunders with sword-thrusts."

"But suppose he _did_ get magic and the devil to help him, and walk
through the fire after all?" said Spini, with a grimace intended to hide
a certain shyness in trenching on this speculative ground. "How do you
know there's nothing in those things? Plenty of scholars believe in
them, and this Frate is bad enough for anything."

"Oh, of course there are such things," said Tito, with a shrug: "but I
have particular reasons for knowing that the Frate is not on such terms
with the devil as can give him any confidence in this affair. The only
magic he relies on is his own ability."

"Ability!" said Spini. "Do you call it ability to be setting Florence
at loggerheads with the Pope and all the powers of Italy--all to keep
beckoning at the French king who never comes? You may call him able,
but I call him a hypocrite, who wants to be master of everybody, and get
himself made Pope."

"You judge with your usual penetration, my captain, but our opinions do
not clash. The Frate, wanting to be master, and to carry out his
projects against the Pope, requires the lever of a foreign power, and
requires Florence as a fulcrum. I used to think him a narrow-minded
bigot, but now, I think him a shrewd ambitious man who knows what he is
aiming at, and directs his aim as skilfully as you direct a ball when
you are playing at _maglio_."

"Yes, yes," said Spini, cordially, "I can aim a ball."

"It is true," said Tito, with bland gravity; "and I should not have
troubled you with my trivial remark on the Frate's ability, but that you
may see how this will heighten the credit of your success against him at
Rome and at Milan, which is sure to serve you in good stead when the
city comes to change its policy."

"Well, thou art a good little demon, and shalt have good pay," said
Spini, patronisingly; whereupon he thought it only natural that the
useful Greek adventurer should smile with gratification as he said--

"Of course, any advantage to me depends entirely on your--"

"We shall have our supper at my palace to-night," interrupted Spini,
with a significant nod and an affectionate pat on Tito's shoulder, "and
I shall expound the new scheme to them all."

"Pardon, my magnificent patron," said Tito; "the scheme