"Ungrateful! How much have my enemies given you to make me die of anger? Is this a way to speak to your liege lord, who if he would, could break you like a reed. And that, too, when I am intent on preserving your reputation!... I have discovered the infamous destroyer of your honour, and have put him to death." "Poor fellow! he deserved it, but he was a very worthy cavalier." "Who told you that he was a cavalier?" "What! Bernardino Antinori, whom you had strangled in prison! Who told me? Well, that is good! Who told me, indeed? Francesco, let me say a few words to you plainly and openly after my own manner. We can do what we think fit; but on one condition, which is this; that we let others talk as they think fit. The people we employ in matters of this sort are vile and infamous from their birth upwards; and if they could find some one to throw them a bigger sop for murdering us, than we give them for murdering others, they would do so. Do you expect fidelity or secrecy from such? In the taverns and in their low orgies, they vomit forth their secrets of blood, often true, oftener exaggerated twofold, till down there among the people, who know us but little, we find an accumulated hoard of hatred that makes one shudder to look at it." "Have you done?" "One minute, and I have done. Add to all this the curse of the pen.... Who knows how many traders are at this hour writing in their ledgers between the records of a purchase of wool, and a sale of silk: _Item_. I record that on such a day in such a year from the Incarnation, Francesco de' Medici caused the Cavaliere Bernardino Antinori to be strangled for adultery with the lady Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Don Pietro dei Medici.[167] And then, besides the merchants, there are the moralisers, and the history–writers, and all the rest of the literary generation, to whom I make a point of being civil, since we cannot drive them out of the world.... But I see that I am putting you to sleep. You were saying—what was it? Oh! that you had had the Cavaliere Antinori strangled." [Sidenote: FRANCESCO AND PIETRO.] Francesco, continues Signor Guerrazzi, who was naturally and habitually sparing of speech, and wont to come directly to his point, felt as if his head was going round with all this flux of words. He needed to recover himself a little; and it was sometime before he resumed his discourse thus. "Well then, if you know the treason of your wife, why is she still alive?" "Because, if I come to my _confiteor_, I fancy that I have more sins on my shoulders than she has; and, further, because I do not see clearly who would save me from the vengeance of her uncle the Duke of Alva, and her brother Toledo, who, between ourselves, are not altogether saints to have to deal with." "And can we not protect you against a viceroy and a duke...."