’’Tis in the scabbard of my knife, Messer—’ (the blade clicked home). ’A good place; keep it there. Now, listen. There’s no other here?’ ’On my oath, no.’ ’Nor on the stair?’ ’How can there be between us and Messer’s gentlemen?’ ’Hark well, then. Thy life depends on it. They ’ve wind of thee, Tassino.’ ’O, O! God pity me!’ ’He helps those—you know the saw. ’Tis touch and go—come to this at last; either they destroy you, or you—them.’ ’How? O, I shall die!’ ’Wilt thou, then? Well, then, if thou wilt. Yet not so much as thy ear-lobe’s spark of nerve were needed to forestall and turn the tables on them. They are very fond together, Tassino.’ ’Curse them! If I could stab him in the back!’ ’Well, why not? Thy scabbard holds the means.’ ’My dagger?’ ’Better.’ ’What?’ ’The Duchess’s troth-ring.’ ’Messer! My God!’ He leapt as if a trigger had clicked at him. Here was to have the gipsy’s prophecy, his own fulsome hope, realised at a flash; but with what fearful significances for himself. So this had actually been the ring of contention, and secured at last—he might have known it would be—by Ludovico. He gave an absurd little shaky laugh, desperately playful. ’How am I to stab with a ring, Messer?’ ’Fool! answer for thyself.’ He was crushed immediately. ’By carrying it to the Duke?’ he whispered fearfully. ’It is thy suggestion,’ said Ludovico—’not for me to traverse. Well?’ ’Ah! help me, Messer, for the Lord’s sake. I turn in a maze.’ The Prince’s thin mouth creased in the dark. ’Nay, ’tis no affair of mine,’ he said. ’I am but friendship’s deputy.’ Tassino almost whimpered, writhing about in helpless protest. ’He will thunder at me, "Whence reaches me this?"’ ’Likely.’ ’What shall I reply then?’ ’Do you put the case hypothetically? I should answer broadly, on its merits, somehow as follows: "By the right round of intrigue, O Duke, completing love’s cycle."’ ’O Messer! How am I to understand you?’ ’Why, easily—(I speak as one disinterested). Call it the cycle of the ring, and thus it runs: _From the husband to the wife; from the wife to her paramour; from the paramour to his doxy; from the doxy back to the husband_.’ ’His doxy? O beast! Hath he a second?’ ’Or had. I go by report, which says—but then I ’m no scandalmonger—that a certain lady, Caprona’s widow, finds herself scorned of late.’ ’And it comes from her—to me? For what? To destroy them both?’ ’A shrewd suggestion. In that case your moods run together.’ ’Monna Beatrice! She sends it?’ ’Does she? Quote me not for it. It were ill so to requite my over-fond friendship. Thou hast the ring. I wish thee well with it. Dost mark?’ ’I mark, Messer.’ ’Why, so. Thou shouldst suffer after-remorse, having dragged in my name; and there is hellbane, so they tell me, in remorse.’ ’I will die before I mention thee in it.’ ’Well, I can trust the grave. That’s to know a friend. So might I add something to thy credentials.’