’Now hist, now hist, my lord’s Grace,’ put in the Castellan, the light in his solitary eye travelling like a spark in dead tinder: ’there’s an emetic or so here would assist the creature’s delivery.’ Tassino gulped and found his voice—or a mockery of it:— ’My lord—spare me—’twas Caprona’s widow.’ ’And for what purpose?’ The fool, lost in terror, garbled his lesson. ’To destroy the Duchess, whom she hates. I know not: ’twas Messer Ludovic made himself her agent to me.’ ’Ho!’ cried the Duke, and the monosyllable rolled up and round under the roof, and was returned upon him. ’Here’s addition, not subtraction. What more?’ Advancing, with set grinning lips, he thumbed the victim’s arm, as he might be a market-wife testing a fowl. ’Plump, plump,’ he said, turning his head about. ’Shall we not singe the fat capon, Messer Castellan, before trussing him for the spit?’ At a sign, the two butchers at the door advanced and seized their victim. He struggled desperately in their grasp. Shriek upon shriek issued from his lips. Galeazzo thundered down his cries:— ’Lay him out,’ he roared, ’and bare his ribs.’ In a moment Tassino was stretched in the rack, an operator, head and heel, gripping at the spokes of the drums. The Duke came and stood above, contemplative again now, and ingratiatory. ’So!’ he said; ’we are in train, at last, for the truth. Tassino, my poor boy, who indeed sent you with this ring to me?’ ’O Messer! before God! It was your brother.’ ’And acting for whom?’ ’The lady, Beatrice.’ ’Who had been given it by?’ ’Messer Bembo.’ ’Ay: and he had received it from——?’ The poor wretch choked, and was silent. Galeazzo glanced aside: the winches creaked. ’Mercy, in God’s name! Mercy!’ shrieked the miserable creature. ’I will swear that it was won from her Grace by fraud—that she never knowingly parted with it to—to——’ ’Ha!’ struck in the Duke; and drew himself up, and pondered awhile blackly. ’My brother—my brother,’ ran his thought. ’It may be; it may well be. To ruin her in mine eyes—yes: a fond fool. But a loyal fool. She’d not conspire—not she; nor Simonetta, loyal too—who mistrusts him, and whom he ’d drag down with her. What, Ludovic!—too crafty, too overreaching. Yet, conspiracy there may be, and she its unconscious tool.’ He looked down again, glooming, grating his chin. ’Here’s some revision, then. Thou whelp, so to have bitten the hand that stroked thee! Shall I not draw thy teeth for it?’ ’Pity, pity!’ moaned Tassino. ’I spoke under compulsion.’ ’And so shall,’ snarled the other. ’What! To mend a slander on compulsion! More physic may bring more cure. Perchance hast made this Countess too thy cats-paw?’ ’My lord! No! On my soul!’ ’She hates the Duchess?’ ’Yes, poisonously.’ ’Why?’ ’My lord!’ ’Why, I say?’ ’Alas! she covets for herself what the Duchess claims to heaven.’ ’Riddles, swine! Covets! What or whom?’ ’O, O! Your Grace’s false deputy, Messer Bembo.’