’As bad, or worse, my lord.’ ’Hush! Two vipers, do you say?’ ’My lord!’ ’Be circumspect, that’s all. ’Tis our will to give great largesse this Christmastide.’ ’The very sound will jingle out his memory—bury the golden calf under gold.’ ’Good, little rogue. We’ll linger on the Mount meanwhile—just a day or so, to let the promise work. ’Twere a sleeveless triumph through a grudging city. Let these thorns be plucked first from our road.’ ’I’ll ride at once, saving your Grace.’ ’Do so, and tell Jacopo, "Quietly, mind—without fuss."’ ’Trust me.’ The Duke flicked his arm and turned, smiling, to the Castellan. ’You shall provide Messer Tassino,’ said he smoothly, ’with his liberty, and a swift horse.’ A week later, Sforza the second of Milan set out for his Capital, in all the pomp and circumstance of state which befitted a mighty prince greatly homing after conquest. His path, by all the rules of glory, should have been a bright one; yet his laurels might have been Death’s own, from the gloom they cast upon his brow. Last night, looking from his chamber window, he had seen a misty comet cast athwart that track: to-day, scarce had he started, when three ravens, rising from the rice-swamps, had come flapping with hoarse crow to cross it. He had thundered for an arbalest—loosed the quarrel—shot wide—spun the weapon to the ground. An inexplicable horror had seized him. Thenceforth he rode with bent head and glassy eyes fixed upon the crupper. The road of death ran before; behind sat the shadow of his fear, cutting him from retreat. So he reached the Porta Giovia, passed over the drawbridge, in silence dismounted, and for the first time looked up vaguely. ’Black, black!’ he muttered to the page who held his horse. ’Let Mass be sung in it to-morrow, and for the chaunts be dirges. See to it.’ Did he hope so to hoodwink heaven, by abasing himself in the vestments of remorse? Likely enough. He had always been cunning to hold from it the worst of his confidence. But in the thick of the night a voice came to him, blown upon the wind of dreams:— ’No Future, O, no Future! Look to thy Past!’ And he started up in terror, quavering aloud:— ’Who’s that that being dead yet speaketh!’ *CHAPTER XXIII* It is remarkable how quickly the brute genii will adapt himself to his pint bottle when once the cork is in. Elastic, it must be remembered, has the two properties of expansion and retraction, the latter being in corresponding proportion with the former. Wherefore, the greater its stretching capacity the more compact its compass unstretched.