Carlo fell asleep, with his ear to the funnel. That night the music did not visit him. He awoke—to daylight, and the knowledge of a sudden cry in his brain. Tremulous, he turned, and found his voice had come back to him, and cleared it, and quavered hoarsely into the hole, ’Who speaks? Who’s there?’ He dwelt in agony on the answer—thin, exhausted, a croaking gasp, it reached him at length:— ’Cicca—the Fool—near sped.’ ’The Fool! Thou—thou and none other?’ His cry was like a wolf’s at night; ’none other? Bernardo!’ he screeched. A pause—then: ’Dead, dead, dead!’ came wheezing and pouring from the hole. ’Ah!’ He fell back; swayed in a mortal vertigo; rallied. He was quite calm on the instant—calm?—a rigid, bloodless devil. He set his mouth and spoke, picking his words:— ’So? Is it so? All trapped together, then? When did he die?’ ’Quick!’ clucked the voice; ’quick, and let me pass. When, say’st? Time’s dead and rotten here. I know not. A’ heard thee call—and roused—and shrieked thy name. His heart broke on it. A’ spoke never again. All’s said and done. What more? I could not find the hole—till thy rat came. Speak quick.’ What more? What more to mend or mar? Nothing, now. Hope was as dead as Time—a poxed and filthy corpse. Love, Faith, and Charity—dead and putrid. Only two things remained—two things to hug and fondle: revenge and Messer Topo. He bent and spoke again:— ’Starved to death?’ ’Starved——’ The queer, far little mutter seemed to reel and swerve into a tinkle—an echo—was gone. Carlo called, and called again—no answer. Then he set himself to ruminate—a cud of gall and poison. On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide open. ’Free, Messer,’ he said; ’and summoned under urgency to the palace.’ Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and dreaded by a gentler soul. The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and whispered for Messer Topo. The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him (the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy), apostrophised him face to face:—