His body was first-fruits to the frenzied people without. They seized and bowled it through the streets, whacking it into shreds; then returned, breathed and blooded, for more. They were in high feather, ripe for prey and plunder. Galeazzo was dead! Viv’ Anarchia! They pressed their way into the tumult; snatched gems and trinkets from the hair and bosoms of girls half mad with terror; took their brief toll of dainties, and only fell away, pushing and gabbling, before the onset of the ducal guard. Order followed presently; and then the tally and reckoning. The last fell swift enough to crown an orgy of perfection: screams in the squares; dismembered limbs; mangled scarecrows tossing in file from the battlements. Only two principals, Olgiati and Visconti, escaping for the moment, were reserved for later torments. A conspiracy, like near all blood conspiracies, abortive; founded on the common error that slaves abhor their bonds. They do not, in this world of unequal gifts and taxes. Moreover, it is inconsistent to suppose one can inaugurate an era of tolerance with murder. Olgiati, the last of that dark band to suffer, was also its only martyr. He had struck for a principle, straight in itself, oblique in its fanatic workings. Cursed by his father, abandoned by his friends and relatives, committed to unspeakable tortures, his courage never blenched or wavered. He gloried in his deed to the last; and, if a prayer escaped him, it was only that his executioners should vouchsafe him strength at the end to utter forth his soul in prayer. To Bona he sent a gentle message, deprecating his own instrumentality in the inevitable retributions of Providence. She answered, saintly vengeance, with a priest, urging him to save his soul by penitence. He retorted that, by God’s mercy, his final deed should serve his sins for all atonement; and, so insisting, was carried to his mortal mangling. At the last moment a cry escaped him: ’Mors acerba: fama perpetua!’ and, with that, and the shriek of ’Courage, Girolamo!’ on his lips, he passed to his account. ’The peace of Italy is dead!’ cried Pope Sixtus on the day when news of the crime was brought to him. His prophecy found its first justification in a fervent appeal from the Duchess of Milan that he would posthumously absolve of his sins the man whom ’next to God she had loved above all else in the world.’ And no doubt, being left to the present mercy of factions, she believed it. *EPILOGUE*