His heart was full as they rode by the narrow streets. His eyes and ears were tranced with colour, the murmur of happy voices, the clash of melodious bells. He could not think of that late vision of horror but as a dream. These blithe souls, in all their moods and worships such true apostles of his gay, sweet God! They could not love or practise harshness but as a deterrent from things unnameable. The very absence of sightseers from that pit of scowling death proved it. And then, in a moment, they had debouched upon an open place overlooked by a massive fortress, and in its midst, the cynosure of hundreds of gloating eyes, was a human thing under the flail—a voice moaning from the midst of a red jelly. His heart sunk under a very avalanche. He uttered a cry so loud as to attract the attention of the spectators nearest. ’Who is it? What hath he done?’ he roared of one. ’Trampled on the Host? Defiled a virgin of the mother? Murdered a priest?’ The face puckered and grinned. ’Worse, Messer Cavalier. He once whipped the Duke when his tutor.’ Bembo’s whole little body braced itself to the spring. ’Tutor!’ he cried: ’is that, then, Cola Montano?’ The gross eye winked— ’What is left of it.’ He was answered with a leap and rush. The mob at that point staggered, and bellowed, and fell away from the hoofs of a furious assailant. Carlo, pre-admonished, was already on the boy’s flank. ’Stop, little lunatic!’ he shouted, sweating and spurring to intervene. He had no concern for the feet he trampled or the ribs he bruised. He stooped and snatched at the struggling horse’s bridle. ’It is the Duke’s vengeance!’ he panted. ’See him there above! Art mad?’ A face, flushed as the face of Him who scourged the hucksters from the temple, was turned upon him. ’Art thou? Strike for retaliation by love, or get behind!’ ’Know’st nothing of his deserts,’ cried Carlo. ’Be advised!’ ’By love,’ cried the boy. ’He is worthy of it—a good man—I carry a letter to him from my father. Fall back, I say.’ He drove in his heels, and the horse plunged and started, tearing the rein from Lanti’s grasp. It was true that Bembo bore this letter, among others, in his pouch. The Abbot of San Zeno was so long out of the world as to have miscalculated the durations of court favour. Cola had been an influence in _his_ time. ’Devil take him!’ growled Carlo; but he followed, scowling and slashing, in his wake. The mob, authorised of its worst humour, took his truculence ill. That reduced him to a very devilish sobriety. He began to strike with an eye to details, ’blazing’ his passage through the throng. The method justified itself in the opening out of a human lane, at the end of which he saw Bembo spring upon the stage.