The executioner was cutting deliberately, monotonously on, and as monotonously the voice went moaning. Messer Jacopo, standing at iron ease beside, took no thought, it seemed, of anything—least of all of interference with the Duke’s will. It must have been, therefore, no less than an amazing shock to that functionary to find himself all in an instant stung and staggered by a bolt from the blue. He may have been, like some phlegmatic serpent, conscious of a hornet winging his way; but that the insect should have had it in its mind to pounce on _him_! He found himself and his voice in one metallic clang:— ’Seize him, men!’ Carlo panted up, and Jacopo recognised him on the moment. ’Messer Lanti! Death of the Cross! Is this the Duke’s order?’ ’Christ’s, old fool!’ gasped the cavalier. ’Touch him, I say, and die. I neither know nor care.’ His great chest was heaving; he whipped out his sword, and stood glaring and at bay. Bembo had thrown himself between the upraised thong and its quivering victim. He, too, faced the stricken mob. ’Christ is coming! Christ is coming!’ he shrieked. ’Prepare ye all to answer to Him for this!’ A dead silence fell. Some turned their faces in terror. Here and there a woman cried out. In the midst, Messer Jacopo raised his eyes to the battlements, and saw a white hand lifted against the blue. He shrugged round grumpily on his fellows. ’Unbind him,’ he said; and the whip was lowered. The poor body sunk beside the post. Bembo knelt, with a sob of pity, to whisper to it— ’Courage, sad heart! He comes indeed.’ The livid and suffering face was twisted to view its deliverer. ’Escape, then,’ the blue lips muttered, ’while there is time.’ Bembo cried out: ’O, thou mistakest who I mean!’ The face dropped again. ’Never. Christ or Galeazzo—it is all one.’ A hand was laid on the boy’s shoulder. He looked up to find himself captive to one of the Duke’s guard. A grim little troop, steel-bonneted and armed with halberts, surrounded the stage. Messer Lanti, dismounted, had already committed himself to the inevitable. He addressed himself, with a laugh, to his friend:— ’Very well acquitted, little Saint,’ said he—’of all but the reckoning.’ Bembo lingered a moment, pointing down to the bleeding and shattered body. "’And there passed by a certain priest,"’ he cried, ’"and likewise a Levite; but a Samaritan had compassion on him,"’ and he bowed his head, and went down with the soldiers. Now, because of his beauty, or of the fear or of the pity he had wrought in some of his hearers, for whatever reason a woman or two of the people was emboldened to come and ask the healing of that wounded thing; and they took it away, undeterred of the executioners, and carried it to their quarters. And in the meanwhile, Bembo and his comrade were brought before the Duke.