’Is to be broken on the wheel pleasant?’ ’Well, the dog shall hang.’ ’Still for so little? Why, were he Cain he could pay no higher. Valuest thy life, then, at a pinch of gold dust? This is to put a premium on regicide.’ The Duke bit his lip, and frowned, and laughed vexedly. ’How now, Bernardino?’ ’Lord, I am young—a child, and without comparative experience. I pray thee put this rogue aside, while we consider.’ Galeazzo waved his hand, and the Jew, staring and stumbling, was removed. Another, a creature gaunt and wolfish, took his place. What had he done? He had trodden on a hare in her form, and, half-killing, had despatched her. Why? asked Bembo. To still her telltale cries, intimated the wretched creature. Galeazzo’s eyes gleamed; but still he called upon Heaven to sentence. In such a case? Men glanced at one another half terrified. Any portent, even of good, is fearful in its rising. Bembo turned to the kneeling clerk. ’Come, Master Scrivener! A little offence, in any case, and with humanity to condone it.’ The frightened servant shook his head, with a glance at his master. He murmured the worst he dared—that the law exacted the extremest penalty from the unauthorised killer of game. Bembo stared a moment incredulous, then pounced in mock fury at the prisoner:— ’Wretch! what didst thou with this hare?’ The hind had to be goaded to an answer. ’Master, I ate it.’ ’What!’ cried the other—’a monster, to devour thy prince’s flesh!’ ’God knows I did not!’ ’Nay, God is nothing to the law, which says you did. Else why should it draw no distinction between the crimes of harecide and regicide? Thou hast eaten of thy prince.’ ’Well, if I have I have.’ ’Thou art anthropophagous.’ ’Mercy!’ ’No shame to thee—a lover of thy kind’ (the Saint chuckled). ’And no cannibal neither, since we have made game of thy prince.’ He chuckled again, and turned merrily on the Duke. ’Is the hare to be prince, or the prince hare? And yet, in either case, O Galeazzo, I see no way for thee out of this thy loving subject’s belly!’ The tyrant, half captivated, half furious, started forward. ’Give him,’ he roared—and stopped. ’Give him,’ he repeated, ’a kick on his breach and send him flying. Nay!’ he snarled, ’even that were too much honour. Give him a scudo with which to buy an emetic.’ Bembo smiled and sighed: ’I begin to see daylight’; and Ludovico, after laughing enjoyingly over his brother’s pleasantry, exclaimed audibly to Simonetta: ’This is the very wedding of human wit and divine. I seem to see the air full of laughing cherubs having my brother’s features.’ Now there brake into the arena one clad like an artificer in a leathern apron; a sinewy figure, but eloquent, in his groping hands and bandaged face, of some sudden blight of ruin seizing prime. And he cried out in a great voice:— ’A boon, lord Duke, a boon! I am one Lupo, an armourer, and thou seest me!’ ’Certes,’ said the Duke. ’Art big enough.’