’O lord!’ cried the shattered thing, ’let me see justice as plain with these blinded eyes.’ ’Well, on whom?’ ’Lord, on him that took me sleeping, and struck me for ever from the rolls of daylight, sith I had cursed him for the ruin of my daughter.’ Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders. ’This thine assailant—is he noble?’ ’Master, as titles go.’ ’Wert a fool, then, to presume. He were like else to have made it good to thee. Now, an eye for—’ but he checked himself in the midst of the enormous blasphemy. ’Judge thou, my guardian angel,’ he murmured meekly. ’What!’ answered the boy, with a burning face, ’needs _this_ revision by Heaven?’ And he cried terribly: ’Master armourer, summon thy transgressor!’ For a moment the man seemed to shrink. ’Nay,’ cried the Saint, ’thou need’st not. I see the hand of God come forth and write upon a forehead.’ His eyes sparkled, as if in actual inspiration. ’Tassino!’ he cried, in a ringing voice. (’He heard me address him,’ thought Ludovico, curious and watchful.) At the utterance of that name, the whole nerve of the audience seemed to leap and fall like a candle-flame. Galeazzo himself started, and his lids lifted, and his mouth creased a moment to a little malevolent grin. For why? This Tassino, while too indifferent a skipjack for his jealousy, was yet the squire amoroso, the lover _comme il faut_ to his own correct Duchess, Madam Bona. A minute’s ticking silence was ended by the stir and pert laugh of the challenged himself, as he left the ring of spectators and sauntered into the arena. It was a little showy upstart, to be sure, as ebulliently curled and groomed as her Grace’s lap-dog, and sharing, indeed, with Messer Tinopino the whole present caprice of their mistress’s spoiling. His own base origin and inherent vulgarity, moreover, seeming to associate him with the ducal brutishness (an assumption which Galeazzo rather favoured than resented), confirmed in him a self-confidence which had early come to see no bounds to its own viciousness or effrontery. Now he cocked one arm akimbo, and stared with insufferable insolence on the pronouncer of his name. ’Know’st me, Prophet?’ bawled he. ’Not more than I thee, methinks. Wert well coached in this same inspiration.’ ’Well, indeed,’ answered Bembo. ’Thou hast said it. It was God spake in mine ear.’ Tassino laughed scornfully. It was a study to see these young wits opposed, the one such plated goods, the other so silver pure. ’In the name of this lying carle,’ he cried, ’what spake He?’ ’He said,’ said Bembo quietly, ’"Let the false swearer remember Ananias!"’ Then in a moment he was all ruffled and combative, like a young eagle. ’Answer!’ he roared. ’Didst thou this thing?’