He paused, then answered, it seemed, an unspoken invitation: ’He just silenced the better ones.’ Galeazzo got hurriedly to his feet. ’Blasphemer! thou shalt die for the word. What! this Lord’s anointed! A natural songster! no art, no culture in his voice—sweet and wild, above human understanding. I said nothing. Be damned, and damned alone! Go hang thyself like Judas!’ ’Well, name my successor first,’ said Jacopo. The Duke leapt, and with one furious blow shattered his lute to splinters on the other’s steel headpiece, then stamped upon the fragments, his arms flapping like wing stumps, his teeth sputtering a foam of inarticulate words. Jacopo, erect under the avalanche, stood perfectly silent and impassive. Then, as suddenly as it had burst, the storm ended. Galeazzo sank back on his seat, panting and nerveless. ’Well, I am no poet—curse thy block head, and mine for trusting to it—the Muses shall decide—Apollo or Marsyas—the Christian Muses and a Christian penance—flaying only for heretics. I am no poet nor musician, say’st? Calf! what know’st thou about such things?’ He roared again: ’What brings thee here, with thy damned butcher’s face, scaring my pretty lambs of song?’ ’Thine order.’ ’Mine?’ ’This astrologer monk, this Fra Capello was it not? I neither know nor care.’ ’Dost thou not? A faithful dog!’ ’Faithful enough.’ ’O! art thou? By what token?’ ’By the token of the quarry run to earth.’ ’To earth? Thou hast him? Good Jacopo!’ ’This three days past. Had I not told thee so already? Let thine improvising damn thyself, not me.’ ’The villain! to call himself a Franciscan, a lowly Franciscan, and pretend to read the stars! How about his prophecy now?’ ’Why, he holds to it.’ ’What! that I have but eleven years in all to reign—less than one to live?’ ’Just that—no more.’ ’Now, is it not a wicked schism from the plain humility of his founder? A curse on their spirituals and conventuals! _This_ fellow to claim kinship with the stars—profess to be in their confidence, to share heaven’s secrets? Dear Jacopo, sweet Jacopo! is it not well to cleanse this earth of such lying prophets, that truth may have standing-room?’ ’Ask truth, not me.’ ’Nay, not to grieve truth’s heart—the onus shall be ours. This same Franciscan—this soothsaying monk—where hast lodged him?’ ’In the "Hermit’s Cell."’ ’Ah, old jester! He shall prove his asceticism thereby. Let practised abstinence save him in such pass. He shall eat his words—an everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer, by the token, as I hear.’ ’He went in, fat.’ ’Wretch! wouldst thou starve him? Remember the worms, thy cousins. Hath he foretold his end?’ ’Ay, by starvation.’ ’He lies, then. Thou shalt take him _in extremis_, and, with thy knife in his throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What sort of night is it?’ ’Why, it rains and thunders.’