’Why,’ I said, ’what killing bait had tempted the monk’s shyness at length?’ ’What, then?’ ’Thyself.’ ’I?’ ’Art thou not a star-child and Galeazzo’s protégé? O, pretty, sweet decoy, to draw the astrologer from his cloister!’ ’Dost mean that the Duke would use me to question the truth of these predictions? Alas! not I, nor any man, can interpret nothingness into a text.’ ’Wilt thou tell him so?’ ’Who?’ ’The Duke.’ ’I have told him so.’ ’Thou hast? Then God keep the Franciscan in breath!’ ’Amen!’ had said Bembo, in all fervour and innocence. He had thought the other to mean nothing more than that the Duke was designing, on _his_ authority, to win a faulty brother from the heresy—as he construed it—of divination. As _he_ construed it. Young and inexperienced as he was, he had yet a prophet’s purpose and vision—the vision which, in despite of all traditional beliefs, looks backwards. His soft eyes were steadfast to that end which was the beginning. No sophistries could beguile him from the essential truth of his kind creed. _He_ was an atavism of something vastly remoter than Caligula—than any tyranny. He ’threw back’ to the stock of those first angels who knew the daughters of men—to the first fruits of an amazed and incredible sorrow. By so great a step was he close to the God his sires had offended; was close to the parting of the ways between earth and heaven, and with all the lore of the since-accumulated ages to instruct him in his choice of roads. O, believe little Bernardo that his was the true insight, the true wisdom! There is no Future, nor ever will be. The past but prolongs itself to the present; and all enterprise, all yearning, are but to recover the ground we have lost. That truth once recognised, the horror of Futurity shall close its gates; its timeless wastes shall be no more to us; and we—we shall be wandering back, by æons of pathetic memories, to trace to its source the love that gushed in Paradise. Three days later the boy—the Duke being gone—was strolling, again with Cicada his shadow, on the ramparts. It had become something his habit to take the air, after hearing the morning causes, on these outer walls, whence the tired vision could stretch itself luxuriantly on leagues of peaceful plain. He liked then to be left alone, or at the most to the sole company of his dogged henchman, the erst Fool. Cicada’s gruff but jealous sympathy was an emollient to lacerated sensibilities; his wit was a tonic; his tact the fruit of long necessity. No one would have guessed, not gentle Bernardo himself, how the little, ugly, caustic creature was, when most wilful or eccentric in seeming, watching over and medicining his moods of inevitable weariness or depression. Perhaps he was in such a mood now—induced by that passion of the irremediable which occasionally must overtake every just judge—as he leaned upon the battlements, his cheek propped on his palm, and gazed out dreamily over the shining campagna.