It was in actual fact a sop to Cerberus, was this grisly-ludicrous doll, fruit of the decision (which had followed much discussion of ways and means) to postpone its prototype’s murder to some occasion of public festivity, when the sympathies of the mob might be kindled and a revolution accomplished at a stroke. Politic Cerberus must nevertheless have something to stay the gnawing and craving of a delayed revenge which had otherwise corroded him. He took a ferociously boyish delight in fashioning this lay-figure, and, having made, in whetting his teeth on it; in clothing it in purple and fine linen; in addressing it wheedlingly, or ironically, or brutally, as the mood swayed him. And to-night his mood, stung by the tempest, perhaps, was unearthly in its wildness. It rose in fiendish laughter; it mocked the anguish of the blast, a threefold litany, now blended, now a trifurcating blasphemy. There were the roaring bass of Visconti, Lampugnani’s smooth treble, the deadly considered baritone of Olgiati. And, punctuating all, like the tap of a baton, flew the interjections of Messer Montano, the conductor:— ’Su! Gia-gia! Bravo, Carlo! That was a Brutus stroke! Uh-uh, Andrea! hast bled him there for arrears of wages! a scrap of gold-cloth, by Socrates! A brave sign, a bright token, Andrea!’ He chuckled and hugged himself, involuntarily embracing in the action the long pendant which hung from his roundlet or turban, and half-pulling the cap from his skull-like forehead. ’Death!’ he screeched in an ecstasy, and Lampugnani, glancing at him, went off into husky laughter, and sank back, breathed, upon a bench. ’Cometh in a doctor’s gown,’ he panted. ’Nay, sir, bonnet! bonnet! or the dummy will suspect you.’ He might have, himself, and with a better advantage to his fortunes, could he have penetrated the vestments of that drear philosophic heart. There was a secret there would have astounded _his_ self-assurance. Montano wore his doctor’s robe, meetly as a master of rhetoric, not the least of whose contemplated flights was one timely away from that political arena, whose gladiators in the meanwhile he was bent only on inflaming to a contest in which he had no intention of personally participating. He had a fixed idea, his back and his principles being still painfully at odds, that the cause would be best served by his absence, when once the long train to the explosion he was engineering had been fired at his hand. And so he hugged himself, and Lampugnani laughed. ’Look at Master Lupo, with the sound of thy screech in his ears! As if he thought we contemplated anything but to bring slashed Venetian doublets into vogue!’