The servants bore Buondoni into the great hall; but it was in vain they attempted for a moment or two to rouse him into consciousness again. There was no waking from the sleep that was upon him. Lorenzo's sword, thrust home, had passed through and through his body, piercing his heart as it went. Very different were the sensations of the different persons who gazed upon his great, powerful limbs and handsome face, as he lay in death before them. Ramiro d'Orco could hardly be said to feel anything. It was a sight which he had looked on often. Death, in the abstract, touched him in no way. To see a man take any one of his ordinary meals or die was the same to him. It was an incident in the world's life--no more. He had no weak sympathies, no thrilling sensibilities, no fanciful shudderings at the extinction of human life. A man was dead--that was all. In that man he had no personal interests. He knew him not. There had been no likelihood that he ever would know him; if anything, less probability that that man could ever have served him, and therefore there seemed nothing to regret. Neither had there been any chance that Buondini could ever have injured him, therefore there could be no matter for rejoicing; but yet, if anything, there was a curious feeling of satisfaction, rather than otherwise, in his breast. Death--the death of others--was a thing not altogether displeasing to him. He knew not why it was so, and perhaps it sometimes puzzled him, for he had been known to say, when he heard a passing-bell. "Well, there is one man less in the world! There are fools enough left." Old men grow hardened to such things, and in the ordinary course of nature, as their own days become less and less, as life with them becomes more and more a thing of the past, they estimate the death of others, as they would estimate their own approaching fate, but lightly. The old Count Rovera looked with but very little feeling upon the dead man; but he thought of his young relation Lorenzo, and of what might be the consequences to him. At first, when he remembered that this man had been a great favourite with Ludovic the Moor, and thus another offence had been offered by a Visconti to a Sforza, he entertained some fears for the youth's safety. But then the recollection of the King of France's powerful protection gave him more confidence, and his sympathies went no farther.