"Nay, ask the French envoy," replied Marie de' Medici, "his Highness the Duke of Nevers will tell you whom we have the honour to entertain as our guest." "I, Mademoiselle," exclaimed the representative of the French King, "truly, I have never before looked upon his face." "Declare yourself Sire, I beseech of you," Marie de' Medici implored, and Brandilancia answered calmly: "I am the authorised representative of the Earl of Essex. Brandilancia is the Italian equivalent of my name, which in English is plain Will Shakespeare. That I am an actor and playwright you have graciously conceded, and that is the only distinction which I have ever claimed." His words carried overwhelming conviction to the brain of the deluded girl, and she sank fainting into the arms of the man whom she had so misunderstood and who was still far from comprehending the cause of her emotion. "Leave my niece to the care of her women," the Grand Duke commanded sternly. "Radicofani, is this indeed the rogue who slipped from your clutches?" "It is, my lord," replied that worthy, as he grasped the actor's arm. "Then consign him to the hospitalities of our sky-parlour. In the cage suspended from that tower, young man, you may await my investigation of your case." From his lofty outlook in the iron cage, dizzily suspended between earth and heaven, our adventurer obtained a new and wider view. The palace and its life dwindled to a speck. Far away to the north he could discern the white summits of the mountains that cradle the blue lake of Garda, while at his feet the Mincio flowed peacefully toward the Adriatic, where a good ship (on which, but for his folly in pausing at Mantua, he might on the morrow be voyaging homeward) was impatiently tugging at her moorings. Fool that he was, he had made his bed and must lie on it. It was a very uncomfortable bed at the present moment, for he could neither stretch himself at full length nor stand erect, but sat with his hands clasping his knees and his head bowed upon them. How long must he retain this cramped position? Malespini's words came to him with sinister emphasis. Would he be left here until starvation released him from agony and his bones bleached in the sun? The Angelus chimed from the belfries, the only structures which reached his plane, and gave him a sense of human companionship, but the tones of the bells sounded thin in the empty air, and his loneliness increased with their cessation. The sun climbed the heavens and beat unmercifully upon his unprotected head, but just as his thirst became intolerable and he groaned in agony, a low, chuckling laugh replied from a window in the tower near his cage, and turning his head he saw the malicious face of the dwarf Leonora Dosi. Repugnant as she was to him he greeted her appearance now, for it flashed through his mind that she might have brought him some message from Marie de' Medici.