"Alas, was it no more?" moaned the Duke. "Indeed, I am very weak; there is a blur before my eyes. I cannot see who this lady is that kneels before me. Who is she, and what ails her?" And having said this in fretful weary tones, he lay back on his pillow gasping. Then the Master of the Household came forward and said to him, "My lord, this is the Lady Lucia, and she kneels before your Highness praying for the life of Count Antonio, because she loves him." Now the name of Count Antonio, when spoken to him, moved the Duke more than all the ministrations of his physician; he roused himself once again, crying, "Antonio! I had forgotten Antonio. Does he still live?" "Your Highness has not given the signal for his death." "Have I not? Then here----" He moved his hand, but with a great cry the Lady Lucia sprang forward and seized his hand before he could raise it, kneeling to him and crying, "No, no, my lord, no, no, no!" And the Duke had no strength to fling her off, but he gasped, "Free me from her!" And the Master of the Household, terrified lest in her passion she should do violence to His Highness, roughly tore her hands from the Duke's hand, and the Duke, released, sat up on his couch, and he said, in a strange hard voice that was heard of all, even to the scaffold, and yet seemed not the voice that they knew as his, "Let Antonio----" But then he stopped; he choked in his throat, and, catching at his shirt, tore it loose from him. "Let Antonio!"----he cried again. "Let Antonio!"----And he sat there for an instant; and his eyes grew dim, the intelligence departing from them; once again he opened his lips, but nothing came from them save a gasp; and with a thud he fell back on his pillows, and, having rolled once on his side, turned again on his back and lay still. And a great hush fell on every man in the square, and they looked in one another's faces, but found no answer. For Valentine, Duke and Lord of Firmola, was dead of his sickness at the moment when he had sought to send Antonio to death. Thus marvellously did Heaven in its high purposes deal with him. "His Highness is dead," said the physician. And the Master of the Household, as his duty was, came to the front of the Duke's couch, and, standing there before all the people, broke the wand of his office, and let the broken fragments fall upon the marble steps; and he cried aloud, "Hear all of you! It hath pleased Almighty God to take unto Himself the soul of the noble and illustrious Prince, Valentine, Duke and Lord of Firmola. May his soul find peace!"