It was the freedom of one whose services are valuable enough, even when well paid, to permit him to bear himself with small respect to his employers. For the mercenaries were a power; the transfer of their services could ruin states and lose towns, and even Visconti had to pay them well and concede license to their leaders; for upon them, to a great extent, his sovereignty rested, and Alberic da Salluzzo could take more liberties than any. He was a famous captain, noted for his skill in wars and turbulence in peace, a man with no country and no honor, endowed with dauntless courage and endurance, of vast rapacity and of all the cruelty his age allowed. Making no way for Tisio, and motioning curtly to his men, he strode up the stairs, a stalwart figure, overdressed in splendid armor, and swung into the antechamber of the Visconti's audience-room. It was deserted. Alberic, astonished, paused on the threshold, looking around in amazement for the crowd--courtiers, servants, seekers, soldiers--wont to fill it. Opposite was the closed door of the Visconti's room, but even Alberic dare not knock there unannounced. He was turning away to seek enlightenment, when a dark form he had passed unnoticed in the distant shadows of the great room rose, and he recognized, as it advanced, the secretary's stooping figure. "What has happened here?" demanded the soldier. "Is there need to ask?" answered Giannotto. "The Duke has had the room cleared. He will see no one." Alberic half-laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. "The madness is on him at Count von Schulembourg's escape. Is that it?" he asked. "But art even thou excluded?" he continued in surprise, for Giannotto was the one man who could come and go unannounced, unbidden, the one man who knew Visconti's secrets. The secretary smiled, the slow smile that men's lips learned in the Visconti palace. "It is best for the Duke to be alone, and for me that he should be," he said. "The news that Count Conrad has escaped hath galled him much; it came at a bad moment too, following on those parchments twice found within the grounds"--he paused. "Thou wert sent to find the writer, or the one who put them there; art thou successful?" Alberic shook his head. "I return as I went. Beyond finding that doorway forced in the wall, messer secretary, there is no token whatsoever of how the Count escaped. But after so long a fast, messer," Alberic showed his teeth, "it is not likely that it was alone." "The one who aided him is he who inscribed those parchments?" "'Twould seem so," answered Alberic. "We have searched anew among the huts from which we drove Count Conrad's German dogs; on the threshold of the largest there was--this." He drew out of his breast a parchment, a long narrow strip, scrawled across in irregular writing, and handed it to Giannotto. "What does it say?" he asked. Giannotto glanced at it hastily, his eyes on the Duke's door. He read, "Della Scala lives!"