"It was
ever the way of that secretive vassal. Damn him! He frankly told me
that if I knew, I would talk. Heard you ever of such insufferable
insolence to a prince? All that he would let me learn was that there was
a conspiracy afoot to supplant me, and that he was going to capture the
conspirators, together with the man whom they were inviting to take my
place. Ponder it, Francesco! Such are the murderous plans my loving
subjects form for my undoing--I who rule them with a rod of gold, the
most clement, just and generous prince in Italy. Cristo buono! Do you
marvel that I lost patience and had their hideous heads set upon spears?"
"But did you not say that two of these conspirators were brought back
captive?"
The Duke nodded, his mouth too full for words.
"Then, at their trial, what transpired?"
"Trial? There was no trial." Gian Maria chewed vigorously for a moment.
"I tell you I was so heated with anger at this base ingratitude, that I
had not even the wit to have the names of their associates tortured out
of them. Within a half-hour of their arrival in Babbiano, the heads of
these men whom it had pleased Heaven to deliver up to me were where you
saw them to-day."
"You sent them thus to their death?" gasped Francesco, rising to his feet
and eyeing his cousin with mingled wonder and anger. "You sent men of
such families as these to the headsman, without a trial? I think, Gian
Maria, that you must be mad if so rashly you can shed such blood as
this.
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