"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."

The Duke sank back in his chair to gape at his impetuous cousin. Then,
in sullen anger: "To whom do you speak?" he demanded.

"To a tyrant who calls himself the most clement, just and generous prince
in Italy, and who lacks the wisdom to see that he is undermining with his
own hands, and by his own rash actions, a throne that is already
tottering. Can you not think that this might mean a revolution? It
amounts to murder, and though dukes resort to it freely enough in Italy,
it is not openly and defiantly wrought, as is this."

Anger there was in the Duke's soul, but there was still more fear--so
much, that it shouldered the anger aside.

"I have provided against rebellion," he announced, with an ease that he
vainly strove to feel. "I have given the command of my guards to Martino
Armstadt, and he has engaged for me a company of five hundred Swiss
lanzknechte that were lately in the pay of the Baglioni of Perugia."