who broke it.

"Well, Lazzaro?" she asked. "Have you naught to say?"

"What would you have me say, Madonna? If this wedding accords with your
own wishes, then am I glad."

"Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not."

"How should I know it, Madonna?"

"Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me. Think you this
petty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceive
affection for? Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded us
here; but my love--that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for some
very different man. When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight, a
gentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address."

"An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonna
mia. But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him?"

"Are there, then, no such men?"

"In the pages of Bojardo and those other poets whom you have read too
earnestly there may be."

"Nay, there speaks your cynicism," she chided me. "But even if my
ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such
a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni--a weak-spirited craven, as
witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle him;
a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to seek no
further instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool, devoid of wit
and barren of ambition? Such is the man they would have me wed. Do
not tell me, Lazzaro, that it were difficult to find a better one than
this."

"I do not mean to tell you that. After all, though it be my trade to
jest, it is not my way to deal in falsehood. I think, Madonna, that if
we were to have you write for us such an appreciation of the High and
Mighty Giovanni Sforza, you would leave a very faithful portrait for the
enlightenment of posterity."

"Lazzaro, do not jest!" she cried. "It is your help I need. That is the
reason why I am come to you with the tale of what they seek to force me
into doing."

"To force you?" I cried. "Would they dare so much?"

"Aye, if I resist them further."

"Why, then," I answered, with a ready laugh, "do not resist them
further."

"Lazzaro!" she cried, her accents telling of a spirit wounded by what
she accounted a flippancy.

"Mistake me not," I hastened to elucidate. "It is lest they should
employ force and compel you at once to enter into this union that I
counsel you to offer no resistance. Beg for a little time,