grave.

"I had hoped otherwise," he said. "That is why I have been slow to move.
That is why I have waited, why I have even committed the treachery
of permitting Pier Luigi to suppose me ready at need to engage in his
service."

"Ah, there you play a dangerous game," said Gonzaga frankly.

"I'll play a more dangerous still ere I have done," he answered stoutly.
"Neither Pope nor Devil shall dismay me. I have great wrongs to right,
as none knows better than your excellency, and if my life should go in
the course of it, why"--he shrugged and sneered--"it is all that is left
me; and life is a little thing when a man has lost all else."

"I know, I know," said the sly Governor, wagging his big head, "else I
had not warned you. For we need you, Messer Galeotto."

"Ay, you need me; you'll make a tool of me--you and your Emperor. You'll
use me as a cat's-paw to pull down this inconvenient duke."

Gonzaga rose, frowning. "You go a little far, Messer Galeotto," he said.

"I go no farther than you urge me," answered the other.

"But patience, patience!" the Lieutenant soothed him, growing sleek
again in tone and manner. "Consider now the position. What the Emperor
has answered the Pope is no more than the bare and precise truth. It is
not clear whether the States of Parma and Piacenza belong to the
Empire or the Holy See. But let the people rise and show themselves
ill-governed, let them revolt against Farnese once he has been created
their duke and when thus the State shall have been alienated from the
Holy See, and then you may count upon the Emperor to step in as your
liberator and to buttress up your revolt."

"Do you promise us so much?" asked Galeotto.

"Explicitly," was the ready answer, "upon my most sacred honour. Send
me word that you are in arms, that the first blow has been struck, and
I shall be with you with all the force that I can raise in the Emperor's
name."

"Your excellency has warrant for this?" demanded Galeotto.

"Should I promise it else? About it, sir. You may work with confidence."

"With confidence, yes," replied Galeotto gloomily, "but with no great
hope. The Pontifical government has ground the spirit out of half
the nobles of the Val di Taro. They have suffered so much and so
repeatedly--in property, in liberty, in life itself--that they are grown
rabbit-hearted, and would sooner cling to the little liberty that is
still theirs than strike a blow to gain what belongs to them by every
r