e wings of birds, if we could use them, were admirable for the
purpose, Princess," he replied. "But, for the moment, the difficulty of
instructing such messengers is insuperable. And not only so, but it is
probable that the Lord Gregorio, seeing such an envoy to his hand, might
put a bolt into it, and itself into the pot, without interrogatories
delivered or answers made. So messenger and message would alike be
boiled. Another way occurs to me, which arises out of this
consideration. We stand, each bather of us, in a lake of air. A lake?
Rather, an illimitable ocean of it spread over land and sea, in which
the very mountain-tops do blink. Should not, then, the pulsing of our
thought, as it rings outward from us, be discernible in the ripples
about the Lord Gregorio's ears? Obviously it should. But the reading of
such ripples would be a nice matter; and again we lack means, and again
the time, to instruct his lordship. Once more--"

"Ah, you dream your subtleties, and my letter gets cold," said Bianca
Maria, pouting. "You are now just as you sit watchfully when you should
be painting my picture."

"It is then that I am painting my hardest, Princess Saint Anne," he
returned. "But leave with me your letter. It shall go in a man's bosom
to-morrow morning."

High affairs of State are not settled in a week, nor dukes so apt at
billing as a pair of girls. Duke Ludovic would not declare himself to
every adventurer; Duke Amilcare was too patently adventurous to disclose
all his hand. Then came Grifone, with a game of his own. Blind each of
one eye, they set to dealing their cards for beggar-my-neighbour.

Now Ludovic feared one man in all Italy, and so did Amilcare. That was
the one man in all Italy whom Grifone respected, on whom he thought he
could honestly rely. Thought he to himself, "Can their Serenities be
leagued against this man in my service? Can they not, by our risen
Lord?" He fancied that they might.

To this end he proposed to his master, very shortly, the assassination
of Borgia by means of the lovely Molly. Let her, at a private banquet,
inveigle him to drink a cup.

"Suggest this to the Duke of Bari," he said. "I think your lordship will
not be disappointed. Substantial pledges must be exacted, of course; he
must tread in deep enough to leave a footmark or two visible 'twixt
Milan and Nona."

Amilcare thought well of this advice and followed it. Ludovic,
incredulous at first and breathless, took a fortnig