"Hey, Excellency," cried the other, "there are many devout souls in the
same case."

Can Grande pished. "Devout jellyfish," he grunted; and then--"She seems
to haunt one quarter, eh?"

"It is so, Excellency, save that yesterday she must have passed through
the Porta San Zeno unseen of the guard."

"Have you interrogated the guard?" asked the tyrant, sharply.

"It was done, Highness. Nothing entered between Compline and Prime but a
couple of bullock-carts and a cavalcade of merchants from Brescia."

"What was in the bullock-carts, bishop?"

"Birch-bark, Excellency, for the yards."

"H'm!" was all Can Grande had to say to this.

He changed the conversation. "I have had the warden of the Minorites and
the provincial of the Dominicans here this morning," he said, "about
that accursed business of the rag-picker's wife. It is another example
of what I told you just now, that these people attribute what they
cannot understand to persons they can only dream about. They put down
the whole of your miracles to a special reward for their zeal in
hounding down the Carmelite and his mistress. They want the order
expelled; I think they would like the house razed and the church washed
out with holy water, or Fra Battista's blood--the latter for choice.
Now, I cannot pull down religious houses, lord of Verona though I be,
because a herd of frightened peasants have gone capering over the city
singing, 'Salve festa dies.' I must really do the parties the honour of
an interview before I draw the sword. Let me be sure which back I am
going to score before I begin to carve. You had better bring the prior
and Fra Lancillotto-Battista to me, and if you can collect the young
woman and her brat, so much the better."

"Alas! Excellency, I fear the young woman is in pieces," said the
bishop. "She has never been heard of since the day of her expulsion."

The advice, however, was good, the judgment good enough; but before it
could be followed a stroke more telling than any Can Grande's sword
could have made was wrought by Madonna of the Peach-Tree.

On the night of that same day Can Grande was sitting in the palace with
two chosen companions, as dare-devil as himself, waiting the hour of an
assignation. It was about ten o'clock: at half-past the hour they were
to go out cloaked into the streets, bent upon the lifting of a decent
burgess's wife from her bed. Hence they were not in the castle, which is
near San Zeno, but in the Della Scala