dels you! I had a part in shaping you
so bestial; our age, too, had a part--our bright and cruel day, wherein
you were set too high. Yet for me it would perhaps have proved as easy
to have made a learned recluse of you, Alessandro, or a bloodless
saint, if to do that had been as patently profitable. For you and all
your kind are so much putty in the hands of circumspect fellows such as
I. But I stood by and let our poisoned age conform that putty into the
shape of a crazed beast, because it took that form as readily as any
other, and in taking it, best served my selfish ends. Now I must pay
for that sorry shaping, just as, I think, you too must pay some day.
And so, I cry farewell with loathing, but with compassion also!"

Then these two turned toward the hills, leaving Duke Alessandro where
he lay in the road, a very lamentable figure in much bloodied finery.
They turned toward the hills, and entered a forest whose ordering was
time's contemporary, and where there was no grandeur save that of the
trees.

But upon the summit of the nearest hill they paused and looked over a
restless welter of foliage that glittered in the sun, far down into the
highway. It bustled like an unroofed ant-hill, for the road was alive
with men who seemed from this distance very small. Duke Alessandro's
attendants had found him and were clustered in a hubbub about their
reviving master. Dwarfish Lorenzino de Medici was the most solicitous
among them.

Beyond was the broad river, seen as a ribbon of silver now, and on its
remoter bank the leaded roofs of a strong fortress glistened like a
child's new toy. Tilled fields showed here and there, no larger in
appearance than so many outspread handkerchiefs. Far down in the east
a small black smudge upon the pearl-colored and vaporous horizon was
all they could discern of a walled city filled with factories for the
working of hemp and furs and alum and silk and bitumen.

"It is a very rich and lovely land," said Eglamore--"this kingdom which
a half-hour since lay in the hollow of my hand." He viewed it for a
while, and not without pensiveness. Then he took Graciosa's hand and
looked into her face, and he laughed joyously.

JUDITH'S CREED

"_It does not appear that the age thought his works worthy of
posterity, nor that this great poet himself levied any ideal tribute on
future times, or had any further prospect than of present popularity
and present profit. So careless wa