Cristo buono! Do you marvel that I lost patience and had their hideous heads set upon spears ?" "But did you not say that two of these conspirators were brought back captive ?" The Duke nodded, his mouth too full for words.
"Then, at their trial, what transpired ?" "Trial?
There was no trial." Gian Maria chewed vigorously for a moment.
"I tell you I was so heated with anger at this base ingratitude, that I had not even the wit to have the names of their associates tortured out of them.

Within a half-hour of their arrival in Babbiano, the heads of these men whom it had pleased Heaven to deliver up to me were where you saw them to-day." "You sent them thus to their death ?" gasped Francesco, rising to his feet and eyeing his cousin with mingled wonder and anger.

"You sent men of such families as these to the headsman, without a trial?
I think, Gian Maria, that you must be mad if so rashly you can shed such blood as this." The Duke sank back in his chair to gape at his impetuous cousin.

Then, in sullen anger: "To whom do you speak ?" he demanded.
"To a tyrant who calls himself the most clement, just and generous prince in Italy, and who lacks the wisdom to see that he is undermining with his own hands, and by his own rash actions, a throne that is already tottering.

Can you not think that this might mean a revolution?
It amounts to murder, and though dukes resort to it freely enough in Italy, it is not openly and defiantly wrought, as is this." Anger there was in the Duke's soul, but there was still more fear--so much, that it shouldered the anger aside.
"I have provided against rebellion," he announced, with an ease that he vainly strove to feel.