"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.
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