If the five years which had passed between
Signor Giustino Canacci's marriage and the year
1638 had changed him from a hale old man to a half
bedridden dotard, the alteration for the worse
which they had worked in his son was yet greater.
He was already at thirty years of age a mere
wreck. Long continued habits of intemperance
had so seasoned and yet at the same time shaken
his nervous system, that he could hardly be said
to be ever drunk, or ever sober. With trembling
legs and palsied hands, blear-eyed, haggard, bloated
and blotched in face, he was as unprepossessing
an object as it is possible to imagine. And
as he shuffled into the room where the duchess
was awaiting him, with a stupid look of half-
awakened curiosity mixed with a would-be defiant
swagger, it needed an effort on her part so far to
overcome the disgust he occasioned her, as to
enter on the business with him which had brought
her there.

Motioning him with her hand to sit on the
opposite side of a little table in the centre of the
room to that at which she seated herself as he
entered, "Signor Bartolommeo Canacci," she
began, in a slow, clear, magisterial kind of voice,
"are you aware that the good name of your
respectable and honourable house has been
destroyed and made a byword in Florence?"

"Shouldn't wonder, lady fair, whoever you
are. They are a bad lot in Casa Canacci, the
old father and the young mother-in-law—a bad
lot, fit to break an honest man's heart. But you
know the song

When there's sorrow in thinking,
Then there's wisdom in drinking.

If it was not for practising that wisdom I should
have gone to the church, heels foremost, long ago.
But what have you got to say in the matter?"

"This I have to say, Bartolommeo Canacci.
The vile abandoned woman whom your doting
father made his wife, and who has made the
shame of his life and the misery of yours, has
also been the bane of mine."

"You don't mean that! Does she lock away
every farthing of money—money that should be
your own—where you can't get at it? Does she
keep you out of your own house? Does she drive
you to drink to get rid of care?"

"I tell you she has done worse than all
this to me. Homeless! Yes, has she not made
me homeless too? For what is my home to me!
Man! I hate Caterina Canacci as no human being
ever hated another yet!"

"Well, I am not much behind you in that
matter, I'll warrant me. We are two in a boat,
so far. But the worthy gentleman who brought
me here to your ladyship said something, if I am
not mistaken, about some transaction in current
coin to take place here this evening. Now, I
don't think it likely, upon the whole, that he
could have alluded to any disbursement to be
made by me to your ladyship."

"Are you in want of money?"

"A pretty question! Why, who the devil is
not in want of money? Is not the grand-duke
always wanting money? Don't I look as if I had
as princely or saintly an appetite for coin as any
duke in the land, or saint in the calendar?"

"Do you like revenge on those who have injured you?"

"Why, what a question again! Do you like
victuals when you are hungry? Have you any
taste for rest when you are weary? Haven't I
told you already that I hate . . . one ... or two,
mayhap? Yes!" and his half-bantering, half-
maudlin manner changed suddenly to an expression
of brutal ferocity, while a dangerous gleam
lighted up for a moment his dull dead eyes.
"Yes, I do like revenge: perhaps, if I got a
taste of it, should like it better than anything
else to be had in this dog-hole of a world."
"Right, friend! I like it best of anything in
all the world." The duchess returned fixedly
the cruel wolfish glare that shot from under his
sullen overhanging brow, looking into his eyes
with a gleam of hate, as fierce and deadly as his
own. "And," she continued, after a pause, "we
hate the same person."

The bloodshot eye of the common-place ruffian
deadened and fell beneath the intensity of vindictive
passion concentrated in the face of the
duchess. The lower nature and deteriorated
organisation of the man was dominated and
almost daunted by the superior energy and
strength of will of the woman. The wretched
drunkard wanted sundry things, after all, more
than gratification of his hatred. Hatred is a
spiritual passion. The body has no craving for
it. And with the degraded sot, his body and its
cravings had to be served before any needs of
the spirit, however low and ignoble in their
nature, could be heard. Drink, and wherewithal
to procure it, was infinitely more necessary to
him than the luxury of revenge. With the Lady
Veronica it was otherwise. She spoke less than
the whole truth, when she said that she loved
revenge better than anything else in all the
world. She might, with truth, have said that it
was the only thing for which she cared and lived;
that all else had become vanity, emptiness, and
indifference. And yet the Lady Veronica was
a mother, and had been a passionately loving
wife. But it may be doubted whether she would
now have bartered the prospect of revenge on
her rival, even for the restoration of her husband's
affection. For in such organisations as that of
the duchess, vindictive hate is like the serpent
which was generated from the rod of the prophet.
No sooner has it been quickened in the soul, than
it grows with awful rapidity to monstrous stature,
and devours every other passion, and desire, and
affection.

The flame of passion, therefore, that the lady's
words had suddenly kindled in Bartolommeo's
heart sunk down again as suddenly; cowed and
quenched by the intenser passion that blazed in
her own.

"But, may be," continued the duchess, perceiving
the quick burning out of the straw fire
she had raised, "may be you feel inclined to be