"Venus murmured with a sigh: 'Dumb Adonis, numb Adonis!

Fast the golden moments fly, Love and let the world go by, Be a god before you die, Child Adonis, wild Adonis!'"

Lycabetta yawned and lifted up her hand. Euphrosyne ceased in her singing.

"There, you have sung enough," Lycabetta said. "I am neither more sleepy nor more wakeful than I was, and your music wearies me. Have many knocked at our doors to-night?"

She looked at the girl Glycerium as she spoke, and Glycerium answered her.

"The young Duke Ferdinand of Etruria."

Lycabetta gave a little laugh of disdain.

"A handsome fool with a foolish hand. How did he carry himself when you put him by?"

"He was bright with wine," Glycerium answered. "He swore a Greek oath or two, but he left you this pearl."

Glycerium handed a great, round pearl to Lycabetta, who took it from her with indifference, weighing it lightly in the hollow of her hand.

"It is rare and fair," she commented, "but I will not wear it. There is no jewel in the world that is worth what it hides of my whiteness. Who else?"

Glycerium thought for a moment before she answered,

"Messer Gian Sanminiato."

Lycabetta sneered at the name.

"The court poet who would pay for favors with phrases and runs aside to rhyme a sonnet every time he wins the kiss of a lip. What did he say?"

"He seemed very downcast, and he sighed like a dromedary," Glycerium answered. "He charged me to deliver this ode to your loveliness."

She handed a scroll of parchment to Lycabetta, who took it and opened it contemptuously.

"Oh, ancient gods!" she sighed. "Let me see it. Yes, indeed; I am Venus and the Graces Three and the Muses Nine--all which I knew before ever he fumbled for rhymes; and he loves me as Ixion loved the Queen of Heaven.

Well, he had better find a cloud of consolation to-night. Who else?"

"Casimir, the rich Muscovy merchant," Glycerium replied.

Lycabetta gave a shrug.

"He rains gold like Jove, but he smells of civet."

Glycerium ventured a protest.

"His money smells sweet enough," she said. "He flung me this purse on account."

Lycabetta took no notice of the gold.

"Is that all?" she asked.

Glycerium responded, with a slight air of constraint, "Sigurd Olafson, the young Varangian captain."

Lycabetta lifted herself on one elbow with a look of interest.

"I would have welcomed him, for he can hug like a bear and his blue eyes are as bright as the northern star. I could hate the King for swearing he would come to-night and so forcing me to keep my door shut. Did he leave me anything?"

"Nothing," Glycerium admitted; "but he lifted me, there in the moonlit street, to the level of his lips and kissed me."

Lycabetta leaned forward and gave Glycerium a playful box on the ear.

"You little thief," she cried, "to steal the best gift of the bunch. If I thought he cared for you, child, I would make you very unkissable. Oh, I wish the King would come!"

Glycerium gave a sigh of admiration.

"He is better than the best of them," she asserted.

Lycabetta nodded her head.

"He is the all-conquering lover, for he never yields an inch of his heart. If a goddess condescended from Olympus, he would woo her with hot blood and cold brain. His eyes are torches of desire, but there never is a tender light in them. If a woman died in his arms, he would leave her without a sigh. And yet he can speak the speech of love more eloquently than an angel. You will laugh when I tell you that I would give much to believe that he loved me."

"He is the King," Glycerium said, simply.

"If he were a shepherd on a hill-side, I should think the same thoughts.

But he is alike with all women. I do not believe the woman is born of woman who could make gentle his cruelty. He is as pitiless as the plague, that never spares the fairest."

Glycerium shivered.

"Do not speak of the plague, dear lady. They say some have died of it in Syracuse."

"Or call it by some pretty name to placate it," Euphrosyne suggested.

"Say that the blessing is abroad."

Glycerium shivered again.

"Oh, how I wish we had never left Naples!"

Lycabetta's face had grown pale and she gasped her words.

"Gods, how I fear it! But it will not creep in here. We stand high from the city. Our garden is wardered with medicinal herbs, and these odors and essences defend us. So we need not fear it. And yet, gods, how I fear it!"

Even as she spoke and shuddered the hangings of the portal parted, and one of her women entered and saluted reverentially. Lycabetta turned a little on the couch to look at her.

"What is it, Lysidice?" she asked.

"Zal and Rustum, the King's Moors, wait without," Lysidice answered.

"They come with a charge from the King."

"What charge?" Lycabetta asked, attracted by any interruption in the monotony of her night.