A Jay of Italy by Bernard Capes — Read

In the fortress of Vigevano the Duke of Milan sat at wine with his gentlemen, his dark face a core of gloom, blighting the revel. Flushed cheeks; sparkling cups; hot dyes of silk and velvet, and the starry splintering of gems; sconces of flaming tapers, and, between, banners of purple and crimson, like great moths, hanging on the walls above the heads of shining, motionless men-at-arms, whose staves and helmets trickled light -- all this, the whole rich damasked picture, seemed, while the sullen eye commanded it, to poise upon its own fall and change, like the pieces in a kaleidoscope, -- the Duke rose and passed out; and already, with a leap and clatter, it had tumbled into a frolic of whirling colours.

This company, in short, conscious of its deserts, had felt any cold-watering of its spirits at the present pass intolerable. There were captains in it, raw from the icy plains of Piedmont, whence they had come after rallying their troops into winter quarters, against a resumption of hostilities in the spring. Tried men of war, and seasoned toss-pots all, they claimed to spend after their mood the wages of valour, vindicated in many a hard-wrung victory. They had stood, Charles the Bold of Burgundy opposing, for the integrity of Savoy, and had trounced its invaders well over the border. The sense of triumph was in them, and, consequently, of grievance that it should be so discounted by a royal mumps, who till yesterday had been their strutting and crowing cock of conquest. What had happened in the interval, so to return him upon his old damned familiar self?