All the speakers were noble.  Benedetto was Manto’s lover; Eustachio her father’s friend; Leonardo his creditor.  Their advice prevailed, and the three were chosen as a deputation to wait on the prophetess.  Before proceeding formally on their embassy the three envoys managed to obtain private interviews, the two elder with Manto’s father, the youth with Manto herself.  The creditor promised that if he became Duke by the alchemist’s influence with his daughter he would forgive the debt; the friend went further, and vowed that he would pay it.  The old man promised his good word to both, but when he went to confer with his daughter he found her closeted with Benedetto, and returned without disburdening himself of his errand.  The youth had just risen from his knees, pleading with her, and drawing glowing pictures of their felicity when he should be Duke and she Duchess.

She answered, “Benedetto, in all Mantua there is not one man fit to rule another.  To name any living person would be to set a tyrant over my native city.  I will repair to the shades and seek a ruler among the dead.”

“And why should not Mantua have a tyrant?” demanded Benedetto.  “The freedom of the mechanic is the bondage of the noble, who values no liberty save that of making the base-born do his bidding.  ’Tis hell to a man of spirit to be contradicted by his tailor.  If I could see my heart’s desire on the knaves, little would I reck submitting to the sway of the Emperor.”

“I know that well, Benedetto,” said Manto, “and hence will take good heed not to counsel Mantua to choose thee.  No, the Duke I will give her shall be one without passions to gratify or injuries to avenge, and shall already be crowned with a crown to make the ducal cap as nothing in his eyes, if eyes he had.”

Benedetto departed in hot displeasure, and the alchemist came forward to announce that the commissioners waited.

“My projection,” he whispered, “only wants one more piece of gold to insure success, and Eustachio proffers thirty.  Oh, give him Mantua in exchange for boundless riches!”

“And they call thee a philosopher and me a visionary!” said Manto, patting his cheek.

The envoys’ commission having been unfolded, she took not a moment to reply, “Be your Duke Virgil.”

The deputation respectfully represented that although Virgil was no doubt Mantua’s greatest citizen, he laboured under the disqualification of having been dead more than twelve hundred years.  Nothing further, however, could be extorted from the prophetess, and the ambassadors were obliged to withdraw.

The interpretation of Manto’s oracle naturally provoked much diversity of opinion in the council.

“Obviously,” said a poet, “the prophetess would have us confer the ducal dignity upon the contemporary bard who doth most nearly accede to the vestiges of the divine Maro; and he, as I judge, is even now in the midst of you.”