“Virgil the poet,” said a priest, who had long laboured under the suspicion of occult practices, “was a fool to Virgil the enchanter.  The wise woman evidently demands one competent to put the devil into a hole—­an operation which I have striven to perform all my life.”

“Canst thou balance our city upon an egg?” inquired Eustachio.

“Better upon an egg than upon a quack!” retorted the priest.

But such was not the opinion of Eustachio himself, who privately conferred with Leonardo.  Eustachio had a character, but no parts; Leonardo had parts, but no character.

“I see not why these fools should deride the oracle of the prophetess,” he said.  “She would doubtless impress upon us that a dead master is in divers respects preferable to a living one.”

“Surely,” said Eustachio, “provided always that the servant is a man of exemplary character, and that he presumes not upon his lord’s withdrawal to another sphere, trusting thereby to commit malpractices with impunity, but doth, on the contrary, deport himself as ever in his great taskmaster’s eye.”

“Eustachio,” said Leonardo, with admiration, “it is the misery of Mantua that she hath no citizen who can act half as well as thou canst talk.  I would fain have further discourse with thee.”

The two statesmen laid their heads together, and ere long the mob were crying, “A Virgil! a Virgil!”

The councillors reassembled and passed resolutions.

“But who shall be Regent?” inquired some one when Virgil had been elected unanimously.

“Who but we?” asked Eustachio and Leonardo.  “Are we not the heads of the Virgilian party?”

Thus had the enthusiastic Manto, purest of idealists, installed in authority the two most unprincipled politicians in the republic; and she had lost her lover besides, for Benedetto fled the city, vowing vengeance.

Anyhow, the dead poet was enthroned Duke of Mantua; Eustachio and Leonardo became Regents, with the style of Consuls, and it was provided that in doubtful cases reference should be made to the Sortes Virgilianae.  And truly, if we may believe the chronicles, the arrangement worked for a time surprisingly well.  The Mantuans, in an irrational way, had done what it behoves all communities to do rationally if they can.  They had sought for a good and worthy citizen to rule them; it was their misfortune that such an one could only be found among the dead.  They felt prouder of themselves for being governed by a great man—­one in comparison with whom kings and pontiffs were the creatures of a day.  They would not, if they could help it, disgrace themselves by disgracing their hero; they would not have it said that Mantua, which had not been too weak to bear him, had been too weak to endure his government.  The very hucksters and usurers among them felt dimly that there was such a thing as an Ideal.  A glimmering perception dawned upon mailed, steel-fisted barons that there