Temporal Logics in Computer Science Finite State

Systems 1st Edition Stéphane Demri download

https://textbookfull.com/product/temporal-logics-in-computer-
science-finite-state-systems-1st-edition-stephane-demri/

Download more ebook from https://textbookfull.com

We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit textbookfull.com
to discover even more!

The State Russian Museum St Petersburg Guide Author

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-state-russian-museum-st-
petersburg-guide-author/

The logics of healthcare : the professional's guide to

health system science 1st Edition Lillrank

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-logics-of-healthcare-the-
professionals-guide-to-health-system-science-1st-edition-
lillrank/

Environmental Software Systems Computer Science for

Environmental Protection Ji■í H■ebí■ek

https://textbookfull.com/product/environmental-software-systems-
computer-science-for-environmental-protection-jiri-hrebicek/

Systems Analysis and Synthesis Bridging Computer

Science and Information Technology 1st Edition Barry
Dwyer

https://textbookfull.com/product/systems-analysis-and-synthesis-
bridging-computer-science-and-information-technology-1st-edition-
barry-dwyer/
GATE 2020 Computer Science and Information Technology
8th Edition Trishna Knowledge Systems

https://textbookfull.com/product/gate-2020-computer-science-and-
information-technology-8th-edition-trishna-knowledge-systems/

Academic English for Computer Science An English for

Specific and Academic Purposes Course for International
students of Computer Science Computer Engineering
Information and Communication Systems Rizopoulou
https://textbookfull.com/product/academic-english-for-computer-
science-an-english-for-specific-and-academic-purposes-course-for-
international-students-of-computer-science-computer-engineering-
information-and-communication-systems-riz/

Classic Computer Science Problems in Java 1st Edition

David Kopec

https://textbookfull.com/product/classic-computer-science-
problems-in-java-1st-edition-david-kopec/

Harmonic Balance Finite Element Method: Applications in

Nonlinear Electromagnetics and Power Systems 1st
Edition Junwei Lu

https://textbookfull.com/product/harmonic-balance-finite-element-
method-applications-in-nonlinear-electromagnetics-and-power-
systems-1st-edition-junwei-lu/

The Beauty of Mathematics in Computer Science 1st

Edition Jun Wu

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-beauty-of-mathematics-in-
computer-science-1st-edition-jun-wu/
Temporal Logics in Computer Science
Finite-State Systems

STÉPHANE DEMRI
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France

VA L E N T I N G O R A N KO
Stockholms Universitet

MART IN LANGE
Universität Kassel, Germany
 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107028364
© Stéphane Demri, Valentin Goranko and Martin Lange 2016

First published 2016

Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-107-02836-4 Hardback
 Contents

1 Introduction page 1
1.1 Temporal Logics and Computer Science: A Brief Overview 1
1.2 Structure and Summary of the Book Content 6
1.3 Using the Book for Teaching or Self-Study 12
PART I MODELS
2 Preliminaries and Background I 17
2.1 Sets and Relations 18
2.2 Some Fundamental Preliminaries 25
3 Transition Systems 35
3.1 Basic Concepts 37
3.2 Reachability 49
3.3 Bisimulation Relations 55
3.4 Bisimilarity 62
3.5 Trace Equivalence 71
3.6 Exercises 75
3.7 Bibliographical Notes 79
PART II LOGICS
4 Preliminaries and Background II 85
4.1 Preliminaries on Modal Logic 85
4.2 Logical Decision Problems 91
4.3 Expressive Power 93
4.4 Deductive Systems 93
5 Basic Modal Logics 100
5.1 The Basic Modal Logic BML 102
5.2 Renaming and Normal Forms 107
5.3 Modal and Bisimulation Equivalence 110
5.4 Model Checking 116
5.5 Satisfiability and the Tree Model Property 123
 5.6 The Basic Tense Logic BTL 131
5.7 Axiomatic Systems 135
5.8 Exercises 141
5.9 Bibliographical Notes 146
6 Linear-Time Temporal Logics 150
6.1 Syntax and Semantics on Linear Models 152
6.2 Logical Decision Problems 159
6.3 The Small Model Property 164
6.4 Decision Procedures 169
6.5 Adding Past-Time Operators 176
6.6 Invariance Properties 182
6.7 Extensions of LTL 185
6.8 An Axiomatic System for LTL 191
6.9 Exercises 196
6.10 Bibliographical Notes 206
7 Branching-Time Temporal Logics 209
7.1 A Hierarchy of Branching-Time Logics 211
7.2 Bisimulation Invariance 228
7.3 Model Checking 233
7.4 Some Fragments and Extensions of CTL∗ 241
7.5 Axiomatic Systems 252
7.6 Exercises 259
7.7 Bibliographical Notes 265
8 The Modal Mu-Calculus 271
8.1 Fixpoint Quantifiers 272
8.2 Fixpoint Iteration 282
8.3 The Structural Complexity of Formulae 289
8.4 Model-Checking Games 303
8.5 Bisimulation Invariance 309
8.6 The Second-Order Nature of Temporal Logics 313
8.7 Variants 315
8.8 Exercises 320
8.9 Bibliographical Notes 324
9 Alternating-Time Temporal Logics 329
9.1 Concurrent Multiagent Transition Systems 330
9.2 Temporal Logics for Concurrent Game Models 337
9.3 Logical Decision Problems 346
9.4 Exercises 352
9.5 Bibliographical Notes 355
PART III PROPERTIES
10 Expressiveness 361
10.1 Embeddings among Linear-Time Logics 363
10.2 Embeddings among Branching-Time Logics 376
10.3 Separation Results 385
10.4 Exercises 409
10.5 Bibliographical Notes 414
11 Computational Complexity 419
11.1 Proving Lower Bounds 421
11.2 Linear-Time Temporal Logics 435
11.3 Branching-Time Temporal Logics 445
11.4 An Overview of Completeness Results 453
11.5 Exercises 457
11.6 Bibliographical Notes 460
PART IV METHODS
12 Frameworks for Decision Procedures 467
12.1 A Brief Introduction to Three Methodologies 468
12.2 The Frameworks Compared 472
13 Tableaux-Based Decision Methods 476
13.1 A Generic Incremental Tableau Construction 479
13.2 Tableaux for LTL 498
13.3 Tableaux for TLR and CTL 514
13.4 Exercises 536
13.5 Bibliographical Notes 540
14 The Automata-Based Approach 543
14.1 Introduction to Nondeterministic Büchi Automata 546
14.2 From LTL Formulae to Automata 552
14.3 Introduction to Alternating Automata on Words 570
14.4 From LTL Formulae to Alternating Büchi Automata 581
14.5 Extensions of LTL 591
14.6 Tree Automata for Branching-Time Logics 598
14.7 Alternating Tree Automata and CTL 606
14.8 Exercises 615
14.9 Bibliographical Notes 621
15 The Game-Theoretic Framework 625
15.1 Parity Games 627
15.2 Constructions for Automata on Infinite Words 647
15.3 Model Checking 659
15.4 Satisfiability Checking 682
15.5 Exercises 705
15.6 Bibliographical Notes 711
References 716
Index 737
 1
Introduction

1.1 Temporal Logics and Computer Science: A Brief Overview 1

1.1.1 Historical Origins of Temporal Reasoning and Logics 1
1.1.2 The Role of Temporal Logics in Computer Science 3
1.1.3 The Influence of Computer Science on the Development of
Temporal Logics 5
1.2 Structure and Summary of the Book Content 6
1.3 Using the Book for Teaching or Self-Study 12

Temporal logics provide a generic logical framework for modelling and reasoning about
time and temporal aspects of the world. While stemming from philosophical considera-
tions and discussions, temporal logics have become over the past 50 years very useful and
important in computer science, and particularly for formal specification, verification and
synthesis of computerised systems of various nature: sequential, concurrent, reactive, dis-
crete, real time, stochastic, etc. This book provides a comprehensive exposition of the most
popular discrete-time temporal logics, used for reasoning about transition systems and com-
putations in them.

1.1 Temporal Logics and Computer Science: A Brief Overview

We begin with a brief historical overview of temporal reasoning and logics and their role
in computer science.

1.1.1 Historical Origins of Temporal Reasoning and Logics

The study of time and temporal reasoning goes back to the antiquity. For instance, some
of Zeno’s famous paradoxical arguments refer to the nature of time and the question of
infinite divisibility of time intervals. Perhaps the earliest scientific reference on temporal
reasoning, however, is Aristotle’s ‘Sea Battle Tomorrow’ argument in the Organon II – On
2 Introduction

Interpretation, Chapter 9, claiming that future contingents, i.e. statements about possible
future events which may or may not occur, such as ‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’,
should not be ascribed definite truth values at the present time. A few decades later the
philosopher Diodorus Cronus from the Megarian school illustrated the problem of future
contingents in his famous Master Argument where he, inter alia, defined ‘possible’ as ‘what
is or will ever be’ and ‘necessary’ as ‘what is and will always be’.
Philosophical discussions on temporality, truth, free will and determinism, and their
relationships continued during the Middle ages. In particular, William of Ockham held
that propositions about the contingent future cannot be known by humans as true or false
because only God knows their truth value now. However, he argued that humans can still
freely choose amongst different possible futures, thus suggesting the idea of a future-
branching model of time with many possible time-lines (histories), truth of propositions
being relativised to a possible actual history. This model of time is now often called Ock-
hamist or actualist. Later, several philosophers and logicians raised and analysed problems
relating temporality with nondeterminism, historical necessity, free will, God’s will and
knowledge, etc., proposing various different solutions. Still, little tangible progress in the
formal study of temporal reasoning occurred until some new ideas emerged in the late 19th
to early 20th century, including the developments of Minkowski’s four-dimensional space
time model and its application to Einstein’s relativity theory, of Reichenbach’s theory of
temporality and tenses in natural language, as well as some informal philosophical stud-
ies of temporal reasoning by C. Peirce, McTaggart, B. Russell, W. Quine, J. Findley, J.
Łukasiewicz and others. However, temporal logic as a formal logical system only emerged
in the early 1950s when the philosopher Arthur Prior set out to analyse and formalise such
arguments, leading him, inter alia, to the invention of (as Prior called it) Tense Logic, of
which he developed and discussed several formal systems. Prior’s seminal work initiated
the modern era of temporal logical reasoning, leading to numerous important applications
not only to philosophy, but also to computer science, artificial intelligence and linguistics.
Prior introduced the following basic temporal modalities:

P ‘It has at some time in the past been the case that …’
F ‘It will at some time in the future be the case that …’
H ‘It has always been the case that …’
G ‘It will always be the case that …’

Put together in a formal logical language they allow complex temporal patterns to be
expressed, for instance:

There is a solstice ∧ there is a lunar eclipse → GP ‘There is a solstice and a lunar eclipse’

means that if there is a solstice and there is a lunar eclipse now then it will always be the
case that there has been a solstice and a lunar eclipse at the same moment of time.
Subsequently, other temporal modalities were introduced, notably Nexttime and the
binary operators Since and Until in Kamp’s (1968) very influential doctoral thesis. The
 1.1 Temporal Logics and Computer Science: A Brief Overview 3

simplest and most common models of time are linear-ordered time flows and Prior’s tem-
poral operators, as well as Since and Until, have natural interpretation in them. The resulting
temporal logics for linear time are quite expressive. A classical expressiveness result, due
to Kamp (1968) states that the temporal logic with Since and Until is as expressive as first-
order logic. The temporal logic with operators for Next-time and Until interpreted on the
time flow of natural numbers, known as the linear-time temporal logic LTL, became since
the late 1970s the most popular temporal logic used in computer science.
Coming back to Prior’s philosophical studies of temporal reasoning: in his analysis of
Diodorus’s Master Argument Prior argued that its fallacy lay in Diodorus’s assumption that
whatever is, or is not, or will be, or will never be, has in the past been necessarily so – thus, in
effect assuming that the future is deterministic. Prior supported Aristotle’s view that ‘while
it is now beyond the power of men or gods to affect the past, there are alternative futures
between which choice is possible’. In order to resolve the problems pointed out by Aristotle
and Diodorus, Prior wanted, inter alia, to capture the logic of historical necessity. His philo-
sophical analysis and the quest for formalisation of the arguments for ‘the incompatibility
of foreknowledge (and fore-truth) and indeterminism’ lead him to consider two formalisa-
tions of temporal logic of branching time, reflecting the ‘Peircean’ and the ‘Ockhamist’ (or,
‘actualist’) views, underlying respectively the ideas behind the branching-time temporal
logics CTL and CTL∗ presented here. For further reading on the history of temporal rea-
soning and logics, see Øhrstrøm and Hasle (1995). In particular, for details on Prior’s views
and motivating analyses, see Prior (1967, Chapter VII) and Øhrstrøm and Hasle (1995,
Chapters 2.6 and 3.2). A broad but concise overview of temporal logics is Goranko and
Galton (2015).

1.1.2 The Role of Temporal Logics in Computer Science

Temporal aspects and phenomena are pervasive in computer and information systems.
These include: scheduling of the execution of programs by an operating system; concurrent
and reactive systems and, in particular, synchronisation of concurrent processes; real-time
processes and systems; hardware verification; temporal databases, etc. Many of these are
related to specification and verification of properties of transition systems and computations
in them. Formally, transition systems are directed graphs consisting of states and transitions
between them. They are used to model sequential and concurrent processes. There can be
different types of transitions (e.g. affected by different types of actions) which we indi-
cate by assigning different labels to them. Thus, more generally, we talk about labelled
transition systems. A state in a transition system may satisfy various properties: it can be
initial, terminal, deadlock, safe or unsafe, etc. One can describe state properties by formu-
lae of a suitable state-description language; on propositional level these are simply atomic
propositions. The set of such propositions that are true at a given state is encoded in the
label of that state, and a transition system where every state is assigned such label will be
called an interpreted transition system. In terms of the semantics of modal logics, transition
4 Introduction

systems are simply Kripke frames, and the labelling of states corresponds to a valuation of
the atomic propositions in such frames, so interpreted transition systems are just Kripke
models. A computation in a transition system is, intuitively, the observable trace of a run –
a sequence of states produced by following the transition relations in the system, viz. the
sequence of the labels of these states. It can be regarded as a record of all observable suc-
cessive intermediate results of the computing process.
Early work implicitly suggesting applications of temporal reasoning to modelling and
analysis of deterministic and stochastic transition systems is the theory of processes and
events in Rescher and Urquhart (1971, Chapter XIV). The use of temporal logic for speci-
fication and verification of important properties of reactive and concurrent systems, such as
safety, liveness and fairness, was first explicitly proposed in Amir Pnueli’s (1977) seminal
paper (see also Abrahamson 1979; Lamport 1980; Ben-Ari et al. 1981, 1983; Clarke and
Emerson 1981). In particular, Pnueli proposed and developed, together with Zohar Manna,
versions of the temporal linear-time logic LTL, in Manna and Pnueli (1979, 1981) as logi-
cal framework for deductive verification of such systems. Other influential early works on
temporal logics of programs and processes include Abrahamson (1979, 1980) and Kröger
(1987).
Since the late 1970s temporal logics have found numerous other applications in com-
puter science. The key for their success and popularity is that temporal logics are syn-
tactically simple and elegant, have natural semantics in interpreted transition systems, are
well expressive for properties of computations and – very importantly – have good com-
putational behaviour. Thus, they provide a very appropriate logical framework for formal
specification and verification of programs and properties of transition systems. Depending
on the type of systems and properties to specify and verify, two major families of temporal
logics have emerged: linear-time and branching-time logics. Manna and Pnueli (1992) is
a comprehensive reference on the early use of (linear time) temporal logics for specifica-
tion of concurrent and reactive systems, and Manna and Pnueli (1995) is its continuation
showing how that can be used to guarantee safety of such systems.
Two major developments, both starting in the 1980s, contributed strongly to the popular-
ity and success of temporal logics in computer science. The first one is the advancement of
model checking as a method for formal verification by Clarke and Emerson (1981), followed
by Clarke et al. (1983, 1986), and independently by Queille and Sifakis (1982a). Introduc-
tions to model checking can be found in Huth and Ryan (2000) and Clarke and Schlingloff
(2001), and for more comprehensive expositions, see Clarke et al. (2000) and Baier and
Katoen (2008). The second major development is the emergence of automata-based meth-
ods for verification, initially advocated in a series of papers by Streett (1982), Sistla, Vardi
and Wolper (1987), Vardi and Wolper (1986a,b) and Emerson and Sistla (1984), and fur-
ther developed in Sistla et al. (1987), Emerson and Jutla (1988), Muller et al. (1988), Streett
and Emerson (1989), Thomas (1990), Emerson and Jutla (1991), Vardi (1991), Vardi and
Wolper (1994), Vardi (1996, 1997), Wolper (2000), Kupferman et al. (2000), Löding and
Thomas (2000), etc. See also Vardi and Wilke (2007), Vardi (2007) and Grädel et al. (2002)
for broader overviews and further references.
 1.1 Temporal Logics and Computer Science: A Brief Overview 5

1.1.3 The Influence of Computer Science on the Development of Temporal Logics

The applications of temporal logics for specification and verification of computer systems
have in turn strongly stimulated the study of their expressiveness and computational com-
plexities and the development of efficient algorithmic methods for solving their basic logical
decision problems.
The first proof systems developed for temporal logics were Hilbert-style axiomatic
systems (see e.g. Rescher and Urquhart 1971; Goldblatt 1992; Reynolds 2001), as well
as tableaux-style calculi and some Gentzen-type systems (see e.g. Fitting 1983; Wolper
1985; Goré 1991; Schwendimann 1998b; Goré 1999). In particular, efficient and intuitively
appealing tableau-based methods for satisfiability testing of temporal formulae were devel-
oped in the early 1980s, by Wolper (1983, 1985) for the linear-time logic LTL, Ben-Ari,
Manna and Pnueli (1981) for the branching-time logic UB and Emerson and Halpern (1982,
1985) for the branching-time logic CTL. The increasing demand coming from the field of
formal verification for efficient algorithmic methods solving verification problems has led
to the subsequent development of new methods, based on automata (see earlier references)
and games (Stirling 1995, 1996; Stevens and Stirling 1998; Lange and Stirling 2000, 2001,
2002; Grädel 2002; Lange 2002a; see also Grädel et al. 2002 for a comprehensive cover-
age and further references). Other methods, such as temporal resolution, have also been
developed recently (see e.g. Fisher 2011).
Whereas traditional systems of logical deduction and tableaux-style calculi can be qual-
ified as direct methods, since they handle temporal formulae directly, the automata-based
and the game-theoretic approaches work by reducing the decision problems for tempo-
ral logics to decision problems about automata and games, respectively. For instance, the
automata-based approach is based on reducing logical to automata-based decision problems
in order to take advantage of known results from automata theory (D’Souza and Shankar
2012). The most standard target problems on automata used in this approach are the lan-
guage nonemptiness problem (checking whether an automaton admits at least one accepting
computation) and the language inclusion problem (checking whether the language accepted
by an automaton A is included in the language accepted by another automaton B). In a pio-
neering work, Richard Büchi (1962) introduced a class of automata on infinite words and
showed that these automata are equivalent in a precise sense to formulae in the monadic
second-order theory (MSO) of the structure (N, <), which eventually resulted in Büchi’s
proof of the decidability of that theory. Later this idea and the result were extended by Rabin
(1969) in his seminal paper to automata on trees and the decidability of the MSO theory of
the infinite binary tree (equivalently, the MSO theory of two successor functions). These
results provide the theoretical foundation of the automata-based decision methods in tem-
poral logics.
Likewise, in the game-theoretic approach, the question of whether a temporal formula
is satisfiable corresponds to the question of whether some designated player has a winning
strategy in an associated satisfiability game. More generally, the existence of winning strate-
gies of a given player in model-checking games and satisfiability-checking games provide
6 Introduction

uniform characterisations of the model checking and the satisfiability-testing problems for
many temporal logics. These game-theoretic characterisations are of particular interest in
the context of program verification.
As we demonstrate in this book, the methods for solving decision problems of temporal
logics, based on automata, tableaux and games are closely related, both conceptually and
technically, while each of them has pros and cons compared to the other. Because of the
conceptual elegance and technical power and convenience, the automata-based methods
have generally been favoured by the researchers in the area of verification and most of
the tools that have been implemented are based on automata. On the other hand, tableau-
based methods for model checking and satisfiability checking of temporal logics have so
far been less developed for practical purposes and less tested for industrial applications, but
are arguably more natural and intuitive from logical perspective, easier for execution by
humans and potentially more flexible and practically efficient, if suitably optimised.

1.2 Structure and Summary of the Book Content

With this book we aim to offer a comprehensive, uniform, technically precise and concep-
tually in-depth exposition of the field, focusing on the intrinsically logical aspects of it and
including both classical and recent results and methods of fundamental importance. The
book has been written with the specific intention to be suitable both as a comprehensive
graduate textbook and as a professional reference on the current state of the art in the field.
For that purpose, it presents an essentially self-contained and rigorous treatment of the
content, with precise definitions, statements and many detailed proofs, as well as numerous
examples and exercises. Many easy or routine proofs are omitted in the main text but are
explicitly left as exercises.
Except for the introductory chapter, we do not make references and credits to specific
results in the main text, but provide such references in the bibliographic notes at the end of
every chapter, where we also mention related topics not treated in the book and provide a
number of additional references.
The book consists of 15 chapters structured in four parts. Here we will give a concise
summary of their contents and will mention a few highlights in each chapter. More detailed
summaries can be found at the beginning of each chapter.

Part I, ‘Models’, presents the basic theory of the abstract models for the temporal logics
studied further, viz. transition systems and computations in them.

Chapter 2, ‘Preliminaries and Background I’, provides some preliminary material that
will be needed further, including basics of sets, binary relations and orders, fixpoint the-
ory, computational complexity and 2-player games on graphs. We do not intend to teach
this material here but rather to recall the most basic definitions, terminology and notation,
mainly for readers’ convenience, as a quick reference.
 1.2 Structure and Summary of the Book Content 7

Chapter 3, ‘Transition Systems’, introduces the basic concepts and facts related to transi-
tion systems, computations and important types of their properties. In particular, we provide
simple algorithms solving the basic reachability problems in transition systems. Besides, we
discuss transition systems as abstract models of the behaviour of real systems with respect
to transitions between states. A real transition system can be modelled by different abstract
transition systems and at different levels of detail. The chapter addresses the important ques-
tion of when two transition systems should be considered behaviourally equivalent, that is,
modelling essentially equivalent real transition systems. That question leads to the funda-
mental notion of bisimulation, the main versions of which are introduced and studied in the
chapter. In particular, we introduce bisimulation games and relate the existence of winning
strategies for one of the players in such games to the existence of bisimulation between the
transitions systems on which the game is played. This is the first place in the book where
games are considered and they will be one of its main themes.

Part II, ‘Logics’, is the core part of the book, presenting and studying the most impor-
tant temporal logics used for specification and verification of discrete transition systems
and many variations of them. In a relatively uniform manner we introduce the syntax and
semantics of each of these logical systems, discuss and illustrate their use for formal spec-
ification of properties of transition systems and computations, study their expressiveness
and the basic logical decision problems (model checking, satisfiability and validity test-
ing) for them, relate them to standard verification tasks and present algorithms for solving
some of these decision problems. The expositions are written from the primary perspec-
tive of computer science rather than from the perspective of pure modal and temporal log-
ics. Thus, we have emphasised the more relevant topics associated with transition systems,
such as expressiveness, bisimulation invariance, model checking, small model property and
deciding satisfiability, while other fundamental logical topics, such as deductive systems
and proof theory (except for short sections on axiomatic systems and derivations in them),
model theory, correspondence theory, algebraic semantics, duality theory, etc. are almost
left untouched here, but references are given in the bibliographic notes to other books where
they are treated in depth.
Following is a brief summary of the chapters in this part.

Chapter 4, ‘Preliminaries and Background II’, provides some common background,

terminology and notation related to logical decision problems and deductive systems. It
assumes some knowledge of propositional logic, upon which all temporal logics studied
here are built.

Chapter 5, ‘Basic Modal Logics’, is a concise introduction to the multimodal logic BML,
regarded here as the basic temporal logic for reasoning about interpreted transition systems.
Highlights on that chapter include: invariance of BML formulae under bisimulations and
characterising the existence of bounded bisimulations between interpreted transition sys-
tems with BML formulae; study of the logical decision problems of model checking and
8 Introduction

satisfiability testing for BML, model-checking games and an axiomatic system for BML.
Inter alia, we provide a simple optimal algorithm for testing satisfiability in BML that runs
in polynomial space. These are further adapted to the extension BTL of BML with past-time
operators. This chapter can also be viewed as a stepping stone towards the more expressive
and interesting branching-time temporal logics CTL, CTL∗ and the modal μ-calculus, pre-
sented further.

Chapter 6, ‘Linear-Time Temporal Logics’, is devoted to temporal logics for linear-time

models, representing single computations (i.e. infinite sequences of states generated by the
transition relations), rather than entire transition systems. Here we present and study in
detail the linear-time temporal logic LTL. We focus again on the logical and computational
properties of this logic, viz. its semantics, expressiveness, model checking and testing of
satisfiability and validity. We provide conceptually simple decision procedures for satis-
fiability testing and model-checking problems for LTL based on the so-called ultimately
periodic model property and discuss how these can be refined and transformed into optimal
decision procedures. (Alternative decision methods, essentially using the same property but
based on tableaux and automata, are developed further, respectively in Chapters 13 and 14.)
We also present and discuss here some of the most interesting extensions of LTL over linear
models: with past-time operators, automata-based operators, propositional quantification,
etc. At the end, we provide a complete axiomatic system for LTL and illustrate it with some
derivations.

Chapter 7, ‘Branching-Time Temporal Logics’, introduces and studies a variety of the

most important and expressive branching-time temporal logics extending BML with global
temporal operators capturing different reachability properties and with quantifiers over
paths/computations. These include, inter alia, the temporal logic of reachability TLR, the
more expressive computation tree logic CTL, and the full computation tree logic CTL∗
combining CTL with LTL, plus several fragments, variations and extensions of it. We estab-
lish the tree-model property for CTL∗ , extend the bisimulation invariance result to it and
discuss the expressiveness of the family of branching-time logics. In particular, we show
that formulae of TLR suffice to characterise every finite interpreted transition system up to
bisimulation equivalence. We then study the logical decision problems for CTL and CTL∗ .
We present the linear-time labelling algorithm for model checking CTL formulae and show
how model checking in CTL∗ can be reduced to repeated model checking of LTL formulae.
Lastly, we briefly present complete axiomatic systems for TLR and CTL and illustrate them
with some derivations.

Chapter 8, ‘The Modal Mu-Calculus’, presents the most expressive of all temporal logics
studied in this book. The modal μ-calculus Lμ extends BML with the fundamental syntac-
tic construct of a least fixpoint operator and its dual, the greatest fixpoint operator. Using
these, all previously studied temporal operators in the linear and branching-time logics can
be defined simply and elegantly. The chapter provides a detailed and technically involved
 1.2 Structure and Summary of the Book Content 9

exposition of the key syntactic and semantic concepts of the modal μ-calculus, including
the technical machinery needed to understand and evaluate its formulae, viz. approximants,
signatures and games. We present the embedding of all previously studied (single-action)
temporal logics, including CTL∗ , into the μ-calculus, as well as related topics such as modal
equation systems, model-checking games and results about structural complexity of formu-
lae. The chapter also offers a comparison with other logical formalisms, such as monadic
second-order logic and linear-time μ-calculus.

Chapter 9, ‘Alternating-Time Temporal Logics’, introduces concurrent game structures

as multiagent generalisation of the transition systems considered so far and the respective
multiagent extensions of the branching-time logics, known as alternating-time temporal
logics, which enable strategic reasoning in open and multiagent transition systems and have
recently been gaining increasing popularity. Formulae in the alternating-time temporal log-
ics can quantify over strategies of agents and over all computations consistent with a given
collective strategy of a coalition of agents, which is a refinement of the path quantifica-
tion in CTL∗ , thus enabling the expression of properties of the type ‘the group of agents
C has a collective strategy to achieve a given (LTL-definable) temporal objective on all
computations consistent with that strategy’. Following the general structure of the previ-
ous chapters, we present the syntax and semantics of the multiagent analogues ATL and
ATL∗ of the branching-time logics CTL and CTL∗ , discuss their expressiveness and study
their logical decision problems. In particular, we show that the linear-time labelling algo-
rithm for model checking CTL extends smoothly to ATL. We also generalise the notion of
bisimulation to alternating bisimulation and extend the bisimulation invariance property to
ATL. This chapter is relatively independent from the rest of the book, as we do not study
alternating-time temporal logics further, but it provides sufficient material for their further
study.

Part III, ‘Properties’, is dedicated to two fundamental generic questions about temporal
logics: their expressiveness and the computational complexity of their main logical decision
problems. We provide a uniform treatment by proposing a synthetic and unified approach
to both questions. These topics are also discussed in the rest of the book, but in a less
systematic way. A summary of Part III follows.

Chapter 10, ‘Expressiveness’, provides an in-depth study of the relationships and com-
parisons between the different temporal logics introduced in Part II with respect to the
temporal properties of interpreted transition systems that can, or cannot, be expressed by
formulae in a given particular logic. A way to address such questions is to look at the entire
spectrum of all temporal logics. We can naturally compare the expressiveness of two logics
by asking whether every property that is formalisable in one of them can also be formalised
in the other. This yields a preorder on all temporal logics of the same kind, i.e. with seman-
tics based on the same class of models. A temporal formula can be identified with the class
of (rooted) interpreted transition systems in which that formula is valid. Thus, a formula of
10 Introduction

one logic being expressible by a formula in another logic simply amounts to the two formu-
lae being equivalent in the usual logical sense, i.e. being valid in the same class of models.
The structure of this chapter reflects the two main kinds of results that are presented
there. The first two sections contain positive results of expressive inclusions, by means of
translations from one logic to another, where the two different families of logics – for linear
time and for branching time – are treated in separate sections. For instance, we show that
all the different major extensions of LTL introduced earlier – with automata-based oper-
ators (ETL), with propositional quantification (QLTL), the linear μ-calculus LTμ and the
industrial standard Property Specification Language (PSL) – have the same expressiveness.
With regards to branching-time logics, we present, for instance, the embedding of CTL∗
into Lμ . The last part of Chapter 10 presents negative expressiveness results of the kind that
some properties in one logic are not expressible in another. For instance, we show that LTL
is expressively weaker than its extensions mentioned earlier, pinpoint the expressive power
of CTL by separating it from the other branching-time logics and prove that higher degree
of fixpoint alternation in Lμ yields greater expressiveness.

Chapter 11, ‘Computational Complexity’, is devoted to analysing the computational

complexity of the main decision problems for temporal logics, which is of great impor-
tance for the assessment of their practical suitability as tools for formal verification. The
chapter proposes a unifying picture of the computational complexity of most of the tempo-
ral logics studied here, by characterising the complexities of their satisfiability and model-
checking problems. Complexity upper bounds for these problems are obtained by providing
respective decision procedures in the other chapters, by using either concretely described
algorithms presented there or by developing general decision methods such as semantic
tableaux, automata or games. These upper bounds are revisited in that chapter and matching
complexity lower bounds are established there, thus establishing the optimal complexities
of the respective decision problems. In particular, the chapter presents a hierarchy class
of problems, namely tiling problems and their variants involving games, thus providing a
uniform and powerful framework for obtaining lower bound complexity results.

In the last part, Part IV, ‘Methods’, we present three fundamental methods for solving
decision problems for temporal logics, namely: the tableaux-based, the games-based and
the automata-based methods, by devoting a chapter to each of these. These technical frame-
works are closely related and we discuss briefly their relationships and compare their pros
and cons in the brief opening Chapter 12, ‘Frameworks for Decision Procedures’, pro-
vided to help the understanding of the bridges between these methods. Here is a brief sum-
mary of the other chapters in this part.

Chapter 13, ‘Tableaux-Based Decision Methods’, provides a systematic and uniform

exposition of (a suitable adaptation) of the method of semantic tableaux, for constructive
satisfiability testing and model building for formulae of the logics BML, LTL, TLR and
CTL, by organising a systematic search for a satisfying model of the input set of formulae.
 1.2 Structure and Summary of the Book Content 11

We begin the chapter by sketching a generic tableaux construction for testing satisfiability,
illustrated with the basic modal logic BML. This construction builds on, and optimises
further, a blend of ideas going back to the incremental tableaux method introduced for
the propositional dynamic logic PDL in Pratt (1979, 1980) and further developed for LTL
by Wolper (1983, 1985) and for CTL by Emerson and Halpern (1985). That version of the
tableaux method differs essentially from the more traditional approach to tableaux-based
calculi presented in Fitting (1983) and Goré (1999), because of the need for special treat-
ment of the fixpoint definable temporal operators. Following the generic construction we
develop and illustrate with running examples the tableau constructions for the logics LTL
and CTL and present in detail proofs of their termination, soundness and completeness.
The most distinctive features of the tableaux building methodology presented in Chapter 13
are uniformity, conceptual simplicity and flexibility. That methodology, however, does not
extend readily to the more expressive logics CTL∗ and the Lμ , for which alternative deci-
sion methods, using automata and games, have been developed. Such alternative methods
are developed, also for LTL and CTL, respectively in the two subsequent chapters.

In Chapter 14, ‘The Automata-Based Approach’, we present in detail that approach for
a variety of temporal logics and classes of automata and compare the advantages and the
drawbacks of the different constructions. The automata-based approach consists in reduc-
ing logical decision problems to decision problems about automata and their languages and
takes advantage of known results and decision procedures from automata theory. Here tem-
poral logical formulae are represented by automata and their models are considered to be
of uniform nature, viz. infinite words (representing infinite computations, for linear-time
logics) or trees (representing tree-unfoldings of transition systems, for the branching-time
logics). Thus, the question of truth of a temporal formula in a model is equivalently replaced
by the question of acceptance of that model by the automaton representing the formula.
Respectively, the satisfiability problem for the formula is reduced to the language nonempti-
ness problem of its representing automaton. Based on this generic transformation, in this
chapter we develop the automata-based approach for solving logical decision problems for
several logics, mainly LTL and its variants (ETL, PSL) as well as the branching-time tem-
poral logic CTL (and its fragment BML) for which we present several reductions from
formulae to automata. To do so, we make use of notions from previous chapters but also we
provide some original reductions, e.g. using alternating automata, thus also illustrating the
diversity of automata-based methods. Moreover, we present several methods for LTL-like
logics, as well as analogous methods for CTL, as a generalisation of some of the methods for
LTL. The chapter does not deal with CTL∗ and with modal μ-calculus. Instead, we provide
decision methods based on verification games for those two logics in the next Chapter 15.

Chapter 15, ‘The Game-Theoretic Framework’, develops the approach to the main
decision problems for temporal logics based on special logical games. We present model-
checking games and satisfiability-checking games and use them to characterise the respec-
tive decision problems for temporal logics. These games are defined by means of an arena
12 Introduction

Figure 1.1 Dependencies between the different parts and chapters.

on which two players perform plays. Then we relate the model-checking problem – i.e. the
question of whether a given state of an interpreted transition system satisfies a temporal
formula – to the existence of a winning strategy for the proponent player in the respective
model-checking game. Likewise, the satisfiability problem corresponds to the question of
whether the proponent player has a winning strategy in the respective satisfiability game.
The chapter is divided into four sections. The first one builds the general game-theoretic
framework and concludes with the Main Reduction Theorem which shows how to obtain
reductions to parity games. In the next section we provide the necessary automata-theoretic
constructions for such reductions. The last two sections contain the actual definitions of
games for temporal logics.

1.3 Using the Book for Teaching or Self-Study

The book can be used for a variety of introductory and advanced courses. An introductory
course could cover most of Parts I and II (perhaps, excluding the chapter on the modal
μ-calculus and more advanced topics from the previous chapters). More advanced courses
could add quite independently parts from the chapters in Parts III and IV, see the depen-
dencies between the chapters in the book illustrated in Figure 1.1. The leftmost column
indicates the parts, and each chapter is identified by a keyword and by its number. Arrows
specify dependencies between the parts/chapters where a normal arrow indicates that the
chapter at the arrow’s source should be read before the chapter at the arrow’s target. A
dashed arrow means that it is helpful to read it first. The preliminary chapters 2 and 4 are
not represented in the figure; their content may be needed in the entire book.

Acknowledgements
First of all, we are indebted to many researchers who have contributed over the years to the
development of the area of temporal logics in computer science and have thus produced
 1.3 Using the Book for Teaching or Self-Study 13

much of the content of the book. We have provided detailed references at the end of each
chapter, but for such a huge and dynamic field of research omissions are inevitable, so we
also apologise here en bloc for all – certainly unintended, but nevertheless unfortunate –
omissions to give due credit.
We are grateful to many colleagues who have contributed in one way or another to our
work on the book, from proofreading preliminary parts to discussing its content or related
topics over the years. In particular, we thank Florian Bruse, Paul Gastin, Markus Latte,
Omer Mermelstein, Philippe Schnoebelen and Steen Vester. We also thank Ivan Danov for
the help with the design of the book’s website.
Valentin Goranko and Martin Lange have both been supported by visiting professorships
from the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan in France. Much of the work that has gone
into this book was done during these visits.
Special thanks are due to the representatives of Cambridge University Press: David
Tranah and Clare Dennison for their infinite patience and understanding during the mul-
tiple delays and extensions of the target dates for the completion of this book, as well as
their continual help and support.
Last but not least, we wish to thank our families for the understanding and moral support
during the many years of work on the book. In addition, Valentin is particularly grateful to
his partner Nina for the valuable technical support with the preparation of many figures.
Part I
Models
 2
Preliminaries and Background I

2.1 Sets and Relations 18

2.1.1 Operations on Sets 18
2.1.2 Binary Relations 18
2.1.3 Partial and Linear Orders 21
2.2 Some Fundamental Preliminaries 25
2.2.1 Fixpoints in Powerset Lattices 25
2.2.2 Complexity Classes 26
2.2.3 Two-Player Games 28

This chapter presents preliminaries on set-theoretical notions, binary relations, linear order-
ings, fixpoint theory and computational complexity classes. Mainly, we provide notations
for standard notions rather than giving a thorough introduction to these notions. More def-
initions are provided in the book, and we invite the reader to consult textbooks on these
subjects for further information. For instance, in Moschovakis (2006) any reader can find
material about set-theoretical notions, ordinals or fixpoints far beyond what is sketched in
this chapter. Still, we implicitly assume that the reader has basic set-theoretic background.
As stated already in Chapter 1, we do not intend to teach this material here but rather to
recall the most basic notions, terminology and notation. The current chapter is included for
the convenience of the reader as a quick reference.

Structure of the chapter. The chapter is divided into two sections. The first section con-
tains standard material on sets and relations. Section 2.1.1 presents standard set-theoretical
notions that are used throughout the book. Binary relations are ubiquitous structures in this
volume, and Section 2.1.2 is dedicated to standard definitions about them. In Section 2.1.3,
we provide basic definitions about partial and linear orders.
The second section contains material that is more specialised and needed for the devel-
opment of a theory of and algorithms for temporal logics. Section 2.2.1 presents the basics
of fixpoint theory; Chapter 8, which deals with the modal μ-calculus with fixpoint opera-
tors, uses some of the results stated herein. In Section 2.2.2, we recall standard complex-
ity classes defined via deterministic and nondeterministic time- and space-bounded Turing
machines. Other classes, in particular involving alternating Turing machines, are discussed
18 Preliminaries and Background I

in Chapter 11. Section 2.2.3 provides an introduction to 2-player zero-sum games of per-
fect information that are useful, for instance, in defining the game-theoretic approach to
temporal logics.

2.1 Sets and Relations

2.1.1 Operations on Sets
Throughout this book we use the standard notations for set-theoretical notions: membership
(∈), inclusion (⊆), strict (or proper) inclusion (⊂), union of sets (∪), intersection of sets (∩),
difference of sets (\) and product of sets (×). The empty set is denoted by ∅.
By X n we denote the product X × · · · × X with n factors. A disjoint union of the sets
X and Y is the set X Y = (X × {1}) ∪ (Y × {2}). The union and the intersection of an
 
indexed family (Xi )i∈I of sets are denoted by i∈I Xi and i∈I Xi , respectively.
N, Z, R and Q denote the sets of all natural numbers, integers, real numbers and rational
numbers, respectively. By P (X ) we denote the powerset of the set X, which is the family
of all subsets of X. By card(X ) we denote the cardinality of the set X.
A family (Xi )i∈I of subsets of Y is

r a cover of Y iff i∈I Xi = Y and
r a partition of Y iff it is a cover of Y such that for all i, j ∈ I, we have that i = j implies
Xi ∩ X j = ∅.

2.1.2 Binary Relations

A binary relation between sets X and Y is any subset of X × Y . In particular, a binary
relation in a set X is any subset of X 2 = X × X.
Let R ⊆ X × Y . Some notation: if (x, y) ∈ R, we will also write xRy or R(x, y) and say
that x is R-related to y.
Given sets X and Y and R ⊆ X × Y we define the domain of R,

dom(R) := {x ∈ X | there is y ∈ Y such that (xRy)},

and the range of R

ran(R) := {y ∈ Y | there is x ∈ X such that (xRy)}.

We recall some special relations on a set X:

r the empty relation ∅,
r the equality relation (also known as the identity relation or the diagonal relation):
EX := {(x, x) | x ∈ X} and
r the universal relation X 2 .

Since binary relations are sets themselves, all Boolean operations ∪, ∩ and \ apply to
them, too. Also, the complement of a relation R ⊆ X × Y is defined as R := (X × Y ) \ R.
 2.1 Sets and Relations 19

Note that we can always assume that two relations are defined between the same sets,
because if R1 ⊆ X1 × Y1 and R2 ⊆ X2 × Y2 , we can assume that R1 ⊆ (X1 ∪ X2 ) × (Y1 ∪ Y2 )
and R2 ⊆ (X1 ∪ X2 ) × (Y1 ∪ Y2 ).

Inverse and Composition

Let R ⊆ X × Y . The inverse of R is the relation R−1 ⊆ Y × X defined as
R−1 := {(y, x) | (y, x) ∈ R}.
Thus, we have xRy iff yR−1 x.
Let R ⊆ X × Y and S ⊆ Y × Z. The composition of R and S is the binary relation R ◦
S ⊆ X × Z defined by
R ◦ S := {(x, z) | there is y ∈ Y such that (xRy and ySz)}.
In particular, when R ⊆ X 2 , then R ◦ R is defined, and it is denoted by R2 .
The composition of binary relations is associative, i.e. (R ◦ S) ◦ T = R ◦ (S ◦ T ). How-
ever, the composition of binary relations is generally not commutative.
For any binary relations R, S, we have (R ◦ S)−1 = S−1 ◦ R−1 .

Some Special Binary Relations

A binary relation R ⊆ X is called
2

r reflexive if, for all x ∈ X, we have (x, x) ∈ R;

r irreflexive if, for all x ∈ X, we have (x, x) ∈ R;
r serial, or total, if, for all x ∈ X, there is y ∈ X such that (x, y) ∈ R;
r functional or deterministic if, for all x ∈ X, there is a unique y ∈ X such that (x, y) ∈ R;
r symmetric if, for all x, y ∈ X, we have (x, y) ∈ R iff (y, x) ∈ R;
r antisymmetric if, for all x, y ∈ X, we have that if (x, y) ∈ R and (y, x) ∈ R, then x = y;
r connected if, for all x, y ∈ X, either (x, y) ∈ R or (y, x) ∈ R;
r transitive if, for all x, y, z ∈ X, if (x, y) ∈ R and (y, z) ∈ R, then (x, z) ∈ R;
r equivalence relation if it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive;
r pre-order (or quasi-order) if it is reflexive and transitive;
r partial order if it is reflexive, transitive and antisymmetric, i.e. an antisymmetric
preorder;
r strict partial order, if it is irreflexive and transitive;
r linear order (or total order) if it is a connected partial order;
r strict linear (or total) order, if it is a connected strict partial order.

Example 2.1.1.
1. The divisibility relation in Z \ {0} and the relation ‘not longer than’ in the set of English
words are pre-orders, but not partial orders.
2. The divisibility relation in N \ {0} and the relation ⊆ in any power set P (X ) are partial
orders, but not linear orders, unless X has at most one element.
3. The relation ≤ in any of N, Z, Q, R is a linear order.
4. The relation < in any of N, Z, Q, R is a strict linear order.
20 Preliminaries and Background I

Many of the special binary relations listed can be characterised in a purely relational
language, without referring to the elements of their domains and ranges. For any set X and
binary relation R ⊆ X 2 , the following hold:

1. R is reflexive iff EX ⊆ R.
2. R is symmetric iff R−1 ⊆ R iff R−1 = R.
3. R is antisymmetric iff R−1 ∩ R ⊆ EX .
4. R is connected iff R ∪ R−1 = X 2 .
5. R is transitive iff R2 ⊆ R.

The graph of a function (mapping) f : X → Y is the binary relation Gf ⊆ X × Y defined

by Gf := {(x, f(x)) | x ∈ X}.
A relation R ⊆ X × Y is functional iff it is the graph of a function from X to Y .

Closure Operations
Recall that R denotes the binary relation obtained from the composition R ◦ R. More gen-
2

erally, let us define Ri for all i ∈ N, where R is a binary relation in X × X, as follows:

r R0 := EX , i.e. R0 is the diagonal relation on X and
r Ri+1 := (Ri ◦ R) for all i ∈ N.

We define the transitive closure of the binary relation R as follows:

∞

R+ := Ri .
i=1

We also define the reflexive and transitive closure R∗ of R as

∞

∗
R := Ri = R0 ∪ R+ .
i=0

It is easy to show that, indeed, R is transitive, while R∗ is reflexive and transitive.

+

Section 3.2 contains generalisations of this definition by considering families of binary

relations, as well as other parameters.

Equivalence Relations
Recall that an equivalence relation in a set X is a reflexive, symmetric and transitive relation
in X. For instance, the relations of equality (=) and congruence modulo n (≡n ) in Z are
equivalence relations. (Recall: m ≡n m for m, m ∈ Z iff n divides m − m .)
Let R ⊆ X 2 be an equivalence relation and x ∈ X. The subset of X: [x]R := {y ∈ X | xRy}
is called the equivalence class or the cluster of x generated by R.
For every equivalence relation R in a set X and x, y ∈ X the following hold:

1. x ∈ [x]R .
2. x ∈ [y]R implies [x]R = [y]R .
3. x ∈ [y]R implies [x]R ∩ [y]R = ∅.
 2.1 Sets and Relations 21

Let R ⊆ X 2 be an equivalence relation. The set X/R := {[x]R | x ∈ X} is called the

quotient-set of X generated by R.
The element [x]R , also denoted by x/R , is called the quotient-element of x generated
by R. The mapping ηR : X → XR defined by ηR (x) := x/R is called the canonical mapping
of X onto X/R .
Note that the canonical mapping ηR is surjective, i.e. for every y ∈ XR , there is some
x ∈ X such that ηR (x) = y.
Let f : X → Y . Then the following three statements hold:

1. The binary relation f̃ in X defined by

xf̃y iff f(x) = f(y)

is an equivalence relation in X, called the kernel equivalence of f.

2. The mapping g : X/f̃ −→ Y defined by

g(x/f̃ ) := f(x)

is a well-defined injection, such that f = gηf̃ .

To see this, let x/f̃ = y/f̃ . Then xf̃y, hence f(x) = f(y), i.e. g(x/f̃ ) = g(y/f̃ ), so g is
well defined. Conversely, if g(x/f̃ ) = g(y/f̃ ), then f(x) = f(y), i.e. xf̃y, hence x/f̃ = y/f̃ ,
so g is an injection. Finally, (gηf̃ )(x) = g(ηf̃ (x)) = g(x/f̃ ) = f(x).
3. Moreover, if f is surjective, then g is bijective. This follows immediately from the pre-
vious point.

These statements show, inter alia, that every mapping can be represented as a composi-
tion of a surjective mapping followed by an injective mapping.

Partitions
A partition of a set X is any family P of nonempty and pairwise disjoint subsets of X, the
union of which is X.
For every equivalence relation R ⊆ X 2 , the quotient-set {[x]R | x ∈ X} is a partition of
X.
If P is a partition of a set X, then the relation ∼P ⊆ X 2 defined by

x ∼P y iff x and y belong to the same member of P

is an equivalence relation in X. Thus, equivalence relations in X and partitions of X are two

faces of the same coin.

2.1.3 Partial and Linear Orders

Pre-Orders and Partial Orders
Recall that a pre-order is a reflexive and transitive relation, while a partial order is an anti-
symmetric pre-order. We consider a typical application of the quotient construction. Let R
be a pre-order in X. Then the following hold:
22 Preliminaries and Background I

1. The relation ∼ in X defined by

x ∼ y iff xRy and yRx

is an equivalence relation in X.
2. The relation R̃ in X/∼ , defined by

x/∼ R̃ y/∼ iff xRy,

is a well-defined partial order in X (called the partial order induced by R).

Let ≤ be a (fixed) partial order in the set X. Then X is called a partially ordered set,
abbreviated as poset. We will use standard notation, in particular x ≥ y for y ≤ x; x < y for
x ≤ y and x = y; and x > y for y < x.
Note that every subset Y of a poset X is a poset with respect to the restriction of the
partial order in X to Y .

Extremal Elements
Let X be a poset and Y ⊆ X. A lower (resp. upper) bound for Y in X is any x ∈ X such
that x ≤ y (resp. x ≥ y) for every y ∈ Y . The least of all upper bounds of Y , if it exists, is
also called the supremum of Y ; the greatest of all lower bounds of Y , if it exists, is called
the infimum of Y .
If a lower (resp. upper) bound of Y belongs to Y , it is called a least (resp. greatest)
element of Y .
Note the following:
r Neither infimum nor supremum of Y need to exist, but if one exists, it must be unique.
r If a least (greatest) element of Y exists, it is the infimum (supremum) of Y and therefore
is unique.
r However, the infimum (supremum) of Y need not belong to Y and therefore need not be
a least (resp. greatest) element of it.

An element x ∈ Y is called minimal in Y if there is no element of Y strictly less than x,

i.e. for every y ∈ Y , if y ≤ x, then x = y. It is called maximal in Y if there is no element of
Y strictly greater than x, i.e. for every y ∈ Y , if y ≥ x, then x = y.
Note that the least (resp. greatest) element of Y , if it exists, is minimal (resp. maximal).

Example 2.1.2. The poset N with respect to divisibility has a least element, viz. 1, but no
maximal (hence no greatest) elements.
However, the poset {2, 3, 4, . . .} has no least element with respect to divisibility, while
it has infinitely many minimal elements, viz. all primes.

Trees
A tree is defined as a pair Tr = (X, R), where X is a nonempty set of nodes and R is a
binary relation on X such that there is a designated element r of X (the root) such that
 2.1 Sets and Relations 23

Figure 2.1 A tree with 12 branches.

R−1 (r) = ∅, R∗ (r) = X (i.e. every element of X is reachable by an R-path from r) and for
every x ∈ X \ {r}, R−1 (x) is a singleton set.
If (x, x ) ∈ R, then we say that x is the parent of x and x is a child of x. If (x, x ) ∈ R+ ,
then we say that x is an ancestor of x . The elements of X are called the nodes of the tree
Tr = (X, R).
A branch Br is a subset of X such that the restriction of (X, R) to Br, i.e. (Br, R ∩ Br ×
Br), is a total order and that for any proper extension Br ⊂ Y , (Y, R ∩ Y × Y ) is not a total
order. Depending on the ‘order type’ of (Br, R ∩ Br × Br), a branch can be represented by a
maximal sequence x0 , x1 , . . . such that x0 = r, and for every i ≥ 1, (xi , xi+1 ) ∈ R. Figure 2.1
contains a tree with 12 branches.
The level of x ∈ X, denoted by |x|, is the distance from the root, i.e. the number of R-
transitions from the root to x. In particular, |r| = 0. Equivalently, |x| = n iff there is a branch
Br = x0 , x1 , . . . , xn , . . . such that x = xn . The nodes x of X such that R(x) = ∅ are called
the leaves.
A tree Tr = (X, R) over N is a tree such that X is a subset of N∗ (set of finite sequences
of natural numbers), and if x · i ∈ X, where x ∈ N∗ and i ∈ N, then (x, x · i) ∈ R and
x · (i − 1) ∈ X if i > 1.
Let  be a (finite) alphabet. A -labelled tree is a pair (Tr, f) such that Tr = (X, R)
is a tree and f : X →  is a map. We often refer to f as a labelled tree, leaving its domain
implicit.

Well-Ordered Sets
An ascending (resp. strictly ascending) chain in a poset (X, ≤) is any, finite or infinite,
sequence x1 ≤ x2 ≤ . . . (resp. x1 < x2 < . . .) of elements of X. A descending (resp. strictly
descending) chain is defined analogously.
A poset is called well founded if it contains no infinite strictly descending chains.
24 Preliminaries and Background I

Every finite poset is well founded. Similarly, the linearly ordered set (N, <) is well
founded. The poset (P (X ), ⊆), where X is any infinite set, is not well founded.
A well-founded linear order is called well-order (or complete order).

Example 2.1.3. (N, ≤) is a well-order, while (Z, ≤), (Q, ≤) and (R, ≤) are not. The lex-
icographic order in N2 defined by (x1 , y1 ) ≤ (x2 , y2 ) iff x1 < x2 or (x1 = x2 and y1 ≤ y2 )
is a well-order in N2 .

A poset (X, <) is well founded iff every nonempty subset of X has a minimal element.
In particular, (X, <) is a well-order iff every nonempty subset of X has a least element.

Theorem 2.1.4. Let (X, ≤) be a well-founded set and Y ⊆ X be such that for every x ∈ X,
if all elements of X less than x belong to Y , then x itself belongs to Y . Then Y = X. 
Proof. Assume the contrary, i.e. X \ Y = ∅. Then X \ Y has a minimal element x. Then
all elements of X less than x belong to Y , hence x must belong to Y which is a
contradiction. 

Order Types and Ordinal Numbers

Two ordered sets (X, ≤) and (Y, ≤ ) have the same order type when the sets are order
isomorphic. This means that there is a bijection f : X → Y such that
r for all x, y ∈ X, x ≤ y implies f(x) ≤ f(y) and
r for all x , y ∈ Y , x ≤ y implies f−1 (x ) ≤ f−1 (y ).

Ordinals are defined as equivalence classes of isomorphic well-ordered sets; so, when
(X, ≤) is a well-ordered set, its order type can be understood as the unique ordinal isomor-
phic to (X, ≤); see the following basics on ordinals (see also Rosenstein 1982; Moschovakis
2006). Ordinals can be defined alternatively by considering a well-ordered set for each ordi-
nal that canonically represents the equivalence class of well-ordered sets corresponding to
the ordinal. So, the ordinals can be more conveniently defined inductively by the following:
r The empty set (in that context, usually written 0) is an ordinal.
r If α is an ordinal, then α ∪ {α} (in that context, usually written α + 1) is an ordinal.

r If X is a set of ordinals, then α∈X α is an ordinal.

The ordering is defined by β < α iff β ∈ α. An ordinal α is a successor ordinal iff there
exists an ordinal β such that α = β + 1. An ordinal which is not 0 or a successor ordinal is
a limit ordinal. The first limit ordinal is written ω.
Addition, multiplication and exponentiation of ordinals can be defined inductively. Here
is the definition for addition:
r α + 0 = α,
r α + (β + 1) = (α + β ) + 1 and
r α + β = sup{α + γ : γ < β}, where β is a limit ordinal. Note that here, sup corresponds
to set union. Limit ordinals are sometimes denoted by κ.
 2.2 Some Fundamental Preliminaries 25

Multiplication and exponentiation are defined similarly. The principle behind the definition
of addition is transfinite induction, which is an extension of induction to well-ordered sets.
In a nutshell, let p(α) be a property defined for all ordinals α. Suppose that if p(β ) for all
the ordinals β < α, then p(α) holds true. Transfinite induction guarantees that the property
p(α) is true for all the ordinals α. Such a principle can also be used to define operations
on ordinals, as done for addition, for example. Indeed, the class of ordinals is known to be
well ordered, and therefore Theorem 2.1.4 applies to it. In particular, any nonempty set of
ordinals has a least element. Usually, proving p(α) for all α can be divided into three cases:
(1) prove that p(0) holds; (2) prove that for all ordinals α, if p(α) holds, then p(α + 1)
holds; (3) prove that for limit ordinal κ, if, for all α < κ, we have p(α) holds, then p(κ )
holds. Similar cases appear for defining objects/sets/operations indexed by ordinals.
An ordinal that cannot be put in one-to-one correspondence with any smaller ordinal is
called a cardinal. Furthermore, assuming the Axiom of Choice, every set X can be put in a
one-to-one correspondence with an ordinal. The least ordinal for which there is a one-to-one
correspondence with X is a cardinal, called the cardinality of X and denoted card(X ).

2.2 Some Fundamental Preliminaries

2.2.1 Fixpoints in Powerset Lattices
Given a set X, a mapping F : P (X ) → P (X ) is called an operator on X. An operator F on
X can be iterated upwards α times, denoted F α , for any ordinal α. The upwards iteration
F α is defined by transfinite induction on α as follows (Y ⊆ X):
r F 0 (Y ) := Y ,
r F α+1 (Y ) := F (F α (Y )) and

r F α (Y ) = β<α F β (Y ) for limit ordinals α.

Likewise, F can be iterated downwards α times, denoted Fα , for any ordinal α, and the
iteration Fα is defined by transfinite induction on α as follows:
r F0 (Y ) := Y ,
r Fα+1 (Y ) := F (Fα (Y )) and

r Fα (Y ) = β<α Fβ (Y ) for limit ordinals α.

Definition 2.2.1. An operator F : P (X ) → P (X ) is monotone if, for all Y1 , Y2 ⊆ X, if

Y1 ⊆ Y2 then F (Y1 ) ⊆ F (Y2 ). ∇

Definition 2.2.2. Given an operator F : P (X ) → P (X ), a set Y ⊆ X is

r a fixpoint of F if F (Y ) = Y ,
r a pre-fixpoint of F if F (Y ) ⊆ Y ,
r a post-fixpoint of F if F (Y ) ⊇ Y ,
r a least fixpoint if Y is a fixpoint and Y ⊆ Z for every fixpoint Z,
r a least pre-fixpoint if Y is a pre-fixpoint and Y ⊆ Z for every pre-fixpoint Z,
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
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?
Something beyond their rude guessing—something which, at a
breath, had re-enveloped him in that cloud of constitutional gloom,
which action and the rush of arms had for a little dispelled. The
change had taken him earlier in the day, when, about the hour of
Mass, a little white, cake-fed Milanese had come whipping into
Vigevano on a foam-dropping jade, and, crying as he clattered over
the drawbridge to the castle, 'Ho there, ho there! Despatches for the
Duke!' had been snapped up by the portcullis, and gulped and
disposed of; and was now, no doubt—since no man had set eyes on
him since—in process of being digested.
It may have been he that was disagreeing with their lord, and
sending the black bile to his cheek; or it may have been that second
tale-bearer who, riding in about midday from the capital, had
brought news of the fire which, the evening before, had gutted his
Grace's private closet. Small matters in any case; and in any case,
the death's-head having withdrawn itself from the feast, hail the
bright reaction from that malign, oppressive gloom! A fresh breeze
blows through the hall; the candle-flames are jigging to the rafters;
away with mumps and glumps! Via-via! See the arras blossom into a
garden; the sentries, leaning to it, relax into smiling Gabriels of
Paradise; the wine froth and sparkle at the cup rim! 'Way, way for
the Duke's Grace!' the seneschal had cried at the door; and
Galeazzo, clumsily ushered by Messer Castellan, that blunt old one-
eyed Cyclops, had slouched heavily out, and the curtain had dropped
and blotted him from the record.
He turned sharply to the sound of its thud, and gave a quick
little stoop and start, as if he were dodging something. The face—
that haunting, indefinable ghost—was it behind him again, unlayed,
in spite of all the hope and promise? Why not, since its exorcist had
proved himself a Judas?
He ground his teeth, and moved on, muttering and maddening.
Only yesterday he had been flattering himself with the thought of
returning to his capital wreathed in all the glamour of conquest. And
now! False fire—false, damning fire. What victor was he, who could
not command himself? What vicegerent of the All-seeing, who could
nominate a traitor and hypocrite to be his proxy? And he had so
believed in the accursed boy!
The prophecy of the monk Capello stuck like a poisonous burr in
his soul. He could not shake it off. Now, he remembered, was the
near season for its maturing—a superstition aggravated tenfold by
the thought that its ripening had been let to prosper in the sun of his
own credulous trust. And he could not temporise while the moment
struck and passed, for his fate turned upon the moment. Moreover,
Christmas was at hand, a time dear to the traditions of his house;
and, rightly or mistakenly, he believed that upon a maintenance of
those traditions depended his house's prevalence. His acts must
continue to compare royally, in seasonable largesse and bounty, with
those of Francesco, its yet adored founder; and he could not afford
to ignore those obligations. He felt himself trapped, and turning,
turning, between the devil and the deep sea.
 But he was not without a sort of desperado courage; and fury
lent him nerve.
'Lead on, lead on, Castellano,' he snarled, grinning like a wolf.
'The calf by now should be in train for his blooding.'
They found him stalled deep among the foundations of the
fortress, in a stone chamber whose kiln-like conformation shaped
itself horribly to the needs and privacies of the 'question.' He might,
this Tassino, have been a calf indeed, by the deadly pallor of his
flesh. From the moment when, still in the glow of his send-off, he
had dared, producing his pièce de conviction before the Duke, to
incriminate Bona on its evidence, and had been gripped by the neck
for his pains, and flung, squealing like a rat, into this sewer, it had
never warmed by a degree from this livid hue. Sickened, rather,
since here, dreadfully interned throughout the day, like a schoolboy
locked in with an impossible imposition, he had been left to writhe
and moan, in awful anticipation of the coming inquisition and its
likely consequences to himself. They were prefigured for him, in
order to the sharp-setting of his wits, in a score or so instruments,
all slack and somnolent and unstrung for the time being, but
suggestive of hideous potentialities in their tautening. The rack
riveted to the floor; the pulley pendent from the ceiling; the stocks
in the corner, with the chafing-dish, primed with knobs of charcoal,
ready at its foot-holes; the escalero or chevalet, which was a trough
for strangling recalcitrant hogs in, limb by limb; the iron dice for
forcing into the heels, and the canes for twisting and breaking the
fingers; the water-bag and the thumbscrew and the fanged pincers
—such, and such in twenty variations of hook and stirrup and
dangling monstrosities of block and steel, but all pointing a common
moral of terrific human pain, where the inducements to a calmly
thought-out self-exculpation which had been offered to Tassino's
solitary consideration. No wonder that, when at last the key turned
and the harsh door creaked to admit his inquisitors, he should have
screamed out with the mortal scream of a creature that finds itself
cut off from escape in a burning house.
The Castellan struck him, judicially, across the mouth, and he
was silent immediately, falling on his knees and softly chattering
bloody teeth. Galeazzo, rubbing his chin, conned him at his smiling
leisure; while, motionless and apathetic in the opening of the door,
stood a couple of dark, aproned figures, one a Nubian.
'Ebbéne, Messer Tassino,' purred the Duke at length; 'has
reconsideration found your indictment open to some revision? Rise,
sir—rise.'
He waved his hand loftily. The wretch, after a vain attempt or
two, succeeded in getting to his feet, on which he stood like a man
palsied. He essayed the while to answer; but somehow his tongue
was at odds with his palate.
The Duke, watching him, stealthily lifted his left hand, showing
a green stone on one of its fingers.
'Mark ye that?' said he, smiling.
The other's lips moved inaudibly; his glittering eyes were fixed
upon the token.
'Say again,' said Galeazzo, 'who charged ye with it to this
errand?'
The poor animal mumbled.
'Now hist, now hist, my lord's Grace,' put in the Castellan, the
light in his solitary eye travelling like a spark in dead tinder: 'there's
an emetic or so here would assist the creature's delivery.'
Tassino gulped and found his voice—or a mockery of it:—
'My lord—spare me—'twas Caprona's widow.'
'And for what purpose?'
The fool, lost in terror, garbled his lesson.
'To destroy the Duchess, whom she hates. I know not: 'twas
Messer Ludovic made himself her agent to me.'
'Ho!' cried the Duke, and the monosyllable rolled up and round
under the roof, and was returned upon him. 'Here's addition, not
subtraction. What more?'
Advancing, with set grinning lips, he thumbed the victim's arm,
as he might be a market-wife testing a fowl.
'Plump, plump,' he said, turning his head about. 'Shall we not
singe the fat capon, Messer Castellan, before trussing him for the
spit?'
At a sign, the two butchers at the door advanced and seized
their victim. He struggled desperately in their grasp. Shriek upon
shriek issued from his lips. Galeazzo thundered down his cries:—
'Lay him out,' he roared, 'and bare his ribs.'
In a moment Tassino was stretched in the rack, an operator,
head and heel, gripping at the spokes of the drums. The Duke came
and stood above, contemplative again now, and ingratiatory.
'So!' he said; 'we are in train, at last, for the truth. Tassino, my
poor boy, who indeed sent you with this ring to me?'
'O Messer! before God! It was your brother.'
'And acting for whom?'
'The lady, Beatrice.'
'Who had been given it by?'
 'Messer Bembo.'
'Ay: and he had received it from——?'
The poor wretch choked, and was silent. Galeazzo glanced
aside: the winches creaked.
'Mercy, in God's name! Mercy!' shrieked the miserable creature.
'I will swear that it was won from her Grace by fraud—that she
never knowingly parted with it to—to——'
'Ha!' struck in the Duke; and drew himself up, and pondered
awhile blackly.
'My brother—my brother,' ran his thought. 'It may be; it may
well be. To ruin her in mine eyes—yes: a fond fool. But a loyal fool.
She'd not conspire—not she; nor Simonetta, loyal too—who
mistrusts him, and whom he 'd drag down with her. What, Ludovic!
—too crafty, too overreaching. Yet, conspiracy there may be, and
she its unconscious tool.'
He looked down again, glooming, grating his chin.
'Here's some revision, then. Thou whelp, so to have bitten the
hand that stroked thee! Shall I not draw thy teeth for it?'
'Pity, pity!' moaned Tassino. 'I spoke under compulsion.'
'And so shall,' snarled the other. 'What! To mend a slander on
compulsion! More physic may bring more cure. Perchance hast made
this Countess too thy cats-paw?'
'My lord! No! On my soul!'
'She hates the Duchess?'
'Yes, poisonously.'
'Why?'
'My lord!'
'Why, I say?'
 'Alas! she covets for herself what the Duchess claims to heaven.'
'Riddles, swine! Covets! What or whom?'
'O, O! Your Grace's false deputy, Messer Bembo.'
'What! false? You'll stick to it?'
'How can I help?—O! dread my lord, how can I help the truth,
unless you 'd wrench from me a travesty of it?'
His breast heaved and sobbed. The tyrant gloomed upon him.
'Is it true, then, he's a traitor?'
'O, the blackest—the most subtle! There can I utter without
prompting.'
It was true that he believed he could. Remember how, mongrel
though he was, his mind had been fed on slander of our saint.
Galeazzo dropped into a moody reverie. A long quivering sigh
thereat broke from his prostrate victim. Mean wits are cunning for
themselves; and, looking up into the dark eyes bent above him,
Tassino thought he saw reflected there a first faint ghost of hope. O,
to hold, to materialise it! He must be infinitely cautious.
He moaned, and wagged his head. The Duke broke out again:—
'False! is he false to me? And yet my wife is true, thou sayest?
and yet this woman of Caprona's jealous, thou sayest? Of whom?—
O, dog, beware!'
'Master, of a shadow. She reads the woman's baseness in the
man's.'
'Ho! Not like thou: what, puppy?'
'Before God, no. 'Tis Madonna's very innocence helps his
designs.'
'How?'
 'By trusting in, and exalting them for heaven's. She'll wake
when it's too late, and weep and curse herself for having betrayed
thee.'
'She will? Betray? Too late? These be terms meeter to a
rebellion than a schism.'
'Yet must I speak them, weeping, though I die.'
The despot gnawed his lip.
'Hast venom in thee, and with reason, to sting the boy?'
'Alas! to warn thee rather from his fang.'
'Ha!'
'It will lie flat against his palate, till the time when with his
subtle eyes he shall invite thy hand to stroke his head. No rebellion,
lord; no python rearing on his crushing folds. Yet may the little
snake be deadlier.'
He was gathering confidence hair by hair. There were glints of
coming tempest, well known to him, blooding the corners of
Galeazzo's eyes. He believed, by them, that he should presently ride
this storm of his own evoking.
'Ah!' he moaned, 'I'm sick. Mercy, lord! Truth 's not itself unless
upright.'
The tyrant tossed his hand:—
'Set the dog on his legs.'
The dog so far justified his title that, being released, he crawled
abject on all fours to his master's feet, and crouched there ready to
lick them.
'Bah!' cried the Duke, and spurned him. 'Get on thy hind legs,
ape! The rope's but slackened from thy hanging; the noose yet
cuddles to thy neck. Stand'st there to justify thyself, or answer with
a separate rack and screw for every lie thou 'st uttered.'
He strode a pace or two like one demented; turned, snarled out
a sudden shocking laugh, and came close up again to the trembling,
but still confident wretch.
'See, we'll be reasonable,' he said, mockingly insinuative; 'a twin
amity of dialecticians, ardent for the truth, cooing like love-birds.
"Well, on my faith, he's a traitor," says you; and "your faith shall be
mine on vindication, sweet brother," says I. Now, what proves him
traitor? I ask.'
'He rules the palace.'
'Why, I set him in my place.'
'You did indeed; but—ah! dare I say what's whispered?'
'You 'd better.'
'Why—O, mercy! Bid me not.'
'I'll not ask again.'
'You force me to it—that, being there, he designs to stay.'
'He'll be Duke?'
'No, no.'
'You shall wince with better reason. Dog, you dog my patience.
I'll turn. What then?'
'Only that he sits for Christ. Let them depose him that are devils'
men.'
'My men?'
'O! he's subtle. No word against your Grace; only the dumb
pleas of love and pity courting comparison.'
'With what?'
'Your Grace's sharper methods.'
 'Beast! Did I not waive them for his sake? Did I not leave my
conscience in his keeping?'
'Alas! if thou didst, he's used it, like a false friend, in damning
evidence against thee.'
'O Judas!'
'Used it to point the moral of his own large tolerance. The
people rise to him—cry him in the streets: "Down with Galeazzo!
Nature's our God!"'
'Ha! He's Nature?'
'As they read him—lord of the slums.'
'Lord of filthy swine. I'll ring their snouts. Well, goon. God of the
slums, is he?'
'God of thy palace, too; mends and amends thy laws—sugars
them for sweet palates—gains the women—O, a prince of
confectioners! There's the ring to prove.'
'What!'
'I can guess when he wheedled it.'
'Thou canst?'
'The moment thy back was turned. So quick he sped to discredit
thee—to reverse thy judgments. The monk thou'd left to starve, a
dog well-served—he'd release him, a fine text to open on. But
Jacopo was obdurate—would not let him pass, neither him nor
Cicada——'
'What! the Fool?'
'O, they're in one conspiracy—inseparable. He's to be Vizier
some day.'
'I'll remember that.'
 'So he ran off, and presently returned with a pass-token. I
guessed not what at the time; now I guess. It was the ring he'd
coaxed from Madonna.'
'And saved the monk thereby?'
'Ah-ha! Jacopo had forestalled him; the monk was dead.'
'What did he then?'
'Cursed thy lord's Grace, and ran; ran and hid himself away
among the people, he and his Fool, and spat his poison in that
sewer, to fester and bear fruit. 'Twas only presently the Duchess
heard of him, and persuaded him on sweet promise of amendment
back to the Court. He's made the most of that concession since,
using it to——'
He checked himself, and whimpered and sprang back. On the
instant the storm which he had dreaded while provoking was burst
upon him. Credulous and irrational like all tyrants, Galeazzo never
thought to analyse interests and motives in any indictment whose
pretext was devotion to himself and his safety. Wrapped in eternal
unbelief in all men, no man was so easily arrested as he by the first
hint of a plausible rogue professing to serve him, or so quick, being
inoculated, to develop the very confluent scab of suspicion. It were
well only for Autolycus to make the most of his fees during his little
spell of favour, and to disappear on the earliest threat of himself
falling victim to the disease he had promoted.
Now, for this dumb-struck quartette of knaves and butchers,
was enacted one of those little danses-diaboliques in which this
fearful man was wont to vent his periodic frenzies. He shrieked and
leapt and foamed, racing and twisting to and fro within the narrow
confines of the dungeon. Ravings and blasphemies tore and
sputtered from his lips; mad destruction issued at his hands. He
spurned whatever blocked his path, things living or inanimate; nor
seemed to feel or recognise how he bruised himself, but stumbled
over, and snatched at, and hurled aside, all that crossed the red
vision of his rage. Struggling for coherence, he could force his
imprecations but by fits and snatches to rise articulate:—
'Subtle!—I'll be subtler—devil unmasked—no Future?—a
specious dog—hell gapes in front—master of my own—to vindicate
the monk?—treason against his lord—ha, ha! Jacopo! good servant!
good refuter of a sacrilegious hound!'
Then all at once, quite suddenly as it had risen, the tempest
passed. Slack, dribbling, hoarse, unashamed, he stopped beside his
death-white informer and pawed and mouthed upon him:—
'Why, Tassino! Why—my little honest carver o' joints! Thou
mean'st me well, I do believe.'
'O my lord!' cried the trembling rogue, 'if you would but trust
me!'
'Why, so I do, Tassino,' urged the Duke, nervously handling and
stroking the young man's arm. 'So I do, little pretty varlet. I believe
thy story—fie! an impious tale. Deserv'st well of me for that boldness
—good courage—the truth needs it. Wilt serve me yet?'
'My lord, to the death.'
'Fie, fie! Not so far, I hope. Yet, listen; 'twere meet this viper
were not let to crawl himself within our laurels, and crown our
triumph with a poisonous bite. Hey?'
'I understand your Grace.'
'A hint's enough, then. 'Tis no great matter; but these worms
will sting.'
 'I'll jog Jacopo.'
'You will? He's true to me?'
'O yes!'
'No convert to the other?'
'He hates him well.'
'Does he? A viper has no friends but his kind. This one—hark! a
word in your ear. He 'd loose Capello, who damned me, and was
damned? Were it not right then the false prophet should take the
false prophet's place?'
'Most right.'
'The word's with thee, little chuck. How about the Fool?'
'As bad, or worse, my lord.'
'Hush! Two vipers, do you say?'
'My lord!'
'Be circumspect, that's all. 'Tis our will to give great largesse this
Christmastide.'
'The very sound will jingle out his memory—bury the golden calf
under gold.'
'Good, little rogue. We'll linger on the Mount meanwhile—just a
day or so, to let the promise work. 'Twere a sleeveless triumph
through a grudging city. Let these thorns be plucked first from our
road.'
'I'll ride at once, saving your Grace.'
'Do so, and tell Jacopo, "Quietly, mind—without fuss."'
'Trust me.'
The Duke flicked his arm and turned, smiling, to the Castellan.
'You shall provide Messer Tassino,' said he smoothly, 'with his
liberty, and a swift horse.'
A week later, Sforza the second of Milan set out for his Capital, in all
the pomp and circumstance of state which befitted a mighty prince
greatly homing after conquest. His path, by all the rules of glory,
should have been a bright one; yet his laurels might have been
Death's own, from the gloom they cast upon his brow. Last night,
looking from his chamber window, he had seen a misty comet cast
athwart that track: to-day, scarce had he started, when three ravens,
rising from the rice-swamps, had come flapping with hoarse crow to
cross it. He had thundered for an arbalest—loosed the quarrel—shot
wide—spun the weapon to the ground. An inexplicable horror had
seized him. Thenceforth he rode with bent head and glassy eyes
fixed upon the crupper. The road of death ran before; behind sat the
shadow of his fear, cutting him from retreat. So he reached the Porta
Giovia, passed over the drawbridge, in silence dismounted, and for
the first time looked up vaguely.
'Black, black!' he muttered to the page who held his horse. 'Let
Mass be sung in it to-morrow, and for the chaunts be dirges. See to
it.'
Did he hope so to hoodwink heaven, by abasing himself in the
vestments of remorse? Likely enough. He had always been cunning
to hold from it the worst of his confidence.
But in the thick of the night a voice came to him, blown upon
the wind of dreams:—
'No Future, O, no Future! Look to thy Past!'
And he started up in terror, quavering aloud:—
'Who's that that being dead yet speaketh!'
 CHAPTER XXIII

It is remarkable how quickly the brute genii will adapt himself to his
pint bottle when once the cork is in. Elastic, it must be remembered,
has the two properties of expansion and retraction, the latter being
in corresponding proportion with the former. Wherefore, the greater
its stretching capacity the more compact its compass unstretched.
So it is with life, which is elastic, and mostly lived at a tension.
Relax that tension, and behold the buoyant temperament rinding
roomier quarters in a straitened confinement than would ever a
flaccid one in the same; and this in defiance of Bonnivard, that
fettered Nimrod of the mountains, whose heart broke early in
captivity, and who, nevertheless, as a matter of fact, did not exist.
The truth is, a pint pot is over-enough to contain the mind of
many an honest vigorous fellow; and it is the mind, rather than the
body, which struggles for elbow-room. Carlo, in his prison, suffered
little from that mere mental horror of circumscription which, to a
more sensitive soul, had been the infinite worst of his doom. He
champed, and stamped, and raged, sure enough; cursed his fate, his
impotence, his restrictions; but all from a cleaner standpoint than
the nerves—from one (no credit to him for that) less constitutionally
personal. That he should be shut from the possibility of helping in a
sore pass the little friend of his love, of his faith, of his adoration—
the pretty child who had needed, never so much as at this moment,
the help and protection of his strong arm—here was the true
madness of his condition. And he bore it hardly, while the fit
possessed him, and until physical exhaustion made room for the
little reserves of reason which all the time had been waiting on its
collapse.
Then, suddenly, he became very quiet; an amenable, wicked,
dangerous thing; fed greedily; nursed his muscles; spake his gaolers
softly when they visited him; refrained from asking useless questions
to elicit evasive answers; brooded by the hour together when alone.
They treated him with every consideration; answered practically his
demands for books, paper, pens and ink, wine—for all bodily
ameliorations of his lot which he chose to suggest, short of the
means to escape it. There, only, was there no concession—no
response to the request of an insulted cavalier to be returned the
weapons of his honour of which he had been basely mulcted. His
fingers must serve his mouth, he was told, and his teeth his meat—
they were sharp enough. At which he would grin, and click those
white knives together, and return to his brooding.
But not, at last, for long. Very soon he was engaged in exploring
his dungeon, a gloomy cellar, two-thirds of it below the level of the
moat, and lit by a single window, deep-shafted under the massive
ceiling. His search, at first, yielded him no returns but of
impenetrable induracy—no variations, knock where he might, in the
echoless irresponsiveness of dumb-thick walls. Only, with that
incessant tap-tapping of his, the trouble in his brain fell into rhythm,
chiming out eternally, monotonously, the inevitable answer to a
fruitless question with which, from the outset, he had been
tormenting himself, and from which, for all his sickness of its vanity,
he could not escape.
'What hath Cicada done? Concluded me safely sped? Done
nothing, therefore. What hath Cicada done? Concluded me safely
sped? Done nothing, therefore.'
So, the villainy was working, and he in his dungeon powerless
to counteract it.
He lived vividly through all these phases—of despair, of self-
concentration, of resourceful hope—during the opening twenty-four
hours of his confinement. And then, once upon a time, very
suddenly, very softly, very remotely, there was borne in upon him
the strange impression that he was not alone in his underworld.
The first shadow of this conviction came to haunt him during
the second night of his imprisonment, when, having fallen asleep,
there presently stole into his brain, out of a deep sub-consciousness
of consciousness, the knowledge that some voice, extraneous to
himself, was moaning and throbbing into his ear.
At the outset this voice appealed to him for nothing more than
the emotional soft babble of a dream. It seemed to reach to him
from a vast distance, breathing very faint, and thin, and sweet
through æons of pathetic memories. He could not identify or
interpret it, save in so far as its burden always hinted of a wistful
sadness. But, gradually, as the spell of it enwrapped and claimed
him, out of its inarticulateness grew form, and out of that form
recognition.
It was Bernardo singing to his lute. How could he not have
known it, when here was the boy actually walking by his side? They
trod a smiling meadow, sweet with narcissus and musical with
runnels. The voice made ecstasy of the Spring; frisked in the blood
of little goats; unlocked the sap of trees, so that they leapt into a
spangled spray of blossoms.
 A step—and the turf was dry beneath their feet. The sun smote
down upon the plain; the grasshopper shrieked like a jet of fire; the
full-uddered cattle lowed for evening and the shadowed stall.
Again, a step—and the leaves of the forest blew abroad like
flakes of burning paper; the vines shed fruit like heavy drops of
blood; the sky grew dark in front, rolling towards them a dun wall of
fog—the music wailed and ceased.
He turned upon his comrade; and saw the lute swung aside, the
pale lips yet trembling with their song. He knew the truth at once.
'We part here,' he murmured. 'Is it not? So swiftly run thy
seasons. And you return to Spring; and I—O, I, go on! Whither,
sweet angel? O, wilt thou not linger a little, that, reaching mine
allotted end, I may hurry back to overtake thee?'
Then, clasping his hands in agony, the tears running down his
cheeks, he saw how the boy bent to whisper in his ear—words of
divine solace—nay, not words, but music—music, music all, of an
unutterable pathos.
And he awoke, to hear the shrunk, inarticulate murmur of it still
whispering to his heart.
He sat up, panting, in the deep blackness. His hands trembled;
his face was actually wet. But the music had not ended with his
dream. Grown very soft and far and remote, it yet went sounding on
in fact—or was it only in fancy?
His still-drugged brain surged back into slumber on the thought.
Instantly the voice began to take shape and reality: he caught
himself from the mist—as instantly it fell again into a phantom of
itself.
 And thus it always happened. So surely as he listened wakeful,
straining his hearing, the voice would reach him as a far plaintive
murmur, a vague intolerable sweetness, without identity or
suggestion save of some woful loss. So surely did his brain swerve
and his aching eyes seal down, it would begin to gather form, and
words out of form, and expression out of words—expression, of a
sorrow so wildly sad and moving, that his dreaming heart near broke
beneath the burden of its grief.
A strange experience; yet none so strange but that we must all
have known it, what time our errant soul has leapt back into our
waking consciousness, carrying with it, on the wind of its return,
some echo of the spirit world with which it had been consorting.
Who has not known what it is to wake, in a dumb sleeping house, to
the certain knowledge of a cry just uttered, a sentence just spoken,
of a laugh or whisper stricken silent on the instant, nor felt the
darkness of his room vibrate and settle into blankness as he listened,
and, listening, lost the substance of that phantom utterance?
But at length for Carlo dream and reality were blended in one
forgetfulness.
Morning weakened, if it could not altogether dissipate, his
superstitions. Though one be buried in a vault, there's that in the
mere texture of daylight, even if the thinnest and frowziest, to
muffle the fine sense of hearing. If, in truth, those mystic harmonics
still throbbed and sighed, his mind had ceased to be attuned to
them. He lent it to the more practical business of resuming his
examination of his prison.
At midday, while he was sitting at his dinner, a visitor came and
introduced himself to him, leaping, very bold and impudent, to the
table itself, where he sat up, trimming his whiskers anticipatory. It
was a monstrous brown rat; and self-possessed—Lord! Carlo
dropped his fists on the cloth, and stared, and then fell to grinning.
'O, you've arrived, have you!' said he. 'Your servant, Messer
Topo!'
It was obviously the gentleman's name. At the sound of it, he
lowered his fore-paws, flopped a step or two nearer, and sat up
again. Carlo considered him delightedly. He was one of those men
between whom and animals is always a sympathetic confidence.
'Is it, Messer Topo,' said he, 'that you desire to honour me with
the reversion of a former friendship? What! You flip your whiskers in
protest? No friend, you imply, who could educate your palate to
cooked meats, and then betray it, returning you to old husks? Has
he deserted you, then? Alas, Messer! We who frequent these cellars
are not masters of our exits and our entrances. How passed he from
your ken, that same unknown? Feet-first? Face-first? Tell me, and I'll
answer for his faith or faithlessness.'
The visitor showed some signs of impatience.
'What!' cried Carlo. 'My grace is overlong? Shall we fall to? Yet,
soft. Fain would I know first the value of this proffered love, which,
to my base mind, seems to smack a little of the cupboard.'
His hand went into the dish. Messer Topo ceased from preening
his moustache, and stiffened expectant, his paws erect.
'Ha-ha!' cried Carlo. 'You are there, are you? O, Messer Topo,
Messer Topo! Even prisoners, I find, possess their parasites.'
He held out a morsel of meat. The big rat took it confidently in
his paws; tested, and approved it; sat up for more.
 'What manners!' admired Carlo. 'Art the very pink of Topos.
Come, then; we'll dine together.'
Messer Topo acquitted himself with perfect correctness. When
satisfied, he sat down and cleaned himself. Carlo ventured to scratch
his head. He paused, to submit politely to the attention—which,
though undesired, he accepted on its merits—then, the hand being
withdrawn, waited a moment for courtesy's sake, and returned to his
scouring. In the midst, the key grated in the door, and like a flash he
was gone.
'Ehi!' pondered Carlo; 'it is very evident he has been trained to
shy at authority.'
It seemed so, indeed, and that authority knew nothing of him.
Otherwise, probably, authority would have resented his interference
with its theories of solitary confinement to the extent of trapping and
killing him.
The prisoner saw no more of his little sedate visitor that
evening; but, with night and sleep, the voice again took up the tale
of his haunting; and this time, somehow, to his dreaming senses,
Messer Topo seemed to be the medium of its piteous conveyance to
him. Once more he woke, and slept, and woke again; and always to
hear the faint music gaining or losing body in opposite ratio with his
consciousness. He was troubled and perplexed; awake by dawn, and
harking for confirmation of his dreams. But daylight plugged his
hearing.
He had expected Messer Topo to breakfast. He did not come.
He called—and there he was. They exchanged confidences and
discussed biscuits. The key grated, and Messer Topo was gone.
 This day Carlo set himself to solve the mystery of his visitor's
lightning disappearances—Anglicè, to find a rat-hole. Fingering, in
the gloom, along the joint of floor and wall, he presently discovered
a jagged hole which he thought might explain. Without removing his
hand, he called softly: 'Topo! Messer Topo!' Instantly a little sharp
snout, tipped with a chilly nose, touched him and withdrew. He
stood up, as the key turned in the lock once more.
This time it was Messer Jacopo himself who entered, while his
bulldogs watched at the door. He came to bring the prisoner a
volume of Martial, which Carlo had once had recommended to him,
and of which he had since bethought himself as a possible solace in
his gloom. The Provost Marshal advanced, with the book in his hand,
and seeing his captive's occupation, as he thought, paused, with a
dry smile on his lips. Then, with his free palm, he caressed the wall
thereabouts.
'Strong masonry, Messer,' he said; 'good four feet thick. And
what beyond? A dungeon, deadlier than thine own.'
Carlo laughed.
'A heavy task for nails, old hold-fast, sith you have left me
nothing else. Lasciate ogni speranza, hey, and all the rest? I know, I
know. Yet, look you, there should have been coming and going here
once, to judge by the tokens.'
He signified, with a sweep of his hand, a square patch on the
stones, roughly suggestive of a blocked doorway, wherein the mortar
certainly appeared of a date more recent than the rest.
The other made a grim mouth.
'Coming, Messer,' he said; 'but little going. Half-way he sticks
who entered, waiting for the last trump. He'll not move until.'
 Carlo recoiled.
'There's one immured there?'
'Ay, these ten years——'
And the wooden creature, laying the book on the table, stalked
out like an automaton.
He left the prisoner gulping and staring. Here, in sooth, was
food for his fancy, luckily no great possession. But the horror bit him,
nevertheless. Presently he took up the book—tried to forget himself
in it. He found it certainly very funny, and laughed: found it very
gross, and laughed—and then thought of Bernardo, and frowned,
and threw the thing into a corner. Then he started to his feet and
went up and down, nervously, with stealthy glances to the wall.
Haunted! No wonder he was haunted. Did it sob and moan in there
o' nights, beating with its poor blind hands on the stone? Did it——
A thought stung him, and he stopped. The rat! Its run broke
into that newer mortar, penetrated, perhaps, as far as the buried
horror itself. Was there the secret of the music? Was it wont, that
hapless spectre, putting its pallid lips to the hole, to sigh nightly
through it its melodious tale of griefs?
He stood gnawing his thumb-nail.
What might it be—man or woman? There was that legend of a
nun with child by—Nay, horrible! What might it be? Nothing at this
last, surely—sexless—just a spongy chalk of bones, a soft rubble for
rats to nest in. O, Messer Topo, Messer Topo! on what dust of
human tragedy did you make your bed! Perhaps——
No! perish the thought! Messer Topo was a gentleman—
descendant of a long line of gentlemen—no hereditary cannibal. He
preferred meats cooked to raw. An hereditary guardian, rather, of
that flagrant tomb. And yet—
He lay down to rest that night, lay rigid for a long while, battling
with a monstrous soul-terror. A burst of perspiration relieved him at
last, and he sank into oblivion.
Then, lo! swift and instant, it seemed, the unearthly music
caught him in its spell. It was more poignant than he had known it
yet—loud, piercing, leaping like the flame of a blown candle. He
awoke, sweating and trembling. The vibration of that gale of sorrow
seemed yet ringing in his ears—from the walls, from the ceiling,
from the glass rim of his drinking-vessel on the table, which
repeated it in a thousand tinkling chimes. But again the voice itself
had attenuated to a ghost of sound—a mere Æolian thread of
sweetness.
But it was a voice.
Carlo sat up on his litter. He was a man of obdurate will, of a
conquering resolution; and the moment, unnerving as it seized him
out of sleep, found him nevertheless decided. A shaft of green
moonlight struck down from the high grate into his dungeon,
spreading like oil where it fell; floating over floor and table; leaving
little dark objects stranded in its midst. Its upper part, reflecting the
moving waters of the moat outside, seemed to boil and curdle in a
frantic dance of atoms, as though the spirit music were rising thither
in soundless bubbles.
He listened a minute, scarce breathing; then dropped softly to
the floor, and stole across his chamber, and stooped and listened at
the wall.
 The next moment he had risen and staggered back, panting,
glaring with dilated eyes into the dark. There was no longer doubt.
It was by way of Messer Topo's pierced channel that the music had
come welling to him.
But whence?
Commanding himself by a tense effort, he bent once more, and
listened. Long now—so long, that one might have heard the passion
in his heart conceive, and writhe, and grow big, and at length deliver
itself in a fierce and woful cry: 'Bernardo! my little, little brother!'
With the words, he leapt up and away—tore hither and thither
like a madman—mouthed broken imprecations, fought for articulate
speech and self-control. The truth—all the wicked, damnable truth—
had burst upon him in a flash. No ghostly voice was this of a ten
years immured; but one, now recognised, sweet and human beyond
compare, the piteous solution of all his hauntings. The run pierced
further than to that middle tragedy—pierced to a tragedy more
intimate and dreadful—pierced through into the adjoining cell, where
lay his child, his little love, perishing of cold and hunger. He read it
all in an instant—the disastrous consequences of his own disaster.
And he could not comfort or intervene while this, his pretty swan,
was singing himself to death hard by.
Pity him in that minute. I think, poor wretch, his state was near
the worse—so strong, and yet so helpless. He shrieked, he struck
himself, he blasphemed. Monstrous? it was monstrous beyond all
human limits of malignity. So the ring had sped and wrought! What
had this angel done, but been an angel? What had Cicada, so hide-
bound in his own conceit of folly? Curst watchdogs both, to let
themselves be fooled and chained away while the wolf was ravening
their lamb!
He sobbed, fighting for breath:—
'Messer Topo, Messer Topo! Thou art the only gentleman! I
crave thy forgiveness, O, I crave thy forgiveness for that slander! A
rat! I'll love them always—a better gentleman, a better friend,
bringing us together!'
With the thought, he flung himself down on the floor, and put
his ear to the hole. Still, very faint and remote, the music came
leaking by it—a voice; the throb of a lute.
He changed his ear for his lips:—
'Bernardo!' he screamed; 'Bernardo! Bernardo!' and listened
anew.
The music had ceased—that was certain. It was succeeded by a
confused, indistinguishable murmur, which in its turn died away.
'Bernardo!' he screeched again, and lay hungering for an
answer.
It came to him, suddenly, in one rapturous soft cry:—
'Carlo!'
No more. The sweet heart seemed to break, the broken spirit to
wing on it. Thereafter was silence, awful and eternal.
He called again and again—no response. He rose, and resumed
his maddened race, to and fro, praying, weeping, clutching at his
throat. At length worn out, he threw himself once more by the wall,
his ear to the hole, and lying there, sank into a sort of swoon.
Messer Topo, sniffing sympathetically at his face, awoke him. He
sat up; remembered; stooped down; sought to cry the dear name
again, and found his voice a mere whisper. That crowned his misery.
But he could still listen.
No sound, however, rewarded him. He spent the day in a
dreadful tension between hope and despair—snarled over the
periodic visits of his gaolers—snarled them from his presence—was
for ever crouching and listening. They fancied his wits going, and
nudged one another and grinned. He never thought to question
them; was always one of those strong souls who find, not ask, the
way to their own ends. He knew they would lie to him, and was only
impatient of their company. Seeing his state, they were at the
trouble to take some extra precautions, always posting a guard on
the stairs before entering his cell. Messer Lanti, normal, was
sufficiently formidable; possessed, there was no foretelling his
possibilities.
But they might have reassured themselves. Escape, at the
moment, was farthest from his thoughts or wishes. He would have
stood for his dungeon against the world; he clung to his wall, like a
frozen ragamuffin to the outside of a baker's oven.
Presently he bethought himself of an occupation, at once
suggestive and time-killing. He had been wearing his spurs when
captured—weapons, of a sort, overlooked in the removal of deadlier
—and these, in view of vague contingencies, he had taken off and
hidden in his bed. His precaution was justified; he saw a certain use
for them now; and so, procuring them, set to work to enlarge with
their rowels the opening of the rat hole. He wrought busily and
energetically. Messer Topo sat by him a good deal, watching, with
courteous and even curious forbearance, this really insolent
desecration of his front door. They dined together as usual; and then
Carlo returned to his work. His plan was to enlarge the opening into
a funnel-like mouth, meeter for receiving and conveying sounds. It
had occurred to him that the point of the tiny passage's issue into
the next cell might be difficult of localisation by one imprisoned
there, especially if the search—as he writhed to picture it—was to be
made in a blinding gloom. If he could only have continued to help by
his voice—to cry 'Here! Here!' in this tragic game of hide-and-seek!
He wrought dumbly, savagely, nursing his lungs against that
moment. But still by night it had not come to be his.
Then, all in an instant, an inspiration came to him. He sat down,
and wrote upon a slip of paper: 'From Carlo Lanti, prisoner and
neighbour. Mark who brings thee this—whence he issues, and
whither returns. Speak, then, by that road—' and having summoned
Messer Topo, fastened the billet by a thread about his neck, and,
carrying him to his run, dismissed him into it. Wonder of wonders!
the great little beast disappeared upon his errand. Henceforth kill
them for vermin that called the rat by such a name!
Messer Topo did not return. What matter, if he had sped his
mission? Only, had he? There was the torture. Hour after hour went
by, and still no sign.
Carlo fell asleep, with his ear to the funnel. That night the music
did not visit him. He awoke—to daylight, and the knowledge of a
sudden cry in his brain. Tremulous, he turned, and found his voice
had come back to him, and cleared it, and quavered hoarsely into
the hole, 'Who speaks? Who's there?'
He dwelt in agony on the answer—thin, exhausted, a croaking
gasp, it reached him at length:—
'Cicca—the Fool—near sped.'
 'The Fool! Thou—thou and none other?' His cry was like a wolf's
at night; 'none other? Bernardo!' he screeched.
A pause—then: 'Dead, dead, dead!' came wheezing and pouring
from the hole.
'Ah!'
He fell back; swayed in a mortal vertigo; rallied. He was quite
calm on the instant—calm?—a rigid, bloodless devil. He set his
mouth and spoke, picking his words:—
'So? Is it so? All trapped together, then? When did he die?'
'Quick!' clucked the voice; 'quick, and let me pass. When,
say'st? Time's dead and rotten here. I know not. A' heard thee call—
and roused—and shrieked thy name. His heart broke on it. A' spoke
never again. All's said and done. What more? I could not find the
hole—till thy rat came. Speak quick.'
What more? What more to mend or mar? Nothing, now. Hope
was as dead as Time—a poxed and filthy corpse. Love, Faith, and
Charity—dead and putrid. Only two things remained—two things to
hug and fondle: revenge and Messer Topo. He bent and spoke
again:—
'Starved to death?'
'Starved——'
The queer, far little mutter seemed to reel and swerve into a
tinkle—an echo—was gone. Carlo called, and called again—no
answer. Then he set himself to ruminate—a cud of gall and poison.
On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and
alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide
open.
'Free, Messer,' he said; 'and summoned under urgency to the
palace.'
Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even
his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that
this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal
would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer
up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and
dreaded by a gentler soul.
The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced
willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might
be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and
whispered for Messer Topo.
The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at
attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him
(the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy),
apostrophised him face to face:—
'My true, mine only friend at last,' he said (his voice was thick
and choking). 'I must go, leaving him to thee. Be reverent with him
for my sake—ah! if I return not anon, to carry out and plant that
sweet corse in the daisied grass he loved—not dust to dust, but
flower to the dear flowers. Look to it. Shall I never see him more—
nor thee? I know not. I've that to do first may part us to eternity—
yet must I do it. Come, kiss me God-be-with-ye. Nay, that's a false
word. How can He, and this bloody ensign on my brow? My brain in
me doth knell already like a leper's bell. Canst hear it, red-eyes? No
God for me. Why should I need Him—tell me that? Christ could not
save His friend. I must go alone—quite alone at last. Only remember
I loved thee—always remember that. And so, thou fond and pretty
thing, farewell.'
He put his lips to the little furry head; put the animal gently
down; longed to it a moment; then, as it disappeared into its run,
turned with a wet and burdened sigh.
But, even with the sound, a black and gripping frost seemed to
fall upon him. He drew himself up, set his face to the door, and
passed out and on to freedom and the woful deed he contemplated.

CHAPTER XXIV

A despotism (Messer Bembo invitus) is the only absolute expression

of automatic government. The fly-wheel moves, and every detail of
the machinery, saw, knife, or punch, however distant, responds
instantly to its initiative. Galeazzo, for example, had but to make, in
Vigevano, the tenth part of a revolution, and behold, in Milan!
Messer Jacopo—saw, knife, and punch in one—had 'come down,'
automatically, upon the objectives of that movement. Within a few
minutes of Tassino's return, Bernardo and his Fool, seized quietly
and without resistance as they were taking the air on the
battlements, were being lowered with cords into the 'Hermit's Cell.'
Sic itur ad astra.
The Duke of Milan re-entered his capital on the 20th of December.
His Duchess met him with happy smiles and tears, loving complaints
over his long absence, a sweet tongue ready with vindication of her
trust, should that be demanded of her. The last week had done
much to reassure her, in the near return to familiar conditions which
it had witnessed; and she felt herself almost in a position to restore
to her Bluebeard the key, unviolated, of the forbidden chamber. If
only he would accept that earnest of her loyalty without too close a
questioning!
And, to her joy, he did; inasmuch, you see, as he had his own
reasons for a diplomatic silence. It would appear, indeed, that recent
great events had altogether banished from his memory the pious
circumstances of his departure to them. He had returned to find his
duchy as to all moral intents he had left and could have wished to
recover it. The fashion of Nature had shed its petals with the
summer brocades, and Milan was itself again.
For the exquisite, who had set it, was vanished now some seven
days gone; and that is a long time for the straining out of a popular
fashion. He had departed, carrying his Fool with him, none—save
one or two in the secret—knew whither; but surmise was plentiful,
and for the most part rabid. That he had fallen out of home favour
latterly was obvious and flagrant; now, the report grew that this
alienation had received its first impetus from Piedmont. That whisper
in itself was Nature's very quietus. Eleven out of a dozen presumed
upon it, and themselves, to propitiate tyranny with a very debauch
of reactionism to old licence. Moreover, scandal, in mere self-
justification, must run intolerable riot. Nothing was too gross for it in
its accounting for this secession. The pure love which had striven to
redeem it, it tortured into a text for filthy slanders. The Countess of
Caprona had her windows stoned in retaliation one day by a
resentful crowd; the wretched girl Lucia was dragged from her bed
and suffocated in a muddy ditch. The logic of the mob.
The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having
run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his
diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to
Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the
boy no evil; had acted as she did merely in the interests of the
State, she told herself. If, for a moment, her thoughts ever swerved
to Tassino—now returned, as it was whispered, to his old quarters
with the Provost Marshal, and abiding there a readjustment of affairs
—she hid the treason under a lovely blush, and vowed herself for
ever more true wife and incorruptible.
So for the most part all was satisfactory again; and there
remained only to alienate the popular sympathy from its idol. And
that the Church undertook to do. The moment the false prophet was
exposed and deposed, it rose, shook the crumbs from its lap, and
gave him his coup de grâce in the public estimation.
'He but sought,' it thundered, 'to turn ye over, clods; to cleanse
your gross soil for the fairer growing of his roses.' A parable: but so
far comprehensible to the demos in that it implied its narrow escape
from some cleaning process, a vindication of its prescriptive rights to
go unwashed, and therefore convincing. Down sank the threatening
swine-monster thereon; and, being further played upon with comfits
of a festal Christmas-tide, did yield up incontinent its last breath of
revivalism, and kick in joyful reassurance of its sty.
 So the whole city absolved itself of redemption, and set to
making enthusiastic provision for the devil's entertainment against
the season of peace and goodwill.
Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit: nor less Bona bona erit.
Only there was a rift within the happy wife's lute, which somehow
put the whole orchestra out of tune. She saw, for all her sweet
chastened sense of relief, that the Duke was darkly troubled. The
oppression of his mood communicated itself to hers; and she began
to dream—horrible visions of cloyed fingers, and clinging shrouds,
and ropey cobwebs that would drop and lace her mouth and nostrils,
the while she could not fight free a hand to clear them.
Then, double-damned in his own depression, by reason of its
reacting through his partner on himself, the Duke one day sent for
the Provost Marshal.
'The season claims its mercies,' gloomed he. 'Take the boy out
and send him home to his father.'
'His father!' jeered Jacopo brusquely, grunting in his beard. 'A's
been safe in his bosom these three days.'
'What!' gasped the tyrant.
'Dead, Messer, dead, that's all,' said the other impassively;
'passed in a moment, like a summer shower.'
There was nothing more to be said, then. As for poor Patch, he
was too cheap a mend-conscience for the ducal mind even to
consider. It took instead to brooding more and more on the drawn
whiteness of its Duchess's face, hating and sickened by it, yet
fascinated. The air seemed full of portents in its ghostly glimmer. His
fingers were always itching to strike the hot blood into it. A loathly
suspicion seized him that perhaps here, after all, was revealed the
illusive face of his long haunting. Constantly he fancied he saw
reflected in other faces about him some shadow of its menacing
woe. Once he came near stabbing a lieutenant of his guards, one
Lampugnani, for no better reason than that he had caught the
fellow's eyes fixed upon him.
So the jovial season sped, and Christmas day was come and
gone, bringing with it and leaving, out of conviviality, some surcease
of his self-torment.
But, on that holy night, Madonna Bona was visited by a dream,
more ugly and more definite than any that had terrified her hitherto.
Groping in a vast cathedral gloom, she had come suddenly upon a
murdered body prostrate on the stones. Dim, shadowy shapes were
thronged around; the organ thundered, and at its every peal the
corpse from a hundred hideous wounds spouted jets of blood. She
turned to run; the gloating stream pursued her—rose to her hips,
her lips—she awoke choking and screaming.
That morning—it was St. Stephen's Day—the Duke was to hear
Mass in the private chapel of the castello. He rose to attend it, only
to find that, by some misunderstanding, the court chaplain had
already departed, with the sacred vessels, for the church dedicated
to the Saint. The Bishop of Como, summoned to take his place,
declined on the score of illness. Galeazzo decided to follow his
chaplain.
Bona strove frantically to dissuade him from going. He read
some confirmation of his shapeless suspicions in her urgency, and
was the more determined. She persisted; he came near striking her
in his fury, and finally drove her from his presence, weeping and
clamorous.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

textbookfull.com