sake, let me serve thy masters first.'

The jester had already the flask at his mouth. The wine sank into him as into hot sand.

'Go,' he said, stopping a moment, and bubbling—'go, and damn thy capon; I ask no grosser aliment than this.'

The landlord, bustling in a restored confidence, filled a great bottle from a remote jar, and armed with it and some vessels of twisted glass, mounted to daylight once more. Messer Lanti, scowling in the sun, cursed him for a laggard.

'Magnificent!' pleaded the man, 'the sweetest wine, like the sweetest meat, is near the bone.'

'Deep in the ribs of the cellars, meanest, O, ciacco?'

He took a long draught, and turned to his lady.

'Trust the rogue, Beatrice; it is, indeed, near the marrow of deliciousness.'

She sipped of her glass delicately, and nodded. The cavalier held out his for more.

'Malvasia, hog?'

'Malvasia, most honoured; trod out by the white feet of prettiest contadina, and much favoured, by the token, of the Abbot of San Zeno yonder.'

Messer Lanti looked up with a new good-humour. The party was halted in a great flat basin among hills, on one of the lowest of which, remote and austere, sparkled the high, white towers of a monastery.

'There,' he said, signifying the spot to his companion with a grin; 'hast heard of Giuseppe della Grande, Beatrice, the father of his people?'

'And not least of our own little Parablist, Madonna,' put in the landlord, with a salutation.

'Plague, man!' cried Lanti; 'who the devil is this Parablist you keep throwing at us?'

'They call him Bernardo Bembo, my lord. He was dropped and bred among the monks—some by-blow of a star, they say, in the year of the great fall. He was found at the feet of Mary's statue; and, certes, he is gifted like an angel. He mouths parables as it were prick-songs, and is esteemed among all for a saint.'

'A fair saint, i'faith, to be carousing in a tavern.'

'O my lord! he but lies here an hour from the sun, on his way, this very morning, to Milan, whither he vouches he has had a call. And for his carousing, spring water is it all, and the saints to pay, as I know to my cost.'

'He should have stopped at the rill, methinks.'

'He will stop at nothing,' protested the landlord humbly; 'nay, not even the rebuking by his parables of our most illustrious lord, the Duke Galeazzo himself.'

Lanti guffawed.

'Thou talkest treason, dog. What is to rebuke there?'

'What indeed, Magnificent? Set a saint, I say, to catch a saint.'

The other laughed louder.

'The right sort of saint for that, I trow, from Giuseppe's loins.'

'Nay, good my lord, the Lord Abbot himself is no less a saint.'

'What!' roared Lanti, 'saints all around! This is the right hagiolatry, where I need never despair of a niche for myself. I too am the son of my father, dear Messer Ciacco, as this Parablist is, I'll protest, of your Abbot, whose piety is an old story. What! you don't recognise a family likeness?'

The landlord abased himself between deference and roguery.

'It is not for me to say, Magnificent. I am no expert to prove the common authorship of this picture and the other.'

He lowered his eyes with a demure leer. Honest Lanti, bending to rally him, chuckled loudly, and then, rising, brought his whip with a boisterous smack across his shoulders. The landlord jumped and winced.

'Spoken like a discreet son of the Church!' cried the cavalier.

He breathed out his chest, drained his glass, still laughing into it, and, handing it down, settled himself in his saddle.

'And so,' he said, 'this saintly whelp of a saint is on his way to rebuke the lord of Sforza?'

'With deference, my lord, like a younger Nathan. So he hath been miscalled—I speak nothing from myself. The young man hath lived all his days among visions and voices; and at the last, it seems, they've spelled him out Galeazzo—though what the devil the need is there? as your Magnificence says. But perhaps they made a mistake in the spelling. The blessed Fathers themselves teach us that the best holiness lacks education.'

Madonna laughed out a little. 'This is a very good fool!' she murmured, and yawned.

'I don't know about that,' said Lanti, answering the landlord, and wagging his sage head. 'I'm not the most pious of men myself. But tell us, sirrah, how travels his innocence?'

'On foot, my lord, like a prophet's.'

''Twill the sooner lie prone.' He turned to my lady. 'Wouldst like to add him to Cicada and thy monkey, and carry him along with us?'

'Nay,' she said pettishly, 'I have enough of monstrosities. Will you keep me in the sun all day?'

'Well,' said Lanti, gathering his reins, 'it puzzles me only how the Abbot could part thus with his discretion.'

'Nay, Illustrious,' answered the landlord, 'he was in a grievous pet, 'tis stated. But, there! prophecy will no more be denied than love. A' must out or kill. And so he had to let Messer Bembo go his gaits with a letter only to this monastery and that, in providence of a sanctuary, and one even, 'tis whispered, to the good Duchess Bona herself. But here, by the token, he comes.'

He bowed deferentially, backing apart. Messer Lanti stared, and gave a profound whistle.

'O, indeed!' he muttered, showing his strong teeth, 'this Giuseppe propagates the faith very prettily!'

Madam Beatrice was staring too. She expressed no further impatience to be gone for the moment. A young man, followed by some kitchen company adoring and obsequious, had come out by the door, and stood regarding her quietly. She had expected some apparition of austerity, some lean, neurotic friar, wasting between dogmatism and sensuality. And instead she saw an angel of the breed that wrestled with Jacob.

He was so much a child in appearance, with such an aspect of wonder and prettiness, that the first motion of her heart towards him was like the leap of motherhood. Then she laughed, with a little dye come to her cheek, and eyed him over the screen of feathers she held in her hand.

He advanced into the sunlight.

'Greeting, sweet Madonna,' he said, in his grave young voice, 'and fair as your face be your way!' and he was offering to pass her.

She could only stare, the bold jade, at a loss for an answer. The soft umber eyes of the youth looked into hers. They were round and velvety as a rabbit's, with high, clean-pencilled brows over. His nose was short and pretty broad at the bridge, and his mouth was a little mouth, pouting as a child's, something combative, and with lips like tinted wax. Like a girl's his jaw was round and beardless, and