before Thy servant! Already my young footsteps are warned of the bitter pass to come. Be Thou with me in the rocky ways, lest I faint and slip before my time.'

He remained long minutes beseeching, while the moon, anchored in a little stream of clouds, seemed to his excited imagination the very boat which awaited the coming of One who should walk the waters. He stretched out his arms to it.

'Lord save me,' he cried, 'or I sink!'

He heard a snuffle at his back, and looked round and up to find the fool Cicada regarding him glassily.

'Sink!' stuttered the creature, swaying where he stood. 'Lord save me too! I am under already—drowned in Malmsey!'

Bembo rose to his feet with a happy sigh. 'Exultate Deo adjutori nostro!' he murmured, 'I am answered.'

His clear, serene young brow confronted the fuddled wrinkles of the other's like an angel's.

'Cicada mio,' he said endearingly; 'judge if God is dull of hearing, when, on the echo of my cry, here is one holding out his hand to me!'

The Fool, staring stupidly, lifted his own lean right paw, and squinted to focus his gaze on it.

'Meaning me?—meaning this?' he said.

Bembo nodded.

'A return, with interest, on the little service I was able to render thee this morning. O, I am grateful, Cicada!'

The Fool, utterly bemused, squatted him down on the grass in a sudden inspiration, and so brought his wits to anchor. Bernardo fell on his knees beside him.

'What moved you to come and save me?' he said softly. 'What moved you?'

Cicada, disciplined to seize the worst occasion with an epigram, made a desperate effort to concentrate his parts on the present one.

'The wine in my head,' he mumbled, waggling that sage member. ''Tis the wet-nurse to all valour. I walked but out of the furnace a furlong to cool myself, and lo! I am a hero without knowing it.'

He looked up dimly, his face working and twitching in the moonlight.

'Recount, expound, and enucleate,' said he. 'From what has the Fool saved the Parablist?'

'From the deep waters,' said Bembo, 'into which he had entered, magnifying his height.'

The Fool fell a-chuckling.

'There was a hunter once,' said he, 'that thought he would sound his horn to a hymn, and behold! he was chasing the deer before he had fingered the first stops. Expound me the parable, Parablist. Thou preachest universal goodwill, they say?'

'Ay, do I.'

'Thou shalt be confuted with thine own text.'

'How, dear Fool?'

'Why, shall not every wife be kind to her friend's husband?'

'Ay, if she would be unkind to her own.'

The Fool scratched his head, his hood thrown back.

'And so, in thy wisdom, thou step'st into a puddle, and lo! it is over thy ears. Will you come out, good Signor Goodwill, and ride home in a baby's pannier?'

Bembo caught one of the wrinkled hands in his soft palms.

'Dear Cicada,' he said, 'are there not tears in your heart the whiles you mock? Do you not love me, Cicada, as one you have saved from death?'

Some sort of emotion startled the harsh features of the Fool.

'What better love could I show,' he muttered, 'than to warn thee back from the toils that stretch for thy wings?'

'Ah, to warn me, to warn me, Cicada!' cried the boy, 'but not home to the nest. How shall he ever fly that fears to quit it? Be rather like my mother, Cicada, and advise these my simple wings.'

The Fool caught his breath in a sudden gasp—

'Thy mother! I!'

A spasm of pain seemed to cross his face. He laughed wildly.

'An Angel out of a Fool! That were a worthy parent to hold divinity in leading-strings.'

'Zitto, Cicca mio!' said Bembo sweetly, pressing a finger to his lips. 'Do I not know what wit goes to the acting of folly—what experience, what observation? If thou wouldst lend these all to my help and aid!'

'In what?'

'In this propaganda to govern men by love.'

'Thou playest, a child, with the cross-bow.'

'I know it. I have been warned; direct thou my hand.'

'I!' exclaimed the Fool once more in a startled cry. And suddenly, wonder of wonders! he was grovelling at the other's knees, pawing them, weeping and moaning, hiding his face in the grass.

'What saint is this?' he cried, 'what saint that claims the Fool to his guide?'

'Alas!' said the boy, 'no saint, but a child of the human God.'

'And He mated with Folly,' cried Cicada, 'and Folly is to direct the bolt!'

He sat up, beating his brow in an ecstasy, then all in a moment forbore, and was as calm as death.

'So be it,' he said. 'Be thou the divine fool, and I thy mother.'

With a quick movement Bembo caught the Fool's cheeks between his palms.

'Ay, mother,' said he, with a little choking laugh, 'but see that thy hand on mine be steady, lest the quarrel fly wide or rebound upon ourselves.'

It was the true mark indeed to which the cunning rascal had all this time been sighting his bow. He watched anxiously now for the tokens of a hit.

The Fool sat very still awhile.

'Speak clearer,' he muttered; then of a sudden: 'What wouldst ask of me?'

'Ah! dear,' sighed Bembo; 'only that thou wouldst justify thyself of this new compact of ours.'

'I am clean—as thou readest love. Who but God would consort with Folly? The Fool is cursed to virginity.'

'Cicada, dear, but there is no Chastity without Temperance.'

The Fool tore himself away, and slunk crouching back upon the grass.

'I renounce thy God!' he chattered hoarsely, 'that would have me false to my love, my mistress, my one friend! Who has borne me through these passes, stood by me in pain and madness, dulled the bitter tooth of shame while it tore my entrails? Cure wantonness in women, gluttony in wolves, before you ask me to be dastard to my dear.'

'Alas!' cried Bembo, 'then am I lost indeed!'

A long pause followed, till in a moment the Fool had flung himself once more upon his face.

'Lay not this thing on me,' he cried, clutching at the grass; 'lay it not! It is to tear my last hope by the roots, to banish me from the kingdom of dreams, to bury me in the everlasting ice! I will follow thee in all else, humbly and adoringly; I will try to vindicate this love which has stooped from heaven to a clown; I will perish in thy service—only