would induce me to lend a vacant ear to thy
report. And now, good Filippo, I could sip a small glass of Muscatel
or Orvieto, and turn over a few bleached almonds, or essay a smart
dried apricot at intervals, and listen while thou relatest to me the
manners and customs of that country, and particularly as touching thy
own adversities. First, how wast thou taken?

_Filippo._ I was visiting at Pesaro my worshipful friend the canonico
Andrea Paccone, who delighted in the guitar, played it skilfully, and
was always fond of hearing it well accompanied by the voice. My own
instrument I had brought with me, together with many gay Florentine
songs, some of which were of such a turn and tendency, that the
canonico thought they would sound better on water, and rather far from
shore, than within the walls of the canonicate. He proposed then, one
evening when there was little wind stirring, to exercise three young
abbates[9] on their several parts, a little way out of hearing from
the water's edge.

_Eugenius._ I disapprove of exercising young abbates in that manner.

_Filippo._ Inadvertently, O Holy Father! I have made the affair seem
worse than it really was. In fact, there were only two genuine
abbates; the third was Donna Lisetta, the good canonico's pretty
niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness when you bend your knees
before her at bedtime.

_Eugenius._ How? Where?

_Filippo._ She is the angel on the right-hand side of the Holy Family,
with a tip of amethyst-coloured wing over a basket of figs and
pomegranates. I painted her from memory: she was then only fifteen,
and worthy to be the niece of an archbishop. Alas! she never will be:
she plays and sings among the infidels, and perhaps would eat a
landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly as she would a roach.

_Eugenius._ Poor soul! So this is the angel with the amethyst-coloured
wing? I thought she looked wanton: we must pray for her release ...
from the bondage of sin. What followed in your excursion?

_Filippo._ Singing, playing, fresh air, and plashing water, stimulated
our appetites. We had brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin
_marzopane_, of which the sugar and rose-water were inadequate to ward
off hunger; and the sight of a fishing-vessel between us and Ancona,
raised our host immoderately. 'Yonder smack,' said he, 'is sailing at
this moment just over the best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she
continues her course and we run toward her, we may be supp