eyeing the fruit with ill-concealed desire; "but yours is not the hand
to give me any, I trow."

"You are much mistook," said the other. "Here, catch!" And suddenly
threw a double handful into Marcia's lap.

Marcia brought her knees together by an irresistible instinct.

"Aha! you are caught, my lad," cried she of the nuts. "'Tis a man; or a
boy. A woman still parteth her knees to catch the nuts the surer in her
apron; but a man closeth his for fear they should all between his hose.
Confess, now, didst never wear fardingale ere to-day?"

"Give me another handful, sweetheart, and I'll tell thee."

"There! I said he was too handsome for a woman."

"Ser Gerard, they have found me out," observed the Epicaene, calmly
cracking an almond.

The libertines vowed it was impossible, and all glared at the goddess
like a battery. But Vanucci struck in, and reminded the gaping gazers
of a recent controversy, in which they had, with a unanimity not often
found among dunces, laughed Gerard and him to scorn, for saying that men
were as beautiful as women in a true artist's eye.

"Where are ye now? This is my boy Andrea. And you have all been down on
your knees to him. Ha! ha! But oh, my little ladies, when he lectured
you and flung your stibium, your cerussa, and your purpurissum back in
your faces, 'tis then I was like to burst; a grinds my colours. Ha! ha!
he! he! he! ho!"

"The little impostor! Duck him!"

"What for, signors?" cried Andrea, in dismay, and lost his rich
carnation.

But the females collected round him, and vowed nobody should harm a hair
of his head.

"The dear child! How well his pretty little saucy ways become him."

"Oh, what eyes and teeth!"

"And what eyebrows and hair!"

"And what lashes!"

"And what a nose!"

"The sweetest little ear in the world!"

"And what health! Touch but his cheek with a pin the blood should
squirt."

"Who would be so cruel?"

"He is a rosebud washed in dew."

And they revenged themselves for their beaux' admiration of her by
lavishing all their tenderness on him.

But one there was who was still among these butterflies, but no longer
of them. The sight of the Princess Claelia had torn open his wound.

Scarce three months ago he had declined the love of that peerless
creature; a love illicit and insane; but at least refined.

How much lower had he fallen now.

How happy he must have been, when the blandishments of Claelia, that
might have melted an anchori