such generous spirits, they meant to
have the baggage actually tied to them in church; but silly youth has
neither sense nor truth. Now they are lying in their graves, those
worthy men, and have been turned out of life's doors in a most
scandalous way. But this does not move her a whit more than my sorrow
and distress; so that I can't make her consent to live with a rich
young noble cavalier, the nephew of a cardinal, who could floor this
whole room with gold. The silly jade has run away, and they absolutely
won't give her up to me again. Such is the respect shewn to a mother
in these days."

"Let her go, the worthless trumpery!" cried Beresynth: "we shall live
happily together without her, I warrant; our ways of thinking and
feeling are so well paired."

"But why should she run away," continued the old woman, "like a
faithless cat after a flogging? We might have parted as if we loved
each other, and like two rational beings. Surely some occasion would
have turned up before long of selling the greensick minx
advantageously to an old lover or a young one; and this might have
succeeded too, why should not it? if she had not lockt up a silly
young fellow in her heart, whom she loves, as she tells me."

"O have done, gammer!" screamed Beresynth, reeling and already half
asleep. "If you begin to talk about love, coz, I shall tumble into
such a laughing convulsion that I shall not recover from it for this
next three days. Love! that stupid word broke the neck of my famous
master, Pietro. But for this tarantula-dance the great hawk-nose would
still be sitting as professor at his lecturing desk, and tickling the
young goslings with philosophy and wisdom as they perkt up their
yellow beaks to catch the crumbs he dropt into them. Marry! old
beldam, this monkey-trick of love, this Platonic drunkenness of the
soul, was the only thing wanting to us, to me as well as you, and then
the miracle of our heroic existence would have been quite perfect....
Well, goodbye, old dame; tomorrow night about this time I'll come to
fetch you, and then we never part more."

"Cousin," said Pancrazia, "goodbye, till we meet again. Since you came
through my door, I have grown quite a different creature. We will make
a royal housekeeping of it hereafter."

"So we too have had our jubilee now!" stammered Beresynth, who was
already standing in the street, and who reeled through the dark night
to his lodging.

* * * *