on.

"Again! Again!" he growled--it seemed he dare not lift his voice. "Will
you never be satisfied until we are broken on the wheel? You dog, you!
The sooner you are broken the better, were that all! Ay, and were that
all, I could watch the bar fall with pleasure! But do you think I will
see the fruit of years of planning, do you think that I will see the
reward of this brain--this! this, you brainless idiot, who know not
what a brain is"--and he tapped his brow repeatedly with an earnestness
almost grotesque--"do you think that I will see this cast away, because
you swill, swine that you are! Swill and prate in your cups!"

"'Fore God, I said nothing!" Grio whined. "I said nothing! It was only
that he would not drink and I----"

"Made him?"

"No, he would not, I say, and we were coming to blows. And then----"

"He gave back, did he?"

"No, Messer Blondel came in."

Caesar Basterga stretched out his huge arms. "Fool! Fool! Fool!" he
hissed, with a gesture of despair. "There it is! And Blondel, who should
have sent you to the whipping-post, or out of Geneva, has to cloak you!
And men ask why, and what there is between our most upright Syndic and a
drunken, bragging----"

"Softly," Grio muttered, with a flash of sullen resentment. "Softly,
Messer Basterga! I----"

"A drunken, swilling, prating pig!" the other persisted. "A broken
soldier living on an hour of chance service? Pooh, man," with contempt,
"do not threaten me! Do you think that I do not know you more than half
craven? The lad below there would cut your comb yet, did I suffer it.
But that is not the point. The point is that you must needs advertise
the world that you and the Syndic, who has charge of the walls, are
hail-fellows, and the world will ask why! Or he must deal with you as
you deserve and out you go from Geneva!"

"Per Bacco! I am not the only soldier," Grio muttered, "who ruffles it
here!"

"No! And is not that half our battle?" Basterga rejoined, gazing on him
with massive scorn. "To make use of them and their grumbling, and their
distaste for the Venerable Company of Pastors who rule us! Such men are
our tools; but tools only, and senseless tools, for Geneva won for the
Grand Duke, and what will they be the better, save in the way of a
little more licence and a little more drink? But for you I had something
better! Is the little farm in Piedmont not worth a month's abstinence?
Is drink-money for your old age, when else you must starv