, and I am not so tender in that part of the body as to
fear it is to be the forerunner of a closer squeeze. Didst ever hear of a
churchman that suffered in this way?"

"Men often escape with less than their deserts;" Maso drily answered.
"Well, fortune, or the saints, or Calvin, or whatever power most suits
your tastes, good friends, has at length put a roof over our heads,--an
honor that rarely arrives to most of us, if I may judge by appearances and
some little knowledge of the different trades we follow. Thou wilt have a
fair occasion to suffer Policinello to rest from his uneasy antics, Pippo,
while his master breathes the air through a window for the first time in
many a day, as I will answer."

The Neapolitan had no difficulty in laughing at this sally; for his was a
nature that took all things pleasantly, though it took nothing under the
corrective of principle or a respect for the rights of others.

"Were this Napoli, with her gentle sky and hot volcano," he said, smiling
at the allusion, "no one would have less relish for a roof than myself."

"Thou wast born beneath the arch of some Duca's gateway," returned Maso,
with a sort of reckless sarcasm, that as often cut his friends as his
enemies; "thou wilt probably die in the hospital of the poor, and wilt
surely be shot from the death-cart into one of the daily holes of thy
Campo Santo, among a goodly company of Christians, in which legs and arms
will be thrown at random like jack-straws, and in which the wisest among
ye all will be puzzled to tell his own limbs from those of his neighbors,
at the sound of the last trumpet."

"Am I a dog, to meet this end!" demanded Pippo, fiercely--"or that I
should not know my own bones from those of some infidel rascal, who may
happen to be my neighbor!"

"We have had one disturbance about brutes, let us not have another;"
sarcastically rejoined Il Maledetto. "Princes and nobles," he added, with
affected gravity, "we are here bound by the heels, during the good
pleasure of those who rule in Vevey; the wisest course will be to pass the
time in good-humor with each other, and as pleasantly as our condition
will allow. The reverend Conrad shall have all the honors of a cardinal,
Pippo shall have the led horse at his funeral, and, as for these worthy
Vaudois, who, no doubt, are men of substance in their way, they shall be
bailiffs sent by Berne to rule between the four walls of our palace! Life
is but a graver sort of mummer