m to resent the hunch-back's slights upon the land which had been
unlucky enough to mother him.

"All men of Italy are not knaves," he growled, huskily, and, half rising
from his seat with crimsoned visage, he was busying himself to say more,
when Staupitz, who was as interested as the others in Master AEsop's
scandalous chronicle, clapped one bear's paw on Faenza's shoulder and
another bear's paw across Faenza's mouth, and thus forced him at once, by
sheer effort of brute strength, to a sitting posture and to silence. This
action on the part of the man whom for the time being he had consented to
accept as his general, combined with the cold glance of cruelty and scorn
which AEsop gave him, served to cool Faenza's hot blood. He heard AEsop
say, dryly, "Some men of Italy are fools," and might perchance have
flamed again, to his misluck, but that Staupitz, breathing thickly in his
ear, whispered: "Idiot, he mocks a Mantuan. Are not you Naples born and
bred?" Faenza, recovering his composure, resolved himself swiftly from an
Italian in general to a Neapolitan in particular, with a clannish
antagonism to alien states. He spat upon the floor. "Damn all Mantuans!"
he muttered, and did no more to interrupt the flow of AEsop's discourse.

"As I was saying, this princeling of Gonzague affected a great show of
friendship for his ducal brother of Nevers, and this same friendship he
left--it was, indeed, wellnigh all he had to leave--to his only son and
only child, the present prince of Gonzague."

He made a momentary halt, as if he were observing curiously the effect of
his words upon his hearers, then resumed:

"The young Louis de Gonzague and the young Louis de Nevers were almost of
an age. Each was an only child, each was an only son, each was clever,
each was courageous, each was comely, each was the chosen heart's friend
of a namesake king, each was much a lover of ladies, each was much loved
by ladies."

AEsop grinned hideously as he said these words, and his left hand fumbled
lovingly at the little volume that lay hid in the breast of his doublet,
but he did not delay the flow of his words.

"The chief difference between the two young men who were bound so
closely by ties of blood and yet more closely by ties of personal
affection was that while Louis de Nevers was the heir to all the
treasures of his house, Louis of Gonzague was heir to little more than a
rotting palace and a hollow title. And yet, by the irony of nat