ed himself on an empty cask. At
first he sat motionless, silently observing the crowd; then he drew
forth the ballads and ran his eye over them. He was still engaged in
this study when his notice was attracted by a loud discussion going
forward between a party of men at the nearest table. The disputants,
petty tradesman or artisans by their dress, had evidently been warmed by
a good flagon of wine, and their tones were so lively that every word
reached the listener on the cask.

"Reform, reform!" cried one, who appeared by his dress and manner to be
the weightiest of the company--"it's all very well to cry reform; but
what I say is that most of those that are howling for it no more know
what they're asking than a parrot that's been taught the litany. Now the
first question is: who benefits by your reform? And what's the answer to
that, eh? Is it the tradesmen? The merchants? The clerks, artisans,
household servants, I ask you? I hear some of my fellow-tradesmen
complaining that the nobility don't pay their bills. Will they be better
paid, think you, when the Duke has halved their revenues? Will the
quality keep up as large households, employ as many lacqueys, set as
lavish tables, wear as fine clothes, collect as many rarities, buy as
many horses, give us, in short, as many opportunities of making our
profit out of their pleasure? What I say is, if we're to have new taxes,
don't let them fall on the very class we live by!"

"That's true enough," said another speaker, a lean bilious man with a
pen behind his ear. "The peasantry are the only class that are going to
profit by this constitution."

"And what do the peasantry do for us, I should like to know?" the first
speaker went on triumphantly. "As far as the fat friars go, I'm not
sorry to see them squeezed a trifle, for they've wrung enough money out
of our women-folk to lie between feathers from now till doomsday; but I
say, if you care for your pockets, don't lay hands on the nobility!"

"Gently, gently, my friend," exclaimed a cautious flaccid-looking man
setting down his glass. "Father and son, for four generations, my family
have served Pianura with Church candles, and I can tell you that since
these new atheistical notions came in, the nobility are not the good
patrons they used to be. But as for the friars, I should be sorry to see
them meddled with. It's true they may get the best morsel in the pot and
the warmest seat on the hearth--and one of them, now and