’Here’s a comrade blithe To the wild wood hieth— Follow and find! Loving both least and best, His love takes still a zest From the song-time of the wind. The chuckling birds they greet him, The does run forth to meet him— Follow and find! Strange visions shall thou see; Learn lessons new to thee In the song-time of the wind. Couldst, then, the dear bird kill That kiss’d thee with her bill? Follow and find How great, having strength, to spare That trusting Soft-and-fair In the song-time of the wind. He is both God and Man; He is both Christ and Pan— Follow and find How, in the lovely sense, All flesh being grass, wakes thence The song-time of the wind. It was, I say, popular with the Lotharios. The novelty of this sort of renunciation tickled their sensoriums famously. It suggested a quite new and captivating form of self-indulgence, in the rapture to be gathered from an indefinite postponement of consummations. The sense of gallantry lies most in contemplation. I do not think it amounted to much more. Teresa and Elisabetta enjoyed their part in the serio-comic sport immensely, and were the most cuddlesome lambs, frisking unconscious under the faltering knife of the butcher. Madonna Caterina laughed immoderately to see their great mercy-pleading eyes coquetting with the greatly-withheld blade. But then she had no bump of reverence. The little wretch disliked sanctity in any form; loved aggressiveness better than meekness; was always in her heart a little Amazonian terrier-bitch, full of fight and impudence. It might have gone crossly with Messer Bembo had she been in her adoptive mother’s position of trustee for him. But luckily, or most unluckily for the boy, he was in more accommodating hands. This was the acute period of his proselytising. He had been persuaded back to court, and Bona had received him with moist eyes and open arms, and indeed a very yearning pathos of emotionalism, which had gathered a fataler influence from the contrition which in the first instance must be his. He had stood before her not so much rebuking as rebuked. Knowing her no longer saint, but only erring woman, it added a poignancy to his remorse that he had led her into further error by his abuse of her trust. She had answered his confession with a lovely absolution:— ’What is lost is lost. Thou art the faithfullest warrant of my true observance of my lord’s wishes. Only if thou abandon’st me am I betrayed.’