’Ciacco—hog!’ he thundered: ’did you not hear us call?’ ’Illustrious, no.’ ’Where were your ears? Nailed to the pillory?’ ’Nay, Magnificent, but to the utterances of the little Parablist of San Zeno.’ ’O hog! now by the Mass, I say, they had been better pricked to thy business. O ciacco, I tell thee thy Parablist was like, in another moment, to have addressed thee out of a burning bush. What! I would drink, swine! And, harkee, somewhere from those deep vats of thine the perfume of an old wine of Cana rises to my nostrils. I say no more. Despatch!’ The landlord, abasing himself outwardly, took solace of a private curse as he turned into the shadow of his porch— ’These skipjacks of the Sforzas! limbs of a country churl!’ Something lithe and gripping sprang upon his back as he muttered, making him roar out; and the chirrup of a great cricket shrilled in his ear— ’Biting limbs! clawing, hooking, scoring limbs! ha-ha, hee-hee, ho-bir-r-r-r!’ Boniface, sweating with panic, wriggled to shake off his incubus. It clung to him toe and claw. Slewing his gross head, he saw, squatted upon his shoulders, a manikin in green livery, a monstrous grasshopper in seeming. ’Messer Fool,’ he gurgled—’dear my lord’s most honoured jester!’ (he was essaying all the time to stagger with his burden out of earshot)—’prithee spare to damn a poor fellow for a hasty word under provocation! Prithee, sweet Messer Fool!’ The little creature, sitting him as a frog a pike, hooked its small talons into the corners of his eyes. ’Provocation!’ it laughed, rocking—’provocation by his grandness to a guts! If I fail to baste thee on a spit for it, call me not Cicada!’ ’Mercy!’ implored the landlord, staggering and groping. ’Nothing for nothing. At what price, tunbelly?’ The landlord clutched in his blindness at the post of a descending stair. ’The best in my house.’ ’What best, paunch?’ ’Milan cheese—boiled bacon. Ah, dear Messer Cicada, there is a fat cold capon, for which I will go fasting to thee.’ ’And what wine, beast?’ ’What thou wilt, indeed.’ The jester spurred him with a vicious heel. ’Away, then! Sink, submerge, titubate, and evanish into thy crystal vaults!’ ’Alas, I cannot see!’ The rider shifted his clutch to the fat jowls of his victim, who thereupon, with a groan, descended a rude flight of steps at a run, and brought up with his burden in a cool grotto. Here were casks and stoppered jars innumerable; shelves of deep blue flasks; lolling amphoræ, and festoons of cobwebs drunk with must. Cicada leapt with one spring to a barrel, on which he squatted, rather now like a green frog than a grasshopper. His face, lean and leathery, looked as if dipped in a tan-pit; his eyes were as aspish as his tongue; he was a stunted, grotesque little creature, all vice and whipcord. ’Despatch!’ he shrilled. ’Thy wit is less a desert than my throat.’