’Anon!’ mumbled the landlord, and hurried for a flask. ’Let thy tongue roll on that,’ he said, ’and call me grateful. As to the capon, prithee, for my bones’ sake, let me serve thy masters first.’ The jester had already the flask at his mouth. The wine sank into him as into hot sand. ’Go,’ he said, stopping a moment, and bubbling—’go, and damn thy capon; I ask no grosser aliment than this.’ The landlord, bustling in a restored confidence, filled a great bottle from a remote jar, and armed with it and some vessels of twisted glass, mounted to daylight once more. Messer Lanti, scowling in the sun, cursed him for a laggard. ’Magnificent!’ pleaded the man, ’the sweetest wine, like the sweetest meat, is near the bone.’ ’Deep in the ribs of the cellars, meanest, O, ciacco?’ He took a long draught, and turned to his lady. ’Trust the rogue, Beatrice; it is, indeed, near the marrow of deliciousness.’ She sipped of her glass delicately, and nodded. The cavalier held out his for more. ’Malvasia, hog?’ ’Malvasia, most honoured; trod out by the white feet of prettiest contadina, and much favoured, by the token, of the Abbot of San Zeno yonder.’ Messer Lanti looked up with a new good-humour. The party was halted in a great flat basin among hills, on one of the lowest of which, remote and austere, sparkled the high, white towers of a monastery. ’There,’ he said, signifying the spot to his companion with a grin; ’hast heard of Giuseppe della Grande, Beatrice, the _father_ of his people?’ ’And not least of our own little Parablist, Madonna,’ put in the landlord, with a salutation. ’Plague, man!’ cried Lanti; ’who the devil is this Parablist you keep throwing at us?’ ’They call him Bernardo Bembo, my lord. He was dropped and bred among the monks—some by-blow of a star, they say, in the year of the great fall. He was found at the feet of Mary’s statue; and, certes, he is gifted like an angel. He mouths parables as it were prick-songs, and is esteemed among all for a saint.’ ’A fair saint, i’faith, to be carousing in a tavern.’ ’O my lord! he but lies here an hour from the sun, on his way, this very morning, to Milan, whither he vouches he has had a call. And for his carousing, spring water is it all, and the saints to pay, as I know to my cost.’ ’He should have stopped at the rill, methinks.’ ’He will stop at nothing,’ protested the landlord humbly; ’nay, not even the rebuking by his parables of our most illustrious lord, the Duke Galeazzo himself.’ Lanti guffawed. ’Thou talkest treason, dog. What is to rebuke there?’ ’What indeed, Magnificent? Set a saint, _I_ say, to catch a saint.’ The other laughed louder. ’The right sort of saint for that, I trow, from Giuseppe’s loins.’ ’Nay, good my lord, the Lord Abbot himself is no less a saint.’