'Why, I had rather carry a bull to the temple of Jupiter, as Macrobius has it,' he said, 'meaning that....' 'Yet you have drunk with him,' Katharine interrupted him hotly, 'you have gone hurling through the night with him. You have shamed me together.' 'Yet I cannot forget Tully,' he answered sardonically, 'who warns me that a prudent man should be able to moderate the course of his friendship, even as he reins his horse. _Est prudentis sustinere ut cursum_....' 'Mark you that!' the old knight said to Katharine. 'I will get my boy to read to me out of Tully, for that is excellent wisdom.' 'God help me, this is Christendom!' Katharine said, bitterly. 'Shall one abandon one that lay in the same cradle with one?' 'Your ladyship hath borne with him a day too long,' Udal said. 'He beat me like a dog five days since. Have you heard of the city called Ponceropolis, founded by the King Philip? Your good cousin should be ruler of that city, for the Great King peopled it with all the brawlers, cut-throats, and roaring boys of his dominions, to be rid of them.' She became aware that he was very angry, for his whisper shook like the neigh of a horse. The old knight winked at Margot. 'Why this is a monstrous wise man,' he said, 'who yet speaks some sense.' 'In short,' the magister said, 'If you will stick to this man, you shall lose me. For I have taken beatings and borne no malice--as in the case of men with whose loves or wives I have prospered better than themselves. But that this man should miscall me and beat me for the pure frenzy of his mind, causelessly, and for the love of blows! That is unbearable. To-night I walk for the first time after five days since he did beat me. And I ask you whom you shall here find the better servant?' His thin figure was suddenly shaking with rage. 'Why, this is conspiracy!' Katharine cried. 'A conspiracy!' Udal's voice rose up into a shriek. 'If your ladyship were a Queen I would not be a Queen's cousin's whipping post.' His arms jerked with the spasms of his rage like those of a marionette. 'A shame that learned men should be so beaten!' Margot's gruff voice uttered. Katharine turned upon her. 'That is what made you speak e'ennow. You have been with this flibbertigibbet.' 'This is a free land,' the girl mumbled, her mild eyes sparkling with the contagious anger of her lover. The old knight stood blinking upon Katharine. 'You are like to lose all your servants in this quarrel,' he said. Katharine wrung her hands, and then turned her back upon them and drummed upon the table with her fingers. Udal caught Margot's large hand and fumbled it beneath the furs of his robe: the old knight kept his smiling eyes upon Katharine's back. Her voice came at last: 'Why, I will not have Tom killed upon this occasion into which I brought him.' Rochford shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. 'Oh marvellous infatuation,' he said. Katharine spoke, still with her back turned and her shoulders heaving: