"How know you that?" Basterga repeated with sudden energy, and he shook a massive finger before the other's eyes. "But how know you anything," he continued with disdain, as he dropped the hand again, and turned on his heel, "dolt, imbecile, rudiment that you are? Ay, and blind to boot, for it was but the other day I worked a miracle before you, and you learned nothing from it." "It is no question of miracles," the other muttered doggedly. "But of how you will persuade the Syndic Blondel to betray Geneva to Savoy!" "Is it so? Then tell me this: the girl below who smacked your face a month back because you laid a hand upon her wrist, and who would have had you put to the door the same day--how did I tame her? Can you answer me that?" Grio's face fell remarkably. "No, master," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "I grant it. I cannot. A wilder filly was never handled." "So! And yet I tamed her. And she suffers you! She's sport for us within bounds. Yet do you think she likes it when you paw her hand or lay your dirty arm about her waist, or steal a kiss? Think you the blood mounts and ebbs for nothing? Or the tears rise and the lip trembles and the limbs shake for sheer pleasure. I tell you, if eyes could slay, you had breathed your last some weeks ago." "I know," Grio answered, nodding thoughtfully. "I have wondered and wondered, ay, many a time, how you did it." "Yet I did it? You grant that?" "Yes." "And you do not understand--with what?" Grio shook his head. "Then why mistrust me now, blockhead," the other retorted, "when I say that as I charmed her, I can charm Blondel? Ay, and more easily. You know not how I did the one, nor how I shall do the other," the big man continued. "But what of that?" And in a louder voice, and with a gusto which showed how genuine was his delight in the metre, "Pauci quos aequus amavit Jupiter aut ardens evexit ad aethera virtus Dis geniti potuere," he mouthed. "But that," he added, looking scornfully at his confederate, "is Greek to you!" Grio's altered aspect, his crestfallen air owned the virtue of the argument if not of the citation; which he did not understand. He drew a deep breath. "Per Bacco," he said, "if you succeed in doing it, Messer Basterga----" "I shall do it," Basterga retorted, "if you do not spoil all with your drunken tricks!"