"What old Roberto! Roberto!" cried the old woman almost with a shout of triumph: "hey, only see how strangely some people will turn out! Ay, ay, the sneak in his younger days was such a straitlaced hypocrite, such a holy-seeming dog; afterward however he grew a fine spirited fellow, as they tell me. It was in the grotto then? How cunningly things fit together, and shell off till one gets at the kernel! In that grotto your father in earlier days sat time after time with his first wife; there at their betrothal he first swore eternal love to her. In those times Roberto doubtless already wore that dagger; but he knew not what an odd use he was to make of it some twenty years after. In that grotto too the second spouse would often slumber beside the cool fountain; and again the husband would lie there at her feet. Well, Antonio, child, is not life a right merry, right silly, right absurd, and right horrible hodgepodge? No man can say: 'that's a thing I never will do'. The pangs and the feelings, the stings and the ravings, which the black crew forge in hell's smithy, all these keep coming on and coming on, slowly, wonderously, nearer and ever nearer: on a sudden Horrour is in the house, and the frantic victim sits with it in the corner, and gnaws at it as a dog gnaws a bone. Drink, drink, my darling; this grape-juice sets all things to rights when its spirits once get into the soul.... Now, and you? do tell me a little more." "I swore to revenge my father," said Antonio. "That's just right;" returned the old woman: "look you, my child, when such a firebrand has been once hurled into a house, it must never never go out again. From generation to generation down to grandchild and cousin the poison is entailed; the children rave already; the wound is always bleeding afresh; a new vein must be opened to save the disaster and set it upon its legs again, when but for that it might be in danger of breathing its last. O revenge, revenge is a goodly word!" "But Roberto," said Antonio, "had escaped, and was nowhere to be found." "A pity, a pity!" exclaimed the old woman. "Now of course thy revenge drives thee over the world?" "Yes in truth; I wandered through Italy, searcht in every town, but could find no trace of the murderer. At last the fame of Pietro of Abano fixt me at Padua. I wisht to learn wisdom from him; but when I came into the house of the Podesta...." "Well! speak out, child!"