'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.'
'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.