"Who but your grace, whose letter it is to be."
"Gramercy! what, you writers, find you not the words? What avails your art without the words? I doubt you are an impostor, Gerardo."
"Nay, signora, I am none. I might make shift to put your highness's speech into grammar, as well as writing. But I cannot interpret your silence. Therefore speak what is in your heart, and I will empaper it before your eyes."
"But there is nothing in my heart. And sometimes I think I have got no heart."
"What is in your mind, then?"
"But there is nothing in my mind; nor my head neither."
"Then why write at all?"
"Why, indeed? That is the first word of sense either you or I have spoken, Gerardo. Pestilence seize him! why writeth he not first? then I could say nay to this, and ay to that, withouten headache. Also is it a lady's part to say the first word?"
"No, signora: the last."
"It is well spoken, Gerardo. Ha! ha! Shalt have a gold piece for thy wit. Give me my purse!" And she paid him for the article on the nail à la moyen âge. Money never yet chilled zeal. Gerard, after getting a gold piece so cheap, felt bound to pull her out of her difficulty; if the wit of man might achieve it. "Signorina," said he, "these things are only hard because folk attempt too much, are artificial and labour phrases. Do but figure to yourself the signor you love—"