The argument grew warm, and the friar stood grimly neuter, waiting like the stork that ate the frog and the mouse at the close of their combat, to grind them both between the jaws of antiquity: when lo, the curtain was gently drawn, and there stood a venerable old man in a purple skull cap, with a beard like white floss silk, looking at them with a kind though feeble smile.
"Happy youth," said he, "that can heat itself over such matters."
They all fell on their knees. It was the Pope.
"Nay, rise, my children," said he, almost peevishly. "I came not into this corner to be in state. How goes Plutarch?"
Gerard brought his work, and kneeling on one knee presented it to his holiness, who had seated himself, the others standing.
His holiness inspected it with interest. "'Tis excellently writ," said he.
Gerard's heart beat with delight.
"Ah! this Plutarch, he had a wondrous art, Francesco. How each character standeth out alive on his page: how full of nature each, yet how unlike his fellow!"
Jacques Bonaventura.] "Give me the signor Boccaccio."
His Holiness.] "An excellent narrator, Capitano, and writeth exquisite Italian. But in spirit a thought too monotonous. Monks and nuns were never all unchaste: one or two such stories were right pleasant and diverting; but five score paint his time falsely, and sadden the heart of such as love mankind. Moreover he hath no skill at characters. Now this Greek is supreme in that great art: he carveth them with pen: and turning his page, see into how real and great a world we enter of war, and policy, and business, and love in its own place: for with him, as in the great world, men are not all running after a wench. With this great open field compare me not the narrow garden of Boccaccio, and his little mill-round of dishonest pleasures."