'Be they many?'
'Ay, a crowd; they beset the plain as locusts; you can see no end to them. The Lord hath sent them for the chastisement of our sins, this Black Death, these northern devils.'
'But why, Gorgoglio, speak thus ill of them?' asked Mascarello; 'they come as our friends—our allies.'
'Allies! Hold your peace. Look after your pockets, say I, for that kind of ally is worse than an enemy. He'll buy the horn and steal the bullock.'
'Rave not, Gorgoglio. Expound simply why you hold these French inimical.'
'Because they trample down our crops; because they fell our trees, carry off our beasts, ravish our women. Their king is a baboon; no soul behind his teeth; but he is a great lover of women. He carries a book, pictures of our handsomest women. And they say that, God helping them, they will not leave a maid between Milan and Naples.'
'The villains!' cried Scarabullo, thumping with his fist so that the glasses rang.
'And our Moro,' continued Gorgoglio, 'dances on his hind legs to the sound of the French pipe. And they don't count us to be men, neither. "You," they say, making their grimaces, "you are all thieves and assassins. You have poisoned your rightful duke, you have murdered an innocent boy. For this God punishes you and gives us your land." And we, friends, are receiving them into our arms and feeding them!'
'These be old wives' tales, Gorgoglio.'
'Blind me, cut out my tongue if I speak not the truth! Nor have I told all. Hearken, signori miei, to what they have the audacity to say. They say "We are destined to overcome all the peoples of Italy, to subdue all the seas and the nations of the sea, to destroy the grand Turk, and plant the true cross on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem; then we will come back to you, and we will execute on you the fury of God. And if you submit not yourselves, your name shall be wiped off from the face of the earth." That's what they say!'