'Never mind,' cried the cross-eyed Pippo, 'we'll have him in to the feast.'
'Nay,' interposed Giovanni; 'you are confounding Epictetus with Epicurus.'
He was too late; down came Pippo's hammer so clean on the philosopher's nose that the boys yelled in admiration.
'Epictetus or Epicurus, it's all one! If it isn't the broth, it's the sippets of bread! They shall all go to the house of the devil,' they cried, quoting Fra Girolamo.
However, contention arose before a picture of Botticelli's. Dolfo declared it was the naked Bacchus pierced by the shafts of love, but Federici, whose eye for 'anathemata' rivalled Dolfo's, examined the picture attentively and pronounced it a portrait of Stephen the proto-martyr.
The children stood round in perplexity, for the attire and the expression of the figure in nowise suggested a saint.
'Don't you believe him!' cried Dolfo; ''tis Bacchus, the abominable Bacchus!'
'You blasphemer!' shouted Federici, raising his crucifix for weapon, and the two boys fell upon each other with such goodwill that their followers could hardly separate them. The picture was left for future consideration.
Standing in wondering groups, the children rummaged amongst the properties of old carnivals—amongst the horrid masks of satyrs, grapes for bacchantes, bows, amongst quivers, and wings of Eros, the wands of Hermes, the tridents of Poseidon. Finally, drawing them forth amid shouts of laughter, they lighted on the wooden, gilded, cobwebbed thunderbolt of Jupiter Tonans, and the moth-eaten body of the Olympian eagle, with moulted tail, and wires and nails protruding from his perforated crop. A rat jumped out from the dusty golden wig once worn by Aphrodite, girls screamed, jumped on the couches and gathered up their petticoats. The shadows of terrified bats beating against the ceiling seemed the wings of unclean spirits, and a chill of horror and repulsion settled on the children as they touched this heathen lumber, this sepulchral dust of deities.
Dolfo running up announced that there was yet another room, its door guarded by a little, bald, furious, red-nosed, detestable man, who was hurling blasphemy and curses, and would permit no one to pass. The troop filed off to reconnoitre; and Giovanni, following them, found in the janitor his friend the bibliophile, Messer Giorgio Merula.