'A pretty leech! Think you, fool, that stinking plaster——'
''Tis not so much a plaster as a charm. You are not learned in these matters, and that is why you are so wroth.'
'The devil take you and your charms together! How could that ignoramus cure anything when he knows naught of the structure of the body, and has never heard the name of anatomy?'
'Anatomy, forsooth!' said Nastasio, raising lazy contemptuous eyes to his master.
'Ass!' shouted the latter; 'take yourself off out of my service!'
The groom did not move an eyelash.
'I was on the stroke of leaving you on my own account. Your Excellency owes me three months' wages; and as regards the oats, 'tis no fault of mine. Marco gives me no money for oats.'
'What's the meaning of all this? Once I issue my orders——'
Nastasio shrugged his shoulders and returned to his grooming of the grey mare, working violently as if venting his spleen on the dumb animal.
Meantime Giovanni, amused by the altercation, was smiling as he scrubbed his face with a coarse towel.