“Why do you call Orlando’s horse Vegliantino? Last year he was Brigliadoro.”
“One moment, if you please. Almonte called him Brigliadoro because he had a golden bridle; but when Orlando took him he called him Vegliantino because he was so wide-awake—only slept with one eye at a time—always kept the other open. You have good horses also in England. I read in the Giornale di Sicilia that your King Edward has a good horse who won the great race this year, but I do not remember his name. It was not a reasonable name.”
“The name was Minoru. Do you think that a bad name for a good horse?”
“I think Vegliantino is better.”
“Perhaps it is. Let us return to Malagigi. Are you not going to tell me why he is no longer giving the Christians the benefit of his services as magician?”
So he told me about Malagigi, who, it seems, had a quarrel with Carlo Magno, in the course of which Malagigi boasted:
“You are the Emperor of the World, but I am the Emperor of the Inferno.”
Carlo Magno did not quite like this and responded by cursing Malagigi, saying that he would not go to heaven when he died. One would think that Malagigi must have had the substance of this remark addressed to him before by persons who had not troubled to wrap it up in the imperial language employed by Carlo Magno. If so, it had never made any impression on him, but now he began to think there might be something in it. He had been a good man on the whole and a Christian, nevertheless, as a sorcerer he had no doubt diabolised a little too freely. To be on the safe side, he determined to repent and, as these things do not get over the footlights unless they are done in the grand manner, he began by burning his magical books, all except one, and they were the books of Merlin, whose disciple he had been. He next dropped his name of Malagigi, because it had been given him by the devils in council, and called himself Onofrio. He still kept on terms with his confidential private devil, Nacalone, whom he now summoned and to whom he spoke these words:
“Convey me to some peaceful shore where I may repent of my sins and die of grief in a grotto.”
When we came to this—I could not help it, I was full of small complaints that morning—I exclaimed: