"Why are you thus stingy of your words today?" he at length began, somewhat vext: "is my company troublesome to you? or are you no longer as capable as you used to be of honouring our great teacher and giving him the glory he deserves?"
Antonio was forced to collect himself, not to sink away entirely into his dreamy state.
"What is the matter with you?" askt Alfonso again: "it seems I have offended you."
"No, you have not;" cried the Florentine; "but if you have any regard for me, if you would not excite my anger, if you would not have the bitterest feelings rend my heart, do give over chaunting the praises of your idolized Pietro for today. Let us talk on some other subject."
"Ha! by Heaven!" exclaimed Alfonso: "so the parsons have twisted your feeble senses round at last. Go your own way henceforward, young man; wisdom, I now well see, is too lofty a prize for you. Your head is too weak for this fare; and you are longing again for the pap you were wont to get from the former fathers of your soul. You will do better to stay with them, at least till your milk teeth have dropt out."
"You are talking overweeningly," cried Antonio in wrath; "or rather you are utterly ignorant of what you are saying, and I deserve not this language from you."
"How has our teacher deserved," said the Spaniard hastily, "he who has taken you in like a father, he who favours you so highly above all the young men of our university, who allows you to dwell in his house, who entrusts you with all the thoughts of his heart, by what offense has he deserved, that you should thus mean-spiritedly deny him?"
"If I were to answer now," returned Antonio angrily, "that you do not know him, that I have reasons, and the fullest, to think otherwise of him, again you would not understand me."
"Verily," said Alfonso with a sneer, "you have already scaled so high into the most secret places of his philosophy, that the common unfavoured child of earth is unable to follow you. Here again one sees that half-merit and quarter-merit puff themselves up the most. Pietro Abano is more lowly-minded than you, his feeble mimic."
"You are unmannerly!" exclaimed the young Florentine irritated to the utmost. "If I were now to assure you by my honour, by my faith, by heaven, and by everything which must needs be holy and venerable to you and me, that in all Italy, in all Europe, there is no such wicked villain, no so atrocious hypocrite as this…."