Ercole said, "I have only done what any man would do who loved a lady."
"Don Francis would never say Vieni!" said Virginia with a snap, looking up quickly.
"Then the lady would never come," said Ercole.
I was silent, condemning in my heart what my wits could not gainsay.
Ercole saw his Donna Domenica again. She passed with the returning procession, and again looked full and mournful knowledge on her lover. He neither blushed nor saluted her, but met her eyes steadily and did not follow her retreating figure in the hope that she would turn her head. Nor did she turn it. He seemed perfectly cheerful afterwards, and disposed to sleep. He said that he should take another day in Prato, so as to get a little fun of the fair. They had no fairs at San Benedetto in Alpi.
CHAPTER XVIII
FRA PALAMONE BREAKS THE LAW, AND I MY CHAIN
For his second day's campaign, when he set up as a dentist (in spectacles and a fine black beard), Fra Palamone chose me to be arrayed in a loose punchinello suit of red cotton, covered with the signs of the zodiac in tinsel; for, said he, "Mystery is half our battle won beforehand. Hermes Trismegistus himself had not been the philosopher he was if he had been understood, and to this day Aristotle is undervalued, not for saying what he meant, but for saying it all." He gave me a peaked felt hat for my head, and exhorted me to have no fears. "Tooth- drawing," he said, "is as easy as kissing any day. Reflect, Francis, upon this, and let it be your comfort throughout the coming conflict, that there is no jaw-bone in the head of mortal man so strong as his wrist. With your wrist and elbow you can knock a man down; but show me the jaw that will do so much. I will say nothing of Samson, who is not in debate; moreover his weapon was borrowed and his enemies were God's enemies. Now, here is another fact, full of encouragement for you. The stronger a man is in the jaw, the harder he will pull against your forceps. Pray, what chance has a tooth the most rooted against your pull and the patient's? Not the faintest! Out it comes, and there is one poor sufferer the less in Prato. Courage then; pull and pull again." I promised him that I would pull my stoutest, but curtly declined his suggestion that I should try my hand upon Virginia's mouth, although she made no demur. Sooner should Prato swim in blood, I said, than I lay violent hands upon my friend.
And in blood swam Prato that day, and Fra Palamone bathed in it eloquently. He called himself Conqueror of Pain, and piled up his captures like the trophies of a Roman triumph. I can still hear the soul-congealing yell with which he hailed every new token of his prowess, and still see the packed Piazza surge, as it was swept by it like corn in a breeze. "Woe unto you, heathen masticator," he would cry, holding high the forceps and its victim, "Woe unto you when you meet Palamone, Tyrant of Pain! Blessed be the pincers and the fork, which have gained the celestial paradise for Sant' Agnese, and the terrestrial for this worthy man! I tell you, signori," he would say, looking round upon the gaping company, "I would rather be in this man's shoes than in the Grand Duke's, or in those of my blood-brother in God, the Patriarch of Venice. Ha! he will break up larks' bones this night! and where are the sheep's trotters to deny him entry? Where are the walnuts or the peach stones whose kernels are removed from him? Ahi, signori! do you think, if Signor Dives had had so wholesome a mouth he would have left to Lazarus the bones? Not he—but the pith of every one of them had gone to make him sleeker. Avanti, signori, avanti! Let the next in torment come up." He had abundant custom, and seemed never to tire; but my turn came at last, introduced by a string of panegyric which spoke of me as the Nerve-Acrobat, the Lodestone of Ivory, the Electrical Indian Boy, at whose touch teeth flew from their sockets and tartar dissolved in smoke. Pale, but with resolution, I grasped the weapon which he handed me.
To my consternation and half-undoing, I saw in the chair the sinewy form and honest brown face of Ercole, the heroic lover. He saluted me with a smile and wave of the hand. He was here to encourage me, he said. Every man must make a beginning, and there was nothing like a friendly face. Very much unnerved, I asked him which tooth he proposed to lose. "Whichever you prefer," he said. "I am here ready. Take this one for instance." He tapped a fine grinder in his lower jaw. I asked him did it pain him?