"A toast to Roxané! And as for my foragers—they sweep clean."
The toast was drunk with rapturous applause.
"Right you are," bellowed the Cavallo. "Better brooms were never made on the Posilippo,—not a straw lies in your way."
"Did you accomplish it without fight?" sneered the Lord of Bracciano.
"Fight? Why fight? The burghers never resist a noble! We conjure the devil down with that. When we skin our eels, we don't begin at the tail."
"Better to steal the honey, than to kill the bees that make it."
"But what became of the women and children after this swoop of your foragers?" asked the Lord of Bracciano, who appeared to entertain some few isolated ideas of honour floating on the top of the wine he had gulped down.
"The women and children?" replied the Lord of Civitella with a mocking air, crossing his thumbs, like the peasants of Lugano, when they wish to inspire belief in their words. "They can breakfast by gaping! They can eat wind, like the Tarentines,—it will make them spit clear."
The Lord of Bracciano, irritated at the mocking sign and proverbial allusion to the gaping propensities of the people round the Lago, started up in wrath and struck his clenched fist on the table.
"My Lord of Civitella," he cried, "do not cross your damned thumbs at me, else I will cut them off! The people of Bracciano have still corn in plenty, until your thieving bands scorch their fingers in the attempt to steal it."