"I know it! Yet one single word would make me master where I am the slave."
"And you waver?"
"Silence!" growled Benilo. "Tempt me no more!"
Their discourse at this point was rudely interrupted by the clamour of the guests, bent upon silencing Bembo's exuberance, whose tongue, like a ribbon in the wind, fluttered incessantly. He bore himself with the airs of some orator of antiquity, rolling his eyes until they showed the whites beneath, and beating the air with his short, chubby arms.
"If Bembo is to be believed there is not in all Rome one faithful wife nor one innocent girl," roared the lord of Bracciano, a burly noble who was balancing a dainty dancer on his knee, while she held his faun-like head encircled with her arms.
"Pah!" cried Guido da Fermo, a baron whose chief merit consisted in infesting the roads in the Patrimony of St. Peter. "There are some, but they are scarce, remarkably scarce!"
"Make your wants known at the street corners," exclaimed Roffredo, taking the cue. "And I wager our fair Queen would be the first to claim the prize."
And the young Patrician whose face revealed traces of grossest debauchery gazed defiantly round the hall, as if challenging some one to take up the gauntlet, if he dared.
"Be careful!" whispered the girl Nelida, his companion. "Benilo is looking at you!"
Roffredo laughed boisterously.