It was the fool who answered him. He sat out of sight upon the floor, hunched against the chair of one of Valentina's ladies, who now and again would toss him down a morsel from her plate, much as she might have treated a favourite hound.
“You have the friar to thank for it,” said he, in a muffled voice, for his mouth was crammed with pasty. “Let me be damned when I die, if I make him not my confessor. The man who can so minister to bodies should deal amazingly well with souls. Fra Domenico, you shall confess me after sunset.”
“You need me not,” answered the monk, in disdainful wrath. “There is a beatitude for such as you—'Blessed are the poor in spirit.'”
“And is there no curse for such as you?” flashed back the fool. “Does it say nowhere—'Damned are the gross of flesh, the fat and rotund gluttons who fashion themselves a god of their own bellies'?”
With his sandalled foot the friar caught the fool a surreptitious kick.
“Be still, you adder, you bag of venom.”
Fearing worse, the fool gathered himself up.
“Beware!” he cried shrilly. “Bethink you, friar, that anger is a cardinal sin. Beware, I say!”
Fra Domenico checked his upraised hand, and fell to muttering scraps of Latin, his lids veiling his suddenly downcast eyes. Thus Peppe gained the door.
“Say, friar; in my ear, now—Was that a hare you stewed, or an outworn sandal?”