“Take courage,” he mocked me. And he thrust his head farther forward. He looked singularly like a vulture in that moment.
“You suspect that Messer Gambara... that Messer Gambara and Madonna... that...” I clenched my hands together, and looked into his leering face. “You understand me well enough,” I cried, almost angrily.
He looked at me seriously now, a cold glitter in his small eyes.
“I wonder do you understand yourself?” he asked. “I think not. I think not. Since God has made you a fool, it but remains for man to make you a priest, and thus complete God's work.”
“You cannot move me by your taunts,” I said. “You have a foul mind, Messer Fifanti.”
He approached me slowly, his untidily shod feet slip-slopping on the wooden floor.
“Because,” said he, “I suspect that Messer Gambara... that Messer Gambara and Madonna... that... You understand me,” he mocked me, with a mimicry of my own confusion. “And what affair may it be of yours whom I suspect or of what I suspect them where my own are concerned?”
“It is my affair, as it is the affair of every man who would be accounted gentle, to defend the honour of a pure and saintly lady from the foul aspersions of slander.”
“Knight-errantry, by the Host!” quoth he, and his brows shot up on his steep brow. Then they came down again to scowl. “No doubt, my preux-chevalier, you will have definite knowledge of the groundlessness of these same slanders,” he said, moving backwards, away from me, towards the door; and as he moved now his feet made no sound, though I did not yet notice this nor, indeed, his movement at all.
“Knowledge?” I roared at him. “What knowledge can you need beyond what is afforded by her face? Look in it, Messer Fifanti, if you would see innocence and purity and chastity! Look in it!”