"So! And yet I tamed her. And she suffers you! She's sport for us within bounds. Yet do you think she likes it when you paw her hand or lay your dirty arm about her waist, or steal a kiss? Think you the blood mounts and ebbs for nothing? Or the tears rise and the lip trembles and the limbs shake for sheer pleasure. I tell you, if eyes could slay, you had breathed your last some weeks ago."
"I know," Grio answered, nodding thoughtfully. "I have wondered and wondered, ay, many a time, how you did it."
"Yet I did it? You grant that?"
"Yes."
"And you do not understand—with what?"
Grio shook his head.
"Then why mistrust me now, blockhead," the other retorted, "when I say that as I charmed her, I can charm Blondel? Ay, and more easily. You know not how I did the one, nor how I shall do the other," the big man continued. "But what of that?" And in a louder voice, and with a gusto which showed how genuine was his delight in the metre,
"Pauci quos æquus amavit
Jupiter aut ardens evexit ad æthera virtus
Dis geniti potuere,"
he mouthed. "But that," he added, looking scornfully at his confederate, "is Greek to you!"
Grio's altered aspect, his crestfallen air owned the virtue of the argument if not of the citation; which he did not understand. He drew a deep breath. "Per Bacco," he said, "if you succeed in doing it, Messer Basterga——"