Didst ever hear of a
churchman that suffered in this way?"
"Men often escape with less than their deserts;" Maso drily answered.
"Well, fortune, or the saints, or Calvin, or whatever power most suits
your tastes, good friends, has at length put a roof over our heads,--an
honor that rarely arrives to most of us, if I may judge by appearances and
some little knowledge of the different trades we follow. Thou wilt have a
fair occasion to suffer Policinello to rest from his uneasy antics, Pippo,
while his master breathes the air through a window for the first time in
many a day, as I will answer."
The Neapolitan had no difficulty in laughing at this sally; for his was a
nature that took all things pleasantly, though it took nothing under the
corrective of principle or a respect for the rights of others.
"Were this Napoli, with her gentle sky and hot volcano," he said, smiling
at the allusion, "no one would have less relish for a roof than myself."
"Thou wast born beneath the arch of some Duca's gateway," returned Maso,
with a sort of reckless sarcasm, that as often cut his friends as his
enemies; "thou wilt probably die in the hospital of the poor, and wilt
surely be shot from the death-cart into one of the daily holes of thy
Campo Santo, among a goodly company of Christians, in which legs and arms
will be thrown at random like jack-straws, and in which the wisest among
ye all will be puzzled to tell his own limbs from those of his neighbors,
at the sound of the last trumpet.
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