"
"These, then, are all?" interrupted the Signor Grimaldi, who saw, by the
heaving bosom of Sigismund, that it was time in mercy to interpose.
"Not so, Signore--there is still another and one I like less than any. A
countryman of your own, who, impudently enough, calls himself Il
Maledetto."
"Maso!"
"The very same."
"Honest, courageous Maso, and his noble dog!"
"Signore, you describe the man so well in some things, that I wonder you
know so little of him in others. Maso hath not his equal on the road for
activity and courage, and the beast is second only to our mastiffs of the
convent for the same qualities; but when you speak of the master's
honesty, you speak of that for which the world gives him little credit,
and do great disparagement to the brute, which is much the best of the
two, in this respect."
"This may be true enough," rejoined the Signore Grimaldi, turning
anxiously towards his companions:--"man is a strange compound of good and
evil; his acts when left to natural impulses are so different from what
they become on calculation that one can scarcely answer for a man of
Maso's temperament.
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