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Updated: June 15, 2025
And in despair, seeing no one move to arrest them, he made as if he would stand between them. But the bully flourished his blade about his ears, and with a cry the goodman saved himself "Out, skinker!" Grio cried grimly. "And you, say your prayers, puppy. Before you are five minutes older I will spit you like a partridge though I cross the frontier for it. You have basted me with wine!
"Yes," Claude answered; and the recollection of the scene and of the support which the Syndic had given to Grio checked the impulse to speak. Perhaps after all the girl knew best. "And a person of the name of Basterga, I think?" Claude nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak now. Could it be that a whisper of what was passing in the house had reached the magistrates? The Syndic coughed.
"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.
Knock at my door at eight this evening and I may have news for you." "You don't think to resolve him to-night?" Grio muttered with a look of incredulity. "It may be. I do not know. In the meantime silence, and keep sober!" "Ay, ay!" "But it is more than ay, ay!" Basterga retorted with irritation; with something of the temper, indeed, which he had betrayed at the beginning of the interview.
And for the third time, drawing himself up to his full height, he tapped his brow. "Do you doubt its power?" For answer Grio shrugged his shoulders, his manner sullen and contemptuous. "You do?" "I don't see how it works, Messer Basterga," the veteran muttered. "I say not you have not good wits. You have, I grant it. But the best of wits must have their means and method.
A scholar? No, I tell you, there was never alchemist yet could transmute but one thing poor into rich, rich into poor!" "But," Grio murmured with a look and in a voice of disappointment, "is not that the true transmutation which a thousand have died seeking, and one here and there, it is rumoured, has found? From lead to gold, Messer Basterga?"
Is drink-money for your old age, when else you must starve or stab in the purlieus of Genoa, not worth one month's sobriety? But you must needs for the sake of a single night's debauch ruin me and get yourself broken on the wheel!" Grio shrank under his eye. "There is no harm done," he muttered at last. "Nobody suspects what is between us." "How do you know that?" came the retort. "What?
In what am I worse than Tissot or Grio," he continued, "or I forget the other's name? Have I the plague, or the falling sickness? Am I Papist or Arian? What have I done that I may not lie in Geneva, may not lie in your house? Tell me, give me a reason, show me the cause, and I will go." Her anger had died down while he spoke and while she listened.
And Blondel, who should have sent you to the whipping-post, or out of Geneva, has to cloak you! And men ask why, and what there is between our most upright Syndic and a drunken, bragging " "Softly," Grio muttered, with a flash of sullen resentment. "Softly, Messer Basterga! "A drunken, swilling, prating pig!" the other persisted. "A broken soldier living on an hour of chance service?
He paused rather suddenly, as his eyes met Grio's: and a little of his dignity fell from him with the pause. His manner underwent a subtle change from the judicial to the paternal. When he resumed, he wagged his head tolerantly, and a modicum of sorrow mingled with his anger. "Ah, Messer Grio! Messer Grio!" he said, "it is you, is it? For shame! For shame! This is sad, this is lamentable!
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