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Updated: May 3, 2025
"Stop!" cried the Mahdi. But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. "I'll see to it yet," he cried, turning on his heel. "Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to my father! Farewell!" And in another moment he was gone. The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the doom that was impending.
Rarely, very rarely, there was a dinner party a formal affair, to which the I.G.'s wife went in state and, as became her rank, in a big green box of a sedan chair with four bearers. Indeed this was the only possible means of going about comfortably at night in a city of unexpected ditches, ruts like sword-gashes, and lighted only by twinkling lanterns of belated roysterers.
It tells, too, of the simple life spent in seclusion in contradistinction to the "envious court" of the roysterers in the glare of the leafless flame-tree. A final note in reference to the flame-tree may be permitted. As it is the popular rendezvous during September, pleasure was taken in cataloguing the greatest variety and number of birds congregated there at one and the same time.
A few noisy men laughed and swore obscene oaths; and girls, either in couples or with men, trudged, demure and unshocked, past the roysterers, as though they had neither ears to hear nor eyes to see. In a few minutes the processions were dissipated, dissolved into the vastness of the city, and the pavements nearly deserted. George strolled on towards the Square.
But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.
But I looked so dangerous with my swarthy face and desperate eye, I dare say, also I was so well armed, that the roysterers left me severely alone. But I drank Lord, what did I not drink that night! I poured down my gullet all and sundry that was given me. And to render these Bishop's thralls their dues, there was no lack and no inhospitality.
Then Messer Folco, very gray in the face and stately of bearing, advanced in front of Messer Simone, where he struggled with his friends, and addressed us. "Sirs," he said, gravely, "what has come to the city of Florence, so famous for its decorum and its dignity, when the marriage of one of her citizens is thus rudely interrupted by roysterers in arms?"
Immense was no name for what followed, and it is very unfortunate that similar roysterers do not run up against a like party. "Come, miss," urged the man, "I've paid you a compliment. You ain't a-going to let me lose my bet?" Cad paid no attention to the fellow, and his companions jeered. One said: "She daren't raise her veil, or she'll make you lose, sure."
Anyhow, he thundered to some effect, inasmuch as he detached those that had gentlemanly feelings from the wanton roysterers, and next day the latter pleaded wine. But they told the story, not without embellishments. The world followed their example. I dined and slept at Temple's house, not caring to meet my incarnate humiliation. I sent to hear that he was safe.
Had Bandello allowed Botticelli to tell the tale, it would have been much more in keeping. Leonardo's days were too full of work to permit of his indulging in the society of roysterers his life was singularly dignified and upright. When about twenty years old Leonardo was a fellow-student with Perugino in the bottega of good old Andrea del Verrocchio.
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