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It was a wooden and sheet-iron building on stilts, swarming even at night with dirty children, pigs, chickens, and yellow dogs, and presided over by a glassy-eyed, slatternly woman of French antecedents, the general shape of a wine-skin three-fourths full, and of a ghoulish instinct toward the purses of travelers.
Tom was unusually great; stories of drollery unlocked before, poured from him unceasingly, and what with his high spirits to excite them, and the reaction inevitable after a hard day's severe march, the party soon lost the little reason that usually sufficed to guide them, and became as pleasantly tipsy as can well be conceived. However, all good things must have an end, and so had the wine-skin.
"In the first place, I am of a thirsty family. My father kept a wine-shop and my mother was a cantiniera, and both drank as much as they sold. I inherited an unfortunate addiction to the wine-skin, which upon several occasions has brought me into trouble and the black-hole.
"Tob," I said, "whether I step into power again, or whether I go to the block to-morrow, is another matter which the Gods alone know, but hear me tell you now, that if a chance is given me of showing my gratitude, I shall not forget the way you have served me in this voyage, and the way you have fought this day." Tob filled another brimming horn from the wine-skin and splashed it at my feet.
"My lord, 'twas found by the man Jenkyn snoring within the green, together with a mule a sorry beast! a capon partly devoured, a pasty well spiced! and a wine-skin empty, alas! But for who it is, and whence it cometh "
Put fermenting wine into a hard, unyielding, old wine-skin, and there can be but one result, the strong effervescence will burst the skin, which may not matter much, and the precious wine will run out and be lost, sucked up by the thirsty soil, which matters more. The attempt to confine the new within the limits of the old, or to express it by the old forms, destroys them and wastes it.
The Jew contributed the morality and monotheism of the Old Testament; the Greek, culture and the perfected language that should contain the treasure, the fresh wine-skin for the new wine; the Roman made the diffusion of the kingdom possible by the pax Romana, and at first sheltered the young plant.
But when the last shred of garlic or last gobbet of pork had been fished up, when the wine-skin was flabby, the last crust's memory faded from the toothpick, Petruccio slapped Silvestro on the knee. "Now, comrade," cried he, "we'll have the Jew for dessert." "The Jew, the Jew! Now for the Jew!" went the chorus. Silvestro coloured. "The Jew? Eh, well, I killed him ecco!"
To him to this compound of somnolence, shrewdness, and good nature to this creature with no more tincture of romantic idealism than a wine-skin, the knight addresses, without misgiving, his lofty dissertations on the glories and the duties of chivalry the squire responding after his fashion.
Sancho likewise held his peace and ate acorns, and paid repeated visits to the second wine-skin, which they had hung up on a cork tree to keep the wine cool.
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