ping, the scamp-scholar picked up a small, leathern-bound
volume from the ground, where it had fallen during the struggle, and
held it tightly clutched in his hand. "Ah," he muttered with a glad
sigh, "I feared I had lost it--my Horace! And now, Sir Jester, what
would you with me?"

"A question I might answer with a question," replied the fool. "Having
failed in your enterprise, why should I spare you?"

"You shouldn't," returned the vagabond-student. "The ancients teach
but the irrevocable law of retribution."

To hear a would-be assassin, a castaway out of pocket and heels and
elbows, calmly proclaiming the Greek doctrine of inevitableness, under
such circumstances, would have surprised an observer even more
experienced and worldly than the duke's fool. Involuntarily his face
softened; this _pauvre diable_ gazed upon eternity with the calm eyes
of a Socrates.

"You do not then beg for life?" said the _plaisant_, his former
impatience merging into mild curiosity.

"Is it worth begging for?" asked the straitened book-worm. "Life means
a pinched stomach, a cold body; Death, no hunger to fear, and a bed
that, though cold, chills us not. What we know not doth not exist--for
us; ergo, to lie in the earth is to rest in the lap of luxury, for all
our consciousness of it. But to be unconscious of the ills of this
perishable frame, Horace likewise must be as dead to us as our aches
and pains. Thus is life made preferable to death. Yes; I would live.
Hold, though--" he again hesitated in deep thought--"what avails Horace
if--" he began.

"Why, what new data have entered in the premises?" observed the
wondering jester.

"Nanette!" was the gloomy answer.

"Who, pray, is Nanette?" asked the fool, thrusting his assailant's
weapon in his jerkin.

"A wanton haggard whose tongue will run post sixteen stages together!
Who would make the devil himself malleable; then, work, hammer and
wire-draw him!"

"And what is she to you?"

"My wife! That is, she claims that exalted place, having married me
one night when I was in my cups through a false priest who dresses as a
Franciscan monk. 'Fools in the court of God' are these priests called,
and truly he is a jester, for certainly is he no true monk. But
Nanette, nevertheless, asserts she is the lawful partner of my sorrows.
So work your will on me. A stroke, and the shivering spirit is wafted
across the Styx."

"And if I gave you not only your life--for a conside