again for the pap you were
wont to get from the former fathers of your soul. You will do better
to stay with them, at least till your milk teeth have dropt out."

"You are talking overweeningly," cried Antonio in wrath; "or rather
you are utterly ignorant of what you are saying, and I deserve not
this language from you."

"How has our teacher deserved," said the Spaniard hastily, "he who has
taken you in like a father, he who favours you so highly above all the
young men of our university, who allows you to dwell in his house, who
entrusts you with all the thoughts of his heart, by what offense has
he deserved, that you should thus mean-spiritedly deny him?"

"If I were to answer now," returned Antonio angrily, "that you do not
know him, that I have reasons, and the fullest, to think otherwise of
him, again you would not understand me."

"Verily," said Alfonso with a sneer, "you have already scaled so high
into the most secret places of his philosophy, that the common
unfavoured child of earth is unable to follow you. Here again one sees
that half-merit and quarter-merit puff themselves up the most. Pietro
Abano is more lowly-minded than you, his feeble mimic."

"You are unmannerly!" exclaimed the young Florentine irritated to the
utmost. "If I were now to assure you by my honour, by my faith, by
heaven, and by everything which must needs be holy and venerable to
you and me, that in all Italy, in all Europe, there is no such wicked
villain, no so atrocious hypocrite as this...."

"Who?" shouted Alfonso.

"Pietro Abano," said Antonio now grown calm: "what would you say
then?"

"Nothing!" furiously cried the other, who had not allowed him to
finish: "save that you, and everybody else who dares to speak in that
way, are the paltriest knaves that ever had the audacity to blaspheme
holy things. Draw, if you would not be called a mean coward as well as
a base slanderer."

Antonio's drawn sword met the challenger with the same speed; and it
was in vain that a hoarse anxious voice cried out to them: "Hold!"
Alfonso was wounded in the breast; and the blood at the same time ran
from Antonio's arm.

The old priest, who had wisht to separate the quarrellers, now
hastened forward; bound up their wounds and stancht the blood; then he
called to some students that he had seen a little way off, and told
them to carry the wounded Alfonso to the city.

Before he was removed, Antonio went up to him and whispered in his
ear: