o," as he
turned round to the youths, "you perchance don't know that
wisdommonger there."

"O yes!" said Antonio: "he is our best friend, the excellent
Castalio."

Here the dwarf raised such an enormous shout of laughter, that the
walls and windows of the room clattered and echoed it back. "Castalio!
Castalio!" screamed he as if possest: "why not Aganippe too, or
Hippocrene? So, you have got spectacles before your eyes, and your
souls stare stupidly with a calf's look out of your round pumpkins of
heads! Rub your noses, and see, and recognize, I pray you, your
honoured Pietro of Abano, the great jack-of-all-trades from Padua!"

He who called himself Castalio had sunk as if fainting into a chair:
his trembling was so violent that all his limbs fluttered; the muscles
of his face quivered with such force that no feature in it could be
distinguisht; and after the young men had gazed on it for some time
amazedly, they thought with horrour they perceived that from this
distortion of all the lineaments came forth the well-known countenance
of the aged Apone.

With a loud scream the magician started from his seat, clencht his
fists, and foamed at the mouth; he seemed in his fury of a gigantic
size. "Well, yes!" he roared in a tone of thunder: "it is I, I,
Pietro! and thou slave, thou art spoiling my game, as I was destroying
those young brats after a new fashion. What wouldst thou, worm, of me,
who am thy master, and who have cast thee off? Tremblest thou not
through all thy bones at the thought of my vengeance and punishment?"

Beresynth again raised the same pealing horrid laugh. "Vengeance!
Punishment!" he repeated grinning. "Fool! matchless fool! art thou now
for the first time to find out that such language toward me does not
beseem thee? that thou juggler, must crawl in the dust before me? that
a glance of my eye, a grasp of my iron arm, will dash thee to pieces,
thou earth-born mummery with thy wretched tricks, which only prospered
through my countenance."

A spectre stood in the hall. His eyes shot forth sparks of fire; his
arms spread themselves out like an eagle's wings; his head toucht the
ceiling: Pietro lay whining and howling at his feet. "It was I," so
the demon spake on, "who furthered thy paltry tricks; who deluded the
people; who made thee sin and thrive in thy sins. Thou troddest me
under foot; I was thy scorn; thy high-minded wisdom triumpht over my
silliness. Now I am thy master. Now thou shalt foll