Part 10 (1/2)

While we talked Pons was gathering to my bedside my clothes for the day.

”Drink on, my master,” he answered. ”It won't hurt you. You'll die with a sound stomach.”

”You mean mine is an iron-lined stomach?” I wilfully misunderstood him.

”I mean--” he began with a quick peevishness, then broke off as he realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips draped my new sable cloak upon a chair-back. ”Eight hundred ducats,” he sneered. ”A thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in a coat to keep you warm. A score of farms on my gentleman's fine back.”

”And in that a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to say nothing, perhaps, of a palace,” I said, reaching out my hand and touching the rapier which he was just in the act of depositing on the chair.

”So your father won with his good right arm,” Pons retorted. ”But what your father won he held.”

Here Pons paused to hold up to scorn my new scarlet satin doublet--a wondrous thing of which I had been extravagant.

”Sixty ducats for that,” Pons indicted. ”Your father'd have seen all the tailors and Jews of Christendom roasting in h.e.l.l before he'd a-paid such a price.”

And while we dressed--that is, while Pons helped me to dress--I continued to quip with him.

”It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news,” I said slyly.

Whereat up p.r.i.c.ked his ears like the old gossip he was.

”Late news?” he queried. ”Mayhap from the English Court?”

”Nay,” I shook my head. ”But news perhaps to you, but old news for all of that. Have you not heard? The philosophers of Greece were whispering it nigh two thousand years ago. It is because of that news that I put twenty fat farms on my back, live at Court, and am become a dandy. You see, Pons, the world is a most evil place, life is most sad, all men die, and, being dead . . . well, are dead. Wherefore, to escape the evil and the sadness, men in these days, like me, seek amazement, insensibility, and the madnesses of dalliance.”

”But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper about so long ago?”

”That G.o.d was dead, Pons,” I replied solemnly. ”Didn't you know that?

G.o.d is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty fat farms on my back.”

”G.o.d lives,” Pons a.s.serted fervently. ”G.o.d lives, and his kingdom is at hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no later than to- morrow that the earth shall pa.s.s away.”

”So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them to light his sports.”

Pons regarded me pityingly.

”Too much learning is a sickness,” he complained. ”I was always opposed to it. But you must have your will and drag my old body about with you--a- studying astronomy and numbers in Venice, poetry and all the Italian _fol- de-rols_ in Florence, and astrology in Pisa, and G.o.d knows what in that madman country of Germany. Pish for the philosophers! I tell you, master, I, Pons, your servant, a poor old man who knows not a letter from a pike-staff--I tell you G.o.d lives, and the time you shall appear before him is short.” He paused with sudden recollection, and added: ”He is here, the priest you spoke of.”

On the instant I remembered my engagement.

”Why did you not tell me before?” I demanded angrily.

”What did it matter?” Pons shrugged his shoulders. ”Has he not been waiting two hours as it is?”

”Why didn't you call me?”

He regarded me with a thoughtful, censorious eye.

”And you rolling to bed and shouting like chanticleer, 'Sing cucu, sing cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.'”

He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling falsetto.