from Canto III

41

You’re wrong.—He was the mildest manner’d man
     That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat;
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
     You never could divine his real thought;
No courtier could, and scarcely woman can
     Gird more deceit within a petticoat;
Pity he loved adventurous life’s variety,
He was so great a loss to good society.

42

Advancing to the nearest dinner tray,
    Tapping the shoulder of the nighest guest,
With a peculiar smile, which, by the way,
    Boded no good, whatever it express’d,
He asked the meaning of this holiday;
    The vinous Greek to whom he had address’d
His question, much too merry to divine
The questioner, fill’d up a glass of wine,

43

And without turning his facetious head,
    Over his shoulder, with a Bacchant air,
Presented the o’erflowing cup, and said,
     “Talking’s dry work, I have no time to spare.”
A second hiccup’d, “Our old master’s dead,
     You’d better ask our mistress who’s his heir.”
“Our mistress!” quoth a third: “Our mistresspooh" alt="" />—
You mean our master—not the old but new.”

44

These rascals, being new comers, knew not whom
     They thus address’d—and Lambro’s visage fell—
And o’er his eye a momentary gloom
    Pass’d, but he strove quite courteously to quell
The expression, and endeavouring to resume
     His smile, requested one of them to tell
The name and quality of his new patron,
Who seem’d to have turn’d Haide into a matron.

45

“I know not,” quoth the fellow, “who or what
     He is, nor whence he came—and little care;
But this I know, that this roast capon’s fat,
     And that good wine ne’er wash’d down better fare;
And if you are not satisfied with that,
     Direct your questions to my neighbour there;
He’ll answer all for better or for worse,
For none likes more to hear himself converse.”

46

I said that Lambro was a man of patience,
     And certainly he show’d the best of breeding,
Which scarce even France, the paragon of nations,
     E’er saw her most polite of sons exceeding;
He bore these sneers against his near relations,
     His own anxiety, his heart too bleeding,
The insults too of every servile glutton,
Who all the time were eating up his mutton.

47

Now in a person used to much command—
     To bid men come, and go, and come again—
To see his orders done too out of hand—
     Whether the word was death, or but the chain—
It may seem strange to find his manners bland;
     Yet such things are, which I can not explain,
Though doubtless he who can command himself
Is good to govern—almost as a Guelf.

48

Not that he was not sometimes rash or so,
     But never in his real and serious mood;
Then calm, concentrated, and still, and slow,
     He lay coiled like the boa in the wood;
With him it never was a word and blow,
     His angry word once o’er, he shed no blood,
But in his silence there was much to rue,
And his one blow left little work for two.

49

He ask’d no further questions, and proceeded
     On to the house, but by a private way,
So that the few who met him hardly heeded,
     So little they expected him that day;
If love paternal in his bosom pleaded
     For Haide’s sake, is more than I can say,
But certainly to one deem’d dead returning,
This revel seem’d a curious mode of mourning.

50

If all the dead could now return to life,
     (Which God forbid!) or some, or a great many,
For instance, if a husband or his wife
     (Nuptial examples are as good as any),
No doubt whate’er might be their former strife,
     The present weather would be much more rainy—
Tears shed into the grave of the connexion
Would share most probably its resurrection.