Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents.  Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in his hand, demanded “something for the cook.”  The fair hostess gave him a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the earth.  He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced him for ever.

“Softly!” said the brute-beast.  “Didn’t you take me with you, knowing what sort of fellow I was?  Didn’t I tell you I had every sin and shame under heaven; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single virtue?”

Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excessive nature.  So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep.  He had a pair of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see what he would do on waking.  He accordingly did so, and threw them to a little distance among the bushes.  The sleeper awoke in good time, and, looking and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of laughter.  A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off, making the most ridiculous gestures.  The monkey busied himself, and the light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at length it was found impossible to be restrained.  The glutton had a laughing-fit.  In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room to play.  They couldn’t do it; so he laughed and roared till he burst.  The snap was like the splitting of a cannon.  Morgante ran up to him, but it was of no use.  He was dead.

Alas! it was not the only death; it was not even the most trivial cause of a death.  Giants are big fellows, but Death’s a bigger, though he may come in a little shape.  Morgante had succeeded in joining his master.  He helped him to take Babylon; he killed a whale for him at sea that obstructed his passage; he played the part of a main-sail during a storm, holding out his arms and a great hide; but on coming to shore, a crab bit him in the heel; and behold the lot of the great giant—­he died!  He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a mighty one.

“He made the East tremble,” said Orlando; “and the bite of a crab has slain him!”

O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy![7]

Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Babylon, and honourably interred; and, after many an adventure, in which he regretted him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a cause.