“The hand is masculine, and has been familiar with many friends in its time.  It hath dealt with steel, and cordage, and saltpetre, and most of all with gold.  Signori, the true seat of a man’s digestion lies in the palm of his hand; if that is free to give and to receive, he will never have a costive conscience, for of all damnable inconveniences that afflict mortals, that of a conscience that will neither give up nor take is the heaviest curse.  Let a man have as much sagacity as shall make him a cardinal, if it get entangled in the meshes of one of your unyielding consciences, ye shall see him a mendicant brother to his dying day; let him be born a prince with a close-ribbed opinion of this sort, and he had better have been born a beggar, for his reign will be like a river from which the current sets outward, without any return.  No, my friends, a palm like this of Maso’s is a favorable sign, since it hinges on a pliant will, that will open and shut like a well-formed eye, or the jacket of a shell-fish, at its owner’s pleasure.  Thou hast drawn near to many a port before this of Vevey, after the sun has fallen low, Signor Maso!”

“In that I have taken a seaman’s chances, which depend more on the winds than on his own wishes.”

“Thou esteemest the bottom of the craft in which thou art required to sail, as far more important than her ancient.  Thou hast an eye for a keel, but none for color; unless, indeed, as it may happen to be convenient to seem that thou art not.”

“Nay, Master Soothsayer, I suspect thee to be an officer of some of the Holy Brotherhoods, sent in this guise to question us poor travellers to our ruin!” answered Maso.  “I am, what thou seest, but a poor mariner that hath no better bark under him than this of Baptiste, and on a sea no larger than a Swiss lake.”

“Shrewdly observed,” said Pippo, winking to those near him, though he so little liked the eye and bearing of the other that he was not sorry to turn to some new subject.  “But what matters it, Signori, to be speaking of the qualities of men!  We are all alike, honorable, merciful, more disposed to help others than to help ourselves, and so little given to selfishness, that nature has been obliged to supply every mother’s son of us with a sort of goad, that shall be constantly pricking us on to look after our own interests.  Here are animals whose dispositions are less understood, and we will bestow a useful minute in examining their qualities.  Reverend Augustine, this mastiff of thine is named Uberto?”

“He is known by that appellation throughout the cantons and their allies.  The fame of the dog reaches even to Turin and to most of the towns in the plain of Lombardy.”

“Now, Signori, you perceive that this is but a secondary creature in the scale of animals.  Do him good and he will be grateful; do him harm, and he will forgive.  Feed him, and he is satisfied.  He will travel the paths of the St. Bernard, night and day, to do credit to his training, and when the toil is ended, all he asks is just as much meat as will keep the breath within his ribs.  Had heaven given Uberto a conscience and greater wit, the first might have shown him the impiety of working for travellers on holy days and festas, while the latter would be apt to say he was a fool for troubling himself about the safety of others at all.”