“Honor the saints!” repeated Ithuel, looking curiously round him, as he took a seat at a third table, shoving aside the glasses at the same time, and otherwise disposing of everything within reach of his hand, so as to suit his own notions of order, and then leaning back on his chair until the two ends of the uprights dug into the plaster behind him, while the legs on which the fabric was poised cracked with his weight; “honor the saints! we should be much more like to dishonor them!  What does any one want to honor a saint for?  A saint is but a human—­a man like you and me, after all the fuss you make about ’em.  Saints abound in my country, if you’d believe people’s account of themselves.”

“Not quite so, Signor Bolto.  You and me no great saint.  Italian honor saint because he holy and good.”

By this time Ithuel had got his two feet on the round of his seat, his knees spread so as to occupy as much space as an unusual length of leg would permit, and his arms extended on the tops of two chairs, one on each side of him, in a way to resemble what is termed a spread eagle.

Andrea Barrofaldi regarded all this with wonder.  It is true, he expected to meet with no great refinement in a wine-house like that of Benedetta; but he was unaccustomed to see such nonchalance of manner in a man of the stranger’s class, or, indeed, of any class; the Italian mariners present occupying their chairs in simple and respectful attitudes, as if each man had the wish to be as little obtrusive as possible.  Still he let no sign of his surprise escape him, noting all that passed in a grave but attentive silence.  Perhaps he saw traces of national peculiarities, if not of national history, in the circumstances.

“Honor saint because he holy and good!” said Ithuel, with a very ill-concealed disdain—­“why, that is the very reason why we don’t honor ’em.  When you honor a holy man, mankind may consait you do it on that very account, and so fall into the notion you worship him, which would be idolatry, the awfullest of all sins, and the one to which every ra’al Christian gives the widest bairth.  I would rather worship this flask of wine any day, than worship the best saint on your parsons’ books.”

As Filippo was no casuist, but merely a believer, and Ithuel applied the end of the flask to his mouth, at that moment, from an old habit of drinking out of jugs and bottles, the Genoese made no answer; keeping his eyes on the flask, which, by the length of time it remained at the other’s mouth, appeared to be in great danger of being exhausted; a matter of some moment to one of his own relish for the liquor.

“Do you call this wine!” exclaimed Ithuel, when he stopped literally to take breath; “there isn’t as much true granite in a gallon on’t as in a pint of our cider.  I could swallow a butt, and then walk a plank as narrow as your religion, Philip-o!”