PAOLO.  For what?

LANCIOTTO.  For wedding me. 
In sooth, she’ll need it.  Say—­

PAOLO.  Nay, Lanciotto,
I’ll be a better orator in your behalf,
Without your promptings.

LANCIOTTO.  She is fair, ’tis said;
And, dear Paolo, if she please your eye,
And move your heart to anything like love,
Wed her yourself.  The peace would stand as firm
By such a match.

PAOLO. [Laughing.] Ha! that is right:  be gay! 
Ply me with jokes!  I’d rather see you smile
Than see the sun shine.

LANCIOTTO.  I am serious. 
I’ll find another wife, less beautiful,
More on my level, and—­

PAOLO.  An empress, brother,
Were honoured by your hand.  You are by much
Too humble in your reckoning of yourself. 
I can count virtues in you, to supply
Half Italy, if they were parcelled out. 
Look up!

LANCIOTTO.  I cannot:  Heaven has bent me down. 
To you, Paolo, I could look, however,
Were my hump made a mountain.  Bless him, God! 
Pour everlasting bounties on his head! 
Make Croesus jealous of his treasury,
Achilles of his arms, Endymion
Of his fresh beauties,—­though the coy one lay,
Blushing beneath Diana’s earliest kiss,
On grassy Latmos; and may every good,
Beyond man’s sight, though in the ken of heaven,
Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! 
O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes;
My heart is beating with a lighter pulse;
The air is musical; the total earth
Puts on new beauty, and within the arms
Of girding ocean dreams her time away,
And visions bright to-morrows!

    Enter MALATESTA and PEPE.

  MALATESTA.  Mount, to horse!

PEPE. [Aside.] Good Lord! he’s smiling!  What’s the matter now? 
Has anybody broken a leg or back? 
Has a more monstrous monster come to life? 
Is hell burst open?—­heaven burnt up?  What, what
Can make yon eyesore grin?—­I say, my lord,
What cow has calved?

  PAOLO.  Your mother, by the bleat.

PEPE.  Right fairly answered—­for a gentleman! 
When did you take my trade up?

PAOLO.  When your wit
Went begging, sirrah.

PEPE.  Well again!  My lord,
I think he’ll do.

  MALATESTA.  For what?

PEPE.  To take my place. 
Once fools were rare, and then my office sped;
But now the world is overrun with them: 
One gets one’s fool in one’s own family,
Without much searching.

MALATESTA.  Pepe, gently now. 
Lanciotto, you are waited for.  The train
Has passed the gate, and halted there for you.

  LANCIOTTO.  I go not to Ravenna.

  MALATESTA.  Hey! why not?

PAOLO.  For weighty reasons, father.  Will you trust
Your greatest captain, hope of all the Guelfs,
With crafty Guido?  Should the Ghibelins
Break faith, and shut Lanciotto in their walls—­
Sure the temptation would be great enough—­
What would you do?