LANCIOTTO.  I am bemocked on all sides.  My sad state
Has given the licensed and unlicensed fool
Charter to challenge me at every turn. 
The jester’s laughing bauble blunts my sword,
His gibes cut deeper than its fearful edge;
And I, a man, a soldier, and a prince,
Before this motley patchwork of a man,
Stand all appalled, as if he were a glass
Wherein I saw my own deformity. 
O Heaven! a tear—­one little tear—­to wash
This aching dryness of the heart away!

    Enter PAOLO.

PAOLO.  What ails the fool?  He passed me, muttering
The strangest garbage in the fiercest tone. 
“Ha! ha!” cried he, “they made a fool of me—­
motley man, a slave; as if I felt
No stir in me of manly dignity! 
Ha! ha! a fool—­a painted plaything, toy—­
For men to kick about this dirty world!—­
My world as well as theirs.—­God’s world, I trow! 
I will get even with them yet—­ha! ha! 
In the democracy of death we’ll square. 
I’ll crawl and lie beside a king’s own son;
Kiss a young princess, dead lip to dead lip;
Pull the Pope’s nose; and kick down Charlemagne,
Throne, crown, and all, where the old idiot sprawls,
Safe as he thinks, rotting in royal state!”
And then he laughed and gibbered, as if drunk
With some infernal ecstasy.

LANCIOTTO.  Poor fool! 
That is the groundwork of his malice, then,—­
His conscious difference from the rest of men? 
I, of all men, should pity him the most. 
Poor Pepe!  I’ll be kinder.  I have wronged
A feeling heart.  Poor Pepe!

PAOLO.  Sad again! 
Where has the rapture gone of yesterday?

LANCIOTTO.  Where are the leaves of Summer?  Where the snows
Of last year’s Winter?  Where the joys and griefs
That shut our eyes to yesternight’s repose,
And woke not on the morrow?  Joys and griefs,
Huntsmen and hounds, ye follow us as game,
Poor panting outcasts of your forest-law! 
Each cheers the others,—­one with wild halloos,
And one with whines and howls.—­A dreadful chase,
That only closes when horns sound a mort!

PAOLO.  Thus ever up and down!  Arouse yourself,
Balance your mind more evenly, and hunt
For honey in the wormwood.

LANCIOTTO.  Or find gall
Hid in the hanging chalice of the rose: 
Which think you better?  If my mood offend,
We’ll turn to business,—­to the empty cares
That make such pother in our feverish life. 
When at Ravenna, did you ever hear
Of any romance in Francesca’s life? 
A love-tilt, gallantry, or anything
That might have touched her heart?

PAOLO.  Not lightly even. 
I think her heart as virgin as her hand.

  LANCIOTTO.  Then there is hope.

  PAOLO.  Of what?

  LANCIOTTO.  Of winning her.