"You do not then beg for life?" said the _plaisant_, his former impatience merging into mild curiosity.
"Is it worth begging for?" asked the straitened book-worm. "Life means a pinched stomach, a cold body; Death, no hunger to fear, and a bed that, though cold, chills us not. What we know not doth not exist--for us; ergo, to lie in the earth is to rest in the lap of luxury, for all our consciousness of it. But to be unconscious of the ills of this perishable frame, Horace likewise must be as dead to us as our aches and pains. Thus is life made preferable to death. Yes; I would live. Hold, though--" he again hesitated in deep thought--"what avails Horace if--" he began.
"Why, what new data have entered in the premises?" observed the wondering jester.
"Who, pray, is Nanette?" asked the fool, thrusting his assailant's weapon in his jerkin.
"A wanton haggard whose tongue will run post sixteen stages together! Who would make the devil himself malleable; then, work, hammer and wire-draw him!"
"My wife! That is, she claims that exalted place, having married me one night when I was in my cups through a false priest who dresses as a Franciscan monk. 'Fools in the court of God' are these priests called, and truly he is a jester, for certainly is he no true monk. But Nanette, nevertheless, asserts she is the lawful partner of my sorrows. So work your will on me. A stroke, and the shivering spirit is wafted across the Styx."
"And if I gave you not only your life--for a consideration hereafter to be mentioned--but a small silver piece as well?" suggested the jester, who had been for some moments buried in thought.
"Ha!" ejaculated the scamp-student, brightening. "Your gift would match the piece I already have and which--dolt that I was!--I overlooked to include in my chain of reasoning." And thrusting his hand into his ragged doublet, after some search he extracted a diminutive disk upon which he gazed not without ardor. "Thus are we forced to start the chain of reasoning anew," he remarked, "with Horace and this bit of metal on one side of the scales and Nanette on the other. Now unless the devil sits on the beam with Nanette--which he's like to do--the book and the bit of dross will outweigh her and we arrive at the certitude that life, qualified as to duration, may be happily endured."