“Reform, reform!” cried one, who appeared by his dress and manner to be the weightiest of the company—­“it’s all very well to cry reform; but what I say is that most of those that are howling for it no more know what they’re asking than a parrot that’s been taught the litany.  Now the first question is:  who benefits by your reform?  And what’s the answer to that, eh?  Is it the tradesmen?  The merchants?  The clerks, artisans, household servants, I ask you?  I hear some of my fellow-tradesmen complaining that the nobility don’t pay their bills.  Will they be better paid, think you, when the Duke has halved their revenues?  Will the quality keep up as large households, employ as many lacqueys, set as lavish tables, wear as fine clothes, collect as many rarities, buy as many horses, give us, in short, as many opportunities of making our profit out of their pleasure?  What I say is, if we’re to have new taxes, don’t let them fall on the very class we live by!”

“That’s true enough,” said another speaker, a lean bilious man with a pen behind his ear.  “The peasantry are the only class that are going to profit by this constitution.”

“And what do the peasantry do for us, I should like to know?” the first speaker went on triumphantly.  “As far as the fat friars go, I’m not sorry to see them squeezed a trifle, for they’ve wrung enough money out of our women-folk to lie between feathers from now till doomsday; but I say, if you care for your pockets, don’t lay hands on the nobility!”

“Gently, gently, my friend,” exclaimed a cautious flaccid-looking man setting down his glass.  “Father and son, for four generations, my family have served Pianura with Church candles, and I can tell you that since these new atheistical notions came in, the nobility are not the good patrons they used to be.  But as for the friars, I should be sorry to see them meddled with.  It’s true they may get the best morsel in the pot and the warmest seat on the hearth—­and one of them, now and then, may take too long to teach a pretty girl her Pater Noster—­but I’m not sure we shall be better off when they’re gone.  Formerly, if a child too many came to poor folk they could always comfort themselves with the thought that, if there was no room for him at home, the Church was there to provide for him.  But if we drive out the good friars, a man will have to count mouths before he dares look at his wife too lovingly.”

“Well,” said the scribe with a dry smile, “I’ve a notion the good friars have always taken more than they gave; and if it were not for the gaping mouths under the cowl even a poor man might have victuals enough for his own.”

The first speaker turned on him contentiously.

“Do I understand you are for this new charter, then?” he asked.

“No, no,” said the other.  “Better hot polenta than a cold ortolan.  Things are none too good as they are, but I never care to taste first of a new dish.  And in this case I don’t fancy the cook.”