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And now a strange thing came to pass: that as all these young people, though willing enough to be gay and well attired, were good at heart and honest, as they day by day found that their father, though really bad in nothing, had, on the other hand, no more conscience or virtue than an old shoe or a rag scarecrow, so it was they who began to sermonize him, even as the late Signore Tribaldo had lectured them, the tables being quite turned. But what was most marvellous was that Signore Balsàbo, far from taking any offence, seemed to find in this being scolded for his want of heart, morals, and other crimes, a deep and wondrous joy, a sweet delight, as of one who has discovered a new pleasure or great treasure. This was especially the case when he was brought to book, or hauled over the coals, by his daughter Bianca, who was gifted with the severe eloquence of her other father, which she now poured forth in floods on his successor.

Now, you may well imagine that an old devil-goblin who had been kicked and footed about the world for a thousand years between the back-kitchen of hell unto the inner courts of the Vatican, including all kinds of life, but especially the bad, thus having a family to support and beloved daughters and sons to blow him up, and, in fact, the mere having any decent Christian care enough for him to call him a soulless old blackguard, was like undreamed-of bliss. He had been in his time exorcised by priests in Latin through all that grammar and vocabulary could supply, and cursed in Etruscan, Greek, Lombard, and everything else; but the Italian of his daughter had in it the exquisite and novel charm that there was real love mingled with it and gratitude for his profuse kindness and indulgence, so that ’twas to him like the pecking of an angry and dear canary bird, the which thing acted on him so strangely that he at times was fain to look about him for some stray sin to commit, in order to get a good sound scolding. For he had fallen so much into decent life and ways by living with his dear children that it often happened that he did nothing wrong for as much as three or four days together.