Stephen Colonna despises me.

I have been"-- (here, as he continued, a deep blush mantled over his cheek)--"you remember it--at his palace in my younger days, and pleased him with witty tales and light apophthegms.

Nay--ha! ha!--he would call me, I think, sometimes, in gay compliment, his jester--his buffoon! I have brooked his insult; I have even bowed to his applause.
I would undergo the same penance, stoop to the same shame, for the same motive, and in the same cause.

What did I desire to effect?
Can you tell me?
No! I will whisper it, then, to you: it was--the contempt of Stephen Colonna.

Under that contempt I was protected, till protection became no longer necessary.