Break down the barriers of inviolate worlds--
That Cortez and Pizarro should esteem
The blood of man a trivial sacrifice
When, flinging down from their ancestral thrones
Incas and Mexicans of royal line,
They wrecked two kingdoms to refresh thy palate--

They were the verses in which the abate Parini, in his satire of The
Morning, apostrophizes the cup of chocolate which the lacquey presents
to his master. Cantapresto had in fact just entered with a cup of this
beverage, and Alfieri, who stood at his friend's bedside with unpowdered
locks and a fashionable undress of Parisian cut, snatching the tray from
the soprano's hands presented it to Odo in an attitude of mock
servility.

The young man sprang up laughing. It was the fashion to applaud Parini's
verse in the circles at which his satire was aimed, and none recited his
mock heroics with greater zest than the young gentlemen whose fopperies
he ridiculed. Odo's toilet was indeed a rite almost as elaborate as that
of Parini's hero; and this accomplished, he was on his way to fulfil the
very duty the poet most unsparingly derides: the morning visit of the
cicisbeo to his lady; but meanwhile he liked to show himself above the
follies of his class by joining in the laugh against them. When he
issued from the powder-room in his gold-laced uniform, with scented
gloves and carefully-adjusted queue, he presented the image of a young
gentleman so clearly equal to the most flattering emergencies that
Alfieri broke into a smile of half-ironical approval. "I see, my dear
cavaliere, that it were idle to invite you to try one of the new Arabs I
have brought with me from Spain, since it is plain other duties engage
you; but I come to lay claim to your evening."