We looked at each other for a moment, then a great laugh burst from him, shaking his vast bulk and wrinkling his hideous face.

He thrust the intervening men aside as if they had been a growth of sedges he would penetrate, and he advanced towards me; the Lord Filippo and his sister looking on with all the rest in interested surprise.
In front of me he halted, and setting his hands on his hips he regarded me with a brutal mirth.
"What may your trade be now ?" he asked at last contemptuously.
I had taken rapid stock of him in the seconds that were sped, and from the surpassing richness of his apparel, his gold-broidered doublet and crimson, fur-edged surcoat, I knew that Messer Ramiro del' Orca was grown to the high estate of Governor of Cesena.
"A new trade even as yours," I answered him.
"Nay, that is no answer," he cried, overlooking my offensiveness.

"Do you still follow the trade of arms ?" "I think," Filippo interposed, "that our Excellency is in some error.
This gentleman is Lazzaro Biancomonte, a poet of whom Italy will one day be proud, despite the fact that for a time he acted as the Lord Giovanni Sforza's Fool." Ramiro looked at his interlocutor, as the mastiff may look at the lap dog.

He grunted, and blew out his cheeks.
"There is yet another part he played," said he, "as I have good cause to remember--for he is the only man that can boast of having unhorsed Ramiro del' Orca.

He was for a brief season the Lord Giovanni Sforza himself." "How ?" asked the profoundly amazed Filippo, whilst all present pressed closer to miss nothing of the disclosure that seemed to impend.