His hose of red cloth vanished into boots of untanned leather, laced in front and turned down at the knees, and completed in him the general appearance of a mercenary in time of peace, in spite of which the six nobles, in that place of paradoxes, bared their heads anew, and stood in attitudes of deferential attention.
He paused a moment to throw off his cloak, of which the young man who had admitted him hastened to relieve him as readily as if he had been born a servitor.

He next removed his hat, and allowed it to remain slung from his shoulders, displaying, together with a still youthful countenance of surpassing strength and nobility, a mane of jet-black hair coiffed in a broad net of gold thread--the only article of apparel that might have suggested his station to be higher than at first had seemed.
He stepped briskly to the coarse and grease-stained table, about which the company was standing, and his black eyes ran swiftly over the faces that confronted him.
"Sirs," he said at last, "I am here.

My horse went lame a half-league beyond Sant' Angelo, and I was constrained to end the journey on foot." "Your Excellency will be tired," cried Fabrizio, with that ready solicitude which is ever at the orders of the great.

"A cup of Puglia wine, my lord.

Here, Fanfulla," he called, to the young nobleman who had acted as usher.