As they proceeded on their way towards the gates of the Park, a figure presented itself, which, from its singularity, was worthy of notice. It was that of a tall, thin raw-boned man, who, naturally possessing a countenance of the ugliest cast of Italian ugliness, had rendered it still more disagreeable by the enormous length of his mustaches, which would have far overtopped his nose, had it been a nose of any ordinary proportion; but a more extensive pear-shaped, ill-adapted organ never projected from a human countenance; and this, together with a pair of small, flaming black eyes, which it seemed to bear forward with it above the rest of the face, protruding from a mass of beard and hair, instantly reminding the beholder of a badger looking out of a hole. The chin, however, bore no proportion to the nose, and seemed rather to slink away from it in an oblique direction, apparently overawed by its more ambitious neighbour. The dress of this delectable personage was a medley of the French and Flemish costumes. He wore a grey vest of silk, with sleeves slashed at the elbow, and the shirt, which was not conspicuously clean, buttoned at the wrist with agate studs. His _haut de chausse_, which was of deep crimson, and bore loops and ribbons of yellow, was fringed round the leg, near the knees, with a series of brazen tags or points but indifferently silvered; and as he walked along with huge steps, these aforesaid tags clattered together with a sort of important sound, which, put in combination with the rest of his appearance, drew many a laugh from the boys of St. Germain's. Over his grey vest was drawn a straight-cut doublet of yellow silk, without sleeves; and a pair of long boots, of untanned leather, covered all defects which might otherwise have been apparent in his hose. His dress was completed by a tawdry bonnet with a high black plume: and a Toledo blade of immeasurable length, with a worked iron hilt and black scabbard, hung by his side, describing with its point various strange figures on the dust of the road. "Here comes Villa Grande, the Italian lute-player," exclaimed Cinq Mars the moment he saw him. "Do you know him, De Blenau?" "I have heard him play on his instrument and sing at your house," replied De Blenau; "and from his language that night, may say I know him through and through, for a boasting coxcomb, with as much courage as the sheath of a rapier,--which looks as good as a rapier itself till it is touched, and then it proves all emptiness. Mind you how he boasted of having routed whole squadrons when he served in the Italian horse? and I dare say he would run from a stuffed pikeman in an old hall."