He, at any rate, was not reticent. On our way he informed me that his companions in the lodgings were a troupe of strolling players among whom he held the important role of _capo comico_. We reached the house after threading our way through a couple of tortuous alleys leading off a street which called itself the Via Servi, and under an archway with a window from which a girl blew Mr. Fett an unabashed kiss across a box of geraniums. The master of it, a Messer' Nicola (by surname Fazio) had rooms for us and to spare. To him Mr. Fett handed the market-basket, after extracting from it an enormous melon, and bade him escort the Princess upstairs and give her choice of the cleanest apartments at his disposal. He then led us to the main living-room where, from a corner-cupboard, he produced glasses, plates, spoons, a bowl of sugar, and a flask of white wine. The flask he pushed towards Marc'antonio and Stephanu: the melon he divided with his clasp-knife. "You will join us?" he asked, profering a slice. "You will drink, then, at least? Ah, that is better. And will you convey my apologies to your two bandits and beg them to excuse my conversing with you in English? To tell the truth"--here, having helped them to a slice apiece and laid one aside for the Princess, he took the remainder upon his own plate--"though as a rule we make collation at noon or a little before, my English stomach cries out against an empty morning. You will like my Thespians, sir, when you see 'em. The younger ladies are decidedly--er--vivacious. Bianca, our Columbine, has all the makings of a beauty--she has but just turned the corner of seventeen; and Lauretta, who plays the scheming chambermaid, is more than passably good-looking. As for Donna Julia, her charms at this time of day are moral rather than physical: but, having married our leading lover, Rinaldo, she continues to exact his vows on the stage and the current rate of pay for them from the treasury. Does Rinaldo's passion show signs of flagging? She pulls his ears for it, later on, in conjugal seclusion. Poor fellow!-- "_Non equidem invideo; miror magis_. "Do the night's takings fall short of her equally high standard? She threatens to pull mine: for I, cavalier, am the treasurer. . . . But at what rate am I overrunning my impulses to ask news from you! How does your father, sir--that modern Bayard? And Captain Pomery? And my old friend Billy Priske?" I told him, briefly as I could, of my father's end. He laid down his spoon and looked at me for a while across the table with eyes which, being unused to emotion, betrayed it awkwardly, with a certain shame.