Jacopo Nardi, [5] together with some young fellows, who began immediately to ask the courier news, each man of his own family in Florence. [6] Tribolo and I kept at a distance, in order to avoid speaking with them. After they had talked a while with Lamentone, Niccolò Benintendi [7] said: “I know those two men there very well; what’s the reason they give themselves such beastly airs, and will not talk to us?” Tribolo kept begging me to hold my tongue, while Lamentone told them that we had not the same permission as he had. Benintendi retorted it was idiotic nonsense, adding “Pox take them,” and other pretty flowers of speech. Then I raised my head as gently as I could, and said: “Dear gentlemen, you are able to do us serious injury, while we cannot render you any assistance; and though you have flung words at us which we are far from deserving, we do not mean on that account to get into a rage with you.” Thereupon old Nardi said that I had spoken like a worthy young man as I was. But Niccolò Benintendi shouted: “I snap my fingers at them and the Duke.” [8] I replied that he was in the wrong toward us, since we had nothing to do with him or his affairs. Old Nardi took our part, telling Benintendi plainly that he was in the wrong, which made him go on muttering insults. On this I bade him know that I could say and do things to him which he would not like, and therefore he had better mind his business, and let us alone. Once more he cried out that he snapped his fingers at the Duke and us, and that we were all of us a heap of donkeys. [9] I replied by giving him the lie direct and drawing my sword. The old man wanting to be first upon the staircase, tumbled down some steps, and all the rest of them came huddling after him. I rushed onward, brandishing my sword along the walls with fury, and shouting: “I will kill you all!” but I took good care not to do them any harm, as I might too easily have done. In the midst of this tumult the innkeeper screamed out; Lamentone cried, “For God’s sake, hold!” some of them exclaimed, “Oh me, my head!” others, “Let me get out from here.” In short, it was an indescribable confusion; they looked like a herd of swine. Then the host came with a light, while I withdrew upstairs and put my sword back in its scabbard. Lamentone told Niccolò Benintendi that he had behaved very ill. The host said to him: “It is as much as one’s life is worth to draw swords here; and if the Duke were to know of your brawling, he would have you hanged. I will not do to you what you deserve; but take care you never show yourself again in my inn, or it will be the worse for you.” Our host then came up to me, and when I began to make him my excuses, he would not suffer me to say a word, but told me that he knew I was entirely in the right, and bade me be upon my guard against those men upon my journey.