I stared at him now with interest, and I found attractions in him, the chief of which was his likeness to my father. So must my father have looked when he was this fellow's age. He returned my glance with a smile that did not improve his countenance, so contemptuously languid was it, so very supercilious. “You may stare, cousin,” said he, “for I think I do you the honour to be something like you.” “You will find him,” lisped the Cardinal to me, “the most self-complacent dog in Italy. When he sees in you a likeness to himself he flatters himself grossly, which, as you know him better, you will discover to be his inveterate habit. He is his own most assiduous courtier.” And my Lord Gambara sank back into his chair, languishing, the pomander to his nostrils. All laughed, and Messer Cosimo with them, still considering me. But Messer Fifanti's wife had yet to make me known to three others who sat there, beside the little sloe-eyed lady. This last was a cousin of her own--Donna Leocadia degli Allogati, whom I saw now for the first and last time. The three remaining men of the company are of little interest save one, whose name was to be well known--nay, was well known already, though not to one who had lived in such seclusion as mine. This was that fine poet Annibale Caro, whom I have heard judged to be all but the equal of the great Petrarca himself. A man who had less the air of a poet it would not be easy to conceive. He was of middle height and of a habit of body inclining to portliness, and his age may have been forty. His face was bearded, ruddy, and small-featured, and there was about him an air of smug prosperity; he was dressed with care, but he had none of the splendour of the Cardinal or my cousin. Let me add that he was secretary to the Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, and that he was here in Piacenza on a mission to the Governor in which his master's interests were concerned. The other two who completed that company are of no account, and indeed their names escape me, though I seem to remember that one was named Pacini and that he was said to be a philosopher of considerable parts. Bidden to table by Messer Fifanti, I took the chair he offered me beside his lady, and presently came the old servant whom already I had seen, bearing meat for me. I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what time a pleasant ripple of talk ran round the board. Facing me sat my cousin, and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with what an insistence he regarded me. At last, however, our eyes met across the board. He smiled that crooked, somewhat unpleasant smile of his. “And so, Ser Agostino, they are to make a priest of you?” said he. “God pleasing,” I answered soberly, and perhaps shortly. “And if his brains at all resemble his body,” lisped the Cardinal-legate, “you may live to see an Anguissola Pope, my Cosimo.”