'Precisely! And so little did they want me to go, that when I thought a change of air would suit me they sent a troop of horse to induce me to return.'

'Your head would have made a pretty ornament stuck on a pike in the grand piazza.'

'The thought amuses you,' I answered, 'but the comedy of it did not impress me at the time.'

I remembered the occasion when news was brought me that the Vitelli, the tyrant of Castello, had signed a warrant for my arrest; whereupon, knowing the rapid way he had of dealing with his enemies, I had bidden farewell to my hearth and home with somewhat indecent haste.... But the old man had lately died, and his son, proceeding to undo all his father's deeds, had called back the Fuorusciti, and strung up from the Palace windows such of his father's friends as had not had time to escape. I had come to Forli with Matteo, on my way home to take possession of my confiscated property, hoping to find that the intermediate proprietor, who was dangling at a rope's end some hundred feet from the ground, had made sundry necessary improvements.

'Well, what do you think of our wine?' said Matteo. 'Compare it with that of Città di Castello.'

'I really haven't tasted it yet,' I said, pretending to smile agreeably. 'Strange wines I always drink at a gulp—like medicine.'

'Brutta bestia!' said Matteo. 'You are no judge.'

'It's passable,' I said, laughing, having sipped it with great deliberation.

Matteo shrugged his shoulders.

'These foreigners!' he said scornfully. 'Come here, fat man,' he called to the innkeeper. 'Tell me how Count Girolamo and the gracious Caterina are progressing? When I left Forli the common people struggled to lick the ground they trod on.'

The innkeeper shrugged his shoulders.

'Gentlemen of my profession have to be careful in what they say.'

'Don't be a fool, man; I am not a spy.'

'Well, sir, the common people no longer struggle to lick the ground the Count treads on.'

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