You pay a paul, (and give the bouquet to—­your landlady’s daughter,) while the departing mercante di fiori assures you that he never, no, never expects to make a fortune at flowers; but if he gains enough to pay for his wine, he will be very tipsy as long as he lives!

Then comes an old man, with a chessboard of inlaid stone, which he hasn’t an idea of selling; but finds it excellent to ‘move on,’ without being checkmated as a beggar without visible means of s’port.  The first time he brought it round, and held it out square to Caper, that cool young man, taking a handful of coppers from his pocket, arranged them as checkers on the board, without taking any notice of the man; and after he had placed them, began playing deliberately.  He rested his chin on his hand, and with knitted brows, studied several intricate moves; he finally jumped the men, so as to leave a copper or two on the board; and bidding the old man good-night, continued a conversation with Rocjean, commenced previous to his game of draughts.

Next approaches a hardware—­merchant, for, in Imperial Rome, the peddler of a colder clime is a merchant, the shoemaker an artist, the artist a professor.  The hardware-man looks as if he might be ‘touter’ to a broken-down brigand.  All the razors in his box couldn’t keep the small part of his face that is shaved from wearing a look as if it had been blown up with gunpowder, while the grains had remained embedded there.  He tempts you with a wicked-looking knife, the pattern for which must have come from the litreus of Etruria, the land called the mother of superstitions, and have been wielded for auguries amid the howls and groans of lucomones and priests.  He tells you it is a Campagna-knife, and that you must have one if you go into that benighted region; he says this with a mysterious shake of his head, as if he had known Fra Diavolo in his childhood and Fra ’Tonelli in his riper years.  The crescent-shaped handle is of black bone; the pointed blade long and tapering; the three notches in its back catch into the spring with a noise like the alarum of a rattle-snake.  You conclude to buy one—­for a curiosity.  You ask why the blade at the point finishes off in a circle?  He tells you the government forbids the sale of sharp-pointed knives; but, signore, if you wish to use it, break off the circle under your heel, and you have a point sharp enough to make any man have an accidente di freddo, (death from cold—­steel.)

Victor Hugo might have taken his character of Quasimodo from the wild figure who now enters the Greco, with a pair of horns for sale; each horn is nearly a yard in length, black and white in color; they have been polished by the hunchback until they shine like glass.  Now he approaches you, and with deep, rough voice, reminding you of the lowing of the large grey oxen they once belonged to, begs you to buy them.  Then he facetiously raises one to each side of his head, and you have a figure that Jerome Bosch would have rejoiced to transfer to canvas.  His portrait has been painted by more than one artist.