snatch up her child and make the sign against the evil eye.  A boy who stood staring open-mouthed at Fulvia caught the gesture and repeated it; a barefoot friar imitated the boy, and it seemed to Odo that the familiar sign was spreading with malignant rapidity to the furthest limits of the crowd.  The impression was only momentary; for the cavalcade was again in motion, and without raising his eyes he rode on, sick at heart...

***

At nightfall a man opened the gate of the ducal gardens below the Chinese pavilion and stepped out into the deserted lane.  He locked the gate and slipped the key into his pocket; then he turned and walked toward the centre of the town.  As he reached the more populous quarters his walk slackened to a stroll; and now and then he paused to observe a knot of merry-makers or look through the curtains of the tents set up in the squares.

The man was plainly but decently dressed, like a petty tradesman or a lawyer’s clerk, and the night being chill he wore a cloak, and had drawn his hat-brim over his forehead.  He sauntered on, letting the crowd carry him, with the air of one who has an hour to kill, and whose holiday-making takes the form of an amused spectatorship.  To such an observer the streets offered ample entertainment.  The shrewd air discouraged lounging and kept the crowd in motion; but the open platforms built for dancing were thronged with couples, and every peep-show, wine-shop and astrologer’s booth was packed to the doors.  The shrines and street-lamps being all alight, and booths and platforms hung with countless lanterns, the scene was as bright as day; but in the ever-shifting medley of peasant-dresses, liveries, monkish cowls and carnival disguises, a soberly-clad man might easily go unremarked.

Reaching the square before the Cathedral, the solitary observer pushed his way through the idlers gathered about a dais with a curtain at the back.  Before the curtain stood a Milanese quack, dressed like a noble gentleman, with sword and plumed hat, and rehearsing his cures in stentorian tones, while his zany, in the short mask and green-and-white habit of Brighella, cracked jokes and turned hand-springs for the diversion of the vulgar.

“Behold,” the charlatan was shouting, “the marvellous Egyptian love-philter distilled from the pearl that the great Emperor Antony dropped into Queen Cleopatra’s cup.  This infallible fluid, handed down for generations in the family of my ancestor, the High Priest of Isis—­” The bray of a neighbouring show-man’s trumpet cut him short, and yielding to circumstances he drew back the curtain, and a tumbling-girl sprang out and began her antics on the front of the stage.

“What did he say was the price of that drink, Giannina?” asked a young maid-servant pulling her neighbour’s sleeve.

“Are you thinking of buying it for Pietrino, my beauty?” the other returned with a laugh.  “Believe me, it is a sound proverb that says:  When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself.”