"
"No doubt," snarled old Baldo, scrubbing at his mail shirt viciously.
"Though I am not in your confidence, I agree that a nice day is
coming, a beautiful day--like a pig. Look you, Cercamorte, shake off
this strange spell of folly. Prepare for early trouble. Just as a
Venetian sailor can feel a storm of water brewing, so can I feel,
gathering far off, a storm of arrows. Do you notice that the crows
hereabouts have never been so thick? Perhaps, too, I have seen a face
peeping out of the woods, about the time that Foresto goes down to
pick berries."
"You chatter like an old woman at a fountain," said Lapo, still
caressing his vest with his palms. "I shall be quite happy soon--yes,
even before the Lombard league takes the field."
Baldo raised his shoulders, pressed his withered eyelids together,
and answered, in disgust:
"God pity you, Cercamorte! You are certainly changed these days.
Evidently your Arabian has given you a charm that turns men's brains
into goose-eggs."
Lapo stamped away angrily, yet he was soon smiling again.
And now his coarse locks were not unkempt, but cut square across
brow and neck. Every week he trimmed his fingernails; every day or so,
with a flush and a hangdog look, he drenched himself with perfume.
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