ere conjecture
here--were the cases chosen for adjudication, the selection of the
particular charges being their especial province. Elbowing their
way through the filthy corridors, where accusers and accused were
inextricably mingled--the prisoner, and the plaintiff, and the witness
all jammed up together, and not unfrequently discussing the vexed
question to be tried with all the virulence of partisans--the
carabiniere makes his choice among these, aided, not impossibly, by
a stimulant, which in Italy has its agency throughout all ranks and
gradations of men.

In this vile assemblage of all that was degrading and wretched our poor
strollers were now standing, their foreign aspect and their title
of vagabonds obtaining for them a degree of notice the reverse of
flattering. Sarcastic remarks upon their looks, their means of life,
and, stranger still, their poverty, abounded; and these from a mob whose
gaunt and famished faces and tattered rags bespoke the last stage of
destitution.

The Babbo, indeed, was a picture of abject misery; bankrupt was written
on every line of his poor old face, through which the paint of forty
years blended with the sickly hues of hunger and fear. He turned upon
the bystanders a glance of mild entreaty, however, that in a less
cruel company could not have failed to meet some success. Not so Donna
Gaetana: _her_ stare was an open defiance, and even through her bleared
eyes there shot sparks of fiery passion that seemed only in search of a
fitting object for their attack.

As for Gerald--his head bound up in a bloody rag, his arm in a sling,
and his face pale as death--he might have disarmed the malice of
sarcasm, had it not been that he held his arm clasped close round
Marietta's waist, and even thus, in all his misery, seemed to assert
that he was her protector and defender. This was alone sufficient
to afford scope for mockery and derision, the fairer portion of the
audience distinguishing themselves by the pungent sharpness of their
criticisms; and Marietta's swarthy skin, her tinsel ragged-ness, and her
wild, bold eyes, came in for their share of bitter commentary.

'What a brazen-faced minx it is!' cried one.

'What a young creature to have come to such wickedness!' exclaimed
another.

'Look at the roundness of her shape, and you 'll see she is not so very
young neither,' whispered a third.

'That's her gypsy blood,' broke in another. 'There was one here t'other
day, of thirteen,