with the air of men hurrying to a storm, cleaving their way
through the crowd--striking, buffeting, trampling all before them. At
sight of the governmental power the crowd quailed at once, all save one,
the Donna. Standing to her guns to the last, she now turned her sarcasms
upon the gendarmes, overwhelming them with a perfect torrent of abuse,
and with such success that the mob, so lately the mark of her virulence,
actually shook with laughter at the new victims to her passion. For a
moment discipline seemed like to yield to anger. The warriors appeared
to waver in their impassive valour; but suddenly, with a gleam of wiser
counsel, they formed a semi-circle behind the accused, and marched them
bodily into the presence of the judge.

Justice was apparently accustomed to similar interruptions; at least,
it neither seemed shocked nor disconcerted, but continued to listen with
unbroken interest to Vincenzio Bombici's sorrows--not, indeed, that he
had arrived at the incident of the night before. Far from it. He was
merely preluding in that fashion which the exactitude of the Tuscan law
requires, and replying to the interesting interrogatories regarding
his former life, so essential to a due understanding of his present
complaint.

'You are, then, the son of Matteo Friuli Bombici, by his wife
Fiammetta?' read out the prefect solemnly, from the notes he was taking.

'No, Eccelenza. She was my father's second wife. My mother's name was
Pacifica.'

'Pacifica,' wrote the prefect. 'Daughter of whom?'

'Of Felice Corsari, tin-worker in the Borgo St. Apostoli.'

'Not so fast, not so fast,' interposed the judge, as he took down the
words, and then muttered to himself, 'in the Borgo St. Apostoli.'

'My mother was one of eight--three sons and five daughters. The eldest
boy, Onofrio----'

'Irrelevant, irrelevant; or, if necessary, to be recorded hereafter,'
said the prefect. 'You were bred and brought up in the Catholic faith!'

'Yes, Eccelenza. The Prete of San Gaetano has confessed me since I
was eleven years old. I have taken out more than two hundred pauls in
private masses, and paid for three novenas and a plenary, as the Prete
will vouch.'

'I will note your character in this respect, Vincenzio,' said the judge
approvingly.

'They will probably bring up before your worship the story against my
father, that he stole the cloak of the Cancelliere Martelli, when he was
performing the part of Pontius Pilate in the holy m