"

"Pity you have not a man who is deaf and dumb," said Tressan, half in
jest. But Marius looked up suddenly, his eyes serious.

"We have as good," said he. "There is the Italian knave Fortunio
enrolled yesterday, as I have told you. He knows neither her wealth nor
her identity; nor if he did could he enter into traffic with her, for he
knows no French, and she no Italian."

The Dowager clapped her hands. "The very man!" she cried.

But Marius, either from sheer perverseness, or because he did not share
her enthusiasm, made answer: "I have faith in Gilles."

"Yes," she mocked him, "and you had faith in Berthaud. Oh, if you have
faith in Gilles, let him remain; let no more be said."

The obstinate boy took her advice, and shifted the subject, speaking to
Tressan of some trivial business connected with the Seneschalship.

But madame, woman-like, returned to the matter whose abandoning she had
herself suggested. Marius, for all his affected disdain of it, viewed it
with a certain respect. And so in the end they sent for the recruit.

Fortunio--who was no other than the man Garnache had known as
"Sanguinetti"--brought him, still clad in the clothes in which he had
come. He was a tall, limber fellow, with a very swarthy skin and black,
oily-looking hair that fell in short ringlets about his ears and neck,
and a black, drooping mustache which gave him a rather hang-dog look.
There was a thick stubble of beard of several days' growth about his
chin and face; his eyes were furtive in their glances, but of a deep
blue that contrasted oddly with his blackness when he momentarily raised
them.

He wore a tattered jerkin, and his legs, in default of stockings, were
swathed in soiled bandages and cross-gartered from ankle to knee. He
stood in a pair of wooden shoes, from one of which peeped forth some
wisps of straw, introduced, no doubt, to make the footgear fit. He
slouched and shuffled in his walk, and he was unspeakably dirty.
Nevertheless, he was girt with a sword in a ragged scabbard hanging from
a frayed and shabby belt of leather.

Madame scanned him with interest. The fastidious Marius eyed him with
disgust. The Seneschal peered at him curiously through shortsighted
eyes.

"I do not think I have ever seen a dirtier ruffian," said he.

"I like his nose," said madame quietly. "It is the nose of an intrepid
man."

"It reminds me of Garnache's," laughed the Seneschal.

"You flatter the Parisian," commented Mariu