, pardonable, Master Landlord, in proportion to the gravity of the
consequences that may attend it. And now we will make ourselves ready
for the succulent dinner which, I have no doubt, your wise care is about
to set before us, for your house has an excellent name, but we would
have you know that our appetites are at least as good, and our
understanding of the noble art of cookery much better. It is not
becoming to speak of any actions we may have to our past credit in war,
but we can at least boast without reproach that we have eaten some of
the best dinners cooked since Lucullus supped with himself!'

This tirade, delivered with the utmost rapidity and punctuated with
several smiles that showed the speaker's sharp and gleaming teeth,
partially reassured the innkeeper, who took himself off at once; and as
he had been frightened he proceeded at once to restore his self-respect
by frightening the cook, cuffing the scullions, and threatening the
drawer with an awful end if he should shake the bottles and disturb the
ancient sediment when he brought the Burgundy to the gentlemen's table.

When he was gone, the Bravi did not at once talk over the unexpected
news, for Grattacacio was with them, coming and going, bringing hot
water, shaving them as well as any barber, unpacking their linen and
clothes, and waiting on them with such a constant prescience of their
needs as only a highly trained body-servant can possess. For the truth
was that he had begun life as a bishop's footman, and had risen to be
valet to a cardinal, before he had taken to the road after robbing his
master of some valuable jewels; but his hair was now growing grey at the
temples, and his nerve was not so good as it had been, and as he had
escaped hanging till now, he gave up risking it any longer. Accordingly
he had parted his hair and called himself Tommaso once more, and he was
now looking out for a good place with a not too decrepit prelate; for he
had been used to boast that no valet in all the Roman Curia could put on
a bishop's sandals at High Mass with such combined skill and unction as
he, nor carry a cardinal's scarlet train at a consistory with such
mingled devoutness and grace. As for serving Mass, it had been a second
nature to him, and even now he could rattle off the responses without a
mistake, from the first 'sicut erat in principio' to the last 'Deo
gratias' after the Second Gospel.

Trombin and Gambardella did not discuss the situation