you the key.'

'I would rather you should come here,' said Don Alberto, suspecting a
trap.

'Bring a guard with you if you think I mean to rob you,' answered
Tommaso. 'Bring a squadron of cavalry, if you like! Besides, you know
that there will be thousands of people about the Lateran all night on
Saint John's Eve, eating and drinking on the grass to keep the witches
out of their bodies for the rest of the year!'

'That is true,' Don Alberto answered. 'I will be there.'

'But if your Excellency should accidentally see me in the meantime,'
continued Tommaso, 'your Excellency had better not notice me, nor be
seen to recognise me.'

He had resumed his obsequious tone, and was already bowing to take his
leave.

'I have one thing to tell you,' said Altieri. 'If you fail, I will have
you locked up in Tor di Nona for prying into my affairs and making an
infamous proposal to me, and it may be a long time before you get out.'

'At the pleasure of your Most Illustrious Excellency! I shall not make
the least resistance if I fail.'

'You had better not,' returned Altieri, haughtily enough, as he turned
away and left Tommaso bowing to the ground.

'Your Most Illustrious Excellency's most humble and dutiful servant!'
said the man.

Then he went off in the opposite direction, passed the Altieri palace,
turned to his right, and in due time reached the Sign of the Bear, where
his masters lodged. He found them in Trombin's room, sitting near the
open window with their coats off, and eating fruit from a huge blue and
yellow majolica basket that stood between them on the end of the table.
There were oranges, ripe plums, and very dark red cherries in handsome
profusion, and the serving-girl, who cherished a secret but hopeless
admiration for Gambardella, had brought a pretty bunch of violets in a
coarse Roman tumbler.

Both the Bravi were of opinion that a little fruit taken in the morning
was cooling to the blood in spring. Trombin had cut a hole in the top of
an orange and was solemnly sucking it--a process for which his small
round mouth seemed to be expressly formed--and his pink cheeks
contracted and expanded like little bellows as he alternately drew in
the sweet juice and took breath. Gambardella could not have sucked an
orange to save his life, because his long nose was directly in the way;
he ate cherries slowly, and looked like a large brown bird of prey
pecking at them with his beak.

'Come in,' he said between tw