rotect Ortensia.

Cucurullo answered a little despondently.

'I know it,' he said. 'All you say is true. And yet when I remember how
your gentlemen wounded him and then drove the watch before them like
sheep, and yet never so much as showed their faces, I cannot help hoping
that they will do something for us.'

'Hope by all means, my dear friend, for, as you say very well, my
masters are no ordinary fine gentlemen, made up of curls and lace
collars, and paste buckles and satin, and drawing-room small-swords of
about the size and temper of a silver hairpin! Why, most of these young
dandies are no better than girls, and are not half such men as some
priests I have known! Either of my masters could skewer a round dozen of
them while the bells are ringing for noon, and sit down to dinner at the
last stroke as cool as if I had just shaved them and smoothed their
clean collars over their coats! But after all, dearest Cucurullo, they
are only two, and I might bear them a hand with my cudgel, and we should
be three--only three men against the whole army of the Pope, horse,
foot, and artillery, besides the Swiss Guard and the five or six hundred
sbirri in plain clothes whom the Cardinal maintains in the holy city! It
would not be a fair fight, my friend!'

Cucurullo smiled at Tommaso's voluble statement of the odds, for the
hunchback was not without a certain sense of humour.

'No doubt you are right,' he said, 'but if Don Alberto tried to carry
off my master's lady, he would avoid the publicity of an escort of three
or four thousand men! Indeed, I doubt whether he would take more than
two or three of his servants with him, for whom you three would
certainly be a match.'

'A match!' cried Tommaso, suddenly indignant. 'We would make sausage
meat of them! We would mince them as fine as forcemeat in five minutes!
Their bones would be nothing but a cloud of dust before you could count
ten! A match, indeed! My dearest friend, you do not know what you are
saying!'

'I do, but you have a greater command of language than I,' answered
Cucurullo quietly. 'When I said that you would be a match for them, I
meant that you could destroy them in an instant.'

'I see,' said Tommaso, pacified. 'But if you think I can talk, you
should hear Count Trombin! Now listen, most worthy friend. If you desire
it, I will speak with my masters for you; for the truth is, they are two
very noble cavaliers, and would ask nothing better than to help a l