per, that cool
young man, taking a handful of coppers from his pocket, arranged them as
checkers on the board, without taking any notice of the man; and after
he had placed them, began playing deliberately. He rested his chin on
his hand, and with knitted brows, studied several intricate moves; he
finally jumped the men, so as to leave a copper or two on the board; and
bidding the old man good-night, continued a conversation with Rocjean,
commenced previous to his game of draughts.

Next approaches a hardware--merchant, for, in Imperial Rome, the peddler
of a colder clime is a merchant, the shoemaker an artist, the artist a
professor. The hardware-man looks as if he might be 'touter' to a
broken-down brigand. All the razors in his box couldn't keep the small
part of his face that is shaved from wearing a look as if it had been
blown up with gunpowder, while the grains had remained embedded there.
He tempts you with a wicked-looking knife, the pattern for which must
have come from the _litreus_ of Etruria, the land called the _mother of
superstitions_, and have been wielded for auguries amid the howls and
groans of lucomones and priests. He tells you it is a Campagna-knife,
and that you must have one if you go into that benighted region; he says
this with a mysterious shake of his head, as if he had known Fra Diavolo
in his childhood and Fra 'Tonelli in his riper years. The
crescent-shaped handle is of black bone; the pointed blade long and
tapering; the three notches in its back catch into the spring with a
noise like the alarum of a rattle-snake. You conclude to buy one--for a
curiosity. You ask why the blade at the point finishes off in a circle?
He tells you the government forbids the sale of sharp-pointed knives;
but, signore, if you wish to _use it_, break off the circle under your
heel, and you have a point sharp enough to make any man have an
_accidente di freddo_, (death from cold--steel.)

Victor Hugo might have taken his character of Quasimodo from the wild
figure who now enters the Greco, with a pair of horns for sale; each
horn is nearly a yard in length, black and white in color; they have
been polished by the hunchback until they shine like glass. Now he
approaches you, and with deep, rough voice, reminding you of the lowing
of the large grey oxen they once belonged to, begs you to buy them. Then
he facetiously raises one to each side of his head, and you have a
figure that Jerome Bosch would have rejoice