rofessional secret--the same philter, I declare to you on the honour of
a nobleman, whereby, in your own city, a lady no longer young and no way
remarkable in looks or station, has captured and subjugated the
affections of one so high, so exalted, so above all others in beauty,
rank, wealth, power and dignities--"

"Oh, oh, that's the Duke!" sniggered a voice in the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I name no names!" cried the quack impressively.

"No need to," retorted the voice.

"They do say, though, she gave him something to drink," said a young
woman to a youth in a clerk's dress. "The saying is she studied medicine
with the Turks."

"The Moors, you mean," said the clerk with an air of superiority.

"Well, they say her mother was a Turkey slave and her father a murderer
from the Sultan's galleys."

"No, no, she's plain Piedmontese, I tell you. Her father was a physician
in Turin, and was driven out of the country for poisoning his patients
in order to watch their death-agonies."

"They say she's good to the poor, though," said another voice
doubtfully.

"Good to the poor? Ay, that's what they said of her father. All I know
is that she heard Stefano the weaver's lad had the falling sickness, and
she carried him a potion with her own hands, and the next day the child
was dead, and a Carmelite friar, who saw the phial he drank from, said
it was the same shape and size as one that was found in a witch's grave
when they were digging the foundations for the new monastery."

"Ladies and gentlemen," shrieked the quack, "what am I offered for a
drop of this priceless liquor?"

The listener turned aside and pushed his way toward the farther end of
the square. As he did so he ran against a merry-andrew who thrust a long
printed sheet in his hand.

"Buy my satirical ballads, ladies and gentlemen!" the fellow shouted.
"Two for a farthing, invented and written by an own cousin of the great
Pasquino of Rome! What will you have, sir? Here's the secret history of
a famous Prince's amours with an atheist--here's the true scandal of an
illustrious lady's necklace--two for a farthing...and my humblest thanks
to your excellency." He pocketed the coin, and the other, thrusting the
broadsheets beneath his cloak, pushed on to the nearest coffee-house.

Here every table was thronged, and the babble of talk so loud that the
stranger, hopeless of obtaining refreshment, pressed his way into the
remotest corner of the room and seat