'Be quiet, Nicolo!' said another, and there was an awkward silence, during which Matteo and I looked at one another in surprise; and then everyone burst out talking, so that you could not hear what was said.
Matteo and I bowed ourselves away from Donna Giulia, and he took me to Checco, standing in a group of men.
'You have recovered from your fatigue?' he asked kindly.
'You have been travelling, Matteo?' said one of the company.
'Yes, we rode sixty miles yesterday,' he replied.
'Sixty miles on one horse; you must have good steeds and good imaginations,' said a big, heavy-looking man--an ugly, sallow-faced person, whom I hated at first sight.
'It was only once in a way, and we wanted to get home.'
'You could not have come faster if you had been running away from a battlefield,' said the man.
I thought him needlessly disagreeable, but I did not speak. Matteo had not cultivated the golden quality.
'You talk as one who has had experience,' he remarked, smiling in his most amiable manner.
I saw Checco frown at Matteo, while the bystanders looked on interestedly.
'I only said that,' added the man, shrugging his shoulders, 'because the Duke of Calabria is rather celebrated for his retreative tactics.'
I entertained a very great respect for the Duke, who had always been a kind and generous master to me.
'Perhaps you do not know very much about tactics,' I remarked as offensively as I could.
He turned and looked at me, as if to say, 'Who the devil are you!' He looked me up and down contemptuously, and I began to feel that I was almost losing my temper.
'My good young man,' he said, 'I imagine that I was engaged in war when your battles were with your nursemaid.'
'You have the advantage of me in courtesy as well as in years, sir,' I replied. 'But I might suggest that a man may fight all his life, and have no more idea of war at the end than at the beginning.'
'It depends on the intelligence,' remarked Matteo.
'What the devil do you mean?' said the man, angrily.
'I don't suppose he means anything at all, Ercole,' put in Checco, with a forced laugh.
'He can answer for himself, I suppose,' said the man. A flush came over Checco's face, but he did not answer.
'My good sir,' I said, 'you have to consider whether I choose to answer.'